BlackOut — SOPA’s Choice
Filed Under Bullshit, Orwellian, Technology | 1 Comment
(Illustration found here).
Today is a kind of watershed moment when the Internets respond to attempts to censor shit by banging down the back door, but a load of ‘Net peoples have chosen instead to go black.
Daily Kos has an action line to protest the twin online-control orbs SOPA ‘Stop Online Piracy Act,’ (US House) and PIPA ‘Protect Intellectual Property Act” (US Senate), which reportedly are designed to shut down access to overseas websites that traffic in stolen content or counterfeit goods, but like a lot of other surveillance-state-of-affairs, there’s more than just bullshit flying.
Copyright law can be a step away from censorship: “Like many other tech companies, we believe that there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue websites without asking U.S. companies to censor the Internet,” a Google spokeswoman told Reuters on Monday.
And today (Wednesday) Google has a black band over its name on its search site, and Wikipedia leads to a Gothic-looking spot which proclaims “Imagine A World Without Free Knowledge,” in protest of the upcoming Congressional bills.
Along with Wiki, Reddit and Boing Boing, among others were also going black for awhile to protest.
Even HuffPost had a huge, black box at the top of his home page (where a photo/headline usually appears) early Wednesday, and supplies a factoid page here.
All authority hates freedom — one wonders how the popular uprisings in the Middle East, even the Occupy movement here in the US would fare under these laws, and how would freedom really be effected because as it is now, the real freedom is in the ability to get the truth out there.
Even in the most totalitarian regimes on earth, a little iPhone camera can change the outlook of the whole, entire world — in a real sense, currently there can’t be a total news black out and we need to keep it that way.
An understanding via the LA Times:
Sascha Meinrath, director of the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Initiative, said the bills set “a horrendous precedent globally” and that much of the content users put online — such as open publishing, crowd-sourced information gathering or comments sections — could all become “incredibly dangerous” if the bills passed.
“We would end up in a situation where we’re trying to do needlepoint with harpoons,” he said.
“You can’t target only pirated information, content or media without getting tons of collateral damage that removes entirely legal content.”
As a screenwriter, East Hollywood resident Steven Darancette, 40, uses Wikipedia often for background information. But he isn’t too concerned about the website going dark Wednesday, saying he supports the protest.
“If I need to get research, I’ll just Google,” he said.
“There are also these things called books.”
The way-big problem, though, is once that door is opened, then locked back again by SOPA/PIPA there’s no going back, the freedom of pure communication will be lost in an Orwellian influenced society, and that ain’t good at all.
Captivating Conundrum
Filed Under Cloud gazing, Everything | Leave a Comment
Everyday appears a mystery, and the mystery more wonderful.
‘Light at dawn, shone
through clouds, thick with weather.
Even in the gray a beauty of quiet, potent perplexity
Awaiting this day.A most-astonishing sight.’
Poetry has always explained a lot of shit we just don’t understand, a state in which reality can’t seem to interpret, can’t conjure up actual words to define the meaning.
Hence the popular, though, nonsensical phrase, ‘poetic license,’ in which apparently one can indulge without guilt the stretching of truth — from the online freedictionary: n. The liberty taken by an artist or a writer in deviating from conventional form or fact to achieve a desired effect.
However, in the real world, one doesn’t have to be any kind of artistic type — politicians, for instance, use poetic license much-abundantly to whitewash something or decipher harmful bullshit, form or fact.
I’ve been writing poetry for decades, since my early teens — I was ‘class poet‘ for my high school graduating class in 1967.
After all this time, I can’t recall the whole title of that particular poem written for the occasion, just ‘Something and Green Lemonade,’ which doesn’t make a shitload of sense.
I do remember the senior breakfast, though, where the poem was read aloud.
A girl from the Drama Club performed the piece — and she indeed had utterly performed — and the effect had been devastating, and not to use poetic license, the dramatic reading brought down the house.
After she’d spoken the last word, I remember a bit of deep silence (and thinking at the time — oh, no), then a momentous outburst of applause — and a lot of crying.
Cheerleaders — cheerleaders! — came up to me with tears in their eyes and gave me kisses.
An unreal dream since I was an original member of the ‘geeks and nerds’ crowd.
A while after that I though my shit didn’t stink, but that sweet euphoria didn’t last long as life carries no poetic license, and here we be in the nowadays.
Seemingly in time, a simple snap of the fingers.
Flogging the News Biz
Filed Under Media | Leave a Comment
Not only do politicians spew forth much bullshit, the organization that’s supposed to separate shit from bull is itself full of crap.
US peoples don’t trust journalism:
Only one-quarter of those surveyed say news orgs get the facts right, a new low since 1985 when the question was first asked.
Two-thirds (66 percent) say stories are often inaccurate, a new high.
And nearly three-quarters of Americans believe that journalists try to cover up their mistakes, rather than admit them.
(Illustration found here).
Also in the Pew Research survey: …and 80 percent say news organizations are often influenced by powerful people and organizations.
And local news are trusted more than those national organizations — 69 percent vs 59 percent.
No wonder the US (and the world) is going to shit in a wire basket — much better information, and less biased information can be gathered from the foreign press, at least from what I’ve gathered.
In an example from The Daily Howler on the execution of Troy Davis last week — no real details on evidence were presented by anybody, including the fabled Gray Lady:
The headline on Wednesday’s editorial called the impending execution “a grievous wrong.”
Among other things, you read this:NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL (9/21/11): Seven of nine witnesses against Mr. Davis recanted after trial.
Six said the police threatened them if they did not identify Mr. Davis.
The man who first told the police that Mr. Davis was the shooter later confessed to the crime.
There are other reasons to doubt Mr. Davis’s guilt: There was no physical evidence linking him to the crime introduced at trial, and new ballistics evidence broke the link between him and a previous shooting that provided the motive for his conviction.Say what? The man who first told the police that Mr. Davis was the shooter later confessed to the crime? And Davis was executed anyway?
What happened to the guy who confessed? The editors didn’t say.
Some mess there.
A mega-major problem is media attention span.
Firedoglake on Sunday looked at the nearly-unreported dust-up on Wall Street last week via an interview with Paul Weiskel, a photographer who has been taking photos of the occupation.
Weiskel talks reality:
They had to continually bring in more people and towards the end I honestly felt like it was very close to a police state.
I’ve been very hesitant to say the phrase “police brutality” because we don’t live in Syria.
We don’t deal with that type of police repression but today the New York Police Department did violently crack down on peaceful protesters, who definitely have legitimate claims, and I was flat out disgusted.
And the media interest tends to be non-so-called professionals:
I think with the increase in technology the ability to exchange this news, what’s going on, is pretty much equal if you look at the quality of video coming out, if you look at the quality of pictures coming out—if I could say that.
The main difference is the audience that you have.
There were a lot of tweets saying that right now CNN is running a segment on have dating rules changed in the best decade while people are getting pepper sprayed and beaten by cops on street corners in New York. So, it is a very orchestrated blackout by the media but once we get the audience they’re going to see the images and they’re going to be very high quality and very thought-provoking images.
And black outs?
One must remember that if the national media don’t want you to know something, you won’t know it.
Case in big point: In 2008 the New York Times ran a massive expose on those TV “military analysts” who gave most-wonderful commentary in the opening days of the Iraqi war and how they were in fact on the payroll of the Pentagon in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance.
The NYT even won a Pulitzer Prize for the story, but a vast, huge chunk of US peoples haven’t a clue — the TV news outlets, CNN, ABC, NBC, Fox, etc., all blacked out the story — and the only news report on the expose was a segment on PBS.
In the mid 1970s when I started at the Montgomery Advertiser in Montgomery, Alabama, right out of J-school into the entry-level slot of police reporter, journalism was in its golden age buzz.
On the strength of Watergate, us news room types were a proud bunch as we thought what were doing was not only the neatest job in the whole-wide world, but we were there for the public’s right to know and understand.
That was way-long ago and really far, far away.
Shakespeare the Stoner
Filed Under Cloud gazing, Literary, Musings | Leave a Comment
Standing on the corner
Suitcase in my hand
Jack is in his corset and jane is in her vest
And me I’m in a rock and roll band
Riding in a stutz bearcat jim
Those were different times
And the poets studied rules of verse
And all the ladies rolled there eyes
Sweet jane
Sweet jane
Sweet jane
– Mott The Hoople, ‘Sweet Jane‘ (Words and music by Lou Reed)
Creativity is just one delicious side effect of doing a bowl.
Somehow smoke opens new imaginative horizons where the creative factor weighs heavy in the air, alighting like a room full of bong smoke — oh the flow without interruption.
Marijuana lets loose those dogs of words: Last speculative point: marijuana also enhances brain activity (at least as measured indirectly by cerebral blood flow) in the right hemisphere. The drug, in other words, doesn’t just suppress our focus or obliterate our ability to pay attention. Instead, it seems to change the very nature of what we pay attention to, flattening out our hierarchy of associations.
(Illustration found here).
It’s in that high state where the flattening out come in real handy and the creative juices kick in.
Ironic, or maybe it’s just a jagged little pill for innovative thought, but Alanis Morissette agrees:
“As an artist, there’s a sweet jump-starting quality to [marijuana] for me.
I’ve often felt telepathic and receptive to inexplicable messages my whole life.
I can stave those off when I’m not high.
When I’m high — well, they come in and there’s less of a veil, so to speak.
So if ever I need some clarity … or a quantum leap in terms of writing something, it’s a quick way for me to get to it.”
Cop a buzz and you’re head over feet.
And now it appears one of the best-known and most-creative peoples in all of history, Bill Shakespeare, might have been a stoner, and a clue is Sonnet 76:
Why is my verse so barren of new pride,
So far from variation or quick change?
Why with the time do I not glance aside
To new-found methods and to compounds strange?
Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth and where they did proceed?
O, know, sweet love, I always write of you,
And you and love are still my argument;
So all my best is dressing old words new,
Spending again what is already spent:
For as the sun is daily new and old,
So is my love still telling what is told.
Shakespeare might have been more inventive than first realized, and research peoples want to find out for good.
In 2001, scientists at the The South African Police Services Forensic Science Laboratory in Pretoria analyzed the stems and bowls of 24 clay pipes — including a number found in the garden of Shakespeare’s home in England — and found traces of tobacco, suggestive evidence of cannabis, and mysteriously, two of the pipes showed signs of what looks like cocaine.
National Geographic explained: The analysis was made after a South African scientist had a hunch that reference to the “noted weed” in one of Shakespeares sonnets may have been the bard’s way of extolling the effects of cannabis. “There were very low concentrations of cannabis, but the signature was there,” said Inspector Tommy van der Merwe, of the Forensic Science Laboratory.
And with the Bard: Of the pipes that were found in the garden of Shakespeare’s home at New Place, several tested positive for cannabis. “We can’t prove that Shakespeare smoked these pipes, but we do now at least know what his contemporaries were smoking,” Thackeray says.
Now they want to dig up Bill’s bones.
From Fox News (h/t Raw Story):
Paleontologists are looking to examine the remains of William Shakespeare, hoping to unlock the mysteries of the life and death of the world’s most famous playwright — and to prove that the poet once puffed.
The bard is buried under a local church in Stratford-upon-Avon. And a team of scientists, led by Francis Thackeray — an anthropologist and director of the Institute for Human Evolution at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa — have submitted a formal application to the Church of England for permission to probe the site where he sleeps, perchance where he dreams.
…
“We have incredible techniques,” Thackeray told FoxNews.com, referring to the “nondestructive analysis” the team has planned. “We don’t intend to move the remains at all.” Instead the team will perform the forensic analysis using state-of-the-art technology to scan the bones and create a groundbreaking reconstruction.
…
Thackeray claimed the devices were used to smoke cannabis, a plant actively cultivated in Britain at the time. The allegation has provoked disbelief and anger among some fans of the bard.
Prof. Stanley Wells, honorary president of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, told the Daily Mail, “I would be happy if they did open it up because it could put an end to a lot of fruitless speculation.”
“If we find grooves between the canine and the incisor, that will tell us if he was chewing on a pipe as well as smoking,” Thackeray told FoxNews.com, citing similar evidence found in Virginia.
However, there’s the curse Bill put on his grave:
Others may have issues with digging up the body, which goes directly against the late playwright’s dying wishes.
Shakespeare, famously fearful of the happenings of his own remains after his death, had a curse engraved on his tomb: “Good frend for Jesus sake forebeare,/ To digg the dust encloased heare;/ Bleste be the man that spares thes stones,/ And curst be he that moves my bones.”
Philip Schwyzer, a senior lecturer at Exeter University, told Reuters that “Shakespeare had an unusual obsession with burial and a fear of exhumation.
The stern inscription on the slab has been at least partially responsible for the fact that there have been no successful projects to open the grave.”
Dude, it’s just bones — chill a second, then re-fill the pipe.
Blog Block
Filed Under Musings | Leave a Comment
(Illustration found here).
Rare for me to not find a specific subject to write about in the early morning — in fact, it’s usually the exact opposite as there’s so much weird shit happening all over the world that’s it’s kind of easy to find a source for a blog.
This morning, however, despite surfing the news sites, reading tons of very, very, very important stuff, I just couldn’t come up with a viable idea, or a hook to hang some words on and create a piece of literary majic wherein a whole shitload of different world’s peoples would simply adore.
I did shift through the ether for these possibilities:
– The UK resumes its Iraqi war inquiry, the so-called Chilcot panel with more lies from Tony Blair.
– Suicide rates for US National Guard and Reserves units has been on the rise.
– Despite all the bad-mouthing of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, there’s there’s really nothing heavy duty found within “Cablegate.’
– “Baby Doc” returns to Haiti and is promptly arrested for corruption after 25 years.
– Goldman Sach is expected to to achieve more windfall profits (assholes).
– Joe Liberman calls it quits (a decade too late).
– Clint Eastwood is 80, but apparently will be making movies forever.
Half-a-dozen plus one of about 10 news subjects I pursued, but nothing that slapped me in the face or could really wrap my festered brain around — so a blog block developed.
Tomorrow a brain laxative to ease the blockage.
Happy Hump Day!