Accept no substitutes

Category: Amusements (Page 10 of 31)

Things that are amusing

Mixed Signals – News and Dues

Pew Center for the Study of Internet and American Life reports that “For many home broadband users, the internet is a primary news source.” :

By the end of 2005, 50 million Americans got news online on a typical day, a sizable increase since 2002. Much of that growth has been fueled by the rise in home broadband connections over the last four years. For a group of “high-powered” online users — early adopters of home broadband who are the heaviest internet users — the internet is their primary news source on the average day.

At the same time, the US is threatening to create a tiered Internet with positive support from FCC Chief Kevin Martin (reports /. and Networking Pipeline).

People are learning from the internet instead of watching Fox! This must be stopped (or at least further regulated and tamed)!

BBC-TV and Wall Street Journal on Blooker and Jones

Blooker madness continues. After a morning at the doctor, I met up with the two person BBC-TV crew from DC and Stephen Fraser of lulu. We spent about 2 hours shooting in Carroll Hall’s Halls of Fame room. I got to be sitting in Charles Kuralt’s chair during at least part of it. Rozalia Hristova interviewed me about Blooks and the Blooker. Stephen ran out and got a copy of the Blooker overall winner (I can’t tell you what that is yet) as the show, News at 10, will run on or after the April 3rd Blooker winner announcement.
Afterwards, we all went to Bon’s Country Cookin’ where we introduced the BBCers to fried okra, fried green tomatoes, meatloaf, and hushpuppies.
During lunch, I had to walk off and take a call from Ian Mount of the Wall Street Journal. Also about the Blooker. Ian is down in Buenos Aires where they have no Wall Street. Ian’s article will run this upcoming Saturday.
I am trying not to get a standard Blooker rap, but it’s becoming unavoidable.

Flavor of the Future; History of ibiblio

Took a phone interview and an email interview at the same time on two different topics trying to prove I could multiprocess and move in both directions at once today.

The phone call was with Dawn Vaughan of the Herald Sun (in Durham). Dawn asked the unanswerable:

Do you think there will be significant changes in home technology — beyond advances in computer hard/software? Will we use the Internet more/differently? Will we use desktop computers, or everything handheld? Any new “intelligent” home appliances? Will we watch/listen/learn on one piece of equipment? What will it look like?

I answered that the future of home entertainment is would be life-sized fully interactive revival of Flavor of Love reruns controlled by grills and a large clock worn around the home participant’s neck.

Well, after that I tried to get serious to talk about control by voice, gesture and presence, about houses and devices learning your habits and anticipating your needs based on past behaviors, about presense being sensed by various bioprofiles, facescans, heat images, jewelry and implants, about augmentation of the body, about wires vanishing, about widespread fuelcell use. And about a fetishism of the outdoors. Much as trains are now romanticised, the outdoors will be seen as something that we need to visit to make up for the lack of contact with the unpredictable world of nature. Like trains, we’ll talk about nature and our lovely relationship to it more that we actually experience it.

At the same time, I was answering email from Glyn Moody of Linux Weekly News about Open Content (LWN is not Open Content as near as I can tell, they want you to subscribe but Glyn’s open access article is accessible openly). Glyn had done a piece on Open Access earlier and this would be a follow up.

Glyn asked about Sunsite/Metalab/ibiblio’s hosting of Linux, the Linux Documentation Project, Creative Commons, Project Gutenberg and about contributor-run digital libraries. I answered and will publish what I wrote after Glyn has his cut at making sense of it all. I’m sure he’ll do a great job based on what I read in his Open Access article.

SNMNMNM outside at Weaver St

The music was good enough that I missed the beginning of the Carolina/George Mason game. The folks promoting Signal Fest had SNMNMNM playing on the lawn at Weaver St (Carrboro’s front porch or backyard depending on how you like at it).
I love the instrumentation of this band. They are playing power pop and ska with a tuba in the place of the bass guitar for instance. Other brass evident were a trumpet and a trombone. And channeling They Might Be Giants with some radical accordion playing.

Uzi and TJ were there getting the Signal Fest vibe on. Look for more as the Fest approaches — April 7 and 8.

flying leprecun?

Before going out for Irish food last night, I made a joke to my son that we were going for Irish Sushi. That would be corned beef tied to a tatertot with a piece of kelp. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that I just searched for “irish sushi” and found almost exactly that (see link above).

As it turns out, I wasn’t entirely wrong. We went to the Flying Burrito where I had the Mexican variant, the Flying Leprecun. What is a Flying Leprecun? Corned beef and cabbage in a flour tortilla with salsa on top served with tatertots.

Is there no end to cross-cultural fusions in food?

Bound by Law? is out

Bound by Law
James Boyle of Duke Law’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain writes to remind us that Duke won the ACC Championship (after having lost their last regular season game to UNC) and that the Center’s Bound by Law comix book is now available:

Duke Law School’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain has just released “BOUND BY LAW?” – a comic book on copyright and creativity — specifically, documentary film. It is being published today
–March 15 under a Creative Commons License. The comic, by Keith Aoki, James Boyle and Jennifer Jenkins explores the benefits of copyright in a digital age, but also the threats to cultural history
posed by a permissions culture, and the erosion of fair useand the public domain. You can read or download the whole thing for free or buy hard copies (*on soft paper) from Amazon.

Will a spiky-haired, camera-toting super-heroine… restore decency and common sense to the world of creative endeavor? -Paul Bonner, The Herald-Sun

Bound By Law lays out a sparkling, witty, moving and informative story about how the eroded public domain has made documentary filmmaking into a minefield.
-Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing.net

Beverly McIver to NC Museum of Art

Jane Tyndall of Tyndall Galleries writes that the North Carolina Museum of Art has recently acquired the triptych Reminiscing by Beverly McIver (I wrote a little about McIver’s show at Jane’s gallery last year).

Quoting Jane who quotes Preview: The Magazine of the North Carolina Museum of Art, March/April 2006:

“The Museum has recently acquired several new works of art that expand the scope and diversity of the 20th century and contemporary collections and also reflect the global, cross-cultural dialogue taking place in the art
world today. The new pieces include painting, photography and sculpture by nationally and internationally known artists and artists with North Carolina connections. …

“Beverly McIver grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina, and now lives in Arizona. Since the early 1990s, she has examined racial stereotypes in an ongoing series of expressionist self-portraits. The paintings deal with her African American identity and how she perceives her role in a society that historically has marginalized minorities and women. Often McIver paints herself in blackface – a reference to her childhood desire to become a professional clown, and also a way to confront and reclaim stereotypes head-on by changing the conventional clown white-face to black.

“Reminiscing, a self-portrait in triplicate, reveals its subject from three different vantage points – she stares off into the distance, looks down with despondence and then turns her head to the side, never meeting the viewer’s
gaze. Failing to tuck her hair up under her wig and exposing her emotional disarray, McIver paints a woman disheveled in appearance and in mood. This portrayal shows McIver striving to come to terms with her mother’s recent death. Without emphasizing it, the artist has again painted herself in
blackface, for she is rarely out of character, even at times of personal mourning.”

Nature and Non-Nature

This morning a herd of 8 deer outside my window. Then later one then two hawks over Carrboro at the Town Hall. Both reddish with distinctly banded fan-tails. I thought Red Tail at first, but then there was a shreek and a larger and for sure Red Tail appeared on the scene. One of the smaller hawks flew over the Red Tail and drove him off. What were those hawks? Cooper’s? A little larger than that, but not as large as a Red Tail. I’m betting on the Red Shouldered Hawk.

Finished the NY Times Crossword and the Acrostic (jazz themed so easier for me). Chores and reading two of the Blooker Prize finalist (the short list will be announced tomorrow so I can’t say which these are yet).

Open Earth Archive from BBC (if you are in the UK)

Anaconda swimmingBBC’s Natural History Unit announces The Open Earth Archive in which films from BBC nature shows are release under the Creative Archives License.

Viewers are encouraged to be remixers and recreators, to use the clips to make new and imaginative works and to enter the “Wild Card” competition (rules and instructions here).

But there is a giant downside to this plan. I tried to view a clip of an anaconda swimming and I got this message:

The BBC has decided to limit access to Creative Archive Licence Campaign content to UK residents to ensure best value for the UK licence fee. Users outside of the UK are not able to access clips and programmes that form part of this campaign. Regrettably we are therefore unable to offer you content and would like to apologise for any disappointment.

Things done and things left undone

What a busy day! Much more that I could do needed to be done. First off to church where Tucker as acolyte and a very literary and seasonally appropriate sermon included not only a reference to most of the mountain peaks of importance in Scripture but also a description of being driven up one by a one armed taxi driver and a reading of Hopkins’ “Windhover.”
Then Tucker to Odyssey of the Mind and Sally and I to the David Galinsky Memorial Service. Friends completely filled the School of Social Work auditorium for the service which included music from the Triangle Tuba Quartet and remembrances by David’s former students and collegues.
We missed the Steven Silverleaf art show opening at Tyndall Galleries.
Later, after picking up Tucker, we spent some time with the Galinsky family.
Then I went by the home of some friends who are members of a local Samba School who are revving up for Carnaval in the Brazillian style. I managed to catch a little of the jazz on WCOM as I drove and got to hear of little of Ed Paolantonio‘s in-studio interview with Melva Okun.
In my spare time, I finished the Sunday NY Times Crossword (only one cup of coffee needed this Sunday) and finished reading “Everything is Illuminated”

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