ishbadiddle: i haven't blogged this yet but 2 beatles links
ishbadiddle: http://www.boingboing.net/2005/05/29/copyright_prevented_.html
ishbadiddle: http://www.airwindows.com/analysis/Albums/BeatlesWhiteAlbum/index.html
molanphy: Thx. Boy, the supply of Beatles-related links/memes is endless, innit?
ishbadiddle: pretty much.
ishbadiddle: i think the idea of copyright preventing a song from being released *into space* is pretty hilarious
molanphy: Well, hey, you never know who could be file trading in space
ishbadiddle: LGMster?
ishbadiddle: (Little Green Men)
ishbadiddle: besides we've been *broadcasting* this stuff since Marconi....
molanphy: But the fidelity from a golden phonograph record! So much better than broadcast...my god! The labels have got to put a stop to it! SUE VOYAGER!
ishbadiddle: yeah but what if Voyager becomes the center of a hostile alien civilization, a la Star Trek?
ishbadiddle: it could totally countersue then.
molanphy: And then we would all experience blige.
ishbadiddle: Mary J?
molanphy: No, a state of cacophonous interplanetary imprisonment. Leaned about it in a Star Trek game with Ted, Andrea and Jay one time.
ishbadiddle: sounds like the proper punishment for interstellar copyright violators
molanphy: They deserve nothing less. Steal satellite recordings and trade them, will they....!
ishbadiddle: hmmm, in lieu of actually writing a blog post, can i just blim this?
molanphy: Knock yo'self out
ishbadiddle: unless you have something else clever to say at this point :)
molanphy: You might title the post something like "Across the Universe."
ishbadiddle: ooh, that's good.
molanphy: "Copyright extends Across the Universe" something like that
molanphy: I'd play with Lennon's lyrics, but they're pretty obtuse
ishbadiddle: the irony is that the images from the Golden Record are themselves copyrighted
ishbadiddle: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/sceneearth.html
molanphy: Worlds within worlds, my friend.
ishbadiddle's head spins
| Copyright | Space | Outer Space | NASA |
Photos: Robots work in swarms and hives. I'm glad to see that DARPA is funding Skynet just as it's supposed to! Coming soon: grey goo?
Update: robots in new, easy to swallow form!
This article brought to you by the Paranoid Science Fiction Readers Association.
| Mad Science |
I now have all the pieces in place for the Jukebo(Linu)x! I wish I had thought to build one into an accordion, though. (Note to self: check his software configuration when I get to that point.)
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Which governor had a "Potemkin pothole" created just so he could fill it up on camera? And was recently recently attacked for using product placement from his campaign donors in a political commerical? An Ishpoint to the first correct guess. No cheating by reading the articles first!
... than getting that Andrea Bocelli song stuck in your head, it's getting that Andrea Bocelli song stuck in your head as a duet with Elmo. Here are revised lyrics. Why did I get to see this on Sesame Street and not "The Grouch Apprentice" or "Desperate Houseplants"?
And yes, it's still stuck in my head. Thanks, Elmo.
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I recently picked up The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares. The back blurb mentioned both Borges (Casares was a protege) and Philp K. Dick, so how could I not buy it? Plus it was slim. I was in the mood for slim.
But I made the mistake of reading the introduction first. There are two, actually, one by Borges (recommended) and one by the academic Suzanne Jill Levine. Toward the end of her introduction, Prof. Levine says something along the lines of, "The central literary device of the novel, [spoiler redacted], was also the inspiration for [famous foreign film I've never seen.]" Great. Now you've ruined both the book I'm about to read and the movie I wanted to see at some point. Thanks a lot, Prof.
And the book? It's pretty good, although I had to keep trying to imagine myself as the reader who didn't know what was happening, instead of the reader who did. (A pretty Borgesian trick, actually.) It's hard, though, to follow the protagonist around a mysterious island filled with strange machinery and not think, "didn't I play this video game"?
Speaking of Borges, here's a bibliography of the books he invented, reviewed, and described but never wrote. (Link via.) And there's even cover art! I'm still looking for the right word for this process -- to create a work of art by describing it as if it existed, without actually going through the process of writing the book, painting the painting, etc. (For example, this fellow describes all the pictures he did not take.) Rescription? Dereification? Mutasimication? Any suggestions are welcome, or tell me if such a word does exist. I need it.
| Borges | Adolfo Bioy Casares | Imaginary Books |
N.C. pastor stands by sign saying Quran should be flushed
| Religion | North Carolina |
Alan Moore, on having to testify in a suit over the League screenplay:
"They seemed to believe that the head of 20th Century Fox called me up and persuaded me to steal this screenplay, turning it into a comic book which they could then adapt back into a movie, to camouflage petty larceny." This led to Moore giving a ten-hour deposition - he believes he'd have suffered less if he'd "sodomised and murdered a busload of children after giving them heroin."
In other news, Alan Moore breaks with DC Comics, mostly over their film adapatations. But: more League comics coming!
| Alan Moore | Your Blank of the Day |
Woman on cell phone, walking down 7th Avenue.
"I need some advice. My neighbors are convinced I'm running a crystal meth lab out of my kitchen."
She crossed the street before I could figure out if she was calling a friend or 311.
| New York City | Brooklyn | Park Slope |
"Like the Sgt. Pepper's artwork redone by someone with OCD and two grams of meth in his bloodstream, Howard Hallis' Picture of Everything is a huge, annotated drawing of, well, everything." -- memepool
A huge pop culture / art / comics / myth / religion mashup, like a high school doodle that just wouldn't stop. Wow. With juxtapositions like Statler & Waldorf next to the "Magic Seals of the Seven Angels of the Seven Days of the Week." Reproduced below with original captions:
FAMILY FEUD WITH THE MUNSTERS vs. THE ADDAMS FAMILY
Hosted by Elvira. The topic is "Scariest Movies". Located in the "Cars, People, Robots" section.
GANGSTA HEAVEN
This is a TV show where Tupak Sakur and Biggie Smalls are forced to spend the afterlife with each other on a small, deserted island. The only people they can communicate with are Puff Daddy and Lil' Kim, who appear as ghostly heads in the sky. Located in the "Space and Heaven" section.
| Comics | Religion | Mythology |
OK, so whose bright idea was it to ferret out illegal immigrants by pelting them with gamma rays? Don't our politicians and scientists read the comics? Because you know, we truly need illegal immigrants whom we really, really wouldn't like when they get angry.
| Comics | Immigration | Mad Science | Gamma Rays | Radiation |
WMMR, the classic rock radio of choice growing up, used to play a live version of Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London" that he recorded at The Main Point, a now-resurrected folk club in Bryn Mawr. On it he sings "Werewolves of Bryn Mawr" for much of the song. Bryn Mawr being my hometown (we lived there before moving to Wayne), I always wanted a copy of the song, but never got to tape it off the radio before I left Philly. So when I found The Bootleg Browser, a huge compendium of live performances, I thought to look up Zevon. And there, in all its digital glory, was the very song I was looking for.
Ain't the Internet grand?
| MP3 | Bryn Mawr PA |
I'd heard so much about this movie, I was expecting something, I don't know, better. Eh.
Your quote of the day:
"The yield on transporting human remains -- I want to be sensitive when I say this -- is definitely worth our while," says Dale Anderson, director of mail and cargo for JetBlue. "I have to move close to 1,000 pounds of general cargo to equal the revenue of one human remain." --WSJ
Via The Obscure Store.
| Funerals |
Here are two very low hanging ripe fruit that I'm just baffled that somebody hasn't implemented already. I thought the market was supposed to be efficient:
1. Why don't car stereos have input jacks for mp3 players? The existing work around of broadcasting your ipod output onto FM is a dreadful hack, as bad as the old days of putting in a fake tape casset in with a wire leading to the true input device. It has been 3 years since iPods hit, we have stereos that play mp3 CDs for a much smaller audience, I don't get why nobody sells aftermarket stereos with input jacks. [Some more direct hacks: 1, 2, 3]
2. Why can't cell phones beam vcards to each other, like Palm Pilots do. It's dreadfully awkward to try to sit there and punch in somebody's name and number when you meet them, why can't people simply beam, at least on bluetooth phones? As with Palm Pilots, you can make it so that active consent is required to both send and receive. Can you imagine how popular such a phone would be with teens? Everybody would want to pretend they had so many friends that they needed one.
I had more, but they're not coming to mind now. These should be a decent start. Anybody else have obvious product ideas?
| iPod | Telephones |
He'd said "nigger." That much was clear. There was a standoff on 7th Avenue, just ahead of me -- two young black men, a young white woman with them, and The Guy. He was thirtyish and skinny and tall and white and had hip black frames on his glasses and a grey skull cap covering his apparently bald head and was dressed all in blue except for his black boots (dress casual type) and the silver celtic cross around his neck. "Why'd you have to say that?" The young woman wanted to know. "We didn't say anything to you." They were all in the middle of the intersection. "Yeah well it's OK for you to threaten me, you can have free speech but I can't say what I want?" demanded The Guy. More angry words were exchanged but no blows. The Guy kept walking but a bystander stopped him. "Your words were more aggressive," she said. "What it's OK for them to threaten me? You don't care what happens to me. Fuck you you leftist piece of shit!" His foul tirade against liberals, communists, etc continued up 7th Avenue.
It appeared that we were going in the same direction -- to the 7th Avenue Q station. Along the way he took the opportunity to spit on an old man, whose long hair offended him. "Fuck you you hippy!" Fortunately, his spitting wasn't very effective, and the old man didn't apparently notice.
I had no idea what the initial argument had been about, or why he felt threatened. But The Guy was looking for a fight. I had to keep close, in case something happened.
I lost him for a minute while I got a Metrocard. When I caught up to him he was screaming at a woman carrying a Park Slope Food Coop bag. Next to her was a small boy. Again I missed the beginning -- apparently she'd also witnessed his performance on 7th Avenue. He was yelling and screaming at her -- "you're an ugly liberal piece of shit" etc. She was giving it back, power to her. "You keep it up, someone's gonna beat you down on the train before we reach Manhattan." "Oh, who? You're paranoid. Who's gonna get me? Who?"
Now I'm not a violent man. But I had to fight the urge to say "I will," and hit him. Hard. Perhaps I should have. I don't know.
Instead, I shadowed him onto the train. I don't know if I was just invisible to him, but he apparently didn't notice me, even when I sat down right next to him. He continued to talk about how communists were ruining the country, to no one in particular. Then he started muttering about someone else on the train, how the "bug" (?) was trying to act threatening by crossing his arms.
That's when the angels showed up. Guardian Angels, actually, two of them. I got up and approached them. Told them about The Guy. "He's fixing to pop, huh?" Yeah, well, you're the guys to tell. So they stayed on the car. So did I, reading Rules for Radicals (take that) and occasionally glaring at The Guy. He wouldn't meet my eyes. Maybe I wasn't invisible after all.
Oh, and when I finally got to work? There was a full-arc rainbow over Manhattan, staring on the Upper East Side, touching the top of the Empire State Building, and ending somewhere in the 20s. Which I can't take as a sign of anything. But it was sure pretty to look at. Prettier to look at than rage bottled up in blue.
| Brooklyn | Park Slope | Guardian Angels |
For some time now I've been wanting to build a music server that would connect to my stereo system. We have music in four different formats: CDs, MP3s (some ripped from the former, some not), LPs (yes, vinyl) and cassettes (mostly old mix tapes). Music is played on our stereo, on iPods, and in the car, but rarely directly from the computer. I use a Altec Lansing inMotion to play music in the office. I wanted one place for all this music to reside. That meant hooking up my computer to my stereo so that I could rip the analog media. But the computer is in the office, and the stereo is in the living room. Ripping a few hundred LPs is going to take quite a while, and I couldn't tie up Debbie's office computer while I did that. Hooking the laptop into the stereo didn't seem like such a great idea, either, since it only has a line-in jack. And then there's the playback issue. Once all the music was digitzed, how would I play it? If the digital files lived on a hard drive, I'd have to snake a line from the office into the living room. There are wireless streaming options, but they would require that the computer would need to be on all the time in order to play music, and they only work one-way (from PC to stereo) so recording is out. Plus, we're wireless, but it's not, um, our own network. (Thanks, neighbors!)
So time to build a home theater PC! This is my first time building a computer, I'm very excited. I think this means I level up in Geekitude. I have fond memories of building electronics with my father -- we made a ham radio from a Heathkit. I don't think I'll be doing as much soldering this time around, though.
Continue reading "Jukebo(Linu)x" » | Jukebo(Linu)x | Linux |
Jean Reno is a nobleman who is transported from the 11th century into the 20th, along with his vassal. Hilarity ensues. Very very funny.
"It's like TV Land going to Auschwitz and proposing to erect a statue of Colonel Klink."
'Bewitched' Statue Bothers Some In Salem. Via the Obscure Store
| Wiccans |
| Environment | Global Warming | Surveillance Society | Iraq | Tony Blair | George W. Bush |
According to Gadgetopia there's a security risk on FireFox. If you've installed plugins from outside the "official" Mozilla sites, then you've enabled those sites to install plugins at any time. (I've always thought this seemed odd, that there was no "Allow This Plugin" option in addition to "Allow Plugins From This Site"). And that hole has now been exploited. To close it, go to Tools-->Options, then "Web Features", then "click the 'Allowed Sites' button next to 'Allow web sites to install software', and remove anything that isn't update.mozilla.org or addons.mozilla.org."
| Malware |
Waaaay back in 2001 Matt F-B posted about the Sample FAQ, the resource of all known samples in music. Now the same data has a funky reformat over at The History of Sampling. Very cool interface. Could use a legend though -- it's not immediately apparent that the colors correspond to genres, or that the height / depth of each dot is relative to the number of times the album has been sampled / number of samples on the album. Still, very neat. Found on Cool Hunting.
| Hip-Hop | Information Architecture | Design |
An East Waynesville, NC Baptist Church has just kicked out all its Democratic members.
East Waynesville Baptist asked nine members to leave. Now 40 more have left the church in protest. Former members say Pastor Chan Chandler gave them the ultimatum, saying if they didn't support George Bush, they should resign or repent. The minister declined an interview with News 13. But he did say "the actions were not politically motivated." [WLOS]
You can see the video from the local news segment here.
I ask you: what the hell is wrong with this country?
| North Carolina | Crusaders |
And a couple of neat
CSS tricks too, the latter via things magazine.
| How To | CSS |
Hey! I wrote you a similar letter a while ago, but let me just add that they finally make a really nice cinema version of this whole Hitchhiker thing - but not until 2005. Yes, 2005! You'll be.. let's see.. 2000 plus 7 minus 4.. um.. 59 years old. Wait. No. Granted, you have to sit through the disturbingly lo-fi BBC TV version sometime soon - but just try to tune that all out. Also, they are releasing the last star wars film this year. Oh, and a foxy girl sleeps in your future bed with you almost every night!
| Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy |
I've been light on the political blogging recently, but a number of articles on the Crusaders have recently crossed my desk, so to speak. ("Crusaders" is the term I'm trying to inject into the political discourse to describe the Political Religious Right.) Many of these links are via Eschaton. Here goes:
Continue reading "Crusader Roundup" » | Religion | Atheism | George W. Bush | George H. W. Bush | Pat Robertson | 9/11 | Al Qaeda | New York City | Virginia | Wiccans | Law | First Amendment | ABC | Advertising | James Dobson | Focus on the Family | Raul Gonzales | DOJ | Pornography | TSA | Airlines | Hats | RIAA | P2P |
More here. Found on Eyebeam reBlog.
| Roy Lichtenstein | Comics |
Why? Because, that's why.
"Weapons that can incapacitate crowds of people by sweeping a lightning-like beam of electricity across them are being readied for sale to military and police forces in the US and Europe.
[snip]
'We will be able to fire a stream of electricity like water out of a hose at one or many targets in a single sweep,' claims [Xtreme Alternative Defense Systems] president Peter Bitar.
The gun has been designed for the US Marine Corps to use for crowd control and security purposes and is due out in 2005."
Shall we start a pool on how long it will be until someone takes this baby out for a test-drive?
| Military | Weapons | Scary |
It's not often I pick up a Daily News, but when I do I always read the comics. Today I found this "Brevity" comic insulting my intelligence:
The whole joke -- World War II isn't a terribly original name, coming right after World War I, rdrr -- is just wrong! World War I wasn't called WWI until WWII, it was called "The Great War." And Pearl Harbor was two years after the invasion of Poland. Get a history book!
Speaking of historical gaffes, I also happened to spy an advertisement for a bank -- I think Citibank although I am not certain. It jokingly depicted "Innovations in Banking" throughout history -- you know, the toaster giveaway, that sort of thing -- including "The First Check." The check was shown being chiselled out of stone, and the blurb talked about fur-wearing, meat-eating guys who went "clubbing." Get it? Right. Cavemen. Here's the thing: the date given for "The First Check" -- 32 BC. Um, guys, if you're going to make a Stone Age joke, at least put it in the right millenium, OK? Get a history book!
Rassenfrassenfrussenmussen...
| WWI | Comics | Advertising | Stone Age |
The last issue of Greg Pak's Phoenix Endsong is out. As usual, Greg nails it at the end -- because he knows that the common thread through myth, grand opera, and the peculiar mutant family drama of the X-Men is, yes, love.
| Greg Pak | X-Men |
Adam Felber on Intelligent Design and the Intelligent Lobster Designer. Johnny Hart on Charles Darwin. And Funky Winkerbean on Johnny Hart.
| Intelligent Design | Comics | Charles Darwin |
At last (or not yet already), the time traveler convention.
As they so eloquently put it, "Technically, you would only need one time traveler convention. Time travelers from all eras could meet at a specific place at a specific time, and they could make as many repeat visits as they wanted. We are hosting the first and only Time Traveler Convention at MIT in one week, and WE NEED YOUR HELP!"
This event will take place on May 7th. I had a wonderful time, didn't you?
| Conventions |
Apparently a follow-up to the Sophocles story recently blogged here. Coming soon: The Omen, Hastily Corrected Edition!
| Bible | Numerology