Gulfstream

http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=jwz;itemid=74635 What’s art? jwz’s link to that site about the 1988 MacSE with a 1923 Underwood typewriter as its keyboard generated these comments:

atakra: yet another “artist” with too much time on his hands.
jwz: Can I be as cool as you someday?
baconmonkey: you see, a true artist, one who doesn’t have a lot of time on their hands, merely uses photoshop to lift a concept from a movie, as opposed to engineering something physical, tangible, and functional based loosely on something from a movie.

Is something more (or less) like art if it actually works?

(I think jwz considers this a cool hack, not art. I have a blurred memory of jwz posting a comment to slashdot in which he expressed his disgust that something very similar to his webcollage was being exhibited as art. Then there’s this helpful infographic.) 13:36

http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,56014,00.html This is kinda crazy: some dotcom companies are repurchasing their own shares for less than their cash value. (The “cash value” of a share is equal to a company’s cash holdings divided by the total number of shares—to repurchase shares for less than their cash value the total value of a company’s shares must be less than what the company holds in cash.) In other words, investors now not only don’t believe that some dotcom companies will never make money, they believe they’ll waste the money they’ve got! 13:36

http://www.uruklink.net/iraq/bio.htm Curiously straight-forward and (mostly) non-hagiographic official biography of Saddam Hussein. Actually the whole of Iraq’s official website is quite interesting. For example according to the notes of the October 2002 cabinet meeting, Saddam Hussein believes that Zionist interests (not “real American interests”) are behind America’s “hostile policy”: “the American people’s interests lies in dealing with peoples in the world peacefully so as to make its trade interests stable and achieve prosperity with the whole world.” 12:59

http://newyorker.com/fact/content/?021028fa_fact Delivering bad news: “There were several ways that I could answer Peter’s question. I could give the bald statistics—that more than fifty per cent of people with cancer like Maxine’s die within two years—or I could put it more gently, and say that she had a chance, if a low one, of surviving for more than two years. I could even say, somewhat vaguely, that she was young and strong and had as good a chance as anyone of surviving, on the principle that she would benefit more from encouragement than from statistics. As I looked at Maxine, I sensed that she preferred neither the extreme of ignorance nor the extreme of excruciating detail but some middle ground.”

(I sometimes get annoyed when people complain about how politicians spin facts, or how advertisters spin facts—because the thing is, we all spin, all the time. There’s always lots of different ways to tell the whole truth—spin is the approach least upsetting, most comforting, most reassuring.) 12:54

http://newyorker.com/shouts/content/?021028sh_shouts Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush arrange a duel. 10:57

http://www.fair.org/extra/0210/inspectors.html Why UN weapons inspectors left Iraq four years ago: what the media said then, and what the media say now. 17:09

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/technology/articles/
eldredprimer_100902.htm Eldred v. Ashcroft primer.

On balance, copyright terms should be shorter I think. (Probably much shorter.) But I think some of Eldred’s supporters are a little blind to some of the (not so beneficial) implications of a shorter term. Would the public benefit if Mickey Mouse were in the public domain, for example? I’m not sure that we would. What would it be like to live in a world with a Disney Mickey, a Fox Mickey, a Nickelodeon Mickey? Would this be confusing? Or would there be no Mickeys, because no network would be prepared to bear the risk of him being subverted, distorted, smeared by another?

I can only think of a few high-profile fictional characters in the public domain—Santa Claus, Frankenstein’s Monster, Dracula… Why are there so few? Why is Ulysses not as famous as Superman? Is it because no-one owns him? (Alternatively: is this a problem?)

I also think Jack Valenti is right in suggesting that some old films won’t get restored if no-one owns them. Why would you spend money restoring (and promoting) a film if the theatre next door can show their own copy for free if yours proves successful? (Similarly, drug companies have no incentive (economic) to investigate the possibility that existing (but out of patent) drugs can be used to treat novel illnesses.)

There are advantages and disadvantages to a longer copyright terms; I do think the advantages do outweigh the disadvantages. But one should acknowledge that just as it is true that some “moves” are only likely under short copyright terms, some “moves” are only likely with long.

(These arguments have not much to do with whether the case itself succeeds since that depends on matters of First Amendment law.) 22:01

http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,55832,00.html iBrotha: a short film about a Malcolm X-like revolutionary who has a lot of love for Apple computers. The official site contains some interesting images from the film, as well as a fascinating list of four future projects: “The features and short are about reuniting the lost elements of hip hop, exposing the class bias of Harry Potter, a punk organic farming [farmer?] in the Hindu Kush faced with saving his consumerist family and the world-saving chutzpah of showbiz journalists.” 12:04

https://store.theonion.com/cgi-bin/store/EDCstore.pl?user_
action=detail;catalogno=ONION:ON8000MAG1 Onion’s Magnetic Headline Kit. Gives you Area, Man, Clinton, Masturbate, Shittier, etc. 14:00

http://newyorker.com/critics/books/?021014crbo_books Fantastic Columbus biography, provides interesting additional similarities between internet pioneers and Columbus: Columbus was an incorrigible optimist; to his investors he willfully (and wildly) underestimated the difficulty of the voyage (he reported that the estimated distance from the Canary Islands to Japan was a manageable twenty-seven hundred miles—it is in fact over thirteen thousand); he overestimated his own technical abilities. 14:06

http://www.islam.org.au/articles/18/identity.htm “Preserving The Islamic Identity in The West” (And Australia in particular.) This is actually a little disturbing. The aim of the article is “to expose some of the sources of misguidance for Muslims living amongst the Kuffar, as well as some solutions and defences we can employ.” So, for example, one must be wary of schools for within them “the mixing of sexes is not only tolerated but encouraged through the placement of children in multi-gender sporting teams and class groups.” And television shows give the impression that “in some sort of sick way … zina [sex] equates with love and is a ‘natural’ behaviour.”

“It is a fact of life that we must, to some extent, keep close company with the Kuffar. This is almost unavoidable given that we work, study and, unfortunately, play with them.” What, I wonder, is meant by unfortunately here? Is a distaste for other Australians compatible with a successful multicultural society? I hope these sorts of beliefs aren’t widespread.

Nida’ul Islam is billed as “A Comprehensive Intellectual Magazine.” It is produced by the Islamic Youth Movement (which is associated with Australia’s largest Mosque) and has a readership of over 4,000. (More articles.) 00:58

http://diveintomark.org/archives/2002/10/15.html#cycle Oh to be blessed with an ego such as this! 00:03

http://blogdex.media.mit.edu/news/archives/2002_10.html#000100 Plot of the blogosphere’s distribution of urls. 84% are linked only once. 18:18

http://www.henrylim.org/Harpsichord.html A working Lego harpsichord! (Harpsichord because a piano involves 40,000lbs of tension.) Plus: Lego model of Escher’s “Ascending and Descending.” (More on index page.) 12:13

http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/oct02/west.htm “My Experience with Google Answers.” Jessamyn says she enjoyed her time at Google Answers, but complains that the researchers are mistreated and poorly paid. (The question that led to the “jarring episode.”)

What I want to know: why aren’t movies priced according to their running time and production cost? 17:16

http://slate.com/?id=2071953 L.A.’s D.A. wants to put Winona Ryder away for three years: “an exposé conducted by the entertainment tabloid Extra, Celebrity Justice … revealed that in court records of all 5,000 grand theft felony cases filed in Los Angeles County last year, not one defendant was facing penalties as harsh as Ryder’s.” (slate.com not redirecting to slate.msn.com anymore either—?) 13:53

http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html#1.19 DVDs aren’t the pure source I had imagined them to be: because movies are displayed at 24 frames per second (24Hz) and the PAL TV format is 50Hz, PAL DVDs play 4% faster than they did in the cinema. (The sound is usually about a semitone higher too.) The NTSC format (North America) is 60Hz: the process of turning 24 images into 60 results in some judder and blurring. I suppose this must apply to movies shown on TV too.

(Strictly speaking the DVD’s region has nothing to do with this: it just so happens that Region 4 DVDs are PAL-encoded because the TVs in that region are.) 14:00

http://www.snopes2.com/quotes/goering.htm (Democracies are fragile and easily manipulated.) Göring: “Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship. … the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”

(Influencing public opinion is somewhat easier under a dicatorship though.)

Compare this to the political philosophy of Lee Kuan Yew: “when people say, ‘Oh, ask the people!’, it’s childish rubbish. We are leaders. We know the consequences. … They say people can think for themselves? Do you honestly believe that the chap who can’t pass primary six knows the consequences of his choice when he answers a question viscerally, on language, culture and religion? But we knew the consequences. We would starve, we would have race riots. We would disintegrate.” (source) 12:29

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2297471.stm “Libertarian candidate Stan Jones, 63, first discovered his skin was turning blue last year. …” 18:20

http://consumerfreedom.com/ad_campaign.cfm Ads produced by the Center for Consumer Freedom. They’re, uh, a little heavy handed. 12:01