infobong.com

i treat my shoe like my ride

If you haven't guessed, I'm taking a slightly unplanned hiatus from blogging while I'm home having fun in meatspace with my old Tulsa pals. Christmas went well; my mom got me a big-ass picture book of MoMA's permanent collection. I saw a great band, The Ills, which boasts my pal Kasra a sax player. (More on them later.) And I got to finally see Edwards new band play at a church service of all things. Anyway, happy holidays y'all and I should be back blogging in a week or so.

just another fracas over corporate logos

Through Weblogsky I've learned of a fairly frightening event in the online world. Because it found some of the content hosted on artist ISP Thing.net, Verio cut off its upstream connection to the Internet, silencing the target, activist site RTMark, as well as MoMA's P.S.1 contemporary art center and other art venues. The infraction? The Yes Men, who also did Gatt.org, created a parody site at dow.org that highlighted Dow Chemical's reluctance to make amends for the deadly chemical spill in Bhopal, India.
DMCA or no DMCA, this event demonstrates some of the troubling aspects of the political economy online. While utopians in the early nineties suggested that anyone with a Web site could get their message online. Server space and bandwidth costs are hurdles even for those on the right side of the digital divide, but now it seems that the buck stops with your backbone provider. If they or someone who can intimidate your backbone provider doesn't like what you have to say, you get taken down. The powers that be already speak loudest online; now it appears they get to pick who gets to speak at all.

applicable to publicly-funded state universities

As UT students may know, UT-Austin negotiated a site license with Microsoft Corp., allowing students and faculty to get copies of Windows XP and Office XP for the low, low price of $5. Of course, this is another sneaky way to get innocent college kids hooked on Windows Media and proprietary Office formats, rather than outright altruism. An entry at LawMeme suggests Redmond's non-disclosure agreements with the schools prevents the departments from sharing the terms of the licenses, which may be a breach of Freedom of Information Act guidelines since UT-Austin and others are publicly-funded institutions. I guess it must be the fees that UT pays to Redmond, rather than the users's cost, since the front page for the UT Computer Store says they charge five bones.

don't be fooled by the rocks that I got

...I'm still m4dd4wg from the block. I'm blogging from my parents' house in Tulsa right now. I left Austin at 6:45 this morning and I couldn't have asked for worse weather driving up. It was pouring in Austin, then let up as I drove through the greater Waco-Temple-Killeen metro area, just in time to be absolutely pounded with rain in Fort Worth. I started seeing snow on the ground in Norman, where I stopped to eat lunch at Pepe's, but Pepe's was closed so I got some quiche at La Baguette, where I ran into Shane. (Shane is opening up his own salon, btw.) Anyway, I laughed at the snow all through OKC, but it started getting really, really bad about 30 minutes outside OKC. Traffic was at a near-standstill between Stroud and Sapulpa, but I made it in one piece, sanity intact, to Tulsa. Regardless, I could think of a lot more fun ways to spend 10 hours of my life. Good news about Shane, tho.
I can't believe the high in Austin yesterday was like 70-something and there five inches of gloppy, melting snow here in Tulsa. Hopefully, it will be no problem driving around the city tomorrow. I need to get a haircut and stuff.

how you gonna come

The m4dbl0g is sad to note Joe Strummer, singer and guitarist for The Clash, died on Sunday of a heart attack. All y'all film weenies might know him better for his acting gigs in Mystery Train or whatever. Even though they were on a major label and are fairly accessible, I like The Clash quite a bit. My favorite song is probably "Guns of Brixton."

m4dd4wg's meatless family christmas

As I promised earlier, here is the recap from last Christmas' Tofurky extravaganza. Everyone had a blast, enjoying the succulent flavor of a turkey made of tofu and gluten There are nine images below, each between 10 and 20KB, so it might take a while for people on dial-up to download, but that's no reason not to read on.

After I bought my plane ticket to Tulsa in Novemeber, I remembered that I needed to order Tofurky in advance, so I called Akin's from my office in the Philadelphia suburbs. The people at Akins thought it was a little strange someone would order a Tofurky from Philadelphia, but they were happy to fill my request.

When I arrived in Tulsa, all I could think about was Tofurky and how this would be the best Christmas ever, but it was late at night, and Akin's was closed, so I couldn't pick up my bird. I went to Akin's first thing the next morning. At the store, Justin pulled my Tofurky out of the walk-in. He seemed excited about Tofurky, too.

Torfurky was kind of expensive, around thirty bucks. I later learned that the Wild Oats chain (which Cate jokingly calls "White Folks") keeps Tofurkys in stock around the holidays and sells them for less. Darlene, a college-age clerk, checked me out. Justin said, "Darlene would look a whole lot better on your Web site than I would." I wholeheartedly agreed, but she wouldn't let me take her picture, so, alas, Darlene does not appear on the m4dbl0g.

Tofurky needs to thaw overnight before it is cooked, so it sat on the countertop for several hours taunting me and my family with its 100% vegan goodness.

Preparing Tofurky is a fairly involved process. The box includes the Tofurky roast, vegan giblet gravy, drumsticks made of tempeh, and a delicious "wishbone" made of Tofurky Jerky. In addtion, the roast needs to be basted with a mixture of soy sauce and orange juice.

After basting, you swaddle the Tofurky roast in a protective wrap of aluminum foil. This keeps the roast moist.

Here is Tofurky happily roasting in the oven, next to Mom's pumpkin pie. It seemed to take forever. My Mom yelled at me to shut up several times as I sang extemporaneous songs about Tofurky.

When Tofurky was fully cooked, I arranged its constiuent parts on a plate and garnished it with some kale and baby carrots. My mom told me to drink some champagne in the hope it would get me to shut up.

Tofurky had a place of honor at the McConnell family dining table that Christmas. Everything looked delicious, well, except for the stuff that had dead animals in it. Mmm... Tofurky.

Everyone said Tofurky was delicious, especially the tempeh drumsticks, but, for whatever reason, there were plenty of leftovers. That just meant more Tofurky for me!

All in all, Tofurky was an unqualified success. I think my Dad was a little jealous of Tofurky, since he keeps asking me, "You're not bringing one of those damn tofu turkeys again this year, are you?"

a powerhouse in media concentration

About two weeks ago, Dan Gilmor blogged about the Bush Regime's blocking of the DirectTV-EchoStar merger, and I more-or-less tuned it out. But its another one of those items that resonated with me enough that I roll it over in my head some time later. Gilmor suggests that the administration deliberately blocked it, so his pals at News Corp., owners of the reactionary Fox News Channel could buy it at a bargain-basement price.

affirmative action, republican style

Here's a little follow-up to yesterday's post on the arrest of hundreds of Muslims in LA on immigration charges. Through BoingBoing, I found a post by a British blogger in the US who has taken photographs and commented on the torrent of paperwork needed to maintain his visa. He says that his paperwork has been sent back twice by the INS for trivial errors. The instructions are so poor, he says, everyone makes errors, and, presumably, everyone could go to jail for simple mistakes. But Arabs and Persians are the first to be detained. Along with the African-Americans on death row, they're treated to a kind of affirmative action Trent Lott has always believed in.
These are certainly strange times. Its easy to forget the Afghan detainees sitting in cages in Guantanamo Bay with no idea if they'll be tried at all or the US citizens held without being charged with a crime. They might have scotched Operation TIPS, but Total Information Awareness is still going, even if they got rid of the Illuminati logo. And the Homeland Security Bill eliminated whistle-blower protections for employees of the department, so employees speak up when the government does something illegal or immoral, they can legally be fired and harrassed. This is a great little exemption for a department that includes the INS, the Coast Guard, and the Customs Service. I feel very overwhelmed and helpless by all of these changes, which I believe are limiting our freedoms as individuals and giving immense power to people who do not represent the best interests of Americans.

zero tolerance policy toward overtime

Here's another story that should be front-page news - the world's largest retailer was convicted yesterday of forcing its workers to work overtime off the clock. To keep costs down, Wal-Mart "encourages" its managers to avoid paying overtime, even if it means intimidating workers to perform tasks off the clock, as documented in this New York Times story from the summer.
If you think its a coincidence that Wal-Mart is a darling of Wall Street and it uses abusive labor practices, think again. Analysts and shareholders love its formula of sweatshopped goods and mistreated workers since it keeps costs down and profits high. Workers in Las Vegas are attempting to unionize distribution centers there. In an interesting use of media, local organizers rent time on a local AM station where workers can call in and air their grievances about Wal-Mart management. In my opinion, one of the most interesting shows was an interview with turncoat union-buster Marty Leavitt, who came on the show to explain union-busting tactics to the workers, so they could identify them when management turned up the heat.

In related news, The Austin Chronicle reports Austin-based Whole Foods fired two workers in Madison that were involved in organizing there. A friend of mine worked in the kitchen of a Whole Foods in Berkeley and assured me that not only was Whole Foods not one of "the best companies to work for," but one of the worst jobs he's held.

are you here?

I am once again in the UGLi, enjoying its dampness and disrepair. (This place can't be good for books.) I just discovered an accidental art project that I would recommend others to check out, if you get the chance. Entitled, "Are You Here?" it consists of random photos stuck to a whiteboard in the second floor computer lab. I'm guessing that these were pictures students forgot to take out of the scanner before they left the lab, and the proctors posted them here as a sort of lost-and-found. Although the concept behind "Are You Here?" is rather banal, the images are not. UT students are a well-traveled (and cute) lot; there are pictures of exotic locales in Asia and Europe, as well as charming verandas across the south. In sum, "Are You Here?" works as a fascinating bricolage of the diversity and artistry of the UT student body.
"Are You Here?" at the UGL Student Microcomputer Facility, opens Sundays at noon to 9:45 pm, Friday. Saturdays 9am - 9:45pm

There is no good reason I've posted twice now about the ugli FAC building, but I also learned that space/noise/drone/whatever band Stars of the Lid, named their song "FAC 21" after a room in this building.

free our fathers, brothers, husbands and sons

Neal Pollack writes, "This is a goddamn outrage." All I can do is echo that sentiment. Why is this not the top news in our major papers today? What institution do I call to air my complaint? Last night at the blogger meetup, someone offhandedly said "if we found ourselves living under fascism." I thought to myself, "We don't already?" This only confirms my suspicions that the current regime is an enemy of democracy and a pluralistic society.

like winning the ou-texas game 24 to 14."

My alumni email newsletter asks a seemingly easy question, "Guess what Big 12 school has the most computer power - by far?" UT-Austin, the biggest darn school in America, would be the obvious answer, except I didn't graduate from there. (here? whatever.) Apparently, the Sooners are the Big 12 champs in supercomputing as well. OU teamed with IBM and Aspen systems to build a big-ass Linux supercomputing cluster. At first I assumed this was related to OU's vaunted meteorology school, but my first guess was wrong again; the story suggests it will be used in applications related to medicine.

get in the car and don't touch nothin'

I took this picture back in August. I didn't think too much of it when I got the roll back, but I like it a lot now, so I'm posting it here. I still need to work on my scanning skills.Update (12/21): I fiddled with the scanner until I got the colors closer to the way they look in the print. Go me!

And here's a little pastiche that I made when I was in Philly, so its not new or anything, but I'm posting it now.

hypothetical future value accounting

Here are some video clips from a gag video played at an Enron exec's retirement party in 1997. One clip features George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush, acknowledging the importance of Enron in Dubya's political life, while another features Jeff Skilling joking about hypothetical future value accounting, which "can add a kazillion dollars to the bottom line."

the loft is open for all types of music

A recent email from Kasra encouraged the members of the Gold Coast diaspora to attend this UAT show on December 28 at Tulsa's The Loft coffeehouse. (As I understand it, UAT is a coalition of Tulsa hip-hop and electronica artists.) According to Google, "The Loft is a 'Christian atmosphere' coffee house and is a ministry to provide a non-alcoholic, non-smoking environment to enjoy live music." (sic) Yet, looking at their event calendar, it appears a lot of hardcore punk bands appear at the venue. I wondered, if this is like the Blue-Green Coalition that united labor and environmental groups to protest the WTO, only, in this case, uniting the religious right and straightedge punks? "Come at 7:30 for food, fellowship, and slam-dancing!" But a look at their booking information suggests they'll let anyone play provided the acts are not "profane and vulgar."
Anyway, The Loft is located at 18th & Boston in a micro-district I've been fond of. Sitting between downtown and the tony Maple Ridge neighborhood, its been home to neat stuff like the SRO nightclup, Deli 2000, and Ross Edwards' salon. In college I dated a gal - an OKC native, no less - who used to drive from Norman to Tulsa to get her hair cut there. One time I went with her for grins. While she was getting her hair done, I discovered the gallery next door had a show of Warhol silkscreens.

all rights reserved, all wrongs reversed

Hyper-observant readers may have noticed I've put a little Creative Commons notice in the leftbar of this site, which indicates the material here can be reproduced with attribution. As if anyone would want to reproduce this crap. Anyway, the Creative Commons project launched this week, which attempts to provide something like a Lesser GPL for textual works. This Flash presentation, narrated by Larry Lessig in his Shatneresque style, can explain it better.
The animation suggests that The White Stripes' gimmick is their lack of a bass, which I might argue with since many blues bands from the thirties up through Jon Spencer don't have bass players. Considering the Stripes cover the likes of Son House, I wonder if they're simply working out of that tradition. Yeah, I'm picking nits, but isn't that what blogs are for?

as reported at austin/bergstrom

Well, its dark and 63F here in Austin, and I just comfortably walked from the gym to the library wearing nothing but a T-shirt and running shorts. Certainly strange weather to be making Christmas plans, but I sure ain't complaining. And, more importantly, its strange weather for the end of my first semester at grad school! I finished up yesterday. Yippee! I've made it pretty much unscathed, only put on a few pounds of stress fat and I'm certain that like Neal Pollack, I made the right decision moving from Philthy to Austin.

Update (8:15PM):
I just checked out a book, and the guy at the circ desk was all, "That'll be due June 6th."
I chortled and said, "Man, I love that."
"Yeah, that is a popular perk with grad students."
"See you in June!"
Man, I love semester loans. Of course, I won't be the one laughing when I turn my books in overdue.

a prerecorded compact disc, a cassette or a vinyl album

I'm sure many m4dbl0g readers bought a "Music Product, defined as a prerecorded compact disc, a cassette or a vinyl album" between January 1, 1995 and December 22, 2000, so you'll want to cash in on the price-fixing settlement, where the nice folks at the corporate rock industry admitted no guilt. Through BoingBoing, I learned of this site, which enables you to file a claim online. Once funds are disbursed, you may receive between $5-$20 back from the evil media megacorps.

Here are two more germane joints. First, a story from The New York Times about how the music industry is adapting to new distribution technologies like file-sharing and CD-burning. And, via BoingBoing, a piece that uses possibly specious logic to suggest the music industry invented the purported bust in sales due to file-sharing by contorting sales figures. I certainly agree that the recession impacted record sales more than file-sharing, but I question his method of dividing total sales by the number of releases. Its my understanding that the major labels make most of their money selling records from their back catalogs, rather than new releases.

previously de rigueur ranting guy

When I first read it, I thought this Village Voice review that juxtaposes the new releases from Tom Petty and Godspeed You! Black Emperor was interesting, but I have a hard time taking cultural criticism from a corporate rocker like Tom Petty seriously, so I just filed it away in one of the many dusty corners of my mind. It must have really resonated with me, though, since I was thinking about it later on while making burritos at the phat m4d pad. Like seriously, Tom, if you're so worried about corporate control of the mediascape, why are you relying on the nice folks at AOL-Time Warner to distribute your music, when I'm sure you have the capital (both financially and industrially) to release and distrubute your records yourself? I've always thought Petty's music was pretty tame and middlebrow anyway, so I never paid him much note. I should listen to that Godspeed You! Black Emperor again. Like Sigur Ros, I appreciate their music the few times I've heard it, but I rarely feel the desire to listen to Mogwai or much of that "symphonic noise" rock in daily life.
Since the review references it and Jon sort of mentioned it at a recent EFF meeting, I thought I would point readers to Steve Albini's Baffler article on the economics of releasing a record through a major label. Sadly, Courtney Love's high-profile cribbing of Albini is etched in most people's memory.
Finally, here's a great rip on the record industry's trade organization from The Register. After seizing a piracy ring's gear, the RIAA asserts that the 156 CD burners seized was the equivalent of 421 burners, since "some run at very high speeds: some as high as 40x." I'll bet they hired one of those cops that calculates the street values of confiscated pot. "We seized two ounces of marijuana with a street value of over $3000."

give bikes the right

Reading about a local activist that was killed while riding his bike, I've found two interesting bicycling resources. First, BicycleSafe.com offers tips on how not to get hit by gas-guzzlers, and a second site about how the Austin cops pursue cyclists' infractions more than motorists. This is essential reading for cyclists, especially in Austin.
I don't know if y'all saw the news, but Stereolab member Mary Hansen died cycling on Monday. This is sad news for the band and the music world.
Finally, on a lighter note, I was walking to school the other day, and some dude was being all East Coast, trying to weasel out of yielding to pedestrians. I mouthed some choice words at him as I crossed in front of him, and, as he sped away, I noticed a "Give Bikes the Right" bumper sticker on his car. I guess bikes have the right-of-way, but people on foot don't.

where the sunbeams end and the starlights begin

Man, it seems like the more I listen to Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots the more I like it. I suspected that when it came out, comparing its more subtle sound to the High Llama's Gideon Gaye, which took me quite a long time to finally become a favorite.
I'm gonna have to quit watching TV or that Hewlett-Packard ad that features "Do You Realize" is gonna ruin the album for me. I guess the Flaming Lips are on Warner Bros. Records, so its not like they're sellouts or anything. The whole issue of using songs in commercials is pretty much dead anyway. Heck, Volkswagen used a song from Stereolab, a band that has overtly Leftist lyrics in some of their songs.

people who run blogs are called bloggers

Neal Pollack always seems to be dead on - first he makes the right choice of emigrating from Philadelphia to the beautiful ATX, and now he has the scoop on incoming Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, who has been rightly criticized for endorsing Strom Thurmond's 1948 pro-segregation presidential platform. Pollack interviewed the Mississippi Senator and got to the core of the politico's beliefs. Pollack is perhaps the greatest journalist since Mark Leyner.
The New York Post has also weighed in on the Lott controversy in an editorial that humorously puts "blogs" in scarequotes. I do disagree that Glenn Reynolds is "the acknowledged king of the bloggers": I would give that title to Cory Doctorow or Jason Kottke.

like a modern-day al capone

Like The Homeless Guy, the Treesit Blog provides an interesting view into the life of an activist living on the margins of society. Its author, Remedy, lives atop an ancient redwood to stop logging companies from mowing down the forest. In a sloppy paper that I'm too ashamed of to post, I argued that the blogs like the Homeless Guy, - and this one had I known about it - can raise attention to an issue and increase sympathy since blogs tend to empahsize the subjectivity of their authors, not to mention the fact that they give poor, but literate, activists a low-cost means to get their message out.

I learned of this site through Slashdot, which I'd grown tired of in the past year or so, but I'm again finding it an interesting source of information. I don't know if its because I don't get the torrent of IT press releases I got when I wrote for a computer magazine, or if the stories they post are becoming more relevant to me.

what i do in school, part two

I just found that they've posted our little research descriptions over on the RTF Web site, in case you want to know what I say I do in school or learn about the other freaks I go to school with.

Right now I'm in the UGLi, or Undergraduate Library. This building has an ambience that reminds me unfavorably of my high school and holds about as many books as the JHS library. Its got that yucky green tile sixties sort of vibe, for one thing, and the students seem really young. When I was here in high school for nerd camp, the sorority-girl tour leader told us that UGLi was the big "meatmarket," suggesting students come here to hook up, but I'm more inspired to search for disinfectant than for love.

boca burgers, tv themes and yo la tengo

In my reveries walking to school, I've often wished for a genre that blends indie rock and hip-hop, much like rap-metal blends, well, rap and metal or the way Will Oldham and David Grubbs blend indie and country. While I often imagined the bastard child of The Olivia Tremor Control and DMX, The Statesman's "XLent" supplement has a story this week on DJ Jester, who says, "I want my records to sound like Pavement records, to have this melancholy hip-hop feeling." That sounds pretty appealing, and his "Riverwalk Riot," which combines artists as diverse as Willie Nelson, Yo La Tengo, and the Outkast into a single mix sounds pretty interesting. Dangerous, have you or anyone else in the browsing audience heard this DJ Jester? I'd go to his show tomorrow, but I don't really have the funds.

as easy as a garbage disposal

The New York Times is running a set of features today about wireless networking in its "Circuits" section. One story describes new networking standards on the horizon, including Linksys' plans to sell products based on the 802.11g - also known by the marketing-friendly "54G" - which promises 54Mbps throughput. I hardly want to be a knee-jerk Luddite, but why in the Sam Hill would anyone need that much bandwidth for a wireless network? A T1 runs at 1.544 Mbps, so its not like you're gonna get online at that speed. The only practical consumer application I can imagine is pairing a base station with a Pringles can to share your decrambled DVD collection with the rest of the neighborhood. Actually, now that I think about it, that would be kind of nice: grassroots video-on-demand.

binary space partitioning trees

Since, I've posted a bunch of entries based on articles in the corporate media today, I'll post some personal stuff, too. I just learned that I'll be a Teaching Assistant in RTF 334M next semester, which is a course in video game development. This should certainly be an interesting experience, not least because I am far from being a video game enthusiast. Maybe they want me to be Mr. "Do you think this is reinforcing negative gender stereotypes?" I'm sure anything the students come up with will be more PC than Custer's Revenge.

Last night, Jordan and I went to a dinner-discussion sponsored by EFF-Austin, where we talked about changes to intellectual property law. Jordan is a first year at UT-Law, and he wants to pursue entertainment law, so this was of particular interest to him. I told one of the co-ordinators I would lead a discussion on open radio spectrum at a later date. I've talked to a fellow student that works at the RTF department's Telecommunications and Information Policy institute about this topic before, so I may ask for her help when I am preparing. Update (12/12): I just learned through Slashdot that the FCC has said publicly it is considering opening up more of the EM spectrum to unlicensed devices.

further misbehavior by nasty regimes

Free speech on the Internet may have been dealt a nasty blow yesterday with the decision that Dow Jones, the owners of Barron's an be sued in Australia under the local libel laws. Members of the British commonwealth generally have stricter libel laws than the US, so this leads to a precedent where governments abroad can dictate the content of sites in other countries. I've pasted The Wall Street Journal's response below. As a story in The Austin American-Statesman points out, this may not prevent some organizations from violating content laws in other countries, since, if they have no assets in that country, they have nothing to lose from an unfavorable ruling.

Down (Under) With the Internet

'Some Australian guy went and ruined the Internet. Dang."

So writes Web writer Glenn Reynolds. And he might not be far wrong. Yesterday's ruling by the High Court of Australia that libel suits can be brought wherever damage occurs has chilling implications for free speech, whether the alleged offender be a large news corporation or a one-man operation like Mr. Reynolds's Instapundit.com. In theory, one incautious comment on your family Web site could be enough to land you in a foreign court if it gets read in the wrong place.

The case at hand concerns an article in an October 2000 issue of Barron's that allegedly defamed Australian mining magnate Joseph Gutnick. Dow Jones, publisher of Barron's and this newspaper, contended that the case should be considered in the U.S., the place of publication and the location of the relevant Internet server. But the Aussie court decided we can be sued under the looser libel laws of Mr. Gutnick's home state of Victoria since the article was downloaded there. "What the appellant [Dow Jones] seeks to do, is to impose upon Australian residents for the purposes of this and many other cases, an American legal hegemony in relation to Internet publications," wrote one of the justices in a concurring opinion.

In our view, the judge has it precisely backward. It is His Honor who is exercising "legal hegemony" by saying we should have looked at Australian law.

U.S. libel law, consistent with the speech protections afforded by the First Amendment, makes it fairly difficult to win a libel suit. The burden of proof is on the plaintiff to show the allegedly defamatory statement is false; the statement must be the result of negligence in the case of a private figure, willful falsehood in the case of a public one. That's one reason so many Web sites advocating change in repressive regimes are located in the U.S.

In Britain and the Commonwealth countries, the reverse holds. It is up to the defendant to prove a statement is true, without reference to fault or intent. This Draconian standard has been used in recent years to shutter political publications such as Britain's LM magazine and saddle their editors with crushing personal debts. It has also resulted in a number of absurdities, such as the settlement Michael Jackson won from London's Mirror tabloid after it noted that the singer had been "hideously disfigured" by plastic surgery. How can you "prove" an aesthetic judgment?

We're not suggesting there's any reason to fear a sweeping Internet crackdown in Britain and Australia, which have otherwise strong democratic traditions. But the precedent asserted by the Australian High Court is certainly an invitation to forum shopping on a global scale and against defendants who lack the legal resources of a Dow Jones. It is also an invitation to further misbehavior by nasty regimes. Just this year Zimbabwe became the first country to criminally prosecute and punish a foreign journalist for an article merely downloaded in that country.

Nor are we much reassured by the court's assertion that there is jurisdiction only where a plaintiff has a reputation to defend. For famous people and large corporations, that could be just about anywhere.

We understand that this is an increasingly small world and that there's a certain amount of arbitrariness involved in limiting jurisdiction to place of publication, whether in print or on a Web server. But at least it's a clear rule of law. Requiring anyone who would publish on the Web to check the statutes of 190 different countries is not.

The Australian High Court has failed to sensibly advance the common law to account for the changes created by the Internet. Its precedent -- if affirmed elsewhere -- will prove a damper on free speech.

Updated December 11, 2002 12:06 a.m. EST

metal mothers

Just the other day, I was asking about the ins and outs of releasing LPs. While it didn't really answer my question, I enjoyed this article on Slashdot profiling a Nashville vinyl factory whose business is booming. Since many companies are exiting the record-pressing business, United Record is growing steadily; the story says revenues have increased $1.4 million to $4 million since 1999, when they began pressing LPs. The planets must be in alignment, since today's Foxtrot cartoon tackles a similar theme. BTW, anyone interested in record-pressing from an artist/label's point-of-view should watch the What's Up Matador? video - one segment has a Matador employee walking through the mastering and pressing process.

austin's famous maelstroms

I'm surprised its taken this long for this issue to be raised in the paper, but The Austin-American Stateman finally ran a story today on the planned Borders bookshop at 6th and Lamar, right across the street from two of Austin's cultural institutions, the BookPeople bookstore and Waterloo Records. When I first learned that was going in the construction site, my reaction was, "Oh, those evil corporate bastards want to put BookPeople out of business," but the article quotes a Borders official as saying, "When locating our stores, it is never our intention to pursue a site with the goal of putting another store out of business." Oh please, Borders and Starbucks business model is all about operating stores at a loss until the local institutions go out of business.

continuous scrolling slide show

If blogging while marathoning wasn't upsettng enough, here's a tool for people too lazy to use their keyboard or mouse. With the Google Viewer, you can type in your entry and passively peruse your favorite blogs or use it to dish up cheesecake hands free. Once you enter your search terms, it gives you a slideshow of screenshots from matching pages.

16 miles getting pain now

If you thought mobile devices, and, for that matter, blogging, was out of control, here's definitive proof. With a T-Mobile Sidekick, a blogger on the Hiptop Nation Weblog, blogged his experience running a marathon, in realtime, with pictures. The folks at Danger should give this guy a sponsorship.

watchin' tv with no will to live

OK, last night I needed an excuse to get out of the house, so I decided to head down to Waterloo Records and pick up The Warlocks'The Phoenix Album. I think I made a good decision. The record is all songs, as a opposed to what an old International Records sleeve might term a "free-form freakout," trippy, meandering guitar jams. It also features The Spacemen 3's Sonic Boom on guitar, who I last saw conducting a Speak-and-Spell ensemble in Oklahoma City. Good to hear you're playing music again, Sonic! As this review suggests, the opener "Shake the Dope Out" is totally cribbed from "Sister Ray," but it still got my booty shaking. Also, the first Warlocks song I ever heard (and the one that got me hooked) - "Hurricane Heart Attack" - is finally on this album. Finally The Phoenix Album is a lot less dark than other Warlocks' records; listening to the bouncy "The Dope Feels Good," I can imagine walking down a beach littered with thousands of needles glistening in the sun.

Readers in Philadelphia are so spoiled by the wonders of AKA Music. Waterloo was charging $14.99 for the CD, and, although the label's site made no mention of an LP release, I check the vinyl bin anyway, which had it for $9.99. The cover art makes a lot more sense on the LP anyway. What's interesting is that like the first Beachwood Sparks, which was released on CD by Sub Pop and on LP by Bomp!, the Warlocks' CD is on Birdman records, but the LP is on Bomp! Can anyone familiar with the vagaries of pressing vinyl explain this?

i'm going down to cowtown

This morning's Austin American-Statesman is running a couple of stories on the opening of Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, the latest addtion to Cowtown's downtown art district. Unfortunately, The Statesman's Website has none of the breathtaking shots of the Tadao Ando-designed edifice that ran in the print edition. I'll definitely have to swing by the museum district over the holiday break. When I went to Dallas for OU-Texas weekend, I meant to go see the Mondrian show at the Kimbell, but I wasn't exactly in a disposition for art appreciation that Sunday.

On a side note, I've gotta say that Statesman.com is a pretty weak newspaper Website, considering Austin purports to be a tech capital. Not only did it not have a slide-show of pictures of the museum, but its articles also lack the "Email to A Friend" feature that even the Daily Texan can boast. I finally found some pictures online at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's site, but only after drilling through four menus and, in desperation, doing a site search, which led to this article, ranked fifth in the results.

look for team ricola on tv

I was just at the gym watching CNN, and as I strode on the elliptical trainer, CNN was showing live footage of the Space Shuttle Endeavor landing at Kennedy Space Center, including grainy footage taken from Endeavor's cockpit. I was reminded how I watched Space Shuttle launches live as a kid, and the excitment they generated. As I grew older, the networks stopped blocking out airtime for launches - presumably because the Shuttle could no longer generate daytime ratings - but it seems a little sad that we can longer plan on seeing crap fly into or emerge from space on TV. I wonder if the BBC will run any footage of the Beagle 2?

When CNN cut to commercial, they ran that wacky Ricola ad that features the Dandy Warhols' "Big Indian." As a giant, plushy Ricola drop and a Swiss girl in a dirndl enter a subway train, otherwise healthy-looking commuters are suddenly afflicted by a persistent, hacking cough. I wondered what Ricola was trying to say with this ad; are they targeting stoners in Urban Bohemia? Or is this simply another spot in that non-sequiturial European advertising tradition best known for those Mentos commercials?

the conventional wisdom is 180 degrees off

I'm a bit of a fan of Princeton economics professor and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, (well, as far as you can be a fan of a professor-columnist, anyway) so I was excited to find this Washington Monthly profile of Krugman, which relates his professional background and attitudes toward his newfound fame. He tells the magazine, "This is not my natural habitat... I should be worrying a lot about Brazil right now." Instead of worrying about Brazil, his Friday column does a great job of explaining why the established telcos and cable operators continue to dominate the market for broadband Internet services and the possible consequences of this situation. On a somewhat related note, Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne Jr. deflates the notion of pervasive left-wing bias throughout the corporate-controlled media, from a journalist's point-of-view.

grapple with audiences or textual meanings

Some readers have wondered what exactly it is I do here in graduate school. To be honest, I do too, but I probably frame the question in more postmodern terms. Anyway, I got the take-home exam questions for RTF 395, a required class for all incoming grad students that exposes us a variety of theoretical approaches to studying media. This semester could be summarized as "Social Science for Lit Majors"; next semester will emphasize more textual approaches to media scholarship. I've pasted the questions below - although you probably won't be familiar with the authors, they may give you a sense of the kinds of topics we discuss here in the department of Radio-TV-Film.

Final Take-Home Exam, RTF 395 December, 2002
Please respond to the following questions as succinctly as possible. Be brilliant and provocative! The exam should be turned into my mailbox in CMA 6.118 by 5:00 pm next Tuesday.

1. One way to characterize many of the theoretical approaches we have considered this semester is in terms of mainstream, American-centric theories (Katz, Lazarsfeld, Merton, cultivation theory, uses and gratifications, media systems dependency theory, agenda setting, technological determinism) as opposed to critical theories (Canclini, Gramsci and hegemony theory, Schiller, Horkheimer and Adorno and the Frankfurt school, Martin-Barbero, Benjamin, Streeter, Garnham and political economy) many of them Latin American or European in origin. The former have been criticized as empiricist, unreflective, and underdeveloped, while the latter are criticized for their totalizing emphasis on media systems’ relationship to power institutions, sacrificing attempts to grapple with audiences or textual meanings. Choose one reading from each set and contrast how they deal with each of the following concepts: The State; democracy; individual agency; decoding or interpretation, as with an active audience; and the masses. (The readings you choose for this question should be a ones that you do not draw on for a primary response to any of the remaining three questions here.)

2. How would diffusion theory account for the spread of DVD players? How would James Carey use a cultural studies approach to discuss the same phenomenon?

3. The political economy analysis of broadcast policy offered by Thomas Streeter and the broader topic of communication and cultural production explored by Nicholas Garnham both comment on the roles of private capitalist accumulation as well as the State in structuring (or destroying) the public sphere. Discuss the operations and significance of the public sphere (in the Habermasian sense) in their arguments.

4. How does the concept of popular culture intersect development or globalization processes? (To respond to this question, please use the readings addressing globalization or those addressing development (the classical, i.e., Schramm, Lerner, or the critical readings, i.e., Freire, Beltran, and so forth).)

Buy Nothing Day Recap

I finally got my film back from Austin's Buy Nothing Day festivities, so I'm posting my recap for you here. For readers unfamiliar with BND, its a yearly action held the day after Thanksgiving where participants buy nothing, in order to call attention to the West's consumer culture. As you will soon see, I badly need to hone my scanning skillz, but I think you will be able to make out some detail in the images.

Last Friday, I attended a Buy Nothing Day gathering at East Austin's Plaza Saltillo, which featured live music, food, and other free activities.

For context, here's a shot of downtown Austin from Plaza Saltillo. East Austin has traditionally been the hub for a variety of minority communities in Austin. Many of the people in East Austin are very poor. I-35 separates East Austin from the rest of the city, so the boundaries for the community are distinct.

As a statement against the consumer culture an all-free swap meet was held; people brought garage sale-type items and left them in an area for others to take what they wanted or needed. I scored a brand-new bicycle lock still in the cellophane.

This guy scored a fur coat, and he sure did look sharp. He also had a wild bicycle that had an extended fork. Atop the fork was a piece of a shopping cart, allowing him to use his bike for transporting a large number of items at once.

This might have been iZac's favorite part of the Buy Nothing Day Activities. A number of local restaurants, including the Magnolia Cafe and the Sacred Cup coffeeshop donated vegetarian free food, since, well, we weren't supposed to buy anything, but we needed to eat. Magnolia's rice was awesome, and a number of people said Sacred Cup's vegan chili was yummy, but it was gone before I got there. Sacred Cup is a few blocks from my pad, so I'll go there and try it some time.

This is Eileen. She's part of Austin's Yellow Bike Project, which takes donated bikes, paints them yellow, and releases them for the community to use for free. Each of the bikes were named, and carried a disclaimer removing the project from any liability.

The Yellow Bike project released about 50 yellow bikes that day at the plaza, and kids of all ages were taking the bikes for a spin. After some initial reluctance, I hopped on a cruiser, and pedaled around the plaza as bands played on stage. There ain't nothin' better than listenin' to some country music while ridin' around on a yeller bike; I wished I went to more shows where you could ride around on bikes instead of imbibe beer and inhale secondhand smoke.

After all the bands played, some college-age kids (with nice cars) put on a puppet show mocking the machinations of market economics. Books Behind Bars, an organization that distributes paperback books to prisoners also had a booth at the party. I had a great time at Buy Nothing Day; I think part of the reason it was a success is because it was a celebration of activists projects around Austin, rather than an event that antagonizes mainstream culture. The vibe was very positive and fun.

edible benefits

Some readers may know that I'm the type of dude who likes to make a big pot of soup, then freeze individual portions to take to school or reheat at home. While I might not feed you as well as Google's cafeteria, I've posted a recipe for the soup I made for lunch today.

Potato Soup with Roasted Garlic and Green Onions
2-3lb Potatoes
1.5 tsp Salt
1 bulb Garlic, roasted
1 bunch, Green Onions
2-3 cups Skim Milk

Peel and dice the potatoes into cubes about a centimeter on each side. Alternatively, you can use new red potatoes and leave the skins on for a more fiber-y soup. Dump all them cut-up potatoes into a saucepan, then cover with water and bring to a boil. Add 1 tsp. salt. Reduce heat to a simmer, until potatoes are tender, generally when you start to see starch deposit on the side of the pan. As the potatoes are cooking, clean and dice the green onions and set aside. Squeeze the individual garlic cloves out of the skin and chop into itty-bitty pieces. When the potatoes are cooked, drain as much water off as you can muster without dumping taters down the drain, then cover with milk. Add onions, garlic, and remaining salt, then bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer and cover. Simmer soup for 20-30 minutes or when broth is on this side of sludgy. Garnish with chopped parsley or shredded cheddar cheese, if you're feeling extra decadent. Serves 3-4.

a glorified thousand island dressing

You've heard of bitrot and linkrot, no doubt, but here are what could only be termed rotlinks. The CraftyPants blog is following in the footsteps of the StinkyMeat project and providing online documentation of rotting organic materials. This time, however, the project has a socially concious spin; Mary Ellen is taking pictures of various items in her compost heap and providing a few tips on successful composting along the way. She's even taking requests!

not turning off

As I was walking up to the communications building tonight, there was a long line of people outside, which can mean only one thing: an Austin City Limits taping. As I walked past the huddled masses outside CMB, I noticed they were wearing thrift-store sweaters and Chuck Taylors, rather than the usual polo shirts and relaxed fit jeans and thought to myself, "Boy howdy, those kids sure look hip for Austin City Limits!" Worried that I might be missing out on a band I'd like to see, I checked the door, which said Spoon was playing, and headed straight to the computer lab.

we're not chuck e. cheese

The latest issue of Readymade arrived in my mailbox today, and I read it with my usual excitement. As usual, the content is inspiring, and the models (who aren't pros) are, well, adorable, but one of the ads particularly piqued my interest. (Okay, okay, I worked long enough in the magazine biz to know that the ads are really the point.) Anyway, yeah, American Apparel is a company based in L.A. that offers "sweatshop-free T-shirts." I get the impression that they plan to sell wholesale to screen-printers, but they have shirts for sale online. The prices are comparable to what you would pay at the Gap, so I wonder if they'll be able to turn a profit.
BoingBoing pointed me to this site, Thriftdeluxe.com, yesterday, which seems to share a similar philosophy as Readymade and GetCrafty, but not as much content. I may have to try the word belt project over the break.

picture pages, picture pages

Time to download picture pages; time to grab a crayon or a pencil! Here are two pages of pictures that may amuse you. There are shots of daily life in Queens on LightningField.com today. Be sure to check out that lovely, hip-hop inspired license plate. I wonder if its Barbie's. And then there's an older Photoshop contest that asks "What if h4x0r5 ruled the world?" I'm particularly fond of the Hollywood sign and The Daily Oklahoman spoofs.

every arty, truculent drop of non-sequiturial energy

I really like the lede to this NYTimes review of a Sonic Youth show. The article posits SY have "fought normal rock-star goals with every arty, truculent drop of non-sequiturial energy in them." Dammit, I wanna gush with arty, non-sequiturial energy! Maybe I should change the tagline from "we're stuffing cheese in places you never dreamed about" to "we're gushing with arty, non-sequiturial energy." Update (12/3): I haven't been following SY closely for some time, so I suddenly asked myself the question, "Jim O'Rourke is playing bass for Sonic Youth?" That seems like a waste of some gee-tar pickin' talent. Its like the dude has arguably the best indie label around right now, and he's half the rhythm section for major-label sluts Sonic Youth? Maybe he needs the cash.

For fear of becoming what one pretentious emoboy termed a "CNN feed," I'll consolidate another NYTimes story into the same post. This story outlines how FCC Commissioner and Colin's kid Michael K. Powell and the corporate media outlets believe that since there are about 89 channels available in the average American household, fears of a lack of media diversity are unjustified. Moreover, this would suggest that megamediaconglomerates like AOL-Time Warner serve the public interest by providing a variety of voices. While Powell says he sees an "explosion of variety," others counter "Just because there are five home shopping networks, four fix-em-up channels and five talking head news channels doesn't mean there's real diversity or competition." Update (12/3): Last night as I was walking home from school, I kicked myself for forgetting to also link to Paul Krugman's Friday column on the same topic.

shifted frequencies at the molecule

Here's some interesting information from my alma mater that I found through BoingBoing. Sooners' Physical Chemist Bing Fung and his colleagues have stored a 32 pixel black & white image in a single molecule by adjusting the properties of constituent hydrogen molecules. Fung and company dub the process "molecular photography," and could lead to a new form of data storage.
In more banal news, I'm intrigued by Yamaha's DiscT@2 technology, which allows you to use a CD burner to etch images into the CD's substrate. According to Tom's Hardware, burning DiscT@2 eats up CD space that could be otherwise used for data, so this is a total novelty, but I can just imagine doing a big art project with a few dozen tattooed discs. Fry's sells IDE DiscT@2 burners for less than $100, so its not exactly exotic technology. Sadly, there's no online gallery of DiscT@2 art yet.