Happy Easter! On this special day, I went to mass at Our Lady of Good Counsel in the East Side on Manhattan, a very beautiful church with great music. The priest delivered a wonderful homily that was a little too long. However, it was funny and interesting how some of his main points had to do with people needing to come to mass every Sunday instead of just on Easter and Christmas.

For me and to many of you, the reasoning behind this is painfully obvious. However, to others, I suspect, it’s not so lucid. In any case, here it is. On Easter we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and such an event is one of the cornerstones (if not the cornerstone) of Christianity. Without His resurrection of both body and soul, the father reasoned, it is impossible for a Christian to believe in the resurrection of our own bodies and souls “when He comes again”; it is impossible to believe in “heaven” as normally defined. Easter falls on a Sunday, because we believe Christ died on a Friday afternoon. Good Friday celebrates this. Three days later, that is, days being measured from sunset to sunset in accord with Jewish tradition, He rose— on a Sunday. And so, every Sunday is sacred because it celebrates (among other things, like the Eucharist) the supreme event in the history of Christianity, Christ’s victory over death.

And that is why people should go to mass at least once on Sunday. You usually don’t think about things like that when you plainly go to mass. So, it follows that you definitely wouldn’t think about His resurrection and, thus, the institution of our faith, if you didn’t even go to mass on Sunday. If you call yourself Christian, then, just do it! It’s not hard.

Just wanted to reiterate some logic for those in need.

In other news, I’m writing this post on the way home on an airplane (although obviously I can’t submit this on an airplane). On this flight, I’ve gotten a bunch of good reading done from Code v2.0 by Lawrence Lessig. Great book. More on that later.

Anyway… It’s been a great first trip over Easter break to New York to visit my brother Michael (wow, a lot of prepositions). I’ve visited a bunch of cool places, including (“and not limited to”) previously mentioned places as well as Carnegie Hall, which I visited today. It’s been cold (yet worth it!), but it’s apparently been cold at home too. In any case, I definitely look forward to nice spring weather in Texas. Ahhh.

Hello! This morning I visited the NYSE trading floor with Michael and Ann. It was pretty cool! (Yeah, I know, that sounds pretty dorky.) When I entered the actual “floor,” it was like suddenly crossing a barrier into a legendary world… We also got to visit Michael’s office— very cool as well.

This evening we went to the Village Vanguard, a pretty famous jazz club (well, it’s gotta be famous if it has its own Wikipedia entry). It was a pretty cool experience. The music was good and interesting, although not all of it was my favorite kind of jazz, but that’s okay!

Lastly, we walked through Time Square up through Midtown to where the famous Apple cube is. Again, another thing pretty cool. What’s funny, though, is that it seems to serve as a 24/7 free internet café. I guess some of those people using the MacBooks/iMacs there may actually eventually get one, and so, it does serve its purpose pretty well.

It’s been reported today by various sources that EMI tracks for sale on the iTunes Music Store are going to become devoid of Digital Restrictions Management (DRM). Good news. Eric Bangeman from Ars Technica has this to say:

Apple and EMI announced today that the music label will begin selling all of its music through the iTunes Store, DRM-free. During a press conference in London this morning, EMI said that all of its unprotected tracks will be available worldwide from the iTunes Store starting in May for $1.29 and that customers will be able to upgrade their already-purchased EMI tracks for 30¢ if they so choose.

EMI and Apple said that the bit rate of EMI’s tracks will be bumped up as well. EMI’s catalog will now be available as 256kbps AAC files, upgraded from 128kbps…

…

It appears as if EMI and Apple are using the excuse of upgraded sound quality for the reason behind the individual track price bump, and not the lack of DRM.

I originally thought that the price increase was a little absurd just for getting a DRM-less song. I mean, why should you pay to “upgrade” your songs that you’ve already bought? Sure, losing the DRM makes it better than before, but you deserved that to begin with.

But then I was reminded by the updated Ars article that you do get a slight upgrade in AAC quality for the upgrade/new price you pay, which can be slightly reasonable. This really does seem to be a half-hearted attempt at getting people like me to completely condone this, but even so, I still think the buyers of rightfully purchased tracks should be able to obtain DRM-less versions for free.

Nonetheless, overall, this is good news, although it could be better, and hopefully, the other major labels watching closely will learn that this would actually good for both their sales and image. Improving said image in particular could really help their sales, actually, because people often dislike buying from evil empires that control all your rights.