Sewers of Babel

Dearest readers,

2006-01-19T16:42:00.000-05:00

We are happy to announce the launch of sewersofbabel.com. Regular posting will resume immediately. We have some nice new features available on the .com version, including contributor's blogs aggregated onto the main page, categories for each individual blog, and a linkpost for quick-hit links more terse than our normal format. Be sure to update your rss feeds and such. If any of you have websites, profiles, etc. to get the word out - well, every bit helps; and for those already linking to us, update dem hrefs. Thank you for your continued interests.

Sincerely,
The United Bloggers Alliance of Sewers and the Intergalactic Meme-Welders Union

Lessig Presentation on Google Print

2006-01-10T06:42:00.000-05:00

I just noticed on Lessig's blog[1] that he has been figuring out how to make available his presentations to those of us who are unfortunate enough to miss the live performance. This is a Good Thing[TM]. I remember his Free Culture presentation that Leonard Lin worked up from his audio and slides in 2002 and I'm glad to see that the wait is over for more. The Free Culture presentation is a great example of how accessible Lessig makes even sometimes complicated ideas. His style is witty, informative, and compelling. He hates to be called this, but really - he is so entertaining it is hard not to think of him as a Copyright Rockstar.

Anyway, he has decided to make all the rest of his presentations available to a wider audience but is having a bit of trouble getting the process streamlined. The file for this presentation on Google Print is a 85MB torrent, which is quite large for a simple video file, but I have faith he will figure out a better way soon enough. If you get it soon, it should download very fast as the torrent is quite active (I was surprised to see that it just completed, total time about fifteen minutes).

Hm. Just trying it now, I seem to be having a strange difficulty playing the mp4 file. When I tried it in winamp, I could hear the sound but could not see the video. When I tried it in divx player, I could see the video but had error messages on the sound. The file wouldn't play at all in TheCoreMediaPlayer. Check for updates if you are interested, I'll work on it a bit and see what I can figure out. (I mess with my system a lot so you may very well have more luck than me. )

[1] If you are not familiar with Lawrence Lessig, he is a prominent figure in the fight for more reasonable copyright law.

Attn: Windows users.

2006-01-03T03:57:00.000-05:00

There is a recently released vulnerability in Windows that has been called the worst ever. The reason is that it does not require the user to open an executable; malicious code can be installed on the computer simply by viewing an image in a browser or explorer.

Microsoft has not yet released an official patch. There is an unofficial patch available, but I am not going to give an opinion, as I do not have the technical knowhow to analyze the code.

There is a workaround provided by Microsoft that will help protect you until Microsoft releases an official patch. I would suggest that you do this, as it does not limit the functionality to an average user and it clears up most of the worry (apparently if one opens an infected file in the Fax Viewer or Paint, one can still be infected so be careful about that.)

Go to Start Menu
Select "Run"
type "regsvr32 /u shimgvw.dll" (without quotes)
This disables the starting of the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer when links to images are opened.

For additional information:

Summary from TheReg.
Security and technical history of the vulnerability unfolding.
FAQ
Article that suggests this affects all versions (not just XP and 2003, like the Reg suggests).

Update: After reading much, much, much too much on the topic (being responsible for family's computers is sometimes a bit of a headache ;-), I feel confident in recommending the unofficial patch to keep yourself as safe as possible until the official patch comes out. It can be found here, and a lengthy discussion about the topic here (much of which should be taken with a grain of salt, for example, one does not have to unregister the dll at each reboot, that wouldn't make any sense considering that MS suggests rebooting after unregistering!)

Finally, Someone With The Guts To Stand Up To Those Overbearing Gregorians

2005-12-31T01:19:00.000-05:00

Here's a little something to noodle whilst ringing in the New Year:
Dick Henry, a man with an unbelievably Anglican name, is tired of being trampled by the opressive, chaotic nature of the traditional Gregorian calendar. After decades of needless calendar reprinting and date-day calculations, Mr. Henry is finally standing up and saying "NO MORE!" He is leading the charge of calendar reform with the flaming sword of the "Calendar-and-Time" (C&T) system. The proposed system would ensure that all months would conform to the much more efficient 30 or 31 day template and each date would fall on the same day each year. Christmas, the lynchpin of the system, would fall every year on Sunday, Dec 25, people would gather together every Wednesday, July 4th to light firecrackers in celebration of America's Independence, and every year I would have an excuse to get drunk in the middle of the week for my birthday. Now, I know what you are saying, "there must be a downside, nothing could be this easy!" Well, in answer to your assumed skepticism, the only thing we would have to worry about is an occasional mini-month called a Newton that pops up every 5 or 6 years. How can we lose? But wait, there's more! Going arm-in-arm with this new calendar is a new time system as well. The proposition is a universal time, centralized around Greenwich Mean. Our sense of time will be slave to that brutal taskmaster, the Sun, no longer. To put it in perspective, here is an excerpt from an FAQ from a C&T support site:
"Question: So, you are really just asking: do I want a very accurate, but very inconvenient calendar (Gregorian), or do I want a more-than-adequately-accurate, but VERY CONVENIENT calendar (C&T)? Answer: Yes."

Aussies make CD ripping, a common practice, legal!

2005-12-30T01:33:00.000-05:00

It seems so simple: Make copying television shows and CDs (for personal use) legal. I mean, making this act legal does not make sharing the files legal. Nor does it make downloading files improperly (without obtaining a license through purchase or explicit permission) legal. It makes using devices like PVRs and iPods legal. That's it! People still have to buy cable and CDs, they can just do more with the product. I can see why TV producers have a hard time with the concept: their money is made on ads, and simple recordings allow the viewer to skip past these ads. But the sellers of CDs should have no problem with this. It increases the utility of their product, which should promote a subsequent increase in demand for the product.

Yeah yeah, I know all the arguments that if people rip they will share. Well, that isn't the point is it? The point is whether banning ripping has a significant and effective impact on copyright infringement with respect to the loss of utility caused by the ban. Since all it takes is one person to break the law to seed the file-sharing networks, the answer is obvious. This is not an effective means to promoting the legitimate market for copyrighted material. I'm happy to be in a country that recognizes this.

The question remains whether they will levy a tax on devices that have potential for infringement. I'm against this approach also, because I think it distorts the market for consumer electronics. If someone has a convincing argument to the contrary, I'd love to hear it.

The Love that Conquers all Fear

2005-12-18T21:31:00.000-05:00

God is not dead,
Nor does He sleep.
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail -
With peace on Earth
And goodwill to Men.

Transcript of the Sunday Address

Pandora

2005-12-11T23:29:00.000-05:00

Pandora rawks. Check it out. They had this whole music genome project thing, which appears to have resulted in some really fabulous preference-based radio streams. I'd pay for it. That's pretty high praise, from me. Check it out. Now. :)

edit: About the name, they use Pandora in reference to curiosity, and as our current society favors the curious, the legend of the box is no longer brought to mind, instead, we find discovery. Neat, huh?

And just to be more clear: It is a site where you can stream music from a seemingly very well chosen array. What you do is pick an artist or a song and it then takes the elements of that to choose your next song. You can tell Pandora that you like the selection or not or just let it keep playing songs for you. If you tell it that you don't like a song, it stops playing that song and chooses another for you, using the fact that you didn't like that particular song to help make future song decisions for that station. If you tell it you like the song, it will use that information as well, in the end bringing you new music in a fashion tailored to your tastes.

I love it, I've had a dearth of good new music and this is opening my world back up without any headache of wading through gobs of obscure facts. This is just music, just for me.

Ho Ho Hardcore!

2005-12-11T01:10:00.000-05:00

Just in time for the holidays!

Karkis - Secret Satan

"You put your name into a hat, then pull one out maliciously, then sign an oath to do Beelzebub's work serrupticiously."

Internet Dating, An Awkward New Pubescence For the Whole of Society

2005-12-05T01:09:00.000-05:00

If the assembly line can drastically change the structure of manufacture, and the automobile can drastically change the structure of population concentration, why not revamp that dusty old dinosaur "romance" with a little modern engineering? I speak of course about the Internet, that zany new fad that is supposedly making the world a "much smaller place". With the combined computational powers of modern computers and the instant communication possible through high-speed cable connections, certainly the world of partner-finding will never be the same.

In the realm of coupling, mankind is the bastard child of nature, not feral enough to just sniff out an appropriate genetic match, not socially organized enough to handle all of its breeding through a single "queen" specialized just for reproduction, we hover in the middle of the spectrum, between pure individual selection and socialized mating. On the one hand, we still have many of the fun mammalian tools for finding that special someone, for example though our acumen has decreased we can still smell if a mate will be a good genetic match, even if we don't realize that is what we're doing. On the other hand, due to the extreme degree of interdependence that is necessary for the survival of the species, we've also got a nice and complex system of social sub-categorization to ensure that sexual reproduction doesn't interfere with economics and by extension the ability of the species to successfully reproduce.

And now for a brief summation of thousands of years of human mating:
In the early days, while human social groupings were small due to the limitations of necessary resources, human pairing possibilities were limited by the number of available partners and the act was used to cement social ties between families and form the larger groups necessary to sustain life. As technology improved and larger populations became possible, the nature of the beast remained roughly the same, but the style shifted. More people meant more complex social organization, which in most cases meant that well defined guidelines were necessary to make sure that the right people were getting together. If there is one thing that societal structures always attempt to do it is perpetuate themselves. Anyway, the march of progress meant bigger and bigger populations, driving the economic and social value of an individual human life lower and lower. In time, it is no longer necessary to the survival of the larger society that specific people turn off the lights and light up a candle, and deciding who should be marrying whom is important only to the sub-societies whose identities are predicated on some group characteristic, having been decided upon at an earlier time. At this point more than ever before, people start to say, "Hey, maybe I should just get it on with someone who makes me happy" to which their identity group responds "Only if they aren't one of those people and they make enough money." Ta dah, romantic love. This is not to say that no form of this existed before, but that it did not become a prevalent force in the zeitgeist until economic and social factors made it more attainable. Now we skip over the Renaissance, the Age of Imperialism, the Industrial Revolution and a couple of World Wars and we've got populations so swollen and mobile that even if you should happen to get to know the people in your local community they won't be around for long. So, communities based on geography are going out of style, communities based on religious and racial identity are blurring their borders to become more inclusive, and individual people are born and die each day without the larger society taking any notice. To add to the fun, post modern thinking just keeps chipping away at the supports of religious, national, and vocational life validation and the feel-good, self-centered capitalist mindset has set up in their place a Cult of Romance, suggesting in movies and on breakfast cereals that the goal of a life is to find love and shop at the Gap (or Hot Topic if you decide to be an "individual"). So now you are ready to get out there and start flinging woo like nobody's business and you stop and say to yourself, "Huh, where do I start?" You probably have an idea of who you’d like to meet based on their preferences for clothes, entertainment and net income, but where do you find them? All those movies you watched in high school lead you to believe that you'll just bump into them and sparks will fly, but that isn't really "pro-active" enough. Wait a second, on the internet I can search for socks and find what I need in three seconds, if only there were a way to harness that power.

Internet Socializing
We may not have jet-packs or hover-cars but by Odin’s beard with a click of a button we can search through thousands of people and find everyone within driving distance who likes Futurama and drinking whiskey, and if that ain't progress then smack my ass. People based search engines, they're all over the place, like pokemon, and if you want to find Mr./Mrs./Ms. Right/Right-Smith you'd better collect them all. There are two main divisions in the field as I see it, first there are the sites that directly sell you the "search for companionship" at the price of 19.99-29.99 a month, then there are the ones that are free of charge and simply pimp out the ad space. The former includes sites such as Match.com, Soulmatch.com, or Soulmatesworld.match.com. Sites of this order are the vanguard of the corporate exploitation of post-modern ennui, "something is missing in your life, but maybe you can find it if you give us money!" The latter on the other hand is more my style, sites such as MySpace, Friendster, Hi5, and my personal favorite OkCupid. With a loose guise as a forum of personal expression and a means to connect with likeminded people, these sites are slowly but surely changing the mechanics of modern socializing. Right now, our internet voices are cracking as we awkwardly step into this new milieu like a pimpled 14-year-old into a junior high school prom, after all, most of us were raised in a time when classified adds were looked down on and the idea of arranging a meeting with someone you met over the internet was tantamount to inviting rape and murder, but as odd as this idea may be for we children of the 70s and 80s, those out there who are going through their actual adolescence on MySpace will most likely see this forum as a natural and time tested method.

A Break Down of My Favorite Sites:
Friendster - Perhaps the first of its kind, Friendster is dedicated to the documentation and expansion of your collection of friends and associates. Its tone is more in line with camaraderie but the mechanisms and the sidebar advertisements skew towards finding that special someone. My Friendster profile.
MySpace - Perhaps the most popular of its kind, MySpace allows the artist in each of us to come out for a little bit to show other people that we are a unique snowflake because we use different wallpaper. What better way to impress the person of your dreams than with your creative use of fonts. My MySpace profile.
OkCupid - My favorite site for two reasons, all the attitude and fun of TheSpark.com combined with a system designed to match you with other people mathematically based on your answers to incredibly biased user written questions. Also, it has tons of cool quizzes to tell you when you will die and whether or not it will be at the hands of zombies. My OkCupid profile.
Catch27 - The award for most original take on this premise definitely goes to Catch27. Catch27 goes balls-to-the-wall and just flat out says, "People are objects, trade your friends with other people and collect a killer set of people." That honesty and fresh take on the whole situation almost makes up for the fact that practically everyone on the site is a slack-jawed cretin. My Catch27 card can be found by searching for "Boys" in "Oregon" named "Devon". I like this, as well.
Portland Mercury's Lovelab - An offshoot of the classified section of the Portland Mercury, this is a matchfinder predominantly for the hip young demographic in the PDX area. I like this site for its quasi-creative style and the fact that you can make a profile for free but then have to pay to send people messages. Now that is classy. My Lovelab profile.

Stick it deeper.

2005-11-29T04:50:00.000-05:00

Standard needles aren't long enough to break through our fat asses to the muscle. Reminds me of the story I saw about people needing bigger toilets. (NB: do not try to search for that article with the terms big fat toilet. Yuck.)

Phone cheat sheet.

2005-11-29T04:03:00.000-05:00

Just what everyone needs: a cheat sheet for dealing with automated phone systems. From now on, whenever you get an automated system, take notes and write this guy!

Popcasts: Podcast aggregator.

2005-11-29T03:52:00.000-05:00

Popcasts:

Popcasts is an aggregator of the most popular podcasts from many different directories and ranking sites, all on one page.

For those of you who are in to that kind of thing. Filter filter filter.

Perhaps Arthur lost himself and had to flee...

2005-11-28T22:18:00.000-05:00

Rimbaud's inspirational methods

I say you have to be a visionary, make yourself a visionary.
A Poet makes himself a visionary through a long, boundless, and systematized disorganization of all the senses. All forms of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he exhausts within himself all poisons and preserves their quintessence's. Unspeakable torment, where he will need the greatest faith, a superhuman strength, where he becomes among all men the great invalid, the great criminal, the great accursed--and the Supreme Scientist!

If I still long for Europe's waters, it's only for
One cold black puddle where a child crouches
Sadly at its brink and releases a boat,
Fragile as a May butterfly, into the fragrant dusk.

Bathed in your weary waves, I can no longer ride
In the wake of cargo ships of cotton,
Nor cross the pride of flags and flames,
Nor swim beneath the killing stare of prison ships.

From Wyatt Mason's translation of La Bateau Ivre; The Drunken Boat

Attn. Windows Users: Password Safe

2005-11-24T20:12:00.000-05:00

Passwordsafe is a utility originally developed by Bruce Schneier to address the problem that many of us have: How to keep track of all our login information while maintaining personal security. I find that many people have said jokingly that they have one "low-security" password that they use for many sites. What I wonder is: why? Why compromise your personal information when there are many tools out there to help you manage your logins in a safe, secure (encrypted), and most importantly, EASY TO USE fashion.

I recommend this utility. I've never had such an easy time managing my bank accounts, my identification information (passport numbers, SSN, drivers license, my Australian visa info and Australian TFN, these things add up and it is often in dealing with my visa and such online that the information is required and password safe allows me to have it at my fingertips in an easy to copy and paste format.) I've just counted how many entries I have in passwordsafe and decided to stop at a hundred, as I feel that is a significant enough magnitude to make my point.

Best of all, it allows me to organize my information. For example, when managing my domains I have FTP info, SSH info, etc. I can keep not only the password safe, but I organize my information into easily manageable and unforgettable structures.

Okay, I'm done selling you this. Peace.

( NB: This is NOT the passwordsafe that I speak of: passwordsafe.com )

The Wonderous and Magnificent Beauty of Chaos, Expressed Through the Medium of Population Excess

2005-11-22T20:59:00.000-05:00

The subway doors open. A hobo enters, holding a bottle of windex in one hand and a tube of toothpaste in the other. He says: Which is the better time to read Dostyevsky? Winter?

He sprays the windex.

Hobo: Or Spring?

He squeezes toothpaste out of the tube.

Japanese girl: Spring!
Hobo: You are correct.

--F train

Overheard in New York

Microcosmos

2005-11-17T18:10:00.000-05:00

"I sleep beside a massy tower of my shit,"
he thought as he turned to unbind
it; to organize within discrete bounds
or build through the roof the remnants.

Google Print: A web full of questions.

2005-11-13T06:05:00.000-05:00

What does Google Print do?

According to Google

searchable

not

entire work

just a brief snippet

publisher program

library project

Why are people excited? Upset?

anywhere

a lot of value

search inside this book

make up the majority

EFF

the digital equivalent of a library card catalog

Is it Google's place to provide this service?

If Google stands to make a lot of money, should they share?

In response

Along comes a player who says "I have a way to promote those books that the publishers have thrown away, creating an opportunity for them to find readers, and eventually, sales." The publishers complain, because they are worried that someone else is going to make money from their slag heap, or more likely, because they are worried that there's some downside risk to their top sellers, even if there's a lot of benefit to the bottom and mid-list books.

Fair use: Is it?

Conclusion:

Whitman waxes and wanes and waxes away

2005-11-09T21:51:00.000-05:00

OUT of the cradle endlessly rocking,
Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle,
Out of the Ninth-month midnight,
Over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where the child leaving his bed wander'd alone, bareheaded, barefoot,
Down from the shower'd halo,
Up from the mystic play of shadows twining and twisting as if they were alive,
Out from the patches of briers and blackberries,
From the memories of the bird that chanted to me,
From your memories sad brother, from the fitful risings and fallings I heard,
From under that yellow half-moon late-risen and swollen as if with tears,
From those beginning notes of yearning and love there in the mist,
From the thousand responses of my heart never to cease,
From the myriad thence-arous'd words,
From the word stronger and more delicious than any,
From such as now they start the scene revisiting,
As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing,
Borne hither, ere all eludes me, hurriedly,
A man, yet by these tears a little boy again,
Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,
I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,
Taking all hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond them,
A reminiscence sing.
-----------

Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son,
Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding,
No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from
them,
No more modest than immodest.

Unscrew the locks from the doors!
Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!

Whoever degrades another degrades me,
And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.
-----------
It avails not, time nor place - distance avails not,
I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence,
Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,
Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd,
Just as you are refresh'd by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, I was refresh'd,
Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I stood yet was hurried,
Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships and the thick-stemm'd pipes of steamboats, I look'd.
-----------
O baffled, balk'd, bent to the very earth,
Oppress'd with myself that I have dared to open my mouth,
Aware now that amid all that blab whose echoes recoil upon me I have
not once had the least idea who or what I am,
But that before all my arrogant poems the real Me stands yet
untouch'd, untold, altogether unreach'd,
Withdrawn far, mocking me with mock-congratulatory signs and bows,
With peals of distant ironical laughter at every word I have written,
Pointing in silence to these songs, and then to the sand beneath.

I perceive I have not really understood any thing, not a single
object, and that no man ever can,
Nature here in sight of the sea taking advantage of me to dart upon
me and sting me,
Because I have dared to open my mouth to sing at all.
-----------
AFTER a long, long course, hundreds of years, denials,
Accumulations, rous'd love and joy and thought,
Hopes, wishes, aspirations, ponderings, victories, myriads of
readers,
Coating, compassing, covering - after ages' and ages' encrus-
tations,
Then only may these songs reach fruition.
-----------
The Whitman Archive, source of the photos and offering most editions of Whitman's opus online
Revising Himself: Whitman and Leaves of Grass[an LoC production]

[compositional co-credit due to the braineel]

CC in a nutshell

2005-11-09T01:51:00.000-05:00

Ok. So, the Creative Commons currently has a newsletter that explains their history and purpose. If you are very interested in the history and philosophy of CC, go read the archives and/or sign up for yourself. If you are just interested in the bare-bones practical aspects of the licenses, this post is for you. In the spirit of CC, I attribute and reformat to make it easier for the casual browser and average writer/composer/producer to digest. Stay tuned for the last of my comments on the creative commons and you.

The Creative Commons (CC) is a response to the difficulty of utilizing copyright law effectively given the Internet; the inability of the traditional framework to cope well with the tremendous changes that the Internet and related technologies present to the economy.
The basic idea of the CC is taken from the Free Software Foundation: Give copyright licenses away for free.

Traditional copyright leaves too many potential uses of a work unregulated: the act of reading a book is not covered by copyright because no copy of the work has been made.
In cyberspace, there is no way to read a book without making a copy.
In principle, any use of a work in cyberspace would require permission from the copyright owner.

CC does not seek to eliminate proprietary culture, it seeks to build a buttress of freely available culture.
CC was created as a way to allow authors to announce to the world the freedoms that they wish their work to carry.
Copyright: All rights reserved.
CC: Some rights reserved.
There are Four Basic Components to the CC license scheme:

Attribution
Non-Commercial
No Derivatives
Share Alike (any derivative made using the licensed work must also be released under a Share Alike license)

98% of original adopters chose the Attribution option, so the core licenses have dropped Attribution as an option (it is now automatically included), the six resultant core licenses of the CC are as follow:

Attribution (use the work however you like, but give me attribution)
Attribution-ShareAlike (use the work however you like, but give me attribution, and license any derivative under a Share Alike license)
Attribution-NoDerivatives (use the work as is, and give me attribution)
Attribution-NonCommercial (use the work for noncommercial purposes, and give me attribution)
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (use the work for noncommercial purposes, as is, and with attribution)
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (use the work for noncommercial purposes, give me attribution, and license any derivative under a ShareAlike license)

Creative commons licenses are default.
A 'Noncommercial' license does not mean the creator would never take money for his or her creativity. It means simply, 'Ask if you want to make a commercial use. No need to ask if you want to make just a noncommercial use.'

___

2005-11-09T00:24:00.000-05:00

_____
concept braineel design kerinth

I'll Take a Second Coming With a Twist of Lime

2005-11-08T21:54:00.000-05:00

In this hurly-burly, work-a-day world of ours, what with the internet, carbon dating and all those damnable rockets to the moon, its even easier than ever before to toddle out from under the skirt of organized religion and find oneself stuck in a the harsh and frightening world without a god. But don't worry, for all those people who'd prefer to scamper for cover, there's a new skirt in town, or in this case toga.

Here is a Modern Drunkard Magazine article regarding the slowly growing popularity of the Revived Order of Dionysus. For those of you not familiar with the Greek Pantheon, Dionysus is commonly remembered as the patron god of wine, women and song, to give you the Cliff's Notes version.

So, You Want to Worship Dionysus?

Much like all those who engage rather excessively in drink, Dionysus was a god of many facets, some having only tenuous relation to the others. He was a patron of wine, agriculture, fertility, nature, the Greek stage, civilization, death, rebirth, lawfulness, ecstatic fervor and passion, and bestial destruction. Anyone who has had decent experience with the many and varied effects of alcohol should be able to completely understand how a god of wine could come to have his hand in so many cookie jars.

Agriculture was his main job, make sure those grapes come in nice and healthy and the wine is robust with a fruity bouquet. From there, it is easy to see where the association with nature, fertility, death and rebirth come in. Much like the crop he protected Dionysus would catch a long nap through winter and wake up just in time to start planting.

Next we have one of my favorite side effects of spirituous beverages, socializing. Once the grapes have been harvested and turned to wine, it is time to sit back and enjoy the "fruits of your labors". With the imbibing of wine comes a natural desire to commune with your fellow human beings, in a variety of ways. Sometimes you want to enjoy the company of others in a relaxed, entertaining setting, hence the theater. What is a better way to spend an evening than with a few good friends, a large bowl of wine and a good poet telling stories? Or perhaps you'd rather commune more intimately with a specific person? Don't worry, Dionysus has already got all aspects of fertility covered, even if you don't intend to be fertilizing. Finally, maybe after all this communing you find that you're embroiled in some kind of society. Never fear, Dionysus is pro-civilization and pro-law, go ahead and continue to socialize, he's got you covered like a jimmy-hat.

Then we get to the more interesting aspects of Dionysus. There you are, after your fourth bowl of wine, naked and writhing in a mass of people, and you find that you've never been more sure that life is awesome and that there is purpose to the Universe. Ta da! Welcome to the realm of ecstatic belief. Worshippers of Dionysus often seek "deliverance from the daily world through physical or spiritual intoxication", and deliverance you shall have. You see, the religious experience is rooted in the awe and ease of spirit experienced while communing on mass with other people, isn’t that right, Emile Durkheim? Add to that the wonder felt in response to the natural world and the mystifying effects of intoxicants and we've got ourselves a happenin' party. Do that a couple times a week and you'll start to see why the Meanads are ripping non-believers apart.

People Like Miracles Involving Wine

Now that you have a basic understanding of who Dionysus is and what he does with his time, let's get on with the interesting stuff. Here is a rather poorly written article suggesting links between Dionysus and Christ, and here is an even equally poor article refuting the idea. Also, here is a little blurb that I like, and here is a nice juicy Wikipedia link.

The main points:

- Dionysus was born from the coupling of a mortal woman and the king of the gods.

- Dionysus was known for death and rebirth, due to the agrarian association as well as a myth in which he is born, sacrificed and reborn.

- Dionysus was known to magic up a little wine from time to time.

- Worshippers of Dionysus conducted rituals in which they ate of his flesh and drank of his blood.

Some Good Advice

Whether the cult of Dionysus had some influence on the mythology and rites of Christianity or whether it all just comes down to religious archetypes common to the human experience, I think the important idea here is best summed up in the words of a drunken boob quoted in the MDM article, responding to whether or not he believes in Zeus as well: "You can believe in whatever you like, that's the thing. I believe in Bacchus". Thank you, drunken reveler, for putting things into perspective.

Images: Hu Yang's "Shanghai Life"

2005-11-08T20:05:00.000-05:00

Hu Yang presents a sequence of photos and short biopic statements from ninety-seven different households and their tenants within Greater Shanghai. The full collection totals around five hundred, and is currently on display at the Shanghai Art Gallery. The museum's site, while somewhat stilted in its translation, offers an interview with the artist that yields such ambiguous gems:

``Until the moment I checked all the answers did I find that life in fact is fair to everyone,'' [Yang] says, ``Because most of the rich people exchanged their happiness and time to earnings."

Still, the social scope of the project makes his humanism pretty unequivocal; eye these examples -

Wei Yufang (Shandongnese, Vendor)
We are leading a hard life and eat battercakes, pickles and a glass of water for all three meals. When our kids want meat dishes, we cook them an egg. We work more than 15 hours a day if it doesn't rain. We want our kids to be educated and not to live like us. I will risk anything if our kids can go to university. My eldest son is excellent and wins prizes every semester. I suffer being teased by local ruffians.

Gao Ming (Jilinese, Unemployed)
Every day I'm thinking about some philosophical questions? I want time to go backwards and I want to know whether this society is square or round. Painting and cultivating flowers are my two hobbies. I express my thoughts, my beliefs and my feelings through painting while by cultivating flowers, I can communicate with nature. In a narrow sense, I'm satisfied with my present life because I'm living in the way I want; in a broad sense, I have nothing to complain. My wife works and supports this family and I'm just doing unpractical things all day long. My pains are my imperfection in spiritual life, my lazy character and my weak viability.

Zhao Ke (Hunanese, Musician)
I'm leading an irregular life and believe disorder inspires my creation. I like composing poems or lying in bed staring blankly. Staring blankly helps me to fancy and relax.

Something about the responses really quantifies what the artist's (speaking more generally) imperative is; a great and cataclysmic juxtaposition of people's varying values, while hinting at the similarities that keep them together. No matter whether the question is "square or round?" or "downtown or underground?" or even an assertion ("I will stare into the face of Chaos!"); we all need caves and questions and rationales to explain ourselves should a photojournalist chance by. I'll be waiting by the place where the light leaks in.

Creative Commons and you.

2005-11-01T18:59:00.000-05:00

. How much do you know about copyright?

I suppose most people feel that it is a daunting arena of legality, they associate current issues with the hype of Napster and file-sharing at the heels of organizations like the RIAA and/or MPAA. I don't know, if you are out there, please comment and let us know where you are in your understanding/ position.

I know most of my friends aren't as interested in the issues as I am, and that is understandable because I'm flat-chat[1] obsessed. They ask me what they should do when they want to release a song or a poem on the internet. Should they put it out there without any copyright to be cool? Or should they reserve all rights to be safe?

Well, there is this awesome newish paradigm in copyright control that brings the issue to the masses. Remember the poor-man's copyright? Where you put the poem/tape in the sealed registered envelope and sent it to yourself, to someday be opened by a judge in court who would then proclaim you the rightful owner of your now famous material? Yeah, this is sortof like that, but on Steroids.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I introduce you to the Creative Commons.

Creative Commons offers a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors and artists. We have built upon the "all rights reserved" of traditional copyright to create a voluntary "some rights reserved" copyright. We're a nonprofit. All of our tools are free.

Have a look around. It isn't as complicated as you think. In order to do service to the issue, I will be making a few more installments to address some of the more interesting (to me, ha!) aspects of the creative commons and associated issues. If you want me to address some of the more interesting (to you, yay!) aspects, comment and I'll be all about it.

See you then!

[1] Author's Edit. Apparently I picked up this slang somewhere and it isn't universally understood. It means totally, completely, balls-to-the-walls out there, on the line, right there in it, pedal to the floor. Something like that. Wink.

Audio: Singing Mice

2005-11-01T18:31:00.000-05:00

Somewhere out there
beneath the pale moon light... Er, not quite.

A Guardian article details the musical come-ons produced by male mice:

Research by a team of neuroscientists has revealed that male mice construct complex songs and sing them for minutes at a time when they come across sex pheromones produced by potential mates.

The male mice are stimulated to sing by exposing them to q-tips swabbed in the urine of female mice in heat. Not quite romantic, but the results are rather listenable, albeit with amplification. Those of us who'd like to observe this in life would need to be blessed with ultrasonic hearing. For everyone else, mp3's of rodent love songs.

Chaplinesque

2005-10-29T11:02:00.000-04:00

"Nothing fails like success," said successful Chaplin. "I mean by that, that money never satisfied a spiritual or intellectual need. . . I doubt whether a rich man ever has a real friend. . . . I always understand poor artists; rich ones always seem to me a contradiction in terms."

David A. Gerstein's Essays on Chaplin's life, films, and views

  Charlie Chaplin is one of the actors for whom early films (especially silent film) were a natural medium for communicating with an audience. From 1915's The Tramp to 1936's Modern Times, Chaplin was one of the most popular movie stars in the world. Chaplin (along with Buster Keaton) defined silent comedy with a redemptive grace that lifted it above simple slapstick.
  Chaplin's "little tramp" character developed from a boorish ne'er-do-well to an iconic hero of the disenfranchised but upbeat. Chaplin's productive period overlapped with the beginnings of the Great Depression, and may have contributed somewhat to the tramp's popularity. Chaplin's tramp was the down-and-out before it was de rigueur, and embodied an ability to rebound from a thousand humiliations to succeed, usually involving getting the girl.
  Chaplin the man had no problem getting the girl in life, which was in itself a problem. He set the stage for expensive, messy, and dutifully reported celebrity divorces with his divorce from Lita Grey (originally cast as his romantic interest in The Gold Rush, but after their relationship began the role was recast). The settlement was a then-record $825,000, and the newspapers had a field day with various sorts of penny-dreadful stories and satire. The 1992 film starring Robert Downey Jr. as Chaplin concentrates heavily on Chaplin's personal affairs, including three under-eighteen brides and various flings. It is possible to reduce anyone to this level with some yield, but in Chaplin's case the on-screen persona dominated his own in the popular mind. While he was at the zenith of his fame, his indiscretions were overlooked, but later he would be subject to spurious paternity suits and finally barred from the United States during the Red Scare due to his potential Communist ties.
  But that is not why Chaplin is worth our time; he is most important methinks as a symbol for both underdogs and absurd heroes; the first who finally gets his due, or the second who gets his due while slyly straddling the divide between status quo and chaos (or comedy). When Chaplin actually spoke in his movies (as he did in 1940's The Great Dictator, where he played both the poor worker and the Adolf Hitler character) he finally gives the absurd/abject everyman a voice striking in its basic humble humanism:

The way of life can be beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men's souls -- has barricaded the world with hate -- has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.
[full-text of the speech]

Chaplin presents an ethic echoed in his short story Rhythm: A story of men in macabre movement. It is almost a purely absurdist piece, about an officer commanding a firing squad who forgets why on a very existential level. It is a critique of military bureaucracy just as Dictator was a critique of totalitarian government; they both show the headway one sensitive, sane & absurd person can make against an unyielding and inhuman system. As Gerstein says in the essay about Chaplin and the social order, Chaplin probably felt

the contrast between his real-world high-society self and how, trapped in that self and admittedly fascinated by its environment, Chaplin may have mainly let out his feelings about class in fiction, through his films.

The underlying feelings did not elude contemporary writers, however, and Hart Crane captured something of it in his poem Chaplinesque:

We will make our meek adjustments,
Contented with such random consolations
As the wind deposits
In slithered and too ample pockets.

For we can still love the world, who find
A famished kitten on the step, and know
Recesses for it from the fury of the street,
Or warm torn elbow coverts.

We will sidestep, and to the final smirk
Dally the doom of that inevitable thumb
That slowly chafes its puckered index toward us,
Facing the dull squint with what innocence
And what surprise!

And yet these fine collapses are not lies
More than the pirouettes of any pliant cane;
Our obsequies are, in a way, no enterprise.
We can evade you, and all else but the heart:
What blame to us if the heart live on.

The game enforces smirks; but we have seen
The moon in lonely alleys make
A grail of laughter of an empty ash can,
And through all sound of gaiety and quest
Have heard a kitten in the wilderness.

Excerpts from Literary Critics on Chaplinesque
I would consider Crane's poem to be judgement of Chaplin's work on the basis of where it finds value. The "fine collapses are not lies": there is a blessedness to the absurd being that frees them from the game and smirks, and allows them to hear and help the "infinitely gentle / Infinitely suffering thing," as T.S. Eliot would have it (the two works are linked in the criticism linked to above). Use the comments on this post to discuss the poem if I am missing the boat.

Random (i.e. more modern) Chaplin stuff -
Excerpt from Aesop Rock's song Daylight, off his CD Labor Days
[as best I can transcribe]

Ok - lift me to activism chain, activate street sweep
Plug in deteriorating zenith of Pendragon
I hack swords wars for the morbid spreading of mad men madly gospel
Sick in your lincoln log cabin and Charlie Chaplin waddle

Ad campaign from the early 80's using Chaplin's character for IBM, to soften its unfeeling big-business image