Twelve Black Code Monkeys

Wow, this Salon.com article is perhaps one of the coolest I’ve read in a while, and the most up my alley in terms of combining different interests:

There’s nothing particularly bleeding-edge about eating the hamburger but not the bun, now that low-carb dieting has gone mainstream. But low-carb diets do appear to hold a special attraction for hackers, programmers and other close-to-the-machine dwellers. For some geeks, the low-carb diet is itself a clever hack, a sneaky algorithm for getting the body to do what you want it to do, a way of reprogramming yourself. Programmers, who are used to making their computers serve their will, are now finding that low-carb diets enable the same kind of control over their bodies.

The article is about how hackers have taken to low-carb dieting for a number of reasons. Who knew that people like Cory Doctorow and Doc Searls were big low-carbers? Not me! Personally speaking most of the people I know who low-carb are not programmers, except for myself of course!

Basically, the article contends that hackers see low-carbing as “hacking” their bodies - to burn calories at a different rate. I think Searls is spot on when he is quoted as saying that he doesn’t think it’s a hack at all, but rather a “feature” - something we are supposed to be doing - eating the way our bodies are meant to. This may sound preposterous to those who are only familiar with the common stereotype (repeated in this article) of low-carbing being about eating a diet of only bacon cheeseburgers without the bun, but if you consider modern hunter gatherers and their overall diets being meat-based, you will get more of an idea of what Searls may be referring to.

The article, as most, only meantions one low-carb diet - Atkins. But Atkins never talks about the evolutionary and anthropological clues scientists have dug up regarding how our ancestors ate, which seem to suggest, as I mentioned, a primarily meat-based diet, such as is discussed in the Protein Power Books, Neanderthin, the Paleo Diet, and others. Since most hackers are scientifically minded, I think they would probably find even more interest in these theories than anyone.

As I’ve written, I’m giving away a few copies of the 4-disk DVD Set of the Live Aid concert. The contest involves writing a bit about how you (or a friend/relative) remembers it. I realized that I actually hadn’t written anything myself about it, so I thought I’d jot down a few recollections.

In 1985 I was a junior in high school in New York City. Friends Seminary (a small Quaker school) to be exact. I had only the previous year started expanding my musical horizons beyond the array of Beatles albums we had at home and the popular videos on MTV. But I hadn’t really started listening to the radio yet.

I don’t think I knew anything about Live Aid before it happened, but the weekend it took place I decided to try out the radio of my combo radio/cassette/turntable unit (probably Fisher or Sanyo or one of those), which while cheap was actually above average because it had a digital tuner!

I think a schoolmate at the time had suggested trying to listen to WLIR, a radio station on Long Island that was one of the pioneering stations to play progressive rock, which I would not really discover until college. WLIR was at 92.7 FM and I was fiddling with the tuner to see if I could get it, but I was getting something else that turned out to be a very strong signal emanating from 92.3 FM. This turned out to be WXRK, or as they were calling themselves, K-Rock. They turned out to be an album-oriented rock station, and at the time there was only one other, the decades old WNEW.

But that day that I tuned in, I wasn’t hearing songs off albums but rather live music. I listened for a while and realized it wasn’t just a live record, but something else. From what I recal, the station was brand new, and they had basically started by broadcasting this Live Aid concert. I think I eventually figured out that I could get it on TV and so eventually made it over to it. But I don’t remember all that much about the live performances themselves. At the time I was pretty new to “classic” rock, and only new a few bands in addition to the big pop personalities of the day (Michael Jackson, Madonna, Cindy Lauper, etc.). Looking at the list of performers at Live Aid, though, I’m familiar with most of them at this point, and perhaps this event was really what spurred me on to really start listening to the radio and in particular album oriented radio rather than the insipid top-40 garbage that was prevalent then as it is today.