Bookmarks for June 21st through July 24th

These are my links for June 21st through July 24th: TALK- Kenneth Goldsmith – Tank Magazine- “NR: Who contributes to Ubu, and how is it curated?KG: Ubu doesn’t generate any of its own content. Instead, films and sounds are taken from very exclusive file-sharing groups and released to the public. The decision as to what [...]
Bookmarks from October 5th through October 10th 2010
“This deal held until about thirty years ago, when for a variety of reasons, California voters realized that while they had done very well from the existing contract, they could do even better by walking away from their obligations and spending what they had inherited on themselves. “My kids are finished with school; why should [...]
Bookmarks from July 12th through July 19th
“What went wrong here?” is an unpopular question with the type of city fathers and civic boosters for whom convention centers and pedestrian malls are the answers to all society’s ills but Harvey captured and chronicled every day what was–and will always be–beautiful about Cleveland: the still majestic gorgeousness of what once was–the uniquely quirky charm of what remains, the delightfully offbeat attitude of those who struggle to go on in a city they love and would never dream of leaving. What a two minute overview might depict as a dying, post-industrial town, Harvey celebrated as a living, breathing, richly textured society.”
link: Anthony Bourdain’s Blog
Video by Satan’s Pearl Horses http://satanspearlhorses.com/
Featuring Matt Marks and Mellissa Hughes
More info here: http://thelittledeathvol1.com/The Little Death: Vol. 1
by Matt Marks Directed by Rafael Gallegos
July 8-11, 14-17 2010
Incubator Arts Project http://incubatorarts.org
“So to me it seems that in banning the word classical we need to have some kind of agreement as to what we think it is we do that we wish to describe differently. “Classical“ clearly fails in 2010 as an a term of aggregation. “Classical” succeeds in maintaining a now elderly participant base for concert presentation, but fails in nearly other aspect of differentiation. Is there a coherent (though divergent) ‘classical’ music practice that could be better described with a single other word/phrase? Or is the suggestion that the discrepant musical discourses and modes of presentation would be better served through the disaggregation that the abandonment of the term classical would afford? These are both deeply philosophical and deeply practical questions.”
link: Ban the word “Classical” « Elissa Milne
“The university police department — about 10 officers and 2 detectives — don’t even know what an IP address is. I even contacted the local FBI office and they said they’re ‘not interested’ in the case despite it now crossing state lines. Am I chasing my own tail here? How can I get someone to pay attention to the fact that all the police need to do is file some RIAA-style paperwork to find the name associated with this IP address and knock on the right door to nab a criminal and recover my property? How can I get my laptop back — and more importantly — stop this criminal in his tracks?”
link: Slashdot Ask Slashdot Story | Retrieving a Stolen Laptop By IP Address Alone?
“Toward the end of our conversation in Birmingham, Donohue began to talk about the challenges of leading an organization. “The CEO in a major company now, if he lasts five years, he’s a hero,” Donohue said. It was clear that he was in part talking about himself. But Donohue has already lasted twelve years as Chamber president, and at the beginning of his tenure the board amended the bylaws to extend the mandatory retirement age past sixty-five. In 2009, he traveled 166 days of the year, coaxing open checkbooks, visiting twenty-seven states, and giving seventy-five speeches. All of this bodes well for his staying power. Still, “I am not powerful,” he said at one point. “The institution is powerful. If I walked out of the Chamber tomorrow, wouldn’t anybody return my phone calls except for a couple of my friends.” Given the anti-corporate rhetoric among Republicans, and the backlash against him in other quarters, this is a contingency he should consider. But for the moment Donohue is still the undisputed master of getting corporate giants to show him the money. And in a Washington that runs on money, that show must go on.”
link: Show Him the Money – James Verini
“I still think that if something is available for sale legitimately, you should pay for it (books, music, photos, movies, sheet music). A lot of the Bach, Scriabin and Rachmaninoff in Mr. Hawley’s collection is certainly available, and handing it to friends on a flash drive is absolutely depriving the publishers of their revenue. True, the composers are long dead, but editing and publishing sheet music is still worth something. It’s those obscure, out-of-print, not-available-anywhere items in his collection that make a tougher case. How many hours are you obligated to research and dig just to find out if something is available for sale? In this case, the barriers to a legitimate purchase are ridiculously high. Isn’t digital piracy justified in that case? Let me know what you think in the comments.”
link: No Easy Answers in the Copyright Debate – Pogue’s Posts Blog – NYTimes.com
“Composition, contemporary composition, is where reviewing comes to life. Complaining about interpreters, or rooting for them, however legitimate, is just fidgeting. Criticism joins the history of its art only when it joins battle, for or against, with the music of its time.” — Virgil Thomson, 1974
iWish

Dale Dougherty, (editor and publisher of MAKE) makes the point that the Ipad could eventually be a great interactive multimedia consumption device (think educational CD’s from the late 90′s) if only there were the software to create it.
“So, when I think of the iPad, I wonder if a new opportunity will exist for interactive applications, which will find a space somewhere between a computer and the TV. They’ll need to do more than convey information, as most ordinary websites do. They’ll need to be more user-driven than television but they’ll need to integrate all forms of media. iPhone apps certainly look more like simple CD-ROM apps than they do websites.
What’s missing today is HyperCard, or an equivalent tool that can be used to create a new wave of applications for the iPad. And if Apple isn’t thinking about it, you’d expect that Adobe would be, especially since its acquisition of Macromedia brought in-house the other professional tool used by CD-ROM creators, Macromind Director. It’s not that HyperCard or Director is the answer, but I am just pointing out the lack of really good tools available for amateurs and professionals to use to create new kinds of applications for the iPad. HyperCard was not only used by The Voyager Company; it was used by teachers to create coursework; or students to prepare a report; it was used by individuals to develop novelty applications like recipe databases. We had highly produced, professional applications and mostly free shareware apps.
Making it easy to create content and increasing the number of people who can create applications for the iPad could be very important to its long-term success. The web has made producers of us all. If the iPad is just another consumer platform for consuming and not creating content, then it will just be another way to watch TV or listen to music or download information. Convenient, yes, but just another device. To be something different, the iPad must not be just a delivery platform but a creative one, offering professionals and amateurs an opportunity to create a unique experience with interactive media“

300th anniversary of copyright

To commemorate the 300th anniversary of the Statute of Anne, (the first modern copyright law) the British Council asked a lot of people with strong ideas about copyright, from the CEO of Random House to the founder of Wikipedia, to remark on what copyright is for and how it might be improved.
her are some of the great quotes
“If there’s one lie more corrosive to creativity above all others, it is the lie of romantic individual originality. Today, ‘copyright curriculum’ warns schoolchildren not to be ‘copycats’ – to come up with their own original notions.
We are that which copies. Three or four billion years ago, by some process that we don’t understand, molecules began to copy themselves. We are the distant descendants of those early copyists – copying is in our genes. We have a word for things that don’t copy: ‘dead’.
Walk the streets of Florence and you’ll find a ‘David’ on every corner: because for half a millennium, Florentine sculptors have learned their trade by copying (but try to take a picture of ‘David’ on his plinth and you’ll be tossed out by a security guard who wants to end this great tradition in order to encourage you to buy a penny postcard)
If copyright law is to truly nurture art and creativity, rather than merely lining the pockets of the last generation of copyists who now declare themselves to be pure of all replication and wholly original from the first word to the last, it ‘must’ recognize and celebrate the wonderful thing that is copying.”
via cory doctorow (is a science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger)
“After all, nothing is created in isolation, and nothing comes of nothing. The products of the creative imagination do not stand alone, unique products of one mind or one company. Perhaps the fact of creation should not, in itself, allow the effective expropriation of the intellectual common ground as a reward for adding something new to the rich and complex stew of culture.
If those advising Queen Anne had seen how copyright has stymied creative expression, placed barriers around so much modern culture and distorted our use of the Internet, the most powerful machine for sharing ever devised, then they might have thought differently.
So let us then recast copyright as a grant of stewardship over an element of our common inheritance, offered to a person or institution‚ for a limited period, but see it not as a privilege but a burden, one that charges its holders with an onerous responsibility which they can best discharge by ensuring the widest possible dissemination, full access by all means possible, and the maximum feasible use and reuse‚ of any copyright material they hold.
In this world anyone granted a ‘copyright’ is obliged to use it to fertilise the fields of creative endeavour, knowing that history – and not the market – will be their judge.”
via bill thompson (technology critic and blogs at andfinally.com)
links for 2010-04-09

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“what will happen now? If past is prologue, the answer is “nothing.” The dead miners families will get a little insurance money, a few months will go by and only the people of Montcoal will remember the tragedy. Until, the inevitable next one. The coal industry owns West Virginia, every graceful mountaintop, every steep hollar, every politician of both parties in the state house and in Washington. The next time a governor wants something like, say, an annual football game between the two state universities, Marshall and West Virginia, he will go to his friends in the coal industry who will cough up some money for the “Friends of Coal Bowl.” I use that as an example because Joe Manchin already did that. The only West Virginia governor who actually tried to stand up to the coal industry–a guy named William C. Marland–fell off the face of the earth after his term in office and was rediscovered 30 years later driving a cab in Chicago.”
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“Going into the study, the researchers thought the optimal strategy would be some kind of mixture of copying and innovating, Laland says, both of which have drawbacks. An unknown berry might turn out to be a great food source for the person who first discovers it, or the berry might be poisonous. On the other hand, copying others might be safer, but not if the information is outdated or wrong. To the researchers’ surprise, the best method relied almost exclusively on copying.”
Bookmarks for the week: June 22nd through June 26th [del.icio.us];
Bookmarks from June 22nd through June 26th:[del.icio.us]
- The history behind Ricci v. DeStafano, the Supreme Court case that will decide who gets the good jobs in cities across America. (1) – By Nicole Allan and Emily Bazelon – Slate Magazine – “The story behind Ricci is just one example of an entrenched conflict over municipal hiring that extends back in time and across the country. For at least two generations, competition for jobs in many cities has been framed as a battle between one ethnic or racial group and another over who is an insider and who is an outsider”
- The Soulvine: Kobe and Antonio on the bus | LA Wave Newspaper | The Soulvine – the mayor is so unpopular kobe doesn’t even want to be on the victory bus with him.
- L.A’s mayor getting schooled – Los Angeles Times -
Teachers at eight of the 10 L.A. Unified schools run by Villaraigosa’s team give him a resounding thumbs down.
- Charter’s upheaval provides some progress for Locke High – Los Angeles Times “A year ago, Green Dot Public Schools, which runs 12 charters serving the city’s urban poor, took over the school. The effort to transform Locke has been a nationally watched test of whether such a large, deeply impoverished urban high school could be transformed by a charter operator. Charter schools are publicly-funded but operate beyond the direct control of school districts, exempt from many regulations and union contracts.”
- In C and Me: listen – Steve Hicken talks about In C and its impact on academia and tonal music.
- Consumerist – How To Launch An Executive Email Carpet Bomb – Customer Service -Here’s a classic tactic for rattling the corporate monkey tree to make sure your complaint gets shoved under the nose of someone with decision-making powers. Let’s call it the “EECB,” or Executive Email Carpet Bomb…
- Wooster Collective: Shit We’re Diggin’: Improv Everywhere’s MP3 Experiment 6 -an interesting flashmob in nyc
- Driving on L.A.’s Westside: 10 miles in 60 minutes – Los Angeles Times what it’s like to drive on the westside of LA (i live on the eastside and commute to CSUF by train)
- Daring Fireball: Regarding the WSJ’s Report That Steve Jobs Had a Liver Transplant john gruber has an interesting theory (really 3) about who and why the Wall Street Journal would print an unsourced article about steve job’s liver transplant.
- Buying A Book For The Kindle Is Digital Russian Roulette – Podcasting News – “According to Gear Diary’s Dan Cohen, DRM is the Kindle’s Achilles heal. Cohen upgraded his iPod touch and bought a new iPhone 3GS recently, and found that he couldn’t download much of his substantial Kindle library to the supported devices”
- RIP: A Remix Manifesto -In RiP: A remix manifesto, Web activist and filmmaker Brett Gaylor explores issues of copyright in the information age, mashing up the media landscape of the 20th century and shattering the wall between users and producers.
![Bookmarks for December 27th through December 31st [del.icio.us]](http://www.paulbailey.us/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/mg65Z1-150x150.jpg)

