It Sounds Like _What_? (music)

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/videos/tom-waits-and-keith-richards-perform-shenandoah-20130111

Please take a moment to experience Keith Richards and Tom Waits doing their rendition of "Shenandoah" - the traditional sea shanty. This track came to me context-free so I had to look it up. Turns out there's an entire album called Son of Rogue's Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs and Chanteys that came out a couple months ago. The creative forces behind this are Johnny Depp, Gore Verbinski and Hal Willner – the creative forces behind the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Go figure.

Anyway, I'm playing this thing and my elder wants to know what it is. "It sounds like orcs singing," he opines. And, y'know, if orcs had a spiritual it would probably sound a lot like that.

Deeper Thinking About Snowden and the NSA

95% of the coverage I read is personal/political/Superbowl/sensational. But a few pieces I've seen lately reflect deeper and more thoughtful work on the topics raised.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/22/privacy-and-the-threat-to-the-self/
In the NY Times, philosophy professor Michael Lynch looks at (one reason) why we care about privacy. It's not just about our actions, but about our sense of self. In some ways, an intrusion on our privacy is an attack on our sense of who we are. As someone who has always considered himself a private person I found this an interesting way to conceive of a good chunk of what it is that bothers me.

http://www.lawfareblog.com/2013/07/what-happens-when-we-actually-catch-edward-snowden/
Meanwhile, over at the Lawfare blog, David Pozen asks the practical "and then what?" question about the US getting ahold of Snowden. Pozen points out that while there are disadvantages to having Snowden running around in semi-exile there is also a strong case to be made that whatever damage Snowden can do is already done and that capture and trial would incur much larger costs than, say, formally exiling him and letting him fade from the headlines. I'm not sure I entirely agree - I think for example the NSA/CIA really want to be sure what he has and has not leaked already and whether he's given anything to the Chinese or Russians - but pragmatically I think they have to assume that he did so (voluntarily or not). If they can be reassured that there are no more bombshells or dead-man caches waiting to be triggered it might well be in their interests to keep him out of the media eye.