parker higgins

Even though The Martian was only officially released last year, I felt like it sat in my to-read pile for way too long before I finally got to it this week. And while I really enjoyed the book, I was disappointed by the lonely protagonist’s occasional sexist comments, which were unnecessary, a little cheap, and (one hopes) out of place in an era where humans are making repeat visits to Mars.

Muckrock has written an article on Jacob, the painting police horse of St. Petersburg, Florida, based on documents I obtained through a public records request to the local police in April. There’s no scandal here, but it’s fun to read about a city so smitten with their talented equestrian officers.

Three years ago, in the wake of the SOPA blackouts, the RIAA chairman and CEO Cary Sherman penned a strange sour grapes op-ed in the New York Times. He claimed that the overwhelmingly popular position against the proposal was based on lies, that “neutral” sites like Google and Wikipedia were violating their integrity by taking a stance at all, and most tellingly, that “misinformation may be a dirty trick, but it works.”

The music business tends to repeat itself. Conversations that seem completely intertwined with new technologies mirror those over earlier developments. Read Adrian John’s Piracy, for example, and see how closely the file-sharing debate followed the one about sheet music a century earlier.

The Washington Post doubled down this weekend on its ridiculous argument for new encryption that uses a “Golden Key” available only to law enforcement under a court order. This proposal has a few weaknesses; perhaps chief among them is that it is literally impossible.

Disney Educational made a short film in 1983 that depicts the devil and an angel arguing over whether a young woman should learn about computers. It’s called “Computers: The Truth of the Matter,” and I got to see it at the Oddball Films archive on Friday as part of a screening of retro-computing shorts. I looked it up online later and found basically nothing, so I thought I’d write up a few words for future searchers.

The tragedy that unfolded in Charleston this week is practically beyond words: a racist gunman committing what can only be described as an act of terrorism, taking the lives of nine people who had just invited him into their bible study community. Many people have spoken much more eloquently than I’m capable of about the white supremacist system that allows, encourages this kind of violence.

When I’m writing, it’s nice to have music that won’t try to distract me. Unfortunately that rules out lyrics and sometimes even melodies. One trick I like is slowing down nice, existing music to the point where it is more of a texture than a song.

Oakland’s employee compensation database is the kind of public record that should be proactively available, even with historical versions, without requiring a formal public records request. But since I couldn’t find it online, I filed a request, and got to interact for the first time with Oakland’s very cool RecordTrac system for handling those requests. RecordTrac is a Code For America fellowship project that launched a year and a half ago, and it ensures the entire process is online and publicly available, so users can see every request that gets filed and what response it received.

The number of kinds of works covered by copyright has increased a lot over the years. The first copyright act, in 1790, covered just books, maps, and charts. Subsequent laws have added things like music, photos, and film. For a real history you can check the Copyright Office circular, but here’s an emoji timeline.