silencematters

As I sat down to work on the WordPress theme that I hope to release soon, I came across a relevant comment that I made on an old Rhizome thread back in February ‘06 in response to the question, …[Should Artists be] required to expose their code in order to receive financial support? The question was originally posted by new-media artist Jason Van Anden. I thought my comment was a nice to dig back up and re-post since it makes relevant points about the nature of creation, and collaborative value. read more…

Kepler, An Opera by Philip Glass will make it’s U.S. premier this November at the Brooklyn Acadamy of Music (BAM). Dennis Russel Davies will be leading the Bruckner Orchestra Linz through for 3 nights of Kepler.

Philip Glass’s opera, written expressly for Landestheater Linz and Linz09, deals with the intellectual cosmos of the great astronomer.

Johannes Kepler lived and worked in Linz from 1612 to 1627. The opera raises fundamental questions of the kind that Kepler worked on all his life and that he hoped science would be able to answer. Historical ruptures in the wake of the Counter Reformation shaped the world into which the astronomer and mathematician was born in 1571. Surrounded on all sides by war and religious strife, he sought to decipher the divine order hidden in the “book of Nature”, in the unshakable belief that his efforts would be crowned with success. “God has based everything on numbers”, was the motto that inspired his research. Philip Glass, one of the best known composers of our time, bases his approach to Kepler on the astromer’s conviction that “without genuine knowledge life is dead”. - Glass Notes

Kepler

An Opera by Philip Glass
Part of the 2009 Next Wave Festival at BAM
Libretto by Martina Winkel
Bruckner Orchestra Linz
Conducted by Dennis Russell Davies
Nov 18, 20 & 21 at 7:30pm
Visit the event listing »

And yes, Juliette and I have a 4 month old named Kepler Cezzar Zilar. He was named after Johannes Kepler. It was mere coincidence that Philip Glass did an opera of the same name. Also a coincidence that NASA launched the Kepler Telescope into space last May, after we had chosen the name. NASA’s Kepler Mission went into full operation July 24, 2009, one day after our Kepler was born.

by silencematters

Juliette and I would like to introduce you to our new baby boy!

Kepler Cezzar Zilar

Born on July 23, 2009 at 6:32am in New York City.

He weighed 5lbs 7oz, is 18in long and is healthy from top to bottom. The nurses have been calling him the little astro-nut.

You cen see more posts, pictures and video of Kepler and our new family on our Futuretree blog. Or you can see the full gamut of Kepler photos and videos on Flickr.

A number of people have been asking for a good twitter directory of journalists. Now there is one. Muckrack is a basic site that has created a growing directory of journalists organized by media outlet. Don’t get me wrong, this is no Facebook for journalists, but this is a great way to reach out to old colleagues, connect with other newsrooms, and collaborate on breaking news. Be warned, it does require that you commit to using Twitter.

The future of information includes the future archive of our books and printed material – a matter not often talked about in the drive to educate ourselves online. That is why I found Robert Darnton’s On the Media interview and article in the New York Review of Books about Google’s plans to for Book Search really relevant to the chatter that is going around about the future of news and information.

He says,

“To digitize collections and sell the product in ways that fail to guarantee wide access would be to repeat the mistake that was made when publishers exploited the market for scholarly journals, but on a much greater scale, for it would turn the Internet into an instrument for privatizing knowledge that belongs in the public sphere.”

“Yes, we must digitize. But more important, we must democratize. We must open access to our cultural heritage. How? By rewriting the rules of the game, by subordinating private interests to the public good, and by taking inspiration from the early republic in order to create a Digital Republic of Learning.”

Umair Haque begins to define the interaction rules that are starting to define the 21st Century.

(via swissmiss)

Kenny Hyder has put together a collection of sites/tools that plug into the Twitter API and give you a clearer picture of your twitter-sphere.

If Twitter is like being blind in a candy store, these tools let you know which candy to try.

Photo by Juliette Cezzar“Our Mairiage Proposal”

One year ago today on Valentine’s Day I proposed to my wife, Juliette, through a crossword puzzle in her copy of The New York Times. Jim Horne, the writer behind WordPlay, the New York Times Crossword Blog was kind enough to publish our story. Read more…

Every problem in life should be approached under the assumption that the solution is this easy. The real work is letting yourself see the solution.

I love it when you come across an analogy, or you see a movie and it seems to color the way you see aspects of the world for days to come. That is just what happened when I read the start of this post by James Bennett.

There’s an old joke, so old that I don’t even know for certain where it originated, that’s often used to explain why big corporations do things the way they do. It involves some monkeys, a cage, a banana and a fire hose.

You have to read the whole first part of the post. It applies to everyone. The rest talks about the release of Python 3.0 – and I have to say, I have never been inclined to learn Python, or really even look into it until now – until someone has taken the care to present it in a smart way. Even if I never do anything with Python, I am now more inclined to think of it in favorable terms.

Also, the post generally highlights the work of competent people, and the world needs more of those. Great Work!