Without a Traceroute

So Sao Paulo is basically like LA in Blade Runner, with fewer androids. Most of the fancy hotels and bars/clubs here have helipads on the roof. The Brazilians tell me that many well-to-do Paulistanos get around the city by helicopter taxi, in order to avoid the atrocious traffic and dangerous streets.

Obviously, this trend is indicative of the city’s tremendous failure to provide adequate transportation and safety for its citizens. On the other hand, it’s also super awesome. I’m told that a heli-taxi ride costs between $40 and $50 USD, and I fully intend to take one before I leave. I’ve never even been in a helicopter before!

NOTE: If you came here from a search engine or elsewhere looking for things to do to help in Iran, and don’t care about my opinions (I don’t blame you), skip to here.

In the wake of last Friday’s presidential election, Iran (or Tehran, at least) has erupted in massive demonstrations over the very questionable results. Much has been made of the use of the microblogging site, Twitter, as an organizing tool by the protesters. The mainstream media have gone on at great, irrelevant length about how wonderful this is. What’s a bit distressing is that bloggers, tweeters and other Web 2.0 types seem to be buying into their own hype as well.
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Many people are probably aware that June 6 marked the 65th anniversary of the D-Day invasion. However, until I saw the commemorative Google logo, I hadn’t realized until I that it represented another monumental anniversary: the 25th birthday of Tetris.

I mentioned this to a friend of mine, and he said something like, “Wow, only 25? It kind of feels like Tetris should have been around forever.” I can see where he’s coming from. There’s something about the platonic purity of Tetris that makes it seem timeless. Other computer games from the 1980s, may still be fun, but invariably feel dated, handicapped by the primitive graphics and sound hardware of the era. Not so with Tetris. Playing Tetris, one gets the feeling that it looks and sounds the way it does because that’s what Tetris is.

The history behind the creation, licensing and promotion of Tetris is incredibly convoluted. It is a tale rich with Cold War politics and transnational intrigue. It’s also too long to recount here, and covered in sufficient detail elsewhere.
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In the past, I have referred offhandedly to my distaste for the microblogging service, but I feel the time is ripe for me to make a full and public denunciation. This way, in 3-6 months, at least I’ll be able to link to this post and say, “Well, I was hating Twitter before it was cool.”

Sadly, the reason this post is necessary is that Twitter is fast approaching a tipping point in public consciousness. Oprah has a Twitter account now, as do dozens of members of Congress; the New York Times has published an article instructing their readers on the finer points of “tweeting”. Next, one of two things will happen. Either Twitter will be abandoned en masse by the members of the trendwhoring geek intelligentsia that made it popular in the first place (who will then tell you how they always hated it as much as Friendster and Pets.com), or, alternatively, it will become a permanent fixture of the culture. We’ve seen this pattern before: in 1985, having an email address meant you were either a scientist or a truly hardcore geek, in 1995, having an email address meant you were a cutting-edge first-adopter type; by 2005, having an email address just meant you were a person in a first-world nation. There should probably be some sort of official rule of pop-culture: once Oprah does something, it is no longer cool.
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So I’ve done a few things that merit longer, better posts, but I haven’t really written those “good” posts yet. Oh, my kingdom for a counterfactual computer (where the mere possibility of my writing such posts would mean that they were already written).

In the absence of reality-bending quantum effects, I’m going to slap together a collection of links and brief anecdotes in order to try to keep up my regular posting schedule. Consider this my “really coming into his own as a blogger” post.

Tonight You Belong to Me (ukulele cover) from buriednexttoyou on Vimeo.

Dave Hoffman is awesome and much better at the ukulele than I am—I am still working on it. He’s also not bad at harmonizing with his evil doppelgänger (you can tell the evil one by the beard). I’ve been looking for a good excuse to link to him for some time now, and I’ve decided if there’s one thing this blog is sorely lacking, it’s ukulele musical interludes. That’s as good a reason as any. Anyone who enjoys eccentricity in their creativity should check out his site.

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