So… there’s this post on Google’s blog titled “Stardate 0817.06“. Ignoring the fact that a Google programmer is blithely creating a Y3K crisis with the stardate, the central premises are sound. Those premises are 1) that Captain Kirk invented blogging and 2) that a lot of the stuff we do every day is right off Star Trek. I guess … it’s really neat and all … but I was promised a future that included the flying car.
Google is also hosting a booth at the 5th annual Official Star Trek Convention in fabulous Laaaaaas Vegas. It looks like just about everyone from the Star Trek universe other than Ensign Ro Laren (my favorite Star Trek character) will be there. I wonder what it says about you when your favorite character in an escapist, utopian reality is the surly, maladjusted early 21st century patriot?
The whole “welcome to the future, now let’s have some fun” vibe that Google is pitching is compelling. I wish that was better at math and puzzles. I get bored with them almost instantly.
The Internet put the music industry and many of its listeners at odds thanks to the popularity of services like Napster and Grokster. Now the industry is squaring off against a surprising new opponent: musicians.
In the last few months, trade groups representing music publishers have used the threat of copyright lawsuits to shut down guitar tablature sites, where users exchange tips on how to play songs like “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” “Highway to Hell” and thousands of others.
Because if we can stop people from PLAYING the music we can potentially kill every shred of interest in the music itself! Brilliant!! Now how’s the device that instantly electrocutes anyone who actually listens to music coming along?
In case you can’t read the above: Sapporo: Team Usa Coach Mike Krzyzewski sought to “light a fire under these spoiled superstars” by screening a motivational video featuring Ron Artest while simultaneously dunking a helpless Anderson Varejo.
While Carmelo Anthony & Dwayne Wade seemed intent on perfecting their new hand signs, the presentation did have an effect on star LeBron James: “Coach K is serious. Serious as a heart attack. And he should be. This is the world stage. Our national pride and honor is at stake.”
Meanwhile, the whole incident was denounced by the Argentinian media as “Predictable American Imperialism”.
I’d like to give an Explosion sized shout-out to the Cavalier (hopefully this will keep him off my back for a few weeks) and also to direct you to the latest addition to my blogroll, NBA Basketball and Other Unrelatedness by the Hype which is darned funny.
PS: The video from Ron-Ron, NBA Clown Prince of Craziness wasn’t really for Team USA. You wouldn’t want to put Ron in front of players as any kind of example. You of course only put Ron in front of children where he shares wisdom like “someone started trouble and I ended it”. To be fair, he does follow that up with “I would always encourage you to protect yourself but in certain situations, if you can avoid them, avoid them”.
I think that someone from Ren & Stimpy is involved in the animation of Endurance Challenge Mordred’s Isle by Hatchling Shorts but I can’t navigate the flash text on their About page to confirm. UPDATE: They told me they’re not, but that they are fans.
One thing’s for sure, Billy West (who voices some of the cartoon) was involved in Ren & Stimpy … and a ton of other great cartoons. He’s the modern-day Mel Blanc.
Under the category of things I found while looking for other things comes this photo of Mary Langley Bruce, seated with her GriffonBruxellois, “Cupid”. For anyone who might care, the Griffon Bruxellois or Brussels Griffon is really three dogs rolled into one, the Griffon Bruxellois, the Griffon Belge and the Petit Brabançon. We’re also told that a proper Griffon should be muscular, compact and well-boned, and should not seem delicate, racy or overly cobby. Cobby? I refuse to google it. I will just assume it means “not looking all freaky like the dog in the picture above”. (view biggee sized pic of this non-cobby dog)
In case anyone cares, I was actually looking for drawings of the Le Griffon (the Griffin), the ship of famous explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle for this article on Absolute Michigan. The story is interesting as an explorer is wrangling with the state of Michigan over a shipwreck. They want to see it before they make any deals with him and he says “no way am I showing it to you without assurances”.
Click Jorma for a slideshow of photos I took at Dunegrass 2006 accompanied by some music from Steppin’ In It, Cornmeal & Seth Bernard and Daisy May.
Speaking of Seth & May, be sure to think hard about going to the inaugural Water Festival at Mackinaw City on Saturday, August 19, 2006. It features musicans from Earthwork Music and speakers from environmental groups.
My assessment of the whole thing is that it’s a case of the Leiberman organization saying “the internet is of vital importance” until the time came to spend money and task people as if the internet were actually of vital importance.
Stadler: Any complex historical situation has structural, interventionist/strategic and chaotic dimensions. What is new, and what makes analysis so difficult, is that their relative weight, and how they shape each other, is changing.
My hunch is that interventionist power politics are losing weight, whereas processes that are too complex to control are gaining. I don’t mean that power politics ceases to exist or that there are no more state-sponsored wars (well, those would be pretty dumb things to say right now), but that even hard-core military interventions quickly get bogged down in chaotic situations where the occupying army quickly becomes one of many actors scrambling along, rather than successfully imposing its own long-term strategy. Iraq, of course, is the prime case for this argument.
The reason for this change in the composition of complex historical processes is, I presume, that the number of actors has grown massively. Not the least due to the fact that large-scale coordination does no longer require a difficult to manage, expensive apparatus, but can be done on the fly, cheaply through open networks of communication and transport…
Or as Bruce summarizes: Basically, it’s because it’s too easy for people who aren’t in armies to find out what’s going on and intervene. Kinda lends an exciting new 21st-century validity to the ancient doctrines of SNAFU.
In my opinion, the same phenomenon is also affecting other facets of our lives. The internet is a place where relatively resource-poor individuals and groups can nonetheless make major waves. Also see Stadler’s site.
The above image is Her Name is Chaos by Christina Ehlinger aka Marronex and this and other images can be purchased right here.
Wired went out and found Temporary Temples, where (in addition to a decade’s worth of crop circles) there are pictures of white horses, monoliths and other oddiments of the English countryside.
I found the horses especially fascinating. They are chalk figures which are (according to Wikireality) usually created by the cutting away of the top layer of relatively poor soil on suitable hillsides. This exposes the white chalk beneath which contrasts well with the short green hill grass and the image is clearly visible for a considerable distance. Here’s a link to some more info about the Uffington White Horse, wiltshirewhitehorses.org.uk and the Hillfigure Homepage.
The basic premise of the Long Tail is that the previous history of products (and media) has been all about the “short head: the blockbuster book or movie, the Model T, the New York Times - lowest common denominator items. Now, with an increased ability to match smaller and smaller slices the market with items, the long tail becomes a place where businesses from large (Amazon) to small (bloggers) can operate.
