Author: .

Hitchens on Orwell

.

A nice interview in the Atlantic Online with Christopher Hitchens, who has written a book on George Orwell.

I saw the quote below on The Morning News, which is what led me to the article.

“The great point that I try to make is that in fact Orwell isn’t a very great writer. He’s a very honest and courageous writer and he does a lot of work and he does have a certain gift of phrase, there’s no doubt about it. But he’s not in the first rank of writers. And that’s a good thing, because it shows what average, ordinary people can do if they care to, and it abolishes some of the alibis and excuses for people who aren’t brave.”

Camping on the Noto Peninsula

.

Sean and I rented a car last weekend and traveled to the Noto Peninsula for two nights of camping on the beach. Noto Peninsula is the large finger of land that juts out into the Sea of Japan to the west of Nagano. Because it’s so expensive to travel on expressways here (there are no “free”ways), we made the trip on secondary highways, over the mountains and then up to the upper-west coast of Noto.

Pictures from the trip are here.

The drive there took about eight hours, which was most of the day Saturday. We arrived after dark, and set up the tent on Kotogahama beach, near the small town of Monzen. The weather was cloudy, and we saw lots of rain during the drive. But when we arrived, there was no rain and the temperature was fairly mild.

We spent Sunday exploring the coast north of Monzen, and did a great hike along a trail carved into the sea cliffs. As we drove further north along the west coast of Noto, we took some small back roads that curved up into the hills along the coast. The scenery was amazing and the roads were crazy narrow. At many places on one road, vegetation on both sides of the road brushed the sides of our (very small) car. And every once in a while, we would come upon a tiny village tucked into the hills, usually no more than a dozen or so buildings.

After having a dinner of ramen in the town of Wajima, we headed back south for a bath at a public resort near our campsite. For about $4 each, we soaked in the hot baths, including an outside bath perched on a hillside balcony.

By the time we returned to the tent on Sunday night, it had started to rain.

The rain continued through our departure the next morning. When we woke up Monday morning, we hauled all our stuff up to the car and then carried the tent to a picnic shelter nearby. So we were able to have coffee and breakfast out of the rain, and were able to take the tent apart in a dry, non-sandy area.

We drove back to Nagano along the Sea of Japan coast, which turned out to be a fairly ugly drive through miles of urban/industrial blight. It wasn’t until we turned away from the coast and headed south to Nagano that we got back into some relative nature.

At one point on the drive home (in the mountains north of Nagano), we spotted a monkey sitting calmly on the edge of a tunnel, just as we passed underneath.

For about an hour in this part of the drive, it seemed like we spent the majority of our time in tunnels. There is such an amazing amount of concrete in Japan. And at times it felt like we would never get out of the tunnels.

The highlight of this trip was being able to explore back roads with the car. Most of the time I’m stuck on the well-traveled train and bus routes, so this was a nice change.

Uncle Mike’s New Niece

.3 Comments

Joni Grace Leahy was born today at 12:30am PST in Seattle. The little lady is presented by Proud Mom (and super sister), Tama, and Super Daddy, John.

This is my first nephew/niece. I’m sooo excited, but disappointed to be half a world away.
To see a cute QuickTime movie (listen for John saying, “Oh, good one!”), click here.

sneeze.jpg

Copyright Thoughts

.

Some additional thoughts on copyright, sparked by the Eldred v. Ashcroft case:
Do we really need to have copyright?

Notice the point was not to promote large incomes for authors and inventors, much less for media conglomerates or patent attorneys. The government only got involved because of the general benefits that flow from innovation and creativity.

Copyright and the Commons

There’s the old saying that good artists copy and great artists steal, and that’s not based on outright theft, but the acknowledgement that we are all influenced by others’ work, and things like hip hop music and photoshop collages point out how great new art can be created when combining other works into new works.

Riding Along With The Internet Bookmobile

“Universal access to human knowledge is what we as a culture and as parents need to do, and we’re screwing up. Ninety-eight percent of all books are inaccessible to my child for any amount of money,” Kahle says, as we pull into Urbana, Ill. Ninety-eight percent of all books in copyright are “terminally” out of print, according to estimates by Lawrence Lessig, professor of law at Stanford University and lead attorney for the plaintiffs in the Eldred case. Universal access to human knowledge? The law is designed to prevent access to knowledge — at least the human knowledge that no longer earns its keep in bookstores and movie theaters.

Kickball on NPR?

.

There’s a story on NPR right now about how kickball is making an “adult” comeback (there’s a kickball league in Pittsburgh). It sounds eerily similar to our summer kickball in Seattle — complete with cases of beer. What’s next? Dodgeball?

From Kyoto

.

It’s our third night in Kyoto. We decided to stay one more night rather than travel to Nara (we’ll do that tomorrow, for a day-trip before heading home to Nagano).

It’s been an excellent trip. Perfect weather. I’ve got lots of great pictures to post after I get home. Kyoto is beautiful, of course, and it’s been great to have three days here.

The Way To Travel

.

One of the best things about traveling by trains in Japan is the ease of use. It’s 11:25pm now — half an hour before our train bound for Osaka is scheduled to leave. We’ll leave the apartment in ten minutes and make the ten minute walk to the station. With ten minutes left, we’ll board the train, which will leave at exactly 11:55. No lines. No security check. Just walk onto the train and go. Who needs airplanes anyway?