] 4. Remove every extraneous word
]
] You want to get up on a soapbox and preach? Fine. Get one
] and try your local park. You want to write for money? Get
] to the point. And if you remove all the excess garbage
] and discover you can't find the point, tear up what you
] wrote and start all over again . . . or try something
] new.

[ Holy shit! Steven FUCKING King is encouraging writers to be concise?! Every single one of his full length novels could be reduced by 20-50%, at least. Ok, fine, i can only speak to the ones i've read, and I'll admit I gave up on his ass some time ago, but shit man, this motherfucker can describe a scene for 14 pages without getting around to any action on the part of the actors in the story. -k]

Everything you Need to Know About Writing Successfully: in Ten Minutes (Stephen King)

] The small town of Galena, Alaska, is tired to pay 28
] cents/kwh for its electricity, three times the national
] average. Today, Galena "is powered by generators burning
] diesel that is barged in during the Yukon River's
] ice-free months," according to Reuters. But Toshiba,
] which designs a small nuclear reactor named 4S (for
] "Super Safe, Small, & Simple"), is offering a free
] reactor to the 700-person village, reports the New York
] Times (no reg. needed).

[ I've posted about this before... I think it looks very promising. -k]

Alaska Village Moves from Diesel to 'Micro-Nuke'

[ It's a quicktime movie, so don't click unless you are prepared to watch an adaptation of Baby Got Back, in which the bible is substituted for the large ass.

I'm not joking. And I'm not sure he is either. -k]

babygotbook512.mov (video/quicktime Object)

] "We are definitely going to do religious
] outreach. We're definitely going to reach out to the
] evangelical community," he said.

What part of standing up for what we believe in puts reaching out to authoritarian christians at the top of the list? The actual priority for the party is "attempt to emulate the other guys because they are doing so well right now."

[ Yeah, that doesn't make me happy, though I didn't like the other guys any better. Still, I was kind of hoping he'd roll in there and say "Will we court religious voters? Of course, because religion in america is important, but we don't believe in exploiting religion in the service of politics, and we will not do that." Pandering to the fundie element -- and yes, I am making an equivalence relation between evangelicals and fundies -- should never be part of the democratic platform. -k]

Dean elected DNC chairman - The Washington Times: Nation/Politics - February 13, 2005

[ I finally got around to finishing this, so I'm finally ready to meme it...

It covers the issue fairly well, I think, for one asserting that while exclusive copyrights do a good job of providing a system of revenue for major rightsholders, and established, successful artists, exclusivity isn't a boon for unknown artists, and in fact hinders them creatively.

There's a decent discussion of the fact that digitalization hasn't actually provided all the amazing things everyone thought it was going to, and some discussion of why.

Personally, what I took out of this, aside from the things i had already concluded about copyright, was that there exists a huge potential for reputation systems which can take the noise of so many competing voices and filter it into a truly useful channel for promoting quality work, that would otherwise never get noticed. This article talks about disintermediation of the distribution channels for music -- the internet is that, the ultimate lack of mediation. What's really needed is a method of mediating which isn't based as much on the marketing dollars of the majors, but on the interests and opinions of the people who listen to the music. -k]

Artists' earnings and copyright

] It's 20 hours before the third annual Dutch Open
] lock-picking competition will begin, but the room is
] already packed with 50 or so men and women wielding
] burglar tools and representing the international steel
] bolt-hacker diaspora.

[ Cool -k]

Wired 13.02: The Lock Busters

Situation:
you are driving down the road or stopped at a stop light and when you glance around you see a woman sitting alone in her car crying her eyes out.

what is your reaction?

Do you even give it a second thought?

What do you think about?

How does it make you feel?

[ I'd think about it long enough to arrive at the conclusion that life sucks sometimes, for everyone. I'd also wonder what was so bad that she broke down right there... is she overly dramatic or did something *actually bad* happen. Then I'd think about one or two things that i might be sad about before moving on, probably because I got hungry for some pizza. -k]

A question to ponder

] An argument that judgment matters but knowledge does not
] is profoundly anti-intellectual. It implies that we do
] not need ever to learn anything in order make mature
] decisions. We can just proceed off some simple
] ideological template and apply it to everything. This
] sort of thinking is part of what is wrong with this
] country. We wouldn't call a man in to fix our plumbing
] who knew nothing about plumbing, but we call pundits to
] address millions of people on subjects about which they
] know nothing of substance.
]
]
] But I did not say that Goldberg's judgment is always
] faulty. I said he doesn't at the moment know what he is
] talking about when it comes to Iraq and the Middle East,
] and there is no reason anyone should pay attention to
] what he thinks about those subjects, as a result.

[ This is Juan Cole disassembling pundit Jonah Goldberg in no uncertain terms... he says a good deal of interesting and informative things in the process, however, so I found it worth a read, even though the political rap-battle aspect didn't interest me particularly. -k

p.s. Another choice quote :
"Goldberg is hoping to Kerryize me because my position on the war can't be reduced to a sound bite. I don't really care. I'm not running for office and I'm not making any money to speak of from this punditry gig. If people can't imagine that you can hate Saddam and also think a unilateral war and long-term occupation of an Arab country are bad ideas, that is their problem."

I should add, from my standpoint, I'm not 100% with Juan on this one... it's our problem too, because misinformed people make bad decisions, and in particular use the lack of a rebuttal as supporting evidence for those bad decisions. He may be saying that it is impossible to convince the sort of people who have such a strongly held opinion otherwise, which is possible. ]

Informed Comment

] The Kleptones ? Bag of shite, mate. Went right downhill
] after that bloke Eric joined. I remember going to watch
] my mate Ralf back in the old days, y'know, when it was
] his band, doing his songs 'n' stuff and they were well
] wicked. The Free Butt, The Albert, The Pressure Point,
] they played everywhere. Not may people got to see 'em but
] when you're on at 7pm most people are still havin' their
] tea, splashing a bit of water on their face in readiness
] for the evening's entertainment, but those half a dozen
] people that had wandered into the gig straight from work
] loved it. Oh, and the sound guy from the Pressure Point
] said he knew someone who worked for EMI and he was gonna
] die when he heard them. So they were set, right ?

[ What they actually are is the avant-garde mashup darlings of the interweb. I was drawn in some time ago by a track from their "Yoshimi Battles the Hip-hop Robots" which blended Flaming Lips with Public Enemy's "By the time I get to Arizona" and fragments of MLK speech. We quickly got hold of the "Never Trust Originality" EP, which is also quite awesome.

I picked up another 2 sets last night, "From Detroit to J.A." and "A Night at the Hip-Hopera". The former I haven't tried out all of yet, but the latter is a mix of classic Queen tracks and modern rap/hip-hop from the likes of KRS-1, Kelis, ODB, De La Soul, Eminem Vanilla Ice, Aaliyah, Beastie Boys, Missy Elliott and a pile of others, not to mention clips from Aqua Teen Hunger force, Mallrats, and other such pop culture faves.

These guys are something close to the ultimate musical expression of our generation -- full of references that appeal to our endless love for trivia, plenty of beats and clever, non-obvious pairings which produce often surprising and exceptional new forms.

The tunes are available on their site via bittorrent, and I highly recommend all you kids check them out. -k]

about the kleptones

] Defense contractors are shaking down model airplane and
] tank makers for punishing royalties on their model kits.
] One result is that kit makers are switching to WWI models
] and to models of enemy armaments. Nice going, defense
] contractors, you took our tax dollars and used them to
] rid the market of all military toys except Nazi tanks and
] planes.

[ Nice. Don't miss, further down on the bb main page, this story :
"The Eiffel Tower's likeness had long since been part of the public domain, when in 2003, it was abruptly repossessed by the city of Paris. That's the year that the SNTE, the company charged with maintaining the tower, adorned it with a distinctive lighting display, copyrighted the design, and in one feel swoop, reclaimed the nighttime image and likeness of the most popular monument on earth. In short: they changed the actual likeness of the tower, and then copyrighted that."

Super. -k]

Boing Boing: Defense contractors demand royalties on model plane and tank kits