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because I stumbled over it today and its still as right as it has ever been and brings it to a point:
Only after the last tree has been cut down
Only after the last river has been poisoned
Only after the last fish has been caught
Only then will you find you cannot eat money.
Cree prophecy
The first electronic musical instrument ever and the only instrument played without touching it? The Theremin. Now in the future you ain´t need antennas you can make it wireless and use fancy light - of course brought to you by the awesomeness of the wii controller (has there ever been a piece of computing hardware this versatile while being that cheap?)
Now with that out of the way you can read stuff and watch a movie on how it works.
Is it not the coolest interface ever for a 303?
Seldom has there been a day with so many headlines about laws and lawcases and policy submissions and calls for boykott that all have to do with our Big Brother and Freedom of Culture. Just a short overview for you:
Danish Internet Provider has to cut off its customers from Pirate Bay Bit Torrent Tracker
(heise.de)
The german Bundesrat (the federal assembly) has ruled AGAINST the new law that would allow video surveilliance in homes without court order and putting spy software on anybody also without court order - that is after the Bundestag (state assembly) has ruled in favor of the law. If until Christmas the law is not passed it will have failed - a BIG BIG hurray for civil liberties - lets see what our evil minister for interior Mr. Schäuble will cook up to force it through until then. (heise.de)
Some internet providers in Germany are not adhering to the one year old "Vorratsdatenspeicherung" (data retention) law in germany despite the threat of hefty fines - guess it might be cheaper for them to pay the fines then to invest in the massive infrastructure that would be needed to make the data rentention possible - or maybe they do value their customers wishes in the end. This puts a lot of pressure on Mr. Schäuble to react - especially since there will be a final ruling on the legality of such law from the "Bundesgerichtshof" (federal court of justice) - the first round of the ruling already hinted that the law might be in breach with the german constitution. Manifest of Internet Providers Calling for Boykott of the law.
The Free Software Foundation has called for 35 days against DRM boykott - the first day marks an issue close to my heart - Apple. They are calling out Steve wonder Jobs on his statement claiming he does not like DRM and then only shortly after removing DRM from music he introduces drastic messearues on its prestigious macbook line that basically cripple the functionality of said computers just to include DRM. I fully support the boykott and will not buy a new Apple computer until that issue is resolved (good thing my current lappy and standalone machine are plenty good for a while). That means I will rock the current lappy again until it falls apart but its unacceptable for Apple to make such a move and I would really really like to see them bleed badly. I am very glad the issue has not died the media short attention span death yet. (Defective By Design 35 days against DRM)
Interesting developments for sure.
This guy is the winner of the Chihuahua Fashion Show in the Philippines. He brought some great laughter around here so I guess that qualifies him a bit for pic of day. The other contender has to wait for tomorrow - enjoy the good mood while it lasts. From around the web.
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
David Wagoner
As reported mogreens and me had a special kind of gig in Toronto last saturday. We splitted our souls and uploaded them through the clogged tubes to reassemble our creative output over there. Well it worked in so far that the signal arrived but its no hiding that there where issues with our limited upload bandwidth and a portforwarding problem with the audio made it necessary to send the audio over the internal microphone and a separate very chunky iChat connection. I want IPv6 and multicast or a working bittorrent streaming protocol - everything else just sucks. But in the end it was a very worthwhile experiment with a high learning factor and one that we will get deeper into in the very near future - stay tuned.
Thanks goes out to Brian T. Moore who made it all possible.
Just stumbled over this. Thought it is kind of amazing that the term showed up in 1987 - never knew but you never stop learning I guess - music is of course taste but me as almost 80s kiddy tends to not dislike it.
Its week of fALks favorites reapearing. My favorite mathematician - yes I have such a thing - is Benoit Mandelbrot since the day he coined the butterfly effect and made me play endlessly with mandelbrot "Apfelmänchen" on my Commodore Amiga 2000 endlessly applying new formula alterations and watching the 12 MHz 7,09 MHz processor due its duty (yes it was slow). Said man is the mentor of Nicholas Taleb - an author whos book "The Black Swan" I almost got once but then didn´t and since then regret not having read said book as it was forecasting the current and all future financial collapses. Good thing for boingboing for linking an interview with the two men explaining in a bit too little but good enough detail why the current crisis is so scary - yes maybe the sack of rice falling over in China had to do with it in the end. Oh yes the greatest mathematician of modern times says that its quite possible that we are in a worse position then in the Great Depression.
Some info from Wikipedia about the book (linked above):
Why do people tend to neglect rare events? Partly because humans underestimate their ignorance in most situations—the effect of unexpected events is far more significant than people often imagine. Taleb argues that the proposition "we know" is in many cases an illusion—the human mind tends to think it knows, but it does not always have a solid basis for this delusion of "I know".
Taleb also questions the authority of experts. The "truth" behind science is limited to certain areas and methods, and in many areas having an academic degree and presenting oneself as a scientist is irrelevant. Indeed, authority can stifle empirical experience which, so many times, has proven to have a sounder base for accuracy.
Extreme events do happen and have a big effect. Examples abound, including September 11th. The Internet with its various effects was scarcely anticipated, and it is a development that has had a significant effect. The effects of extreme events are even higher due to the fact that they are unexpected.
The comic is expected to sell tens of thousands of copies in its first weeks on sale, but is up against stiff competition: anti-capitalist books are the hottest sellers in capitalist Japan at the moment, and it will take something extraordinary to beat the sales of Hideki Mitani’s “Greedy Capitalism and the Self Destructiveness of Wall Street.”
Kapitalism is going away and to speed its departure the Japanese have drawn "Das Kapital" as a manga book to be sold 10.000 times to japanese comic lovers and capitalism haters. Funny dat hope they put it online at one point. I love mangas and I would have nothing against this very book to be in a more digestable form.
The UK Times has more juice to the story
News could not be better... Heck yes economy down the drain and all but as long as TV is wiped out in the process I am all for the deepest recession of all time. The time waster that makes couch potatoes and controls mind to the right like no other is having some serious serious troubles in the USofA. Why? The biggest advertisers of TV is the - wait for it - car industry. And what did we learn last week? The car industry all over the world is in deep shit - the US one in the deepest brown sauce. Now the easiest possible way to save money in a car company without stopping to produce cars is advertisement and thats what they do - cut almost all advertisement as soon as the contracts run out. Now spiral back that means the already not so very profitable TV industry is loosing its biggest money giver (isn´t it interesting that cars, oil and tv with a bit of banking sprinkled in form such a homogenous group?). Readers of this blog know that that the TV industry had prior to all the economic troubles already some heavy rough years where they had to outsource some less profitable time slots to cheapos resulting in worse programming and lower ratings - you know death spiral.
Now, get ready for an even more radical change on Saturday mornings: As Fox parts ways with 4Kids (the deal expires at the end of the year), the network is adopting an unprecedented model for the daypart: Infomercials.
In a network first, Fox has given two of its four Saturday morning hours back to affiliates. But the other two, cleared on 95% of its stations, will now be sold to advertisers -- who will use the time to sell products.
Thats right to stop bleeding they are giving their precious programming hours away to air more infomercials - you know to sell useless shit to stay at home moms that have no money need to get credit for buying the stuff can´t pay it back get insolvent and take the banks with them - oh the irony is breathtaking.
It gets better:
Meanwhile, should one of the nets decide their hefty broadcast infrastructure no longer makes sense, they could go for the most drastic idea of all, one that then-NBC honcho Bob Wright first dangled more than 10 years ago: Dump the network model entirely and turn your broadcast network into a cable one.
Dump TV and put it into the bin - thats my solution - would cost everyone the least stress and would open the world up to some undetered free information flow to everyone and would wake the sleep at home people up and see things more clearly. Its bound to happen anyway. If you have a cable solution only then the result will be that cable is too expensive in times of peril and people rather choose internet then cable TV in the end - so subscription will be soo low that there still wouldn´t be quality programming so people have no reason to subscribe - TV is so far down the death spiral its over before you know it - count my words.
The info comes from the (for me) highly entertaining article called "Needed: Network bailout?" on Variety.com.
Yes they actually think you can save the Titanic.
Sometimes you stumble over articles where you need to rub your eyes slap your hand against your head take a couple of deep deep breath and try to wave the little birdie coming out of your screen goodbye. Today was such a day again. The newly appointed London mayor - the first conservative London mayor since generations - has said that media companies should stop "underestimating" young people and stop "target" them with "cheap" hiphop and instead educate them to "higher" art like classical music and operas.
No I am absolutely not kidding. He wants to spent money so parents can send their kids to learn classical instruments.
Now - nothing against funding of letting people learn classical instruments - but who the fuck does he think to suggest hiphop or any other youth culture is "cheap art" and why does he think he can define what "high culture" is?
In a report outlining his strategy, his chief of arts and culture strategy, Munira Mirza, argues that too much emphasis has been placed on making events "user-friendly".
ugh? make parties user unfriendly so nobody goes to them anymore? See classical concert halls are empty for a fucking reason and that is that young people are BORED TO DEATH hearing songs that have been written 200 years ago and have not evolved since then. It might be an artform where rich kids are pressed into and then can behave as if they are something special - but the innovation in musical art comes from the street the dark warehouses the garages all over the world not some on multimillion dollar live support hanging concert houses that are playing Beethoven the 9th for the 2 millions' time. You rich conservative mummies you need to get out more - especially when you are the mayor of a city that used to be trendsetting when it comes to music.
Give Young People High Culture Not HipHop - Johnson. The Guardian
Two incidents - very unlike one another - intermingled at their core idea. Citizens discontent spoken out loud and clear one heard one damned - one embraced one ignored one solved one clashing.
One for the right to work in China one for the right to party in Germany.
Unlikely role reversed? Or propaganda failing to work?
The more I read and think about it I think there is a big issue with the new display port that Apple is trying to put under the rug. They want to plug the analog hole once and for all. I think its not only to do with copyright shit - so I am reasonably believe that is one of the bigger underlying issues - its also the floppy drive issue. Uh? Yes I am actually of the generation where apple removed the floppy drive without asking anybody. A huge outcry and then a year later people applauded them for the move - you know there was nothing really nice about floppy drives and cd burners where just better and looking back it was one of the smarter moves for apple - pushing the whole industry forward - for the few that needed a floppy drive they could just attach one through USB - sure for them it was the more expensive road but it must have been a tiny minority - I know for myself that I never looked back to the floppy era again.
Fast forward eight years later and Apple brings out a Laptop that for the first time is missing any way to connect analog video to it. Mind you I am a VJ and the only way to do our thing is through analog video cables - but also I am vfx professional and go into any professional video studio these days and have a hard look around and I promise you - you won´t find any kind analog video anywhere anymore. Now also the projectors that do not have a digital video input option of some sort also seem to have died out. So in quite general I would say that yes its a move that from a very very far perspective makes sense on Apples part - ditch analog video and the world sees innovation an crisper pictures and maybe soon wireless digital pictures. Now there is only one big big problem with that thinking and I can see that Apple is not seeing that angle - because they rarely come into contact with it - the whole event bussiness needs to bridge ultra long distances with video cables and as of right now the only digitial standard that can bridge 50+ meters is digital SDI - a very professional option that almost no beamer under $5000 on the market supports nor does apple have a video out solution for that either - especially not on their portable laptop line. I am sure with budgets above 10.000 Euro per event you can cook up a all digitial solution already but this is not the market where 95% of events are in - also the whole backend has not switched to an digital format either - unlike the Floppy that was already replaced by the CD burner and shortly later by the USB flash drives - there is no standard in the video world for digital video. It starts with the cables, goes to compression and codecs through framerates and resolutions - there are about a trillian combinations and no market standard has prevailed so far. So forcing a switch over from analog to digital video at the moment is not a clever idea - no matter what your motivations are - and when half your motivations are bad already (DRM evil evil DRM) then this switch is going to alianate a LOT of people - even if the event market might only make up 0.5% of Apples laptop buying population I think people needing analog video still at this moment approach more 5% (old beamers, old TV sets, bars wanting to show a video etc. pp) and that is a huge chunk. I am quite sure Apple has to come out with a native adapter at one point. The current solution when you ask an Apple employee? Get an old DVI to video adaptor and get minidisplayport to DVI adaptor and chain them together - very elegant Apple - very professional - very reliable such an adaptor chain. BTW - just 3 years ago you could just plug a SVHS cable right into your powerbook without any kind of adaptor - apple used to be about simplicity - these days seem to be waning.
I am a big fan of the whole array of 1970s video synthesizer and while not my favorite one the Rutt Etra definately ranks among the better synths from this time (my favorite is still Bill Hearns Vidium). Now that computing power finally catches up with analog video power the Rutt Etra has been ported to the digital age with the help of Bill Etra - one of the original developers. The cool thing is that it has been ported to VDMX my vj program of choice (and the most extensible vj program on the planet). Bill Etra is sitting in a wheelchair knowadays and Vade - the programmer - asks nicely for a donation which go towards Bill Etra and his dream of the perfect video synthesizer.
Here is Bill Etra himself:
The dream was to create a compositional tool that would allow you to prepare visuals like a composer composes music. I called it then and I call it now “the visual piano”, because with the piano the composer can compose an entire symphony and be sure of what it will sound like. It was my belief then and it is my belief now after 40 years of working towards this, that this will bring about a great change and great upwelling of creative work once it is accomplished. This software is one step closer to that since, once we’re on the computer, things can be developed and repeated reliably.
I now live on disability and we no longer have corporate budgets working on this development. I would like to spend the rest of my existence working on the project that I thought I would finish in 1972. if you find this software useful, please make a donation in whatever amount you feel is appropriate.
The original entry has the link to the Paypal donate page.
Here is a demo video of the original synth in action:
Its funny that as a VJ you are never asked what your favorite DJ is or better the best DJ you have ever played with. Well since I stumbled over the guy by accident today I just have to throw it out: DJ Rupture - hands down noone has come close. Sorry guys - this guy is just a class of his own. If you VJ to the him you are sure to have sweat on your forhead. Its the only DJ who managed to make me get through 650 loops in 45 minutes at a gig in London (think mixing 200 styles of music in 2 seconds intervals and you get the idea). This guy plays with three record players plus occasionally a CD player.
Its great to see he has a blog and radio show.
This saturday we are undergoing a big big experiment - something very very unique - something that saves a lot of CO2 - something that could change the face of parties around the world... got your attention? great :)
MoGreens and my lowly self (proto.beamaz:fALk for the search engines) will be playing a VJ/DJ (or A/V as it might be called in some cirlcles) gig in Toronto/Canada. But instead of flying over there trying to cope with jetlags and the pretty torontonian girls we are safely in the prototypen office using the intertubes to forward our signals to the crew around Brian Moore who are doing their awesome media jam in the coolest property of all Toronto.
Since we can´t stream to more then one computer because in the year 2008 there is still no universal multicast or streaming bittorrent protocol (that works on a mac (so I heard swarmplayer is shaping up nicely)) the only way to experience the awesomeness of a the first and only real global party (massmedia induced Bono concerts don´t count) is to go to it live - either to Toronto for the full bang loud social event at 9 oclock in the evening or come to the proto.office near Berlin for a relaxed chilled friends circle atmosphere at 4 oclock in the morning - your choice - but I am sure you don´t want to miss it either way.
Saturday November 22nd 2008
411 Front Street East Toronto /Canada
9:11 pm EST
&
proto.office Kleinmachnow(Berlin) /Germany
4:00 am CET
Spot.us the website that pioneers a new model of investigative journalism has officially launched. I reported about it a while back because I think this has the potential of becoming huge. Basically its fusing blogging with traditional media with fundraising and creating a local media platform that has funded reporters from communities researching stories that are close to home and report on stories that are also important to themself while in then they get a voice by having their stories spread for free around the web but also on dead trees (now take a deep breath I know it was a long sentence). Since they are funded they have the luxury to go deeper then just copying something from big newspapers or linking to the neighbors blog.
I said already that I really dig that idea and I think it has a huge potential for success. I wish Davin Cohn - the founder of the project - the best of luck with his endeavor.
Here is a video explaining how it all works:
Spot.Us - Community Funded Reporting Intro from Digidave on Vimeo.
The first ever ruling that actually weakens tradional copyright in my lifetime has been taken place in a high profile case about sampling. The once hip - now copyright greedy elektronik pioneers of Kraftwerk have sued Moses Pelham (not much better) for using a two second samples from their song "Metall on Metall" in Sabrina Setlurs Song "Nur Mir" which was produced by Pelham.
Der Bundesgerichtshof (BGH) hat das sogenannte Sampeln von Musikstücken erleichtert. Künstler dürfen unter bestimmten Voraussetzungen kleine Tonfetzen aus Musikstücken entnehmen und daraus ein eigenes Werk schaffen, entschied das Karlsruher Gericht am heutigen Donnerstagmorgen. In dem Prozess ging es um eine Klage der Gruppe Kraftwerk gegen den Produzenten und Komponisten Moses Pelham.
Our - what America calls - Surpeme Court (its Bundesgerichtshof) has said that under copyright you are not allowed to take any part of one artwork and sell it in another - yet there is an interpretative exclusion cause:
Allerdings sehe das Urheberrecht eine Ausnahme von dieser Regel vor, um das kulturelle Schaffen zu fördern. Danach dürfe ein Musiker solche Tonsequenzen aus anderen Stücken entnehmen, die wegen ihrer besonderen Eigenart nicht einfach nachgespielt werden könnten. Für Melodien gelte diese Ausnahme allerdings nicht.
So if its not a melody and if its hard to recreate because it has interesting features and if it advances cultural producing then you are allowed to sample freely. Tiny tiny victory for those who believe in sampling - big loss for those who thought Kraftwerk are cool.
Now somebody needs to rethink if they should be using Kraftwerks songs as openers in a podcast that promotes free culture - maybe change to a song from Moses Pelham? *giggles*
Wir haben die 30iger Grenze hinter uns gelassen und fühlen uns somit viel reifer. Nein im Ernst, wir sind zurück. Da hatte sich was angestaut. Links am Anfang saß fALK mit vielen neuen meistgrünen selbigen. In der Mitte mogreens im Aussendienst, auch wieder links. GrüneBohnenFraktion in Gründungssendung, was das Bauernherz höher schlagen lässt. Und und und mh.usik.
Wie immer am besten den podcast subscriben (iTunes -> Erweitert -> Podcast abbonieren -> link reinkopieren)
http://www.prototypen.com/radio/index.xml
oder durch den iTunes Music Store abbonieren (muss man nur auf Link drücken und dann im Musik Store auf abbonieren gehen)
Radio Prototypen im iTunes Music Store
oder direkt speichern unter
Als Enhanced Podcast im AAC Format:
http://www.prototypen.com/radio/files/rP30_DreissigPlus.m4a
Oder als normales MP3:
http://www.prototypen.com/radio/files/rP30_DreissigPlus.mp3
Links des podcast im "enhanced" Teil des MPG4 ausserdem im Lyrics Teil des MP3 und hier:
Free Culture News
Hintergrund Musik
Hubert Daviz sein Mixtape
Dubcast 13
Free Energy: 12.000 Gigawatt Geothermal Power
Free Energy: Runde Solarzellen
Free Energy: Solar Stick
Free Energy: Solar Tower in Spanien
Free Energy: Energy Ball
Free Energy: Interaktiver Atlas Erneuerbarer Energieen Deutschland
Free Living: Easy Dome
FreeWaste: Japanisches Dorf ohne Müll
Lots of Robots: Der Kellner Roboter
Lots of Robots trifft FreeProducts
Free Water: Wasser aus der Luft
Nachhaltiges Leben: Green Wikia
Who Needs Money?
Free Konzepts: Vier Arten von Freien Waren (Musik)
Free Konzepts: Soziales Verleihen
Free Konzepts: Die Renanissance der einfachen Menschen
PostDemokratie: The Party is Over
Haupthema
Freiräume statt Schlossträume
Webseite protypen.com
Webseite radio.rotypen.com
Links
Harddisc Turntable
Google als MP3 downloader
Ausgehtipps
13.12. Reaggy Clash
Also from soundsbutter.com comes this very brazen cultural fashion play.
This sewing machine sews in soundwave patterns. Whicked - now you can wear your own songs. Maybe a good machine to get when Apple continues to cripple its hardware.
solar powered - just $129.000,00 if the vapor becomes a product. From inhabitat
Its like a dejavú for me of some sort. You know you come up with a story that you set in 10-20 years of the future and then only 2-3 years onward its already happening around you. First there was the viable solution for the tatooed interface featured in Kalkin:Revelation and then there is this blogger/artist who lost an eye in a car accident and now asks for engineers to make her a camera that she can plop into her empty eyesocket so she can blog about what she sees through her not so own eyes - just like my main character Ping - oh btw the tatoo interface and the eyesocket work in unison for ping - maybe that would be a good interface for the new cyborg lady from california too?
Word is out that the new Apple MacBooks and MacBookPros with their new display port technology are lovely looking environmently "friendly" trojan horses of the MPAA (that is the movie mafia of america). When you buy a movie through the iTunes (not only music anymore) store and play it on these new machines - you have to have a copyright safe monitor attached to actually view the movie. That is a mafia approved monitor. If you do not you get a nice little warning sign saying that you are not allowed to play the movie.
Now this raises an interesting question: Is the lack of a miniDisplayPort to analog video adapter something that will never be rectified because it would mean that this would breach HDCP copyright protection? Anyone ponder what this would mean to the Apple using VJs? Not to mention that the movie mafia does the exact same mistake as the music mafia had been doing - by actually forcing people to crack movies just to watch them on their devices - while at the same time teaching millions of people how to actually crack a movie who then find it so easy and enjoying the freedom afterwards that they don´t ever buy one again.
This decision of Apple and the movie mafia is so wrong on so many levels its mind boggling that in the current environment such mistakes are made. What is Apple thinking? They are not above the godline just yet - they must know that these things are creating a huge backlash on the internet - just after their movie store was heralded as something great.
Watch the blog storm about this in the coming days with the citizens demanding DRM free movies and apple apologizing and putting a software patch out in a three month timeframe and the movie industry realising their mistake in less then one year (when they need a bailout).
To the people thinking this stuff up I can only say one thing: Stupid fucking idiots - you must have won your harvard degree in the lottery.
To quote a commenter on the Engadget thread:
I'm not really down with stealing, but when they decide they are going to control how I watch my movies and listen to music they can go die in a fire.
The vOICe is a system that takes the input of a camera that is hidden in some eyeglasses and maps that signal into sounds. This is then fed to earphones and is supposed to enable blind people to "hear pictures". Its supposed to actually work - blind people are capable of learning to hear pictures and oriantate themselfes in 3d space with this system. Its like a learned synesthesia (fusion of two or more sensory inputs in the brain). This quite possible means that people are capable of learning synesthesia mappings. Quite mind boggling.
Articles also in the New York Times and BBC News.
Alex Dragulescu is making automatically generated architecture - his data input are spam emails. Keywords in these spam mails are used to generate planes in three dimensional space.
Michael Pollan is a Journalist that focuses on problems with our society when it comes to the food we consume. He has a very pragmatic balanced way of looking at it but makes it clear that there is real food and food that your great grandma would not recognize and that for that reason alone you shouldn´t eat (over processed corn syrup food f.e.). Watch the talk he gave at google - its really enlightening when you want to know how the current foodcrisis emerged and why processed food is so bad for you but so cheap and likely not to be called real food at all. He sums up his research for his book:
Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants
This is just a vintage photograph with no history attached. Its from the site Vintage Photographs. There are some mightily wicked others over there.
It seems science fiction is contributing more to REAL products then science of late. The ubercool interface that scientology addict Tom Cruise used in the film Minority Report when looking through the memory recordings of the uberconcious future lookers has been made a reality. Apparently the designer of the movie thing was also on board. Think real spacial handmovement interaction. Now this is how I could see myself performing a vj set for sure. Guess not a bad time to get back to kung fu training so that you movements are a bit more smooth then geeks in the movie below.
g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.
Just in honoring the RED announcement I have this gem for the picture of today. No idea where it comes from no idea who made it, no idea if it exists, but nonetheless a fun wordplay.
So last night was the big announcement of the RED digital cameras and did they announce. They basically turned the whole movie making industry on its head, poured pure caffein on them then splashed some more cold water - rinsed and repeated a couple of times. Some users are speculating that they raided Area 51 in the night and stole a camera chip from the UFO there and reverse engineered it. Why? Well there is for one the insanely expensive far off big bambooza of a 28k Monstro chip. You know the most high definition films that are going through post production are 4k with I think Batman for the IMAX topping it with 6k. Now how you would sufficently post produce a 28k movie is beyond me - also beyond me is why you would such foolish thing - but you know you can crop, zoom, pan later and still have 4k. But why I am much more exited is the modularity approach and this might not just be a game changer in the camera business but maybe even the computer biz. Imagine Apple sold 2-3 different enclosures for laptops and you can fit a wide range of gear in them - pretty much plug and play. New motherboard, new processor, new graphic card, new display, different keyboard. Well this is pretty much what red is doing for their cameras - yes you can switch out a 2/3rd, 12bit, 11+ stops sensor and replace it with a super 35mm 16bit 13+ stops sensor later, when you made the money or whatever. Also of course you can change anything else, batteries, outputs, lenses, handles, screens, shoulder mounts whatever. Oh and for the added bonus: it can do 3d too (with two cams that fit together nicely for that option). Now they are not hitting quite home the original goal of 3k camera that works out of the box for $3.000, but the smallest brain (or body) is $2.500 - for about $5000 you should be able to assemble a working unit. Its very revolutionary stuff they do over at RED. Since delivering the REDone nobody doubts their ability to deliver these two new camera systems either. Its just a bit late - don´t expect to hold any of the new ones in your hands before fall next year (thats a year away). Now its going to be more then interesting what the big shots like sony, panasonic, canon and nikon are doing (and hasselblatt) this invades their turf big time.
For more info (or info overload might be better) head over to the REDdot.
There is again a superb analysis from gjohnsit of the "current" economic crisis over on DailyKos. Its staggering. Lets start with the charts left - thats the Baltic Dry Index. An index like the Dow Jones or Dax that is based on the money it costs to ship raw materials over sea. Its been in existence since 1744. That index has collapsed completely (98%) over the last two month. Compared to indices which hold mostly bank stocks this one has real implication in the real world.
The price of the daily rental of a Capesize bulk carrier has collapsed from $234,000 to $5,611. I'm no expert on shipping, but I bet that the cost of fuel, insurance, maintenance, and crew salaries on a ship that large is about $5,600 a day. If there is no profit from moving these ships, then goods will not move.
Thats right. Remember me talking about the tooth of the clockword wheels coming of? Global trade is likely the first big chunk thats flying down the pit as with prices like these ships don´t make a profit which means they have no reason to operate which means you don´t have goods shipping around, which means total collapse of the current "global" economy.
How will this counteracted? BARTERING. Yes you heard it right. The thing we are talking about in our podcast since over a year - that we are heading into a bartering moneyless society - its freaking already happening - on a much bigger scale then I ever thought possible:
Thailand on Monday said it planned to barter rice for oil with Iran in the clearest example to date of how the triple financial, fuel and food crisis is reshaping global trade as countries struggle with high commodity prices and a lack of credit.
Right right! Thailand barters with Iran - rice for oil. That is a transaction without money changing hands. You know the thing everyone we ever talked to about made them laughed at us, ridiculed it or tried to debate it. Yes its happening on a grand scale. Now will it trickle down the scale to reach normal people? Interesting times for sure.
After a very long abstinence from doing the normal club gig thingy I was persuaded to play this Saturday for my friends from the Polyphon -> Impulse Potsdam collective who are doing parties again after a long abstinence too. The thing that caused me to agree to play was the kind of music they are playing - DubStep - the new electronic music hype on the block. Fusing Dub, DrumNBass and Electro and about anything else that fits - what would you want more. So if you are so inclined - come around the bend my friend and say hello to Potsdam dying clubculture.
Todays picture of (the) day is from Tiffany Bozic. I really love the detail and the color and the idea and it mesmerizes me when I look at it. Mrs. Bozic is from Arkansas and I don´t know what else can be said that her biography can´t tell you.
Grand Piano 36" x 48" 2004 - Tiffany Bozic
Commuters in New York got a nice surprise this morning when they got handed a free edition of the New York Times with the main headline "Iraw War Ends!". The paper had all section of the normal New York times but was filled with the wet dreams of leftist environmentalist progressives. The back cover even had an advertisement for KBR (thats the "company" doing "reconstruction" in Iraq). The paper was normally printed so it actually had the look and feel of the original - but it wasn´t. Its probably the most elaborate hoax since faking the french president to Sarah Palin - and maybe even bigger - it has at least as much impact because it actually describes in a nonfictional fiction way on what the world would look like with sane leaders. I really really dig that fictionreality mixing (something we here at the prototypen are planning for next year - mixing reality with fiction and making it a political statement). This actually educates people while entertains people while it makes all its own promotion on itself. Pure geniuous. Word on the street is that it was a job of The Yes Man. Here is also a video:
New York Times Special Edition Video News Release - Nov. 12, 2008 from H Schweppes on Vimeo.
They did it. What? THEY FUCKING DID IT! They passed the fucking law that allows them to install cameras in my room, and install viruses on my computer without a court order! Who? THE FUCKING GOVERNMENT. You know the stupid CDU and SPD with 14 people voicing concern but voting for it anyway. WHAT? Yes! You know first they told us socialism is a bad thing - it kills babies and all. And yes they where right - it might not have killed babies but it killed freedom for a lot of people, encaged them with force spied on people and occasionally killed people wanting to break free. But you know what? What? Former East Germany had a budget deficit of a mere 150 Mio. German Marks - thats a deficit of 75 Mio. Euros - our current oh so effective capitalistic germany has a budget deficit which's number is so high that I don´t know how many zeros that are. So now that we are in such dire financial crisis all of the sudden there come these socialistic ideas from the drawers - you know buy out banks and make them state controlled, buy out car companies and make them state controlled, buy out music industries and make them state controlled - you know socialism at its best - nothing to say against that I guess - it must have worked better then they tried to imprint into our small little gray goo. Yet there is no need to also copy the bad things - you know take our freedom away, lock us up, put us under supervision of our neighbors and friends, close the borders spy kill fuck with our life. Nevertheless they do exactly that - copy the whole thing over - bring it to the 21st century and make it all a bit worse. This is going to take a real bad ending if people on all walks of life don´t WAKE THE FUCK UP.
Financial Times Germany reports in their really detailed "financial crisis live ticker" of today:
Die amerikanische Energy Information Administration EIA hat ihre Produktionserwartungen für die Opec-Staaten nach unten korrigiert: Im vierten Quartal rechnet die Behörde nur noch mit einem täglichen Öl-Output von 31,93 Mio. Barrel nach zuvor 32,44 Mio. Barrel. 2009 werden die Opec-Staaten demnach durchschnittlich 31,13 Mio. Barrel Öl am Tag fördern. Zuvor war die EIA für das kommende Jahr von 31,59 Mio. Barrel ausgegangen. Die Nicht-Opec-Staaten sollen 2009 49,2 Mio. Barrel produzieren nach zuvor 49,51 Mio. Barrel. Für die Sorte West Texas Intermediate erwartet die EIA 2009 einen durchschnittlichen Fasspreis von 63,50 $.
For anyone not speaking german this is the official Oil watchdog agency of the USofA that says that we are beyond peak oil now with heavily declining oil output for the first time ever next year. Opec countries will reduce oil output from 31,93 Mio Barrel after this year producing 32,44 Mio. Barrel - non Opec countries go from 49,51 Mio. to 49,2 Mio. Barrel. The reduction does not seem much but remember - Peak oil means a bell curved shape and the top of the slope is almost straight until the abyss comes closer. Interesting is that the agency dropped their estimate for next year from 31,59 to 31,13 for the Opec countries - knowing that the current vice president has some stake in that business I wonder if the numbers where made to look a bit better before the election. All that means is that even so demand is rising (yes demand is rising even so there is a financial crisis but the SUVs need to be refilled you know) there just is not enough oil redealy available and tapping "new" reserves is highly expensive, takes about 10-15 years to get an oilfield on the line and there is just not much new to tap anyway. The only stuff left is tarsands - have a look at pictures on google on how pretty that is. So no matter what we are going to get with the financial crisis - be assured that we hear something about oil not being enough for even a short time horizon.
PS: On a side note - the Financial Times ticker linked above has been running for quite a while now (about 4-5 month I think) - this is likely to become a historic document to see how a system collapses in slomotion - I wish they would have a better RSS feed for it so that you can do remix things with it.
In a stunning dumb move the Music Industry of the USA has asked the US government for a $25 billion bailout to pay for the multimillion dollar stars and music managers who did not understand the change needed in their business model. This is the most ridiculous proposal ever. I would not be surprised if it actually goes through. If it happens to go through I am hoping that all music that the labels own becomes public domain - I mean in the end the public paid for it and attach a "lead parachute" by making clear that no manager gets any benefits and has to pay double the taxes of everyone else until the end of their day.
From the American Association of independent music:
The U.S. spends around $695 billion a year on defense so it would be a bargain to support the American music industry and stabilize National and global security. Now, more than ever, America needs the recording industry’s creative musical genius to infect the world with the sound and soul of America.
Right because music helps to spread your bullshit patriotism and american propaganda win wars and make the world a saver place - so some stars and clueless managers need some more millions to free the world from independent music.
PS: By the way I am not 100% sure if the original article was not meant as tongue in cheek considering the source is an independent music platform and the proposal is so extremely over top that if it would be genuine it would set the record for most propaganda laden press piece of modern history.
No this is not my long promised article on creative commons but its some insight why this article never appeared. I found a band that I actually liked musical wise and I whizzed the net to find out more about them - you know some nice postpunktrash80s8bitwomanscreaming music. Interestingly the first articles that I found about the band where about plagiarizing other bands and visual artists who had released their stuff under creative commons. Allegedly Crystal Castles (only really bad myspace site that I am not linking to) stole some riffs and sampled some stuff outright and also used some artwork found on the web licensed under Creative Commons for their promotion t-shirts. Now the band became kind of famous (hey they are a lot of fun after all) and was sported in a commercial.
Now I just had the discussion yesterday - no its not allowed to use other people creative common licensed work if you make money if its not explicitly set to the "commercial attribution" license - which is virtually none of the stuff found. Just have a browse through flickr and search in the advanced search option for stuff that you can use commercially - you get if you are lucky 1% of the results you would normally.
Now of course most of the failure lies with the band itself but MUCH MORE of the failure lies with the creative commons foundation and the non-existing rules about non-commercialism. The most asked question about creative commons must be "Am I doing something commercial?". And guess what - even after sending repeated emails to a lot of people in the digital rights movement including Creative Commons Foundation itself - nobody can answer that question. It seems nobody can answer for sure any questions that goes deeper then the "oh creative commons is so cool and free and makes the world a better place". Don´t understand me wrong. I love what creative commons does - yet in the end they better hammer out ANY legal problem they can not answer to someone who creates content. It seems at the moment for example that putting embeds in your page - in Germany you ARE liable (court opinion from Munich of all places) for copyright infringement even if the video is hosted on another site - while in the US you do NOT seem to be liable (but thats not a given - noone is 100% sure). That is: you post a noncommercial CC video that is hosted on YouTube or other similar places on your for profit site (which in itself is not clear where that starts) you are liable for copyright infringement. And no creative commons does know shit about this. "We can not comment on this" was all I got from 4 different people inside the creative commons foundation. Its a nightmare PR wise and legal wise and I predict this will likely bring Creative Commons to a fall if they do not get their act together on the thorny "grey" issues of their license - heck make mock court examples just so its out of the way once and for all. If they are not doing it a high profile case will come around the next bend and you will have plastered all over everything how insufficient CC is. I was a bit shocked - as a content producer - with the lack of understanding on the part of the CC in these "grey goo" matters.
So going back to the band I can see how they started out all indy like never thought it possible to get a record deal or the label are just friends having a great community and then it all of the sudden took off and they where in the spotlight and the once notforprofit thing turned in some bucks and also some media attention and the original owners of the artwork got upset their CC licensed stuff was used - then the band starting to denying it - being their first record and all and not wanting to spoil their success.
Moral of story - produce your own stuff when you want to be successful - 100% of it not matter what medium you operate the bullet is going to bite you otherwise also its the best way to develop your own handwriting and further the art you are doing on a whole.
Oh and embrace Creative Commons but if you have a question about some legal stuff ASK OUT VERY LOUD - make a stink out of it. I can really only hope that the Creative Commons folks are clearing up the legal mess they are having in front of them before it goes downhill.
PS: I will not post any links because I don´t want to take part of the blame game on this band. Nor do I post any email exchange with the lawyers as they have asked me nicely not to because nobody is 100% sure about the legality and implications of some of the CC license points.
Lou Dorfsman is the person who founded CBS Television - on of the big TV stations in the US - interestingly to have his own media channel. He was also a designer. When in the meeting room of CBS the question was how to decorate a wall Dorfsman had the idea to make a giant typesetting drawer filled with words made out of different typefaces in 3d.
There is an article available at designrelated and then there is a small documentary about the wall:
The paintings of kevincyr are a lot of fun.
When I saw one I was sure that this would be it for todays Picture of the Day - cause I know certain people who's cars look similar but when looking through his gallery I found the ingenious marvel pictured. There is also a different perspective of it here.
This got to be the most badass bikemod out there if it would exist.
(Bear your motherland in mind while casting your eyes on the world. / 60 x 72 / oil on panel)
Well I have a tick for the bamboo paper umbrellas - not that I would wear one but I like them for being a canvas with practical usage and girls tend to look chick with them. Now on top of all that they can apparently act as your iPod or other portable music player ultra loud big badass speaker. Immersing you and your friends into rainless cloud of music and disturbing passerby's with music that probably just does not want to fit under 2000 year old invention creating that culture shock moment for the granny next door.
Oh and wouldn´t it be lovely to have an outdoor party with these? I mean your guest are staying dry, and the noise does not spread to the neightboors and everyone has the best musical position - I guess permanent fixture would be needed so that you have both your hands free doing other stuff.
If there is enough interest its going to be produced - for $100... via gizmodo
One of the best indepth explanation of how the current state of the food chain is, why there is a crisis, why food equals health, why food equals oil and how the fuck to get out of it as fast as possible is written up on the New York Times by Michael Pollan in the form of an open letter to the new ruler of the world the USofA. Apparently Mr. Obama has already read it and included it in some energy dependence meetings. If all the points made in that letter can be fullfilled we see a radical shift that I can only embrace in my fullest. Having looked at the very topic of food production for personal reasons as well as for our podcast the concept given could actually make for a soft landing out of the food crisis. On the other hand it would be so radical that it likely incites riots - the problem with any food related alteration of today economy and society - it needs to happen fast and throughout - there is gain if there are 200 small farmers trying to produce fruits and vegtables when on the field next door they are spraying tons of pesticides on the crops, poisoning water supplies. Same with cattle, if you have huge catle farms that raise cattle inside with anibiotics to get the bugs under control - the farmer who puts the cattle on open fields and tries not use chemicals on the animals will loose out because the diseases are spreading out of these houses. So to change anything in the chain to the effect as Mr. Pollan suggests you need to change it all immediately (and since most fields need a five year recovery from the chemical/oil induced shock this cant happen without people not having enough food).
Interesting times. I think they still might try it - its going to be interesting how the big food producers react to their imminent downfall in the wake of such a change.
One of the more "out there" but very effective ideas he put out to educate (he proposes a school garden of all - all I can say is that in socialistic east germany - you know where everything was so evil that it had to be destroyed - education system first - we learned what crop rotations are imagine that - in primary school !) it to put a barcode (QR Code here we come) with a link to the farm website where it is mandatory that there is a list of all chemicals used in the production, pictures of the farm and - ghasp - a live feed of the farm and for meat a live feed of the slaughterhouse so to educate people about the food chain and make it more transparent...
The government should also throw its support behind putting a second bar code on all food products that, when scanned either in the store or at home (or with a cellphone), brings up on a screen the whole story and pictures of how that product was produced: in the case of crops, images of the farm and lists of agrochemicals used in its production; in the case of meat and dairy, descriptions of the animals’ diet and drug regimen, as well as live video feeds of the CAFO where they live and, yes, the slaughterhouse where they die. The very length and complexity of the modern food chain breeds a culture of ignorance and indifference among eaters. Shortening the food chain is one way to create more conscious consumers, but deploying technology to pierce the veil is another.
A very intense long but amazingly well thought out article. Its what the food culture should be like - if it fails to get there in the not so distant future so will civilization fail.
The Food Issue: Farmer in Chief at the New York Times.
Ah I wanted to make this category for a long time so here it is: Picture of the day. Today it comes from a really funny photo series called "man´s best friend" by Ted Sabarese on the Reuben Miller Blog. Head over there to see some more along the same line. Just for the formidable smile.
Ugh right on the heels of "free 3d tutorials" I can post something that is on par with free 3d tutorials - free stock footage. If you ever needed some special cloud backdrop, falling rain to comp over or similar and have looked at certain sites that sell you these you know that you can not afford them ever (we are talking about $200 for ONE 30 second clip in HD resolution). So the great free internet whispered to me today that there is a site now giving you free access to their royalty free stock footage collection - not as pro and full yet as the for pay options but on the right track. And yes you get the footage in HD quality too - just in 30fps (frucking NTSC)...
With tutorials costing as much as €200 and software mostly completely out of reach learning professional computer graphics that incorporates 3d and highend compositing is mostly for rich people - or those that live a dangerous live or those that have too much time on their hand or those that just touch a software and understand it. So it had to happen at one point that digital tutor and gnomon school for visual fx had their market taken over by an open source project. GuerrillaCG is that project and it aims to bring easy to understand 3d video tutorials to the masses for free. I can say that I applaud that idea and say "about fucking time". Maybe I am doing one or two tutorials for them as time permits (and it never permits over here ffs)
The GuerrillaCG Project is a free non for profit organisation that hopes to make it easier to learn high-end computer graphics. We are building a team of volunteers to create videos, that describe in an easy and understandable manner, the fundamental concepts of computer graphics. Because core concepts rarely change with time, these videos have the potential to teach for many years into the future and help thousands of people all over the world. With enough people, it's possible that we can create a vast library covering many of the core concepts of computer graphics.
Here is one tutorial on how to do edge-loop-perfect face modeling in maya.
Take a guy who has a very successfull sunglass bussiness, some hardware geniouses a friend who is an indy movie producer - shake everything and let sit for 3 years. Whats the outcome? A completely change landscape of digital cinema recording. I am of course talking about the RED cameras. Not only has RED proven they can produce a camera that rivals cameras 10-20 times the price they also threat to overtake every other market that has "pro" in it - pro sumer video, pro-photography. The big camera manufacturers are shocked and pump out their own versions of video capable photocameras (because the video cameras have already lost with their lousy 1/3rd sensors and tape mentality). So the newest competitor on the block? Canon EOS 5D MarkII. Its probably the most best pro photocamera you want to get short before middle format but thats it. While it does not inherit the embarrassing sheering effect of the Nikon Pro Cam (the name I forgot) when you move the camera "too fast" it shares the same problem as all other photocams with video function out there: H.264 only. I understand that most photo camera design teams do not get the fact that people are actally doing something in post with the recordings - emblematic with all the "demo" videos have been "not post processed because the companies want to show you the raw footage" - and while stunning its about as far as this footage gets you because doing ANYTHING - even a slight color correction on H.264 footage - even with an insanely high bitrate - will look like crap - especially if you have to recompress it afterwards for web delivery. H.264 is a time based compressor - and the realtime H.264 is even worse because it allocates the same bitrate across all of the movie - leaving you extremely lacking when it comes to fast motion video. Heck up to 8x8 pixel can be combined to one in the color channel of H.264. That leaves you with a 320x240 color resolution when you shoot in HD. Its a nice gimmick and for news style stuff its probably alright (but I wouldn´t want to design the post pipeline trying to even just edit the stuff - non iFrame codecs just don´t edit well - realtime scrubbing is almost impossible etc).
So Nikon and Canon can just try again this was a miss when it comes to the video capabilities.
Until then everyone is looking at RED on November 13th when they show their revised Scarlet 3k camera that will cost you around the same price as the canon photo cam (thats around 2.500 lines x around 4500 rows - thats "only" 11 Megapixels - VIDEO and RAW and iFrame) and brings better photo functionality on top of the exceptional post friendly video functionality.
Oh and if you run a company that makes consumer goods - this is how you should run it:
With 11 days to go, I want to take a moment to thank all of you. We have listened. At 1st, it was difficult. We kept saying to ourselves "don't these guys know how difficult this stuff is?"... and "if they want that, they should try and build one themselves!". Then we really began to get comfortable with the tiger we had grabbed hold of. And many of the suggestions actually seemed within reach. So we decided to really stretch ourselves. The results of that stretch will become apparent on the 13th. Many of you have had input that pushed us to reach higher.
Of course there have been many suggestions that are just out of the question. They are either impossible or not realistic at a reasonable price. If those suggestions were serious (I sincerely hope they were not)... a few might actually be disappointed. But I doubt it. Especially if everything is considered.
Long way around saying that many of you have made a difference. That really is what this forum is supposed to be about. If we responded harshly early on, it was just because we didn't know how to do it all. Now we do. Well, at least much of it.
Put your helmet on. The 13th is near. It is only fitting that I should post here 1st, then on red.com. You guys matter.
Jim
The world is changing indeed. I have been now working on our website for over a year and at one point I ditched support for Internet Explorer in favor of coding standard compliant XHTML. I wanted a website for the future and not for the past. I am only testing in Firefox but foremost in Safaris Webkit (the developer nightly builds of Safari) because by all that I can see it is just the most standard compliant browser out there - so if stuff looks good in there and validates you have good code. Now I am still looking at browser statistics and pander if ditching IE was such a good decision because its still at 75% browser market. Then along comes a blog entry and the world just get a different face. After Google incorporating WebKit in their Google Browser Microsoft thinks about following along with a future generation browser of their own that uses WebKit. I don´t know if you can understand what that means. But that would put Safaris WebKit in the number one browser spot quite instantly surpassing Firefox. That also means the world is left with only two competiting browsers but both of those try to be standard compliant as hell. (Hey I am not counting Opera - who as the total underdog browser still does not seem it necessary to have a standards compliant rendering engine). Heck Firefox and Safari both push CCS3 out the door and SVG is at least in Webkit working very well to the point where you can start animating in it. That means standard compliant moving vector interfaces with custom fonts - together with the audio and video tags that are coming as well this means not only bye bye Internet Exploder but also bye bye Flash... Oh happy days.... Of course the whole thing is taken with a grain of salt as there is nothing official about it - but one can dream right?
"Open source is interesting," he said. "Apple has embraced Webkit and we may look at that, but we will continue to build extensions for IE 8."
John Williams is the composer for what can´t be argued the most successful film scores of Hollywood in the last 40 years (Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park etc pp) . This guy who goes by the youtube name Coray Vidal made an a capella tribute with the help of the comedy group moosebutter. Watch it, its an amazing idea.
via tims twitterstream.
Die viel zu lange Podcastsendepause ist hiermit offiziell beendet . Der gestrige Anlass gab uns Zündstoff alle uns bekannten web 2.0 Anwendungen auf einem Schirm zu öffnen und das Geschehen so live mitzuverfolgen, das lockte sogar ein Gast aus dem fernen Berlin an, welchen wir viel zu selten mit dabei haben, Mr Wolkenberg war auch persönlich zugegen, wobei man sich hier um den Titel streiten könnte. Jedenfalls wurde zivilisiert diskutiert und berichtet, irgendwann hing das Mikro überm Tisch und der rote rec.button ward gedrückt. Schließlich versuchten wir alle proto relevanten Themen verbal upzudaten, was angesichts der späten Stunde, dem klaren alkoholhaltigem Getränk aus dem Osten und langen Pause ein wahrlich vollkommendes Resultat schuf.
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So this is the day when there is the decision if the human capitalistic world will either die fast or slow. The day when the americans will for once not disappoint, or when the machines rise and take matters into their shadowy masters hands. Its just the day the world has been waiting for the last eight years, they day when everything might change or nothing. dailykos.com has an election prediction game going on for those that want to win a MacBook - I was inclined to take part, after closing about 10.000 people took part in the gamble. Here is my ridiculous prediction:
57 Democratic Senate seats
41 Republican Senate seats
260 Democratic House seats
175 Republican House seats
384 Obama Electoral Votes
154 McCain Electoral Votes
55.4 Obama Popular Vote Percentage
43.3 McCain Popular Vote Percentage
I think this election will be a blowout - if it isn´t its because their are dirty tricks - but since the margins in the trackers are so overwhelmingly Obama across the line even in states that have never voted for a democrat in over 20 years and the voter turnout machine of Obama seems to be on a scale never seen before too I would think that the republicans are not so inclined to alter the vote considerably as this would quite certainly mean civil war and I tend to believe that even a lot of Republicans won´t want that as that would nullify their assets over night - and money is all they think of when they go into an election. So I predict this blowout scenario above. I call Florida and Ohio for Obama and I don´t give McCain the slightest chance that he takes Pennsylvania (that is were the fraud would happen if it happens by the way). I give Obama another 1-2 states because of the cellphone problem of most polls (polls including cellphone users tend to poll be 2% higher for Obama) and because of his ground forces organization.
I am a bit sad that South Dakota is not as close as North Dakota - that would have been my favorite pickup for a Democrat.
But in the end there is not much change going to happen in the US of A with either presidential candidate. With McCain the fall would go really fast, Obama might be able to prolong the fall for another 1-2 years, but with the massive debt currently in the country, the two biggest car companies failing and with the whole country on the credit syringe anybodies hand trying to run the country are tight - except if this person attempts to switch to another political system - which no mainstream US candidate will ever try.
We will continue a tradition tonight watching the polls coming in and discussion politics, current and future ones - and todays topic is more a future political system then the current US election. If you know me or mogreens and want to have a fruitful talk come over to mogreens house tonight after 21 CET.
Since I get my last wisdom teeth pulled in about 20 minutes I thought I share the last bit of wisdom in me - no actually I am in a gloomy doomy mood and want to spread that around - no in fact I think topic is too important to be pulled out with my wisdom teeth - anyway...
I have talked to a lot of people about the "financial crisis" in the last weeks and to everyone I talked to it seemed a bit distant to affect them personally (with the few exceptions of the persons who are in the doom camp already). They all had to endure my preaching - if one bit of the capitalistic market comes to a proper grind the whole system collapses. Why do I think that? Look at the world out there. This whole system is like a house of cards, carefully stacked on top of each other of the last 100 years. One layer of cards made the next layer possible and then the next and the next. The bottom layer is comprised of the oil chain and the food chain, next one is housing, then transport, then consumer goods, then luxury goods (its much more fine grained but you get the idea). Now the thing with house of cards is that any part can topple the whole deck - even those on top - but the ones underneath definitely topple everything. Another analogy I am using is clockworks. If just one of the tiny teeth (ha you thought I would get around the post without mentioning teeth again he ;) is being pulled out the result is that the whole clockwork consisting of millions of teeth is coming to a halt. So same with modern day capitalism with a global supply and demand scheme. One part of the whole system stands still the rest will follow very very soon. Now the thing with the "financial crisis" is that at first it doesn´t look like it will affect you personally (not unless a savings bank is bankrupt and people flock to the ATMs to get their nonexistent money out - its all virtual - there is no money because it has all been lend out and then some). I have been watching with open eyes because I believed that pulling that much money from under the market out there must have an affect somewhere in the "real" market (not the virtual "we trade empty numbers" money market) rather sooner then later. Well it seems that food is actually the one thing that might be affected first.
Yes food the thing everyone needs for living. Why? Because our food system at the moment depends on proper fertilization and since everyone just wanted to make profit in the last years they ignored any natural fertilization cycle (crop rotation for example) and instead poisened the field by overloading it with industrial NPK (Nitrogen Phosphorous, Potassium) fertilization techniques. To switch a field from that to a natural cycle takes about 5 years minimum. Now why is that important? NPK fertilizers are freakishly expensive (big part of it is made from natural gas f.e.) and since the banks are extremely nervous they do not give the farmers any loans to get fertilizers - which had been the norm up till this year. No fertilizers mean that on bad fields you can loose up to 70% of your crop. Thats 70% less food on the market - that means skyrocking prices in the supermarket that means a lot of people will be hungry - what this means I don´t want to think about.
This is one scenario of how the system might collapse - one that is already in the making (means its already happening to some extend). There are more paths to doom but happily also some paths out so not all is lost. Then again looking at the world politics I have not that much hope for a instant enlightening of the ruling caste.
Millions will starve (on dailykos.com)
Recent rains have improved seeding conditions, allowing farmers to begin planting soybeans in parts of Mato Grosso, Brazil. Farmers now face another problem, the lack of fertilizer. Even farmers with access to credit have not received their fertilizer due to a distribution delay. A Cuiaba newspaper reports that one producer who normally plants about 15,000 acres of soybeans will plant 10,000 this year because he did not receive enough fertilizer
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With food and energy prices soaring around the world, a constant supply of high-quality, affordable food is no longer guaranteed, the officials are warning Britons. That could mean an era of scarcity like Britain's 1940-54 food rationing, during the war and its aftermath
So it seems this has been already through all the major blogs I must have missed it. Apparently the image fulgurator is a device that can project images onto anything. The clue is that the images are not visible to the human eye but they do show up on photographs. That allows an (prank)artist to alter often photographed sites and have the tourists wonder what is going on when they snap a picture and the photo looks different then in real life. The fulguration device was developed by Julius von Bismarck from Berlin. How it is constructed can be seen on his site.
The tube video shows the thing in action:
I must have missed this but these guys are doing a cool thing. They take video audio and text streems of the presidential debates while they are happening and remixing them live on stage in a "news commentator" like setting - only that they are just talking with pictures. Without music its bound to be not so energetic as the ReVolution08 movie from Coldcut a couple of days ago - but their approach is at least as relevant. Its like a live audiovisual commentary that puts the spotlight of the event to subtleties that you wouldn´t see if you just saw the TV version. And what I also love about them is that they stress the live character of their event not even attempting to make a recorded version available - some things are just better live I guess.
Here is their trailer:
ReConstitution 2008 - Live Presidential Debates Remix by Sosolimited from Sosolimited on Vimeo.
A PEW research comes to the conclusion that internet viewership is up 23% from 4 years ago when people look for news about the current US election. TV has declined 4% and all other media basically staying flat. That makes Internet the overall No2 resource and if the trend hold up it takes only about another 4 years to dethrone TV. Oh happy days. If Obama manages to win on tuesday the internet will have paid a big role in that.
Saturday is a good day to reflect on life (for me somehow always better then sundays where I just want to be outside and clear my mind). So stumbling over an actual insightful article that is more philosophical then political, is somehow timeless is a great joy. So today I did stumble over such an article by the "Daily Dish" blogger of The Atlantic Andrew Sullivan. The article is called "Why I blog" and is very very long but I would suggest that every blogger wades through it. I always enjoy Andrews witty insightfull political commentary and this article outside the political scope is no different. Its a nice description of what blogs are where they came from and how they tick. The money quote on page one:
"For bloggers, the deadline is always now. Blogging is therefore to writing what extreme sports are to athletics: more free-form, more accident-prone, less formal, more alive. It is, in many ways, writing out loud."
Blogging as an accident prone fun alive extreme sport. Its is intimate but public exposing yourself to the outside world by informing the outside world of your thinking and becoming a puzzle piece of the world wide narrative.
Sullivan also offers an insight why blogging is such a boon to the writing crowd compared to constant delays reediting and rewriting in more traditional medias. This makes it possible to be more fearless (coming back to the extreme sports category) when publishing more directly speaking ones mind.
You have to express yourself now, while your emotions roil, while your temper flares, while your humor lasts. You can try to hide yourself from real scrutiny, and the exposure it demands, but it’s hard. And that’s what makes blogging as a form stand out: it is rich in personality.
A very recommended read.
So why do I blog? Mainly because I believe in the world narrative being written by bloggers and everyone should be part of it - its the personal angle the one where politics, the environment and the arts matter (to me). Secondly to give out some of what I learned online offline through trial and error through accidents through investigative passion that sometimes creeps up on me. Thirdly to put spotlight on local events because I blog in english but live in Germany I have a different audience then MoGreens for example that just resonates to different parts of the world who might be interested what happens in this small community over here.
Most of all blogging is a lot of fun and full of surprises its somehow makes you feel like you are a human beeing and not just an ant in a system. If you don´t blog you should try it out one day its liberating.
If all this sounds postmodern, that’s because it is. And blogging suffers from the same flaws as postmodernism: a failure to provide stable truth or a permanent perspective.
