Amy worked in the record business at Enigma, Elektra, Virgin and Sub Pop before she got sucked into the technology vortex. She co-founded the Backwards Beekeepers, a chemical-free urban beekeeping collective in Los Angeles. She runs digital marketing for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and The Hollywood Bowl.
This revolting thing is a cocktail called an "Alien Brain Hemorrhage": "To make an alien brain hemorrhage cocktail, fill a shot glass halfway with peach schnapps. Gently pour Bailey's Irish Cream on top. After the shot is almost full, carefully add a small amount of blue curacao. After it settles, add a few drops of grenadine syrup." Looks like it could be improved with a couple lumps of dry ice.
You know, when I was sitting down with entertainment execs on a regular basis to debate applied, practical technology choices in DRM standards bodies, their constant refrain was, "We love technology! We use it all the time!" The implication being that if they instigated a law prohibiting a technology it would not represent ignorance or fear, but well-informed solemn judgement. I'd often cite Jack Valenti's infamous words to Congress: "The VCR is to the American film industry as the Boston Strangler is to a woman home alone," and they'd scoff. "Why do you always bring that up? It's ancient history!" And I'd say, "Oh, do you repudiate Jack Valenti, then? Because the last time I checked, you guys renamed your headquarters (I shit you not) the Jack Valenti Building." And they'd say, "Ha, ha, very funny. But seriously, is one wrong-headed statement from Jack all you've got?" And then I'd go into the long list of all the crap they'd fought as an industry, from the remote control to cable TV, from diversified cinema ownership to yeah, the VCR, and they'd mumble something about how EFF stood for "Everything For Free," and I just didn't understand the arts. Which always made me laugh because generally speaking I was the only working creative artist in the discussion, and I'd often be going to meetings in between working on novels. Clearly, to understand the arts you need to be an entertainment industry lawyer working for a giant multinational conglomerate, not a working artist.
Anyway, if I was still in those stuffy, hateful rooms where they plotted to ban technologies, I'd print out a stack of this Matador Network infographics, which are a handy guide to the pig-ignorant campaigns that Hollywood has waged against new technologies since the industry's founders ripped off Thomas Edison's patents and fled to California.
Marshall Alexander made these free downloadable papercraft Etch-a-Sketch and Viewmaster models. He notes, "Instead of creating exact paper replica's I chose to do very simple interpretations that fit on a single page and are very easy to construct."
A great Mike Masnick Techdirt editorial deals with MPAA second-in-command Michael O'Leary's statement that, "[the Internet is] a platform we're not at this point comfortable with."
The MPAA's O'Leary concedes that the industry was out-manned and outgunned in cyberspace. He says the MPAA "is [undergoing] a process of education, a process of getting a much, much greater presence in the online environment. This was a fight on a platform we're not at this point comfortable with, and we were going up against an opponent that controls that platform."
Yes, even when he tries to say that they're trying to learn about that confounded internet thingy, he sounds ridiculous and dismissive. But the real point is his inadvertent admission within that statement: the MPAA (and the rest of "old" Hollywood) simply "is not comfortable with" the internet. And that's really what SOPA and PIPA were about. Rather than trying to understand this new platform, and learn from the many entertainers who do get the internet, they did what the MPAA does and simply tried to regulate that which they don't understand and fear.
Furthermore, even more ridiculous is the end of that sentence: "an opponent that controls that platform." As the article makes clear, he means Google. Which shows that he still doesn't get it. First, Google didn't lead the protests. It came late to the game, after the grassroots had already taken off with this stuff and run with it. But, more to the point, contrary to what O'Leary and the MPAA seem to believe: Google does not control the internet. No one does.
An unsigned rap group called After the Smoke couldn't post their song "One in a Million" to YouTube because every time they tried, it generated a YouTube content-match error saying that Universal Music owned their song. It turned out that UMG had laid claim to a leaked video that had a UMG artist performing the unsigned band's track in it, and this effectively gave Universal the power to censor the unsigned band's song.
YouTube's content-matching system has a lot of problems, as archivist Carl Malamud discovered when corporations started to claim that they owned the public domain US government videos he posted, threatening to cost him his YouTube account. And Universal attained notoriety for abusing content match by claiming to own the song that MegaUpload commissioned from major artists criticizing Universal and other rightsholder groups for their copyright stance.
Thingiverse's Tony Buser has an amazing approach to approximating the Hilbert curve, as Make's Sean Ragan explains:
Veteran Thingiverse user Tony Buser has printed a model (intended to be an approximation of the fractal Hilbert curve) using polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) as a support material. Once everything is printed and cooled, the PVA is dissolved away in a glass of water, leaving only the polylactic acid (PLA) model. This technique, when perfected, should allow RepRap-style FFF printers to produce objects with overhanging parts that are currently very difficult, or impossible, for them to print. Tony used two of MakerBot’s Mk7 extruders mounted on a Thing-o-Matic.
The Wall Street Journal published a letter expressing skepticism about anthropogenic climate change signed by a group of engineers, retired weathermen, and scientists from fields other than climate science.
In response, a much larger group of actual climate scientists signed onto a letter rebutting the first letter. The WSJ rejected it. Instead, the pre-eminent science journal Science, which is know for its rigor in treatments of science, published it, as "Climate change and the Integrity of Science" on January 27th, 2012.
(i) The planet is warming due to increased concentrations of heat-trapping gases in our atmosphere. A snowy winter in Washington does not alter this fact.
(ii) Most of the increase in the concentration of these gases over the last century is due to human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.
(iii) Natural causes always play a role in changing Earth's climate, but are now being overwhelmed by human-induced changes.
(iv) Warming the planet will cause many other climatic patterns to change at speeds unprecedented in modern times, including increasing rates of sea-level rise and alterations in the hydrologic cycle. Rising concentrations of carbon dioxide are making the oceans more acidic.
(v) The combination of these complex climate changes threatens coastal communities and cities, our food and water supplies, marine and freshwater ecosystems, forests, high mountain environments, and far more.
"Twitter has taken the unusual step of making DMCA takedown notices public, in partnership with Chilling Effects, a project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and several universities. The site shows 4,410 cease and desist notices dating back to November 2010."
Amy worked in the record business at Enigma, Elektra, Virgin and Sub Pop before she got sucked into the technology vortex. She co-founded the Backwards Beekeepers, a chemical-free urban beekeeping collective in Los Angeles. She runs digital marketing for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and The Hollywood Bowl.
Sound it Out # 15: Nada Surf "Waiting for Something"
Nada Surf has been playing intelligent and catchy guitar-based rock music for two decades. Their records are lush and beautifully written, and the constant sense of wonder and optimism throughout is a joy for this cynic to discover each time. Nada Surf always makes me believe that everything is going to be all right.
The Stars are Indifferent to Astronomy is Nada Surf's new record and it came out Tuesday. The songwriting covers lots of introspective themes about the passing of time without even a hint of sullenness or pomposity. 'Waiting for Something" is a fine example of Nada Surf at their best and may well stick in your head for the foreseeable future. It's been in mine for days.
Click the play button below to listen or the little arrow on the right side of the widget to download.
The key point here, which has been missing in much of the initial coverage, is that the policy announcement is specifically related to the company's global expansion: Twitter is opening offices in more countries around the world. A US-based company doesn't "have to" censor speech according to any other country's laws, but the scenario is quite different for a company opening offices and placing employees within foreign borders. Snip:
Until now, when Twitter has taken down content, it has had to do so globally. So for example, if Twitter had received a court order to take down a tweet that is defamatory to Ataturk--which is illegal under Turkish law--the only way it could comply would be to take it down for everybody. Now Twitter has the capability to take down the tweet for people with IP addresses that indicate that they are in Turkey and leave it up everywhere else. Right now, we can expect Twitter to comply with court orders from countries where they have offices and employees, a list that includes the United Kingdom, Ireland, Japan, and soon Germany.
Twitter's increasing need to remove content comes as a byproduct of its growth into new countries, with different laws that they must follow or risk that their local employees will be arrested or held in contempt, or similar sanctions. By opening offices and moving employees into other countries, Twitter increases the risks to its commitment to freedom of expression. Like all companies (and all people) Twitter is bound by the laws of the countries in which it operates, which results both in more laws to comply with and also laws that inevitably contradict one another. Twitter could have reduced its need to be the instrument of government censorship by keeping its assets and personnel within the borders of the United States, where legal protections exist like CDA 230 and the DMCA safe harbors (which do require takedowns but also give a path, albeit a lousy one, for republication).
When is it OK for me to put copyrighted material on e-reserves for students?
I've got an ancient VHS and the company that made it is defunct. Can I copy it to DVD for a prof's class?
A student's thesis analyzes advertisements and includes some of them. Can I put the thesis in our digital institutional repository?
Academic and research librarians can employ their fair use rights to make such decisions, and now they have a Code of Best Practices in Fair Use to help them decide what's appropriate. Librarians developed this code under the aegis of the Association of Research Libraries and with funding from the Mellon Foundation in sessions over the course of two years, in locations around the country. Legal scholar Peter Jaszi (Washington College of Law, American University) and communication scholar Patricia Aufderheide, who have facilitated several codes of best practices in fair use, also participated.
[Video Link] Amy Seidenwurm says: "'Brothers' by The War on Drugs was possibly my favorite song of 2011. They just released a supremely creepy video for it."
[Video Link] Sounds like this documentary explores the same kind of mass psychological manipulation that Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays invented to convince Americans that it was a good idea to get involved in World War One, as well as convince women that they'd become socially powerful if they smoked cigarettes.
Directed by filmmaker Pete McGrain and hosted by Academy Award nominated actor and activist Woody Harrelson, Ethos: A Time for Change, explains how our country is controlled by some very wealthy families and not our chosen government. These families control the main pillars of our society which include; politics, corporations, banks and the media. The United States is framed as a democracy, suggesting that we the people govern our country and elect our officials, but the truth of that matter is that a democracy does not exist. Rather, the nation was designed to be a polyarchy, one that is ruled by many, those many being the key families. By structuring the country this way, it was premeditated that ultimately it would not matter who is in office because the people campaigning would be controlled and influenced by those controlling the money.
Those featured in the film include renowned historians such as Noam Chomsky (Manufacturing Dissent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media), Chalmers Johnson (Blowback: The Sorrows of Empire), Howard Zinn (A People’s History of the United States), the CEO’s of massive corporations such as Goodyear and Interface, as well as filmmaker Michael Moore.
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
Klaus Schulze pilots his Moog spaceship through the composition "For Barry Graves" live in 1977. The track can be found on "La Vie Electronique Vol. 5." The Klaus Schulze La Vie Electronique series, which started in 2009, are reissues of The Ultimate Edition, a CD box set from 2000 that contained a staggering 50 discs, which is arguably more epic synthesis than anyone should or could possibly endure. (via WFMU)
New Zealand media were raided by police last November just before the general election, after the incumbent centre-right Prime Minister John Key made a criminal complaint over a recording of a conversation in a cafe between him and far right-wing politician John Banks during a staged media event. The country's biggest broadcasters and newspaper were raided by police, who requested unpublished material and sources for interviews as well as the recording itself. Radio New Zealand covered the "Teapot Tapes" scandal and was raided too even though it didn't have a copy of the recording.
The recording has now leaked out onto the Internet. It reveals little of consequence, but police are continuing the investigation and are seeking witnesses who were in the cafe at the time. Police are also warning people that disclosing private conversations unlawfully intercepted can be punished by up to two years' in jail. PM Key is aware the recording is now online, but has told National Business Review that he won't seek to remove it from YouTube and other sites.
Meanwhile, Bradley Ambrose, the cameraman who recorded the conversation - accidentally he says - has been issued with a NZ$14,000 demand for legal costs by the NZ government. If convicted, he could be sent to prison for up to two years. Ambrose had given a copy of the recording to the New Zealand Herald who in turn asked Key for permission to publish it. Before this week's Internet leak, the recording has never been made public.
At Los Angeles International airport early this morning, TSA screeners mistook a woman's insulin pump for a gun. Screening and boarding at Terminal 4 were delayed as airport authorities searched for a woman they thought had a weapon. — Xeni
A worker checks in a special room where the Parma hams are hung to dry in Langhirano near Parma. Prosciutto di Parma can only be produced in a very restricted area of 29 sq km (11.2 sq mile) around the town of Parma in the region of Emilia Romagna, just north of Tuscany. Around 10 million hams are sold every year, of which about 2 million are exported, mainly to France, the United States and Germany, which each consume about 400,000 a year. (REUTERS, file photo from 2009)
[Video Link] Short video of Maus creator Art Spiegelman getting a hero's welcome in France, where a museum in Angouleme is exhibiting a retrospective of his work.
"This easy-to-use beauty and skincare product was developed by an ordinary housewife. Chikako Hirama was simply concerned about her own age and wanted an easy way to combat those telltale lines. Just try the yellow or pink Pupeko daily using such techniques as puffing out your cheeks or sucking them in while breathing through the mouthpiece. Then you can try it while keeping your head upright to give your neck and other muscles further exercise training."
RePress is a new WordPress plugin that turns any WordPress site into a proxy that can be used to circumvent national firewalls, including the systems used in The Netherlands, Italy, Finland and other countries where The Pirate Bay is blocked.
The plugin is developed by the hosting company Greenhost and allows everyone with a WordPress blog to start a proxy for sites that are censored elsewhere in the world. As an example, Greenhost have setup a Pirate Bay and Wikileaks proxy.
“By adding this plug-in to your WordPress website it will start functioning as a proxy and uncensor any blocked website you’d like,” Greenhost explains. “The only thing you’ll need is a WordPress website and the ability to install new plug-ins. After that you can maintain a list of websites you’d like to keep open freely available on the web.”
From the Guardian: "Earlier this month the FBI quietly published a request for information (RFI) looking for companies that might help it build a new social network monitoring system looking at "publicly available" information. Contractors have until 10 February to suggest solutions." — Xeni
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
If you're working on a DIY version of the Hubble Space Telescope, this may come in handy. It's apparently the Vehicle Power Interface Console used at the Goddard Flight Center during pre-launch testing of the HST, and you can buy it now on eBay for $75,000. From the listing:
Everything is housed in a very substantial 3 rack metal cabinet with lockable 3 door access in the back.
Cabinet is completely hand wired, as only NASA can do, it's a thing of beauty!
All pieces of equipment have wire seals that have not been tampered with
There are three large Heat Vent Stacks with internal fans on the top of the cabinet.
This console is large, and has quite an impressive Presentation!
Gothamist digs into whether NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly's statements and actions regarding the production of an Islamophobic propaganda film "screened on a continuous loop for over 1,200 NYPD officers" may have been a violation of NYPD conduct codes. If you're new to the story, first read this NYT item, then this followup. — Xeni
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
After noticing a lack of space for Rob's vintage synthesizer collection, Happy Mutants has decided not to purchase the ICBM silo and air park for sale in New York's Adirondacks. Instead, we have our sights on the Jamesburg Earth Station now for sale in Carmel Valley, California. As we speak, Weisberger is pawning a handful of his rare pens to cover the down payment. The facility has historical significance as it was the first place to receive live images from the 1969 moon landing. (If you believe that sort of thing.) From NBC Bay Area:
For the price, you'll get the 20,000 square foot facility, 160 acres of land, a helicopter landing pad, three bedroom house, basketball court, barn, and even two of private wells.
If that's not enough, the complex also takes home security to a whole new level. Built in the 1960's at the height of a nuclear arms race between the U.S. and Soviet Union, the building is equipped to handle a 5 megaton nuclear blast.
Dunchead of amazingstuff.co.uk sez, "RBS boss Stephen Hester has accepted his bonus of £963,000 on top of his annual salary of £1.2 million. RBS is 80% owned by the UK taxpayer. This image represents his annual income as 2.2 million pixels, comparing it in 'income parade' style with other taxpayer-employed workers."
"On Sept 16, 1981, Representative Stewart McKinney and I introduced legislation designed to end bureaucratic interference in the use of marijuana as a medicant. We believe licensed physicians are competent to employ marijuana, and patients have a right to obtain marijuana legally, under medical supervision, from a regulated source." Newt Gingrich, hypocritical piece of shit, was pro-medical-cannabis "way back before he wanted to behead people and cut off their hands for possessing it," notes Dangerous Minds. — Xeni
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
Several years ago, VH1 made a documentary about the Langley Schools Music Project, and you can watch the whole thing on YouTube. If you're not hip to the Langley Schools Music Project, you're in for a real treat. Between 1976 and 1977, music teacher Hans Fenger and a group of middle school students recorded two albums of the 9-12 year olds singing rock and pop tunes by the likes of the Beach Boys, David Bowie, Neil Diamond, and Klaatu. In 2000, a record collector picked up a copy in a thrift store and sent it to outsider music expert and WFMU DJ Irwin Chusid who busted his tail to get the albums re-issued on a single CD, titled Innocence & Despair. The recordings are bittersweet, simultaneously bleak and hopeful, and beautiful.
"Just as prohibition of alcohol failed in the United States in the 1920s, the war on drugs has failed globally. Over the past 50 years, more than $1 trillion has been spent fighting this battle, and all we have to show for it is increased drug use, overflowing jails, billions of pounds and dollars of taxpayers’ money wasted, and thriving crime syndicates."—Virgin CEO Richard Branson, calling for an end to the "war on drugs."— Xeni
From Ethan Persoff's ongoing chronicles of vintage weird ephemera: COMICS WITH PROBLEMS #7 - MADONNA ON AIDS. This public health pamphlet was handed out at one of her concerts, one night only, in 1987. Her image appears on the cover, and inside, a handwritten note urging for greater awareness of AIDS and an end to prejudice against those who contract it (or who are HIV-positive).
Authorities in Russia are investigating the legality of a "doll demonstration" demanding "clean elections" in the Siberian city of Barnaul, and looking for the humans responsible.
Russian news agency RIA Novosti reports that Russia's police "[arrest] anyone, young or old, who takes part in an "unsanctioned" opposition rally"—so, some citizens in Barnaul created a protest tableau composed of dolls, instead.
Lego minifigs, South Park ("Team America"?) characters, stuffed dollies, Shreks, gnomes, elves, and Wall-e robots carrying protest placards were placed on an icy ledge in the town's center on January 7 and 14. This act followed police crackdowns on two protests by normal-sized people back in December. The focus of all the protests, large and small? Political corruption, and the results of Russia's parliamentary elections.
Most of the figurines held up little signs affixed to toothpicks with satirical messages on them, such as "146%", in reference to a southern region where state television inadvertently reported a 146 per cent turnout in recent elections. Other toys held caricatures of the Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, and President Dmitry Medvedev.
The victory of Mr Putin's United Russia Party in last month's parliamentary polls, amid allegations of fraud, brought tens of thousands of protesters onto Moscow's streets. The government seemed to realise it could not take the usual repressive action against the demonstrators in the capital, but in Barnaul authorities "did everything possible" to block protests, Andrei Teslenko, one of the organisers, said.
That's when the activists set up the toy protests. "The authorities are blocking our constitutional rights to peaceful protests, but they haven't yet got as far as limiting the rights of toys," he said.
Nicko Margolies from the Sunlight Foundation sez, "A new analysis prepared by the Sunlight Foundation shows that wealthy financial sector donors gave $178.2 million in political contributions in 2010, more than ten times what they gave 20 years ago. More than any other industry, individuals from the finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE) sector, particularly those in securities and investments, are the key drivers of the overall growth of elite donors, or what Sunlight calls The Political One Percent of the One Percent.
"An analysis of campaign contribution records by the Sunlight Foundation reveals that the number of donors in the FIRE sector giving at least $10,000 (in 2010 dollars) per election cycle to political candidates, parties and independent expenditure groups increased from 1,091 in 1990 to 5,510 in 2010 (a 405% increase). Combined contributions of these elite donors increased even more dramatically, growing by $162.8 million (a 700% increase, controlling for inflation). This project builds on the Political 1% of the 1% that was featured on Boing Boing in December."
Sillysparrowness, a self-described "German teacher with a leaning towards silliness," described the process by which she came to build a beautiful, obsessively finished Tardis.
, my book about the future of energy in the United States, will be published April 10th.
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When is it OK for me to put copyrighted material on e-reserves for students?
"This easy-to-use beauty and skincare product was developed by an ordinary housewife. Chikako Hirama was simply concerned about her own age and wanted an easy way to combat those telltale lines. Just try the yellow or pink Pupeko daily using such techniques as puffing out your cheeks or sucking them in while breathing through the mouthpiece. Then you can try it while keeping your head upright to give your neck and other muscles further exercise training."
Everything is housed in a very substantial 3 rack metal cabinet with lockable 3 door access in the back.
