Snappy the Clam

Can I touch the hem of his garment?

Joi Ito has been at the center of critical movements to make technology, and creative freedom, available widely. He loves his profession, and he does it well. Mornings for him do not begin with the regret of who he couldn't be. But his success in these fields has also given him an understanding of the people in these fields. In the twenty-some years of his work, he has come to know the people of these industries (both commercial and non-profit) well. They are his friends (Ito has no enemies). He engages them as a friend, always concerned and giving, never short or impatient. He understands them by learning to see them in a certain way. He engages them with the love of friendship by learning to see them in the most beautiful, or distinctive way, possible. Digital technologies have now given us a way to see just how Joi sees the world. By lowering the cost of access and practice, the technologies have allowed Ito to become an accomplished amateur photographer. But 'accomplished' in this context means that he has learned how to capture the person he sees. And unlike the professional photographer, who ordinarily has 10 minutes to come to 'know' the person he photographs, Ito has had his whole professional career. He knows the people in this book. He has come to see them in their most beautiful, or extraordinary light, and he has perfected an ability to capture what he sees, and share it with all of us.

Jesus, what is this? Messianic 2.0? And this saccharine hagiography is from the introduction to a "limited edition" (I can just imagine the price) collection of "portraits." Note the usual technology has disintermediated photography bilge. The ironic thing: Joi Ito is rich. He could already easily afford both access and practice, I'm sure. But we get sold this usual crap about taking photography away from some vague "priesthood", and Joichi Ito gets to scrapbook on a global scale. What a racket. You unwashed not getting comped a copy can download the CC-licensed flickr images, though I'm unsure why you'd want to since it's the usual conference-roaming gang of technology "creatives." For the most part I've given up on shoveling shit against the tide of these people, but this one was just too much to let go by.

Technorati Tags: photography, cc, a-list, usual gang of idiots

Posted by John at 10:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Burrito of Doom 2.0

BuzzMachine » Blog Archive » No, Taco Bell, you come here:

"And then I am permitted only 250 words to tell them about how I used to love Taco Bell but how I’m not feeling well now after having two bites of frijoles that were soupy and strange and how I had to go back to the counter twice to get them to remake a simple grilled burrito that was falling apart and disgusting and how the employee clearly didn’t give a shit and that was why I decided I really didn’t want him feeding me today so I demanded a refund and probably won’t go back to Taco Bell for a decade or two."

One sometimes wonders whether the real allure of the Internet for people like Mr "In This Our New World" Jarvis is in its excellence as an amplifier making it possible for him to scream "This is an OUTRAGE" at the top of his virtual lungs on BOTH a hyperlocal and global basis. The man has a slight detector set to 12. He gets one bad burrito in a Taco Bell and it warrants this big of a "I am SO blogging this" snit? If he acts anything in Real Life like he does on the web, I'm astonished you can get anyone to wait on him at all. One would advise another glass of citizen sommelier-sourced Merlot to wash down a nice, horse-sized chillpill with your next Stufft [sic] Whatever.

As my sainted Mither used to say "Do you really need to make a Federal case out of this?"

PS: JJ, if I were you I'd start checking my entrees for evidence of recent expectoration.

Posted by John at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Oxymoronic foodies and "compassionate meat"

Big City - How About Slaughterhouse Tour Before Supper, Food Lover? - NYTimes.com:

"But the tour, for now, stops short of bringing visitors inside. Knowing the slaughterhouse is there is one thing — seeing what happens inside is another. ‘No, that might be too much,’ said Mr. Barber, who confessed that the first time he visited a slaughterhouse, he experienced the same visceral revulsion that non-foodies often do.
It may be that for some people, seeing it might do just the opposite of enhancing the dining experience. Just how much of a connection to his or her food is anyone willing to make? But then again, to think that seeing the outside of a slaughterhouse would strengthen someone’s connection to the food coming out of it is a little bit like thinking that standing outside a church could bring spiritual enlightenment — isn’t that supposed to come from wrestling with all the messy, improbable, challenging stuff that’s happening inside?
Mr. Barber is clearly taking it one step at a time, and the farm is still considering how it might (safely) open up the slaughterhouse to interested individuals or groups (for now, slaughter day happens on Tuesdays, when the farm is closed to the public). He’s just relieved that the existence of the slaughterhouse hasn’t ‘grossed people out and made them not want to order here,’ a concern that suggests how little he senses his organic-friendly clientele truly understands about what goes on at a farm.
The slaughterhouse, he said, is just as much a part of the farm’s reality as the baby lambs that were born last week. ‘It’s about life and death and disease, and that’s part of what it means to live in an agricultural community,’ he said. ‘We’re not Disneyland.’ "

This is the most sensible thing I've seen on this subject in the media: an actual discussion of the cognitive dissonance buzzing between the antennae of happy, grass-fed animal hype, replete with faux primitivist "respect" - and the cold hard reality of dead animals. If you really want to make this more than a gimmick, have the customers come down on Tuesday, introduce them to Thursday night's dinner, and then have them kill it. We'll see how "connected" they feel when they get served a beautifully presented plate of roast victim, maybe with some of that visceral emulsion - er, I meant "revulsion."

Technorati Tags: vegan, vegetarian, happy+meat, compassionate+carnivore, ethical+meat

Posted by John at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Too bad it doesn't render it unfeasible

Digest - Features: The coming food storm, activists with cameras, bee breeders:

Downergate was a box-office hit: Animal-rights activists have discovered that downloadable video can be the most potent weapon in their arsenal, as long as their footage doesn’t contain so much violence as to render it unwatchable. Apparently we empathize more with large mammals, too. (New York Times)

"Unwatchable," as in don't show me where the candied bacon ice cream comes from.

(Via The Ethicurean.)

Technorati Tags: vegan, vegetarian, locawhores

Posted by John at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Slate on Pollan

Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food. - By Laura Shapiro - Slate Magazine:

In their view [Pollan's] got a bully pulpit and should be using it to rally a mass movement against Big Food, instead of encouraging people to believe that having an organic soyburger for lunch puts them in the front ranks of political activism.

If only it were an organic soyburger instead of a "grass-fed" dead animal. I pretty much agree with this otherwise - most of the locawhatever movement is pretty much "better living through shopping" - but given Dilemma's sloppily thought-out dismissal of vegetarianism, this sentence is no more than an attempt at tarring with the "dirty hippie" brush.

Technorati Tags: sole food, vegan, vegetarian

Posted by John at 2:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Takes one to know one

From the careerist locamogul-wannabes at the Ethicurean, the defenders of such meat-friendly euphemisms as "harvesting" and "humane meat," the people who think that paper-wrapped pig heads confront the reality of slaughter, the folks who like to talk about "happy pigs" but never, ever show you to which very unhappy end those poor pigs come, from those apologists for death we get:

Sticks and stones and spin: Stop talking about “debeaking” a chicken — that bothers people. Instead, let’s call it “beak conditioning”! (NWAnews.com)

Pot? Farmer Kettle from Hypocrite Gulch Farms on line 2. Says he wants to sell you some local grass-fed black.

Technorati Tags: food, locavores, slow food, sole food, vegan, vegetarian

Posted by John at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Good boy, Rex! (4 in a series)

From Twitter:

@davewiner - I'll be in SF later this week. I'll be happy to drop by with some chicken soup.

Technorati Tags: blogging, web

Posted by John at 10:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Who knew

That VRM was actually a fancy-ass acronym for bitching about companies, especially those that affect the life of a often traveling pundit? There's a widely applicable scenario. Who knew you could get a Hahvahd Fellowship for it? Man, they're pretty desperate in Cambridge these days.

Technorati Tags: blogwhores, bubble2.0, bullshit, vrm, vroom vroom

Posted by John at 11:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Good boy, Rex! (3 in a series)

About Fake Steve « Scobleizer:

UPDATE: Rex Hammock reminded me that Daniel Lyons wrote the famous “Attack of the Blogs” article for Forbes.

Good boy, Rex!

Technorati Tags: blogging, blogwhores, clickophant, linkwhores, webble2.0, webwhores

Posted by John at 6:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Legs to the snake

Gruber on Amazon's new PayPal killer:

Interesting but unsurprising sign of the times: they’ve got example code for Java, PHP, Ruby, and C#, but none for Perl.

Surprising omission he didn't notice: Python.

Technorati Tags: amazon, geek, python, web2.0, webdev

Posted by John at 5:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Snappy the Clam

Chowder is evil.

August 1, 2008

Can I touch the hem of his garment?

July 18, 2008

Burrito of Doom 2.0

June 6, 2008

Oxymoronic foodies and "compassionate meat"

March 14, 2008

Too bad it doesn't render it unfeasible

January 2, 2008

Slate on Pollan

September 25, 2007

Takes one to know one

September 11, 2007

Good boy, Rex! (4 in a series)

August 31, 2007

Who knew

August 6, 2007

Good boy, Rex! (3 in a series)

August 5, 2007

Legs to the snake

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