Will Cameron's call for popular films mean more silent comedies? | Stewart Lee | The Observer

A great article about commercialism and art, but this bit (where David Cameron meets the magical Traum Gnaums who weave our dreams) killed me:

David suggested that, instead of dreaming of being dancers or spacemen or clowns, children should be encouraged to dream of, for example, studying economics while being financed by corporate sponsors with a view towards structured apprenticeships within approved educational partner companies. And he said that the meaning of dreams should be clearer, in order to give them a greater mass appeal. Gnaum Guabo disagreed. “For us, that’s the beauty of dreams. They’re mysterious and opaque, collisions of symbols and stories all swooshing around. They stay with you, but it’s not clear why. And often their meaning isn’t apparent until months or years later. Cameron’s telling us dreams should match people’s desires in an obvious and more immediately profitable way. I think I can speak for the Traum Gnaums when I say that isn’t why any of us got into dream weaving.”

Leonard Cohen: 'All I've got to put in a song is my own experience' | Music | The Guardian

A good little write-up and interview with Leonard for the release of his new album.

Coding for success – Andy Young – The Kernel

Learning to code is learning to use logic and reason, and express your intent in a consistent, understandable, repeatable way. Learning to code is learning to get under the skin of a problem and reduce it to it’s simplest form. Learning to code is learning to harness power external to yourself and provide instructions to realise your ideas – whether that be directly to a computer, to delegate to one or more professional programmers or even a human team that work for and with you in any dicipline. Learning to code is ultimately a fantastic way to gain a multitude of transferrable skills.

Young makes a very good point - we don’t need to teach kids to code so they can all get jobs as coders any more than we teach kids sport so they can be professional athletes. Learning to talk to computers, like learning grammar, languages, music theory and design, teaches you to think.

SOPA, Internet regulation, and the economics of piracy

As a rough analogy, since antipiracy crusaders are fond of equating filesharing with shoplifting: suppose the CEO of Wal-Mart came to Congress demanding a $50 million program to deploy FBI agents to frisk suspicious-looking teens in towns near Wal-Marts. A lawmaker might, without for one instant doubting that shoplifiting is a bad thing, question whether this is really the optimal use of federal law enforcement resources. The CEO indignantly points out that shoplifting kills one million adorable towheaded orphans each year. The proof is right here in this study by the Wal-Mart Institute for Anti-Shoplifting Studies. The study sources this dramatic claim to a newspaper article, which quotes the CEO of Wal-Mart asserting (on the basis of private data you can’t see) that shoplifting kills hundreds of orphans annually. And as a footnote explains, it seemed prudent to round up to a million.

Awesome follow-up post explaining that it’s not just the numbers that are the problem - in fact, there’s no evidence that piracy is harming the US economy, or that stopping it would make a difference.

I know it’s illegal, but it’s not the same as stealing. The law needs to be sensibly updated to deal with the Digital Age.

How Copyright Industries Con Congress | Cato @ Liberty

If you’re concerned about the overall jobs picture, as opposed to the fortunes of a specific industry, there is no good reason to think eliminating piracy by U.S. users would yield any jobs on net, though it might help boost employment in copyright-intensive sectors.

Turns out all of the numbers bandied about by the pro-SOPA crew are complete bollocks. What a satisfying article. It’s great when you can prove idiots wrong with numbers.

How Doctors Die

Not full of tubes, apparently. Via neilhimself.

schlock-corridor-poltergeist-1982-part-i

(via Instapaper)

how to make a living playing music | Ol' Danny Barnes

(via Instapaper)

Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist (Paul Kingsnorth)

Great essay.

We are not environmentalists now because we have an emotional reaction to the wild world. Most of us wouldn’t even know where to find it. We are environmentalists now in order to promote something called “sustainability.”

I like Kingsnorth. He writes a lot of sense.

On the Art of Staying in Touch

I worry about this too. Then I fail even harder to do anything about it. It’s Christmas soon, so I’m guaranteed to spend at least a couple of hours in the next week writing lists of people I should really keep in touch with more. Like most years, I’ll probably rewrite it in columns of weekly, monthly and biannual contact. Then I’ll ignore it entirely. I don’t have the vocabulary to keep in touch. Never have.