Mr. Deity and the Showroom

I got a few of the Star Wars references, but I could tell there were more from the dialogue. I'm just not that big of a geek.

Japan Airlines' CEO pays himself less than the pilots, takes the bus to work

I saw this on Boing Boing today and thought that this is an excellent example of how a CEO of a major company might deal with an economic downturn and at the same time boost the morale of the workers he is employing.

The Swans live show

I don't know exactly what I was expecting when I saw the Swans last night, but what I got was better than anything I could have imagined. I've seen them three or four times in the 1990's and they were doing their folk influenced work during much of that.

What I got last night was the sonic onslaught they were famous for during the mid-eighties part of their career and my ears are still ringing from it. It is amazing to me that no band since then has managed to orchestrate that level of bombastic noise into something so beautiful... And then last night, some old guys with gray hair walked onstage and showed the youngsters how it's done... twenty-five years later.

They did two old songs, I Crawled from the Raping a Slave EP (1984) and Sex, God, Sex from Children of God (1986). I found video footage from both of those songs at other stops from the tour.

Hatred of Atheists

Notes and facts about the most hated and feared minority...
I've seen many of these statistics before, but this person brings them all together nicely into one thoughtful and well argued video.
From www.freedomainradio.com 

Baby trashes bar

I saw this on Boing Boing today and had to share.

Copyright control in degrees

Completely aside from the issue of file sharing is the artistic use of other people's copyrighted information in one's own work. And I do think that the legal penalties of this have to be looked at in a case-by-case basis... Is the perpetrator a non-professional individual who sampled someone who is represented by a major label, or is the perpetrator a professional musician on a major label who has sampled someone with no representation at all? The discrepancy between the individual defendant with almost no money for lawyers and the major label with almost unlimited money for a lawsuit is where copyright law seems to break down in my opinion. Obviously, if copyright law is a completely even playing field, then it is much easier for the people represented by major companies to defend the appropriation of songs or images than it is for individuals to defend the appropriation of songs or images from major companies.

First, look at a relatively unknown 1980's techno band called Cybotron. Listen to the keyboard track that starts at the 00:30" second mark and then compare it to the next video.

 Now, compare that to the award winning Missy Elliot song and you will quickly realize that it is the exact same song with different lyrics and some re-engineering. To my knowledge there has been no evidence of a lawsuit.
 And then compare that to a relatively unknown experimental band called Negativeland, who did an ironic spoof of a song by a more famous band called U2 as well as a radio announcer named Kasey Kasem.... I think you can guess what kind of lawsuit they got slapped with.

Keystone Shapes: Tilted Half Dome 2010

Paul Booker
Keystone Shapes: Tilted Half Dome- Detail View  2010
Lexan, Ink, Steel Pins