Category: Art

Podcasts and audiobooks

Because the spoken word content on Spotify is so-so most of the time (aside from podcasts like Ologies and the Spycast), I have been trying Audible to provide better quality listening material during walks.

So far I have finished James Donovan’s book “Strangers on a Bridge: The Case of Colonel Abel” about the espionage trials and eventual prisoner exchange of a KGB colonel living as an illegal in New York (also depicted in the excellent film Bridge of Spies) and Lyndsay Faye’s “Dust and Shadow: An Account of the Ripper Killings by Dr. John H. Watson” which I learned about from an interview with the author on the I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere podcast and then finished in two days.

Donovan’s book was quite interesting, if read a bit mechanically. Faye’s book is a great pastiche, interestingly written with both deep knowledge of the canon and a willingness to innovate, and very well read in this edition.

Over several weeks I have listened to the first half of “Anna Karenina” read by Maggie Gyllenhaal, which is superb. She brings a great saucy enthusiasm to the text and language, and it’s easy to imagine that one is being read to by her character from the film Secretary.

Finally, in the hope of better understanding American conservatism in order to better strategize about climate change, I have been listening to Geoffrey Kabaservice’s “Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, from Eisenhower to the Tea Party.” I’m still working through the 1960s, which is still fairly little-known history to me. The book is a bit challenging both because a lot of the names and events are unfamiliar and because the narrator is a bit monotone in a way that tends to enhance the difficulty of paying attention.

I found that such narration was commonplace in the books and spoken word content on Spotify, so generally I have been very happy about how Audible has shifted my listening toward fully accomplished published works with enduring social importance, rather than just the (sometimes excellent) present-focused podcast and news content.

Open thread: Urban thru hiking

Apparently it’s something that’s starting to exist:

Day hiking within city limits isn’t a new concept, of course. There are guidebooks detailing trails in cities from San Francisco to Atlanta. But Thomas has pushed the pursuit further, mapping out routes as long as 200 miles from one corner of a city to another and using infrastructure like stairways and public art to rack up elevation gain and provide something approximating a vista. She started in 2013 with a 220-mile through-hike in Los Angeles called the Inman 300, named for one of its creators, Bob Inman, and the initial number of stairways it included. Among other efforts, she has since hiked 60 miles through Chicago, 200 miles in Seattle, and 210 miles in Portland, Oregon. In 2015, she trekked the 54 miles from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, on the 50th anniversary of that historic civil rights march.

The way I see it, urban thru hiking lets you walk more comfortably with less gear since you never need to make camp. Routes that amount to a serious sustained hike can be added up from segments which avoid car traffic as much as possible, and which link up with public transit to let you get home at the end of the day and back at the trailhead easily the next one.

Related:

Margaret Atwood on TVO 2008-11-01

I had been looking for this poem for literally years when I came across a TVO recording where she recites it. Atwood’s an intoxicating speaker, but you’ll have to use your imagination unless you can also track the audio down somewhere:

“That grandfather clock that was too large for the shelf, so it stood 90 years on the floor
Was brought from the shop on the day that the grandfather was born and went
Tick tock; tick tock
90 years without slumbering
Tick tock; tick tock
His life’s seconds numbering, just like a heartbeat
But it stopped
Short
Never to go again
When the
Old
Man
died
— I learned some memorable songs in grade three.”

Related:

Utilitarianism and photography

Despite being looked down upon for it by more sophisticated philosophers, I see a lot of value in the utilitarian idea that the right course of action can often be discerned by considering what will produce the greatest good and the least harm among the most people. It’s not a philosophy that answers all ethical questions by itself, but I think it’s healthy to try to focus on the actual life experiences of those involved rather than purely on abstract principles or one’s own preferences and judgment.

My appreciation for utilitarianism is revealed in how I do my photography. If it’s possible to create value for someone, even if it isn’t me and even if I won’t be paid for it, I will nearly always choose to do so when allowed. That’s why my photos are released on Flickr under a Creative Commons license: to empower people to get good quality files and put them to a wide range of non-commercial uses without the need for payment or permission (my usage guide explains how). It’s also why when I am doing a commercial photoshoot I think about what will be valuable and useful to the subjects and others, as well as the client paying me. When taking institutional headshots, for instance, I try to get a variety of shots in different postures and with different backgrounds, even if the client only needs a single consistent look. I then send the collections to the subjects for their own use. It takes more effort from me and probably leads to uncredited use, but it adds to the total amount of value arising from my photographic work. The same goes for sharing photos of events like conferences, rallies, and protests.

I’m somewhat skeptical about the idea of ownership generally, or at least I think people need to remain mindful about how artificial it is. Whether it’s physical or intellectual property, ownership isn’t a fundamental property of the universe, ethics, or human society (though that view is probably most justified with regard to your own physical body). Rather it’s a set of protections states choose to provide, either because it’s consistent with their governing philosophy, because that’s what citizens want or are used to, because they are pressured by other states, or because they think it’s economically efficient or growth-promoting. In my photography I think of myself as a lot like the New Horizons space probe during the one short high-speed flyby of Pluto which was the main justification for the mission. I’m at a particular place and time with instruments that can record what is happening around me. By putting in the effort to document those things effectively (and beautifully if possible) and sharing the data widely I have the potential to be considered a good observer who didn’t squander the opportunities afforded to them. That’s why I especially object when clients want complete control over the pictures I take for them when those pictures (a) don’t reveal anything that’s unproblematic to make public and (b) have some value for other people. Needlessly cutting down the scope of who gets access destroys much of the value that could arise from the photography, and thus much of my motivation and feeling of accomplishment for undertaking it.