A while back I discovered some copies of Interview Magazine from 1995 when I had a subscription. Who knew being a packrat could actually come in handy? It’s actually neat to see how prescient Interview can be. There were interviews with people like Jude Law, Viggo Mortensen, and Russell Crow before they were super well-known.
Anyway, I drew from an Armani sunglasses ad. Check it out:
More evidence that you can’t really call the so-called Second Gulf War a war. It’s more of a US-led coup d’etat with the accompanying routine wartime propaganda. Iraq represents little more than the very bold, well-planned, and carefully executed takeover of an oil-rich third world country by a first world power to support its own perceived strategic interests.
My music collection is getting stale. I need some musical recommendations. Turn me on to something new. I’ll listen to anything. Soul, world music, jazz, new stuff, whatever. I don’t even know what to call other stuff. I have a preference for vocal stuff since I like to listen to music to hear other people and to sing. Here are some recommendations of my own, to start off:
The Dells, Didn’t I Blow Your Mind, Otis Redding, These Arms of Mine, Sting, Mad About You, Ron Sexsmith, These Days, Depeche Mode, Everything Counts
Obviously, I need some new blood. Please help!
CNN Money: How’s your cell service rate?: See how the different networks stack up for quality of service. I still get shitty reception at my house.
I watched The Thief of Baghdad this morning. It’so romantic in a cheesy, special way. Watch the best clip here. To watch it you might need the Divx MPEG4 decompressor.
After keeping the figure rather quiet for two years, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) says the industry released around 27,000 titles in 2001, down from a peak of 38,900 in 1999. Since year-on-year unit sales have dropped a mere 10.3 per cent, it’s clear that demand has held up extremely well: despite higher prices, consumers retain the CD buying habit.
The RIAA has decided to drop all pretense and has cast their lot in with the freedom-loving souls in the Republican party. Not to imply that the Democrats are any more freedom-loving or somehow above outright bribery, they are not that. It’s just that the RIAA, in their desperation to protect their failing business model, have finally realized that when you need real muscle and real action without concern for constitutionality you pay off Republicans. As Malcolm X once said, the Democrats are foxes and the Republicans are wolves. These media conglomerates are getting very antsy about people sharing music and video outside their control. The motion picture industry is watching the same thing happen to them that happened to the music industry a few years ago. Just tonight on the news program of the local Fox affiliate, I saw some anti-piracy ads featuring real people employed by the movie industry. The message was essentially “stop downloading OUR movies because you’ll make us have to lay off all these nice regular people like you”. People who download movies and music are doing themselves a favor, in some respect. After all, the point is that these people are employed with some small portion of the revenues from when regular people like me get screwed for something with an insane profit margin like music and movies. It’s just not my job to care about what happens to some guy linked to the movie industry or to try to prop up some monopolistic business because they can’t get with the times. Look at it this way, piracy is an incentive for companies to give people what they want, namely reasonably priced media or movies they can download over the internet. People are plain tired of getting caught over the barrel and are enjoying a period of consumer revolt.
The RIAA and MPAA will continue to throw money after crooked politicians and will keep trying to sue individuals in order to scare everyone else into submission, but if we all continue to burn and share and fight we can eventually defeat them. And when that happens, they will surrender and will compromise…for a time.
Saw this linked over on Metafilter, a good interview with historian Emmanuel Todd:
Assuming you are right: how did this budding empire slide so quickly into decline?
A rift has been developing, slowly at first and then more quickly, between the US and their various geo-political areas of interest. During the early 1970’s a deficit in the balance of trade began to open. The US assumed the role of consumer and the rest of the world took on the role of producer, in this increasingly unbalanced global process. The balance of trade went from a deficit of $100 billion in 1990 to $500 billion annually at present. This deficit has been financed through capital flowing into the US. Eventually the same effect experienced by the Spanish in 16th and 17th centuries will come to bear. As gold from the New World flooded in, the Spanish succumbed to decreasing productivity. They consumed and dissipated, lived high and beyond their means and fell into economic and technological arrears.
But America is still the leading example of economic and technological competence.
When I speak of the economy, then I mean the industrial core and the associated technological cutting edge, not the anemic New Economy. It is in the core industrial sphere that the US is falling dramatically behind. European investors lost billions in the US during the nineties, but the US economy lost an entire decade. As recently as 1990 the US was still exporting $35 billion more in advanced technology than it was importing. Now the balance of trade is negative even in this field. The US is far behind in mobile communications technology. The Finnish Nokia is four times the size of Motorola. More than half the communications satellites are being launched with European Ariane rockets. Airbus is about to surpass Boeing — the most important transportation medium for personnel traffic in the modern global economy is about to be manufactured primarily in Europe. These are the things that are ultimately important. These are by far more vital and decisive factors than a war against Iraq.
Here’s a photo of some bioenginoodled mice. They glow greenish blue. There are also glowing fish and glowing rabbits, most likely coming soon to a petstore or AllMart near you.
I’m not sure how I should feel about this. On the one hand, I rather like the idea of biological monstrosities like cute glowing fish or cows that squirt chocolate milk, but then on the other hand I don’t want to be trying to rid my rose bushes of the super-intelligent rats or dealing with sharks that can talk. I have a full plate as it is dealing with ordinary creatures, like ants (damn them) and mosquitoes (double damn them).
After all this making of ‘designer pets’, what if people get the big idea to start noodling with human beings? Wouldn’t most parents simply try to have the most attractive, intelligent, and fit genetically engineered children? Wouldn’t that just make it boring to be attractive? Maybe those in the shallow end of the gene pool are necessary so people appreciate intelligence, health, and vigor, so why mess with it? Although, no one wants to be ugly or stupid, so maybe that’s not fair. Maybe people should just not judge other people on whether they’re ugly or stupid, but that’s almost certainly unrealistic.