Bars of Blood & Shackles of Guilt

Today, Margaret Cho wrote,

[I]n my world, memory is a jail from which you can never escape and they suffered, their cages not made of iron, but the indelible blood and guilt are bar and shackles that will never set you free.

Her writing is off-the-cuff, raw with emotion and unpolished. She is a storyteller, not a writer. She always has that lightening bolt sentence to toss at you in her piece, that moment of pure connexion with the point of her piece, no matter how much wandering it does beforehand. I appreciate a skilled speaker who can pull that off.

Thank you, Ms. Cho, for telling the truth. Keep doing it.

EroTech Industries

This is really, really appalling.

Kudos to Emily 2 for finding this important resource. Of ick.

Dubya Dubya III

NYT op-ed columnist Nicholas D. Kristof held a "Name That War" contest. The results are in, and the winner and the many hysterical runners-up are all in today's column.

Darwin-the-Open-Source-OS

Darwin, the open-source UNIX-LINUXy core operating system that Macintosh uses for its systems, has a new version available. You can even get an installer CD that is equivalent to the source code released with Mac OS X.3 (Panther).

Darwin 7.0.1 is designed to run on X.3-friendly Macs as well as x86es. Woo hoo!

CAP & the Neandertals

Although "Cap & the Neandertals" sounds like a sweet indie band, in fact it is UniversitätZürich-based research program of computer-assisted palaeoanthropology - in English, that means using computers for forensic reconstruction of skulls.

I know, you don't care from forensics except that cute ass on [csi]. But before you ignore this site, just check out the sample reconstruction of [gibraltar2] H. neandertalensis, a Neandertal child found at Devil's Tower. Unbelievable: that is the face of an sentient creature, probably able to reason and speak as well as human beings can, who died over 30.000 years ago. Think about that. That is someone's face - and if you do know from forensic programs, you know how eerily accurate those reconstructions can be.

Go to the main page and see how they did it. Now that you are hooked, that is.

Opossums Prove Their Worth Again

I've always loved opossums. Those creepy, lizard-like semi-mammals evolved in the Pacific Northwest back when it was an island, then spread to Europe, South America, Antarctica [it was hot then], Australia and Asia. Then they were driven out of their niches in every place when placentals evolved except for Australasia - and South America. From South America, the opossum form migrated back through Mesoamerica into North America, where it continues to flourish.

Now my favourite wild mammalian has another use: research on gender and sex. Opossum Study May Illuminate Gender Puzzle is brief but interesting. Take a gander.

EDIT: the original text is no longer available online, so here's a snippet:

Opossum Study may Illuminate Gender Puzzle
Stephen Stewart, Newsquest (Herald & Times), 25 Nov 2003

Glasgow, Scotland — Transsexuals and people with sexual abnormalities could benefit from scientific research at a Scots university into the humble opossum.

Work at the University of Glasgow, with the UK's only breeding colony of the South American marsupial, could shed more light on the enigmatic mechanisms involved in sex determination and the development of reproductive organs in humans.

Academics believe the work may give greater insight into intersex conditions (where the appearance of the genitals is not consistent with the person's chromosomal sex) and could be used to treat people suffering the trauma it creates, as well as offering hope to males suffering from one of the most common birth defects, cryptorchidism or the failure of the testes to descend.

Pixellated Robot Romance

R. Stevens' Diesel Sweeties is sharp as the edges of a tin can. And twice as sentient.

I want an iPod. I also want a huge memory upgrade, some speakers for my Mac - and Boing-Boing Blog back at its proper home!

That just ain't right. Wish someone could tell me what in Midgeard is going on that "boingboing.net" should belong to some stupid website that isn't Boing-Boing Blog.

Traditional RIAA Business Model: Thy Days Are Numbered

i want an ipod.

the real nugget to take from this story is towards the end -- the ipod as a micro-broadcaster. i am astounded at the possibilities. what would be even cooler is if ipods or other mp3 players could become something like a wireless world wide music web -- broadcasting playlists not just to people nearby, but to anyone with access to a wireless network.

One More Reason For Me To Want To Emigrate

from orcinus.

I'm Happy, But I'm Also Pissed Off

great. however, i cannot help but note they couldn't get this requirement in place for 2004.

Here's Your Chance...

Oiling Up the Draft Machine? is the article emily one pointed out in her comments on my last blog. I won't say too much else except to note that the government rapidly removed the Department of Defense page it references in support of a build-up by the Occupation Gov't to bring the draft online.

Yeah, that's right. The draft, as in you or your children will go and die in some fucking desert for the oil profits that the Occupation Gov't needs so they can buy underaged prostitutes and cocaine. Fuck, those things are important - important enough for you and your'n to go and die for.

Musical Musings

i've been obsessed with music for the last couple of weeks. i recently discovered soulseek, which has become my personal wet dream. *real* music fans congregate there. unlike the brittany spears kiddies on kazaa, they share good music. they also organize their music into folders, tag the songs, and name them correctly. i can find things on soulseek that i haven't seen since the demise of audiogalaxy.

the sheer diversity of out of print and hard to find albums made me yearn for something akin to the gutenberg text archive for music. if i could get grant money for this, i'd start such a project. there are some great artists whose music was released on vinyl only and will likely never again be reprinted. it would be a dream come true if i could build a database of this music and track down the people who made it. think what a wonderful thing it would be if it could be licensed for a massive interactive non-profit streaming radio station.

i'd eagerly pay a modest subscription fee for access to tens of millions of songs for on-demand streaming anytime anywhere. i wonder if a good subscription model could be developed that would pay for the equipment and the bandwidth as well as compensate the artists who originally wrote and recorded it? this of course would be an enormous under-taking and would require a lot of volunteer effort from people with huge vinyl collections of out of print, non-RIAA releases.

current indie artists could also have their music made available through this kind of service. based on the geographical location of a user requesting a stream of their music, info about local live performances by the artist could be streamed as an ad on the user's audio player. collaborative filtering could also add a lot to something like this. with the growing availability of wireless devices, on-demand streaming radio could conceivably be available anywhere. there would be no need to sit at a computer to listen to it. one could just log on with a wireless walkman, request a playlist, and start listening.

one of the big fears of the RIAA is on-demand music. it would kill the cash cow of their current marketing strategy which is to blanket radio stations with their focused-grouped pap until brainwashed teenagers stagger to the record store and buy the latest manufactured boy band crap. well... now the aforementioned teenagers probably just download it from the internet illegally. nevertheless, the RIAA are desperate to hold on to the power to decide when, where, and how people listen to music.

but there are millions of albums and songs out there that aren't under their control. a lot of it is *really* good and a lot of it is no longer commercially available. actually, probably most of it. since the emergence of recorded music, a mountain of non-RIAA vinyl languishes in attics or unsold in the dusty bins of record stores across the world. a lot of it is stored and lovingly cared for by obsessive record collectors who have painstakingly built their collections by trawling those very grounds. a lot of it is stored away on the record shelves of college radio stations.

if a kind of open source audio effort took hold, imagine the kind of library that could be built from that music. it would be a real travesty if all the unknown gems with less than a thousand pressings were lost. if they aren't made available to a larger audience they will be. vinyl that is carefully stored and protected can last decades, but even the best kept record has a limited life span. the entrance of the global communications network known as the internet poses the fascinating opportunity to preserve those recordings. it would make it a lot easier to organize avid music fans from every country in the world to digitize all that out of print music and make it available to everyone with access to the net.

the task of tracking down and obtaining permission from the artists or their heirs is probably the most daunting part of the scheme, but in my opinion, it would be the ethical thing to do. it would also be a interesting endeavor. i wonder what someone would think if a person came knocking at their door fifty years after he or she released 500 copies of the four songs his or her high school band recorded to ask permission to include it in a database of music to rival the RIAA.

Horrors

today i am aghast. perhaps file-sharing is going to destroy music.

At Sea With MP3's, Boomers Buoy Struggling Record Industry

Beyoncé Knowles and 50 Cent have two of the best-selling albums so far this year. Nonetheless, when Borders Books & Music recently redesigned the layouts of the music sections in its more than 420 superstores, the CD's from these and other young hit-makers were booted from prime browsing display space in favor of albums from the likes of Rod Stewart, Sting and Barbra Streisand.

The rearranging proved prescient, as the release of the latest Billboard top 200 albums chart demonstrated. While Clay Aiken, runner-up in the most recent "American Idol" contest and no hipster himself, took the top spot with his debut album, "Measure of a Man," Mr. Stewart finished second with "As Time Goes By: The Great American Songbook Vol. II."

New releases from Ms. Streisand and the Eagles also landed in the Top 10. All told, artists over the age of 40, like Bette Midler, Van Morrison, Michael McDonald and Simon and Garfunkel, held 11 of the top 50 spots in the Billboard chart. In the same week last year, 7 baby boomers finished in the Top 50.

more ...

rod stewart, bette midler and barbara streisand are topping the charts. their music is being re-released and marketed heavily. this is a fucking disaster. i've feel like i've died and gone to hell.

Desert Storm II: Back to Baghdad

I was struck today by an article I ran into whilst perusing the 'back page', so to speak, of my RSS feeds. I stick my head into the gaming feeds once in a while because I do enjoy watching the amazing creations of modern gaming. I had a gaming console once, before it disappeared in the hands of a highly shifty moving company & I remain fond of the many memories I have of being cider-drunk & playing Twisted Metal II with my closest friend.

There are moments when I pause & wonder about whether the violence is Bad. If you've never even paused, then you are a scary person - I concluded that violence is just fine so long as it isn't Rape the Women III being played by a six-year old, but that doesn't mean I didn't pause. There is some intensely scary shit out there & let me tell you I cut my teeth on Doom & her sisters.

So, in my usual, long-winded fashion, I now arrive at the subject of today's perusion: Gotham Games. More specifically, their new release, Conflict: Desert Storm II - Back to Baghdad.

Gotham Games' own motto is "You are what you play". In this case, you are playing a shoot-'em-up game of unprecedented violence - it has, incidentally, received excellent reviews from the gaming community - set in, that's right, Iraq. "At the height of the 1991 Gulf War in the heart of Iraq, you must command your squad of Special Forces operatives to strike at Iraq's evil dictator," says their website.

I suppose you can see where this is leading. Isn't it extremely tasteless, from the perspective of both US soldiers serving in Iraq and of the Iraqis, for a software company to release a killing-spree game that is a childish revisiting - nay, a rewriting - of the conflict that led to the one in which 367 US soldiers have died?

You're right. I'm going there. How can I not? So many good people have died. Heck, so many people have died in general that I cannot understand how reviewers & players could possibly enjoy this game in good conscience. This isn't Doom, it's a crude & appallingly simplified resketch of a current conflict in which people have suffered & died - & the war is far from over.

I don't want to sound like the same naysayer every generation has. "Things are worse than ever!" My point is far from decrying video games. I hold the same scorn and disgust for any other presentation of questionable materials, whether it is a radio show, stage play, movie or television show, that depicts in such light the deeply troubling involvement of the United States in ugly mercantile wars like the Iraq conflict(s).

For god's sake, there are still men & women on the front lines in Iraq; bombings and hand-to-hand combat continues. Regardless of your political views, the simple fact that people are playing a video game that makes light of the very conflict in which their fellow citizens are involved is beyond my ability to express.

I don't think the company should be penalised or the game should be banned. I don't want to infringe on anyone's freedom of speech. I do, however, think that individuals should make clear their feelings about this video game. Anyone out there lose a family member? Anyone out there immigrate from Iraq or come from an Iraqi lineage? Anyone out there have a family member stationed in Iraq? Write them a letter and tell them how fucking appalling their taste is so they know it.