24fps and Stuart Brand and baseball

[Gillies, Lindsay]

Catching up on a whole stack of mail:

to a curious Jean, re J. Klimkowski re S. Brand re PCs as empowering:
it is a means of communication/publication/duplication.  it also supports 
multiple media.  it also gives access to a world wide network.  how else 
could you talk to as many folks on such an obscure topic as this list?  rave 
not re the lack of informed consumption...it messages for you.  As a 
broadcast medium pcs and internet have typical weaknesses.  The really new 
aspect of things is the ability to electronically congregate.  As for the 
elite and the preterite, how many in the 5th Route Army could read?

re history of the PC Market:
agree with Oliver X...the kick start for the PC market was the publication 
by IBM of complete down-to-the-metal specs for their first PC.  This machine 
was built by an unusually independent division of IBM under the leadership 
of a guy who died a few years later in a Dallas Airport downdraft.  Soon 
afterward, shocked and worried by the hay the PC unit was making, IBM 
Corporate "reintergrated" the unit and has been strangling it ever since. 
 But that initial open publication of specs (completely at variance with IBM 
practice then and pretty much since) created a massive clone machine market 
and a software market that worked efficiently with the hardware.  The Mac 
has always had  better interface technology, but they conversely never 
opened up their operating system for the market and have miserably failed as 
a marketing company.

re baseball and paranoia:
check out a recently published (in paper) and certainly the best bio of one 
Moe Berg ("The Catcher Was a Spy"---doofy title though).  He was a pro 
catcher for many years---also a master linguist who studied at the 
Sorbonne---also an operative for the proto-OSS.  Also someone who learned 
Japanese in about two months.  Also a Jew who attended Princeton.  A 
fascinating character who embodies much of the strangeness of baseball and 
much else.  He also ties back to the explosive discussion some weeks 
past---despite his love for Japan, he took the opportunity while visiting 
the convalescent daughter of the US ambassador to Japan in the Tokyo 
hospital (early 30's) to nip up to the roof (the highest in the city) to a 
take a panorama of snap shots that was used some years later to plan the 
firebombing.

re the pitcher's mound:
physics and the archetypes can (perhaps must) coexist.  while helping the 
non-nolan pitchers, the mound is also a site for activity more anciently 
rooted than the batter up home plate.  "Batter up!"---but who controls the 
game?  Who originates the action?  The basic strategy of the game is never 
discussed at home plate---managers "go out to the mound".