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You Maybe Want I Should Tell Guido To Stop Breaking Your Lamps?
Someone should put a stop to this nonsense.
The RIAA is suing a woman for $540,000 US due to songs that her daughter downloaded from P2P systems. But, and I'm not making this up, they say they'll settle for $4,000. Less than eight tenths of one percent of what they say their damages are.
So they say that a 14 year old girl in rural Minnesota has injured the RIAA for over a half million dollars? I'm sure that little girl was going to buy a half million dollars worth of CDs that now, thanks to Kazaa, she can simply download.
At $15 a CD, that comes up to 36,000 CDs she was going to buy.
But, the RIAA will settle for $4,000. Or roughly 270 CDs. This girl is one massive music fan!
So, you threaten someone with $540,000 and will "settle" for $4,000. Does that sound like a fair business practice to you -- or does it sound like a protection scam where you invent potential harm to extort money?
Cleaning My Credit
[08:19] founder: So I'm cleaning up my credit report.
[08:19] founder: I get a copy of it
[08:19] Ken: Sounds like fun.
[08:20] founder: It has tons of loans on it from college that have long since been paid
[08:20] Ken: How are you cleaning it?
[08:20] Ken: Ahhh, reminding them to scratch stuff?
[08:20] founder: So I send a note to the credit agency saying those and a bunch of old credit cards are no longer open accounts
[08:21] founder: They check and sure enough all are ... except for loans from a company called Unipac.
[08:21] founder: Of which there are eight, because they counted every small loan as a new account.
[08:21] founder: So each quarter I would get money from them
[08:21] Ken: Unipac? Never heard of'em
[08:21] founder: And each quarter they'd make a new loan.
[08:21] founder: So they say my accounts are still open.
[08:22] founder: I say ... um ... close them. I haven't been in school for 15 years.
[08:22] founder: They say "You might go back."
[08:22] founder: Which, even if it were true, I could go to almost any school on earth and likely not in their loan area anyway.
[08:22] Ken: So I says to mABEL, i SAYS, "nOT ON STUDENT LOANS, i WON'T!"
[08:23] founder: So I say "Please close the account"
[08:23] founder: They, get this, tell me to call Equifax and report to them that the accounts were closed.
[08:23] Ken: So lajy!
[08:23] founder: I said, I already did that.
[08:24] founder: She said, No, tell them to tell us to close the account.
[08:24] founder: I said Why the hell would I call them to tell you to close my account? Why can't I just tell you?
[08:24] Ken: Riiiiiiiiight...
[08:25] founder: She said "Because it will take 8 weeks if you tell me to do it, so you should tell Equifax to tell us to do it. That way it will happen in two business days.
[08:25] Ken: Oyyyy.
[08:26] founder: Now, even if they kept the account open because I might go back to school sometime in the next 100 years, WHY DO THEY HAVE TO KEEP EIGHT ACCOUNTS OPEN?!
[08:27] Ken: Secure redundancy. Hm, we need to clear ours off soon, too. We used to have a crapload of cards, which i think still show up on Equifax even though the accts are closed for years.
[08:34] founder: They should show up as closed. But remain on your report for seven years.
[08:34] founder: These don't say closed, they read as open.
[08:34] founder: The number of open accounts you have drastically affects your rating.
[08:35] founder: Here is my 250 characters or less note to Equifax:
[08:35] founder: The people at Unipac, and I'm not making this up, instructed me to tell you to tell them to close my account. Apparently, they don't close them for actual consumers, but they will for you. I don't understand it, nor do I pretend to understand it.
[08:36] founder: Filled out for all eight student loans.
Wavering Support for the War
The war that President Bush said we "won" has had a rocky history of support in the US, as shown in this graph:
But what's most telling about this is that opinions do indeed waver. We are talking about 50 point shifts in voter opinion.
This isn't about school funding or pesticide use, it's about blowing people up and being blown up.
This is an excellent example of what Sid Meyer's games call "War Weariness". The more free a culture is, the faster they are to become weary of war. Perhaps the people that shifted so far in their beliefs will, in the future, check their jingoism at the door.
Thanks, always, to
Joi.
And Now for Something Completely Different
Canadian Elections!
Paul Martin today called for a Canadian Election. The entire government is up for the choosing.
The election will last 35 days. It will be held on the 28th of June.
The longest Canadian election was 74 days and the shortest was 20.*
The lowest voter turnout in Canada EVER was 61.2% of the country's voters. The highest was 74%.*
In the US, we haven't had over 61% since 1960.
In 35 days, I don't think they'll have much time to spend anything like Bush and Kerry's 400 Million US$. Maybe, with the money left over, they can help pay for our deficit.
*According to CBC this morning (That's the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and not the Christian Broadcasting Corporation which share the same three letters...)
Buy My Vote
It appears that it takes a lot of money to be president.
By my calculations, the combined fat pockets of Bush and Kerry are now equal to roughly one dollar for every person living in the US. Which is likely more than twenty dollars per actual voter. I believe they are currently at approx. $390 Million combined.
I feel it's a fair question to ask... Why is it necessary to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to run for president? It can't be to run 30 second spots glorifying yourself or berating your opponent.
It's mostly spin and influence peddling money. With the Internet, you have the ability to put out everything from bullet points to brochures to white papers on every subject imaginable.
Wouldn't it be refreshing for a candidate to say, "There are a lot of issues. No one can adequately respond to them in a television ad. Therefore, I've put a ton of information on my web site about abortion, job creation, transportation, national security, retirement, education, day care, head start, health care, human rights, foreign relations, technology, drug policy, gun policy, welfare, substance abuse, domestic violence, racism, sexism, pesticides, the use of public lands, oil, alternative fuels, preemptive strikes, nuclear weapons, cancer, illness prevention, prenatal care, land use, water rights, international treaties, international trade, popcorn, glue sticks, pornography, the relationship between religion and government, tax exemptions for religious groups, pogo sticks, immigration, illegal aliens, interstate commerce, the internet, outsourcing, lotteries, trade unions, corporate mismanagement, smoking, automobile safety, greenhouse emissions, acid rain, hockey, child actors, ... and much more!
"As you can see, there is no way I could ever talk about all these important issues in 30 seconds or even in a targeted stump speech. But I can say this, as President I know I will be called on to make decisions on all these issues. Many times these decisions will be compromises, with congress, with industry, with the American people. I know this. This is what makes our system work. Maybe it's a little maddening at times, but it can work.
"What doesn't work is me coming out and saying I'm great and my opponent is not. That sucks. I'm J. LeRoy and I approved this message whole heartedly."
Then you go to the web site and there are papers and information on subjects from multiple viewpoints and a statement by the candidate noting how that person is currently leaning. It lets you know that the candidate is actually a thoughtful human being capable of hearing differing opinions and making a decision. And it would dramatically lower the cost of a presidential campaign.
It sure as hell is better than the impression that they are fund raising machines first, partisan politicians second, and maybe a president somewhere down the line.
Inclusiveness = Secularism = Taxable
The Unitarians have recently come up several times in conversation.
My friend Ken and I were discussing the role of religion in the raising of kids. This was something I had been puzzling for a while because I've almost been a dad a few times.
My own religious philosophy is well developed, I believe, but I had to go through a long path to get here. My own religious philosophy does not involve being an active member in an organized religion.
Ken's religious philosophy is well developed as well. His certainly did not come from blindly swallowing dogma, but from long, cosidered thought. His does involve him being quite active in his church.
My wife and I were married by a very nice Unitarian minister in Canada. My wife is Catholic (more or less) and wanted one of her favorite priests to marry us. He quite rudely received us and told us that he would not marry us. I thought it was because we wanted to get married on a yacht. But it was actually because Vivian didn't live in the right postal code and "wasn't in the right parish."
The woman who married us was a wonderful, spiritual woman whose empathy radiated like the sun. Quite a contrast to the spiritual brick back at the Catholic church.
When discussing my quandry about religious education with Ken, I mentioned the Unitarians. He said that he felt that the Unitarian's inclusive philosophy meant that none of the members' religions could be explored in depth. Which I felt was fair.
My feelings are that the Unitarians teach a world view of ethics and understand the role of religion in ethics. I find this refreshing, when other organized religions seem to differentiate themselves more on what they hate than what they might believe.
The State of Texas, however, no apparently believes that ethics are not part of religion, that a several hundred year old established church is not a church, and that Unitarians are little more than a social club. (Note, I would provide the link to the newspaper article, but it's by [free] subscription. Mr. Kuffner has provided the link to the paper though if you care to go all the way to the source.)
It seems to me that Unitarians have church services every weekend, do good work in the community, educate children, have a central set of beliefs, bring people together in an accepting atmosphere, and do not profit from their actions. But I gather from what the "For any organization to qualify as a religion, members must have 'simply a belief in God, or gods, or a higher power,'" is their standard. Which means that an organized belief must be exclusive and divisive in order to qualify as a religion.
That's kinda wrong...
ABB meets ABG
I believe I'm pretty firmly in the Anybody But Bush camp. And I'm comfortable with it.
However, recent speculation still considers Dick Gephardt as a viable running mate for Kerry.
I would say my "Anybody But Gephardt" feelings are nearly (but just oh-so-slightly less) as strong as my ABB feelings.
Please, oh god please, don't let him be the running mate.
I can say sincerely that Dick Gephardt represents everything wrong with the Democratic Party to the same extent that Jesse Helms represented everything wrong with the Republican Party. He will sink the election or, worse yet, turn it into a referrendum for issues that need not be divisive.
George Bush's Brain Testifies Against Him in Court
Braingate allows people to manipulate a mouse or other devices using only brainpower.
A participant on an e-mail list I'm on noted that there wouldn't be a large leap between tracking mouse movements via the brain and tracking thought patterns. She took this to everyone's favorite victimless crime (all apologies to the prostitutes), file sharing. My response is below.
> This could be fun to have someone listen in on me..... Anyone
> listening?...
> "la, la,la, oh I wish I were an oscar meyer wiener, every one would be
> in
> love with me.. Lalalalalalala....." :) the new p2p! :)
[J. LeRoy] In the 80s, when we got our first CDs, my friend Simon and I were listening to Pink Floyd on an audiophile gold CD. Previous to this, the state of the art was his Nakamichi cassette deck.
We wondered how you could possibly improve on that sound quality.
We came to the conclusion that the last weak link in audio is between the speaker cone and the brain. Ears suck and, often, are quite damaged over time.
So the next big innovation had to be direct brain stimulation.
This takes that thought one more step.
Can thought crimes be far behind?
"I see here that at this 2000 press conference, the 'I wanna blow up Iraq like mah daddy' centers in the President's brain were clearly active." - Barb, CNN commentator in another reality.
J.
When This Old World Starts a'Gettin' Me Down
There are people out there who just wanna feel closer. They just want us all to know that we've got a friend. But, some friends are friends we don't know on purpose. And these friends we don't know on purpose have a grounding influence on us. Our friends we don't know are a central bedrock of each and every day.
But now that we know we value our friends we don't know ... how do we keep track of them. These people who add visual, olfactory and auditory inputs to our days, even if they never talk to us, kiss us or tie our shoes?
We might well lose that which we never knew we had.
And that would be painful.
But, enter Jabberwocky, an asset management system that helps you manage assets you may well never recognize. A CRM tool for people who aren't customers. An HR aide for people you will never hire. A phone book for people you will never call.
I truly am fascinated by this thing. It is an amazing sociological statement. I just can't help but make fun of it. You can pretty much bet that if I had bluetooth, I'd download it immediately.
Thank you Boing Boing, for helping me.
But I can't drive to the SuperTarget!
Just watching the evening news. Fully four stories on a half hour newscast were, in some way, related to the massively high gas prices in the US in general and in Seattle in particular.
I just stopped off on the way home from Vancouver and topped up the tank. It cost me $2.49 a gallon at a station on Seattle's Holman Road.
Now, aside from the fact that we pay some of the lowest prices on earth for gas, I really gotta let people in on a big secret.
Gasoline is a fossil fuel, which is non-renewable. One day, we'll run out of the stuff. The major repositories of these fuels are controlled by people we don't seem to relate to very well. And all this suburban sprawl means we've built a society as dependent on a finite, hostile resource as an addict is to heroin.
So, complaining about high gas prices makes about as much sense as complaining that your pusher suddenly doubles the cost of your next fixx. It was obvious this was going to happen again. It will happen in the future as well.
Don't Ask, Don't Care
During the last Bush Administration, a friend of mine was in the army. He went to "Saudi" as they called it then. He was fighting for his country.
While he was there, he got sick. He thought he had pneumonia, which he did, but it was brought on because he was HIV positive.
While in the hospital, with a high fever and near death, the MPs visited him. They demanded to know how he became HIV positive. They treated him like crap. Then they kicked him out of the army.
So, suddenly, after serving his country for several years, he was out on the street with no health insurance.
Now, the elder Bush never made any bones about his lack of regard for human beings, differences in life circumstances or suffering. This Bush, however, did.
There is a paragraph in this article from the Washington post that is now no longer valid. Now the Bush Administration has recinded the protections for employment based on Sexual Orientation. It is now lawful to fire people based on their sexual orientation. Regardless of how one might "feel" about various sexual orientations, it shouldn't take too liberal a mind to note that sexual orientation does not impact job performance and is utterly subjective.
One would imagine that a Gay man in a long term relationship would stand a much higher chance of being dismissed than a married so-called bi-sexual. This points out that the issue here is not of morality but of comfort level. The married bi-sexual creates an illusion loved by Mormons and other religious conservatives ... the "non-practicing" homosexual.
Which begs the question, what, exactly is a homosexual? Well, a homosexual is someone who is gay. Well, what is that? Well, they like people of their own gender. Well, how much? Is a homosexual a person, a trait, a series of actions?
How much does a man have to like another man in order to be gay? Is bi-sexuality part of that continuum?
This is why the Bush Administration and others are so scared of homosexuals. Because they know they aren't gay ... but they don't know why. And since they don't know why, there's always the possibility that they might like someone too much. And that's very scary because we've been making fun of gays since we were kids.
Food for thought from Vancouver BC.
What J. Really Really Wants
Last night Ken and I started several conversations that we were never able to finish because of frequent, if not incessant, interruptions. Our companions seemed to place little value in our existing conversations.
One of the conversations that we started and did not finish … or continued but didn’t continue to the end of this particular episode … is an on-going discussion of literature.
The here-out-of-context question that Ken asked me last night, that I wasn’t even remotely able to answer, and which never saw its seed germinate into dialogue was (more or less):
“What, exactly, are you looking for in reading material now? Because it seems that you are looking primarily for books that are intellectually challenging.”
I started to compose a response but I believe we then started talking about beaded sweaters.
But Ken’s question was pretty accurate. But not entirely. My tastes have long been a subject of annoyance to others, I think. Part of this is because I have a strong sarcastic streak and have a drive to lampoon even that which I cherish. I can’t help it, I was born that way. Even deprogrammers cannot help me.
This makes it seem like I enjoy very few things, when, in fact, quite the opposite is true.
I can say, in general, that one thing is true for my tastes.
I like surprising things, I don’t like predictable things.
However, sometimes a very well crafted predictable thing can be quite surprising.
Now, surprising things are things that make the brain work. The brain says, “Holy crap! I didn’t see that coming! How delightful! Let’s examine it for a while….” So, in that sense, they are intellectually challenging.
But, this in no way relates to “intellectually challenging” in the obtuse presentation of ideas to relate some scholarly or pretentious nuance. For example, I find most postmodern scholars to be quite predictable – regardless of how much their works may make (or unnecessarily force) my brain to work.
There have been several postmodern texts I have enjoyed, but those are … you guessed it … surprising. I would imagine that the ratio of postmodern surprises to postmodern predictable crap is roughly equal to the ratio of popular music surprises to popular music predictable crap.
But this is also why I am able to enjoy all sorts of food, literature, film, television, people, clothes, music, etc. The individual executions of any particular genre are usually puerile and tedious, but I have found beauty in almost every genre of every endeavor I have encountered.
I believe this is often evident in my book reviews. Vernor Vinge has a particular knack for writing huge books that are surprising from beginning to end. But other books, like the soon-to-be-reviewed Moral Politics, was very surprising at the beginning but then quickly became repetitious and unsurprising. Larry Lessig has often suffered a similar fate of fascinating me through 70% of the book and then saying things he already said for 30% of the book.
Or it is true for the band New Order. Who, after Joy Division reformed, had three very interesting albums and then perpetually recorded the same song over and over again with different whiny lyrics for 15 years.
An even better case is Gary Numan who was perhaps the most fascinating musician of the late 70s, then went on this weird boring and utterly unsuccessful pop music binge, and then, in the last 10 years, has released a series of highly compelling and delightfully unique works.
So, that is what I want. What I really really want.
Your Help Needed to Save Bliss
Your help is needed to split some hairs. Please click the “comments” link below and weigh in on the following, your answer may save humanity.
Last night I was standing in Ken and Carolyn’s home in Vancouver when my cell rang. It was Dr. Zorn with an urgent midnight phone call from North America’s east coast (I'm not sure if he was in D.C. or Atlanta). He and his significant other were having a light, yet persistent, altercation – or perhaps a domestic scrabble. They needed something settled and I was part of their popular arbitration lexicon.
So, Dr. Zorn asked me…
“Do you think the following are synonymous or totally dissimilar?
“Draw the blinds
“as opposed to
“Pull the blinds.”
My response, Ken’s response and likely Vivian’s response will soon be available in the Comments section. But I’d like to give them a well-rounded view.
Please, do try to have a good idea how you feel before reading the comments. Otherwise you may fall prey to some stirring or cogent remark and lose all objectivity.
The Daily Telegraph | Good ol' girl who enjoyed cruelty
I feel like I could pass out.
The Daily Telegraph | Good ol' girl who enjoyed cruelty.
I really don't know what to say about this. Every country has their share of people like this. Whether they are tried for war crimes, like the Germans, or negotiate their way out, like Japan. Or have it be too diffused or complicated to even begin to sort it out, like in most of the Middle East. Or written off as "Tribal Warfare" as in Africa.
It just sucks.
I'm just glad that Rumsfeld did not tell Bush about it. Otherwise they would have swept it under the rug. Nice and efficient.
But this should be a lesson to people who wonder why politics in any country is messy. In the US, it should be apparent that torturing people is not a good idea. And here we have a sadly predictable contingent who, in their wisdom, don't feel that way.
That Wacky American Military
The US Military seems to have two distinct faces.
But still it was nice to see Mizuko Ito's account of their experience with US military personnel after world war II.
My Life in the Bush of Ghosts
So I had to fly to San Antonio the other day. I forgot to take a picture of San Antonio. But if you picture a place that's kinda nice around a fake river with about 30 billion conference attendees milling around ... that's it.
But it was kinda nice.
On the way there I had to transfer in the not very nice George Bush airport in Houston. Every flight there was delayed. I flew Continental which seemed to be the rudest airline in North America.
Bush Airport is spotless and shiny clean. But nothing there seemed to work very well. They have a new runway we used when we flew in from Seattle. I think the runway is in Oklahoma because I swear it took us a half hour to get to the Bushport.
They have monitors all over to tell you things. Here is a picture of one.
As you can see, anything named George Bush has a hard time with providing open information.
You Think You're a Geek
Well, you're not a geek. You are a poseur.
A real geek cares about commodity pricing in a virtual universe.
Self Referential
Trevor Blake did a nice write up of a write up I did on Zine / Blog Parallels. If I woulda known he had a blog, I would have included him in the piece.
New Music - Evangelical Paintbrush
My rough draft for the track Evangelical Paintbrush, for the upcoming CD based entirely on goofy assed Spam Titles, is on the site now. You can hear it by clicking on "Listen to J. LeRoy Music" to the left and selecting Evangelical Paintbrush. This first draft is 15 minutes long. There's changes and new stuff all the way through. So, give it a listen. Headphones, dark room, that sorta track.
But, as always, I'd love comments. There are about 12 artists taking part in the Borne from Spam project.
Demo Caucs
Went to the District Caucus today today to participate. Much discussions about platform items. Glad to see that many Dems didn't want to support getting out of NAFTA / GATT / WTO wholesale. Was surprised to see a line item in there to help more people get prescription meds from Canada. People down here don't seem to realize that every cheap pill we get from Canada is subsidized by Canadian taxpayers.
There are fewer people in Canada than California.
I don't think it's good policy to bankrupt someone else's health care system because you can build a decent one of your own.
I won't be going on to the next phase of Caucusdom because I tried to tell a story longer than my allotted time and ended up unable to make my point. So I sounded like a guy with a story... but no point.
Sigh.
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