StinkFight.com

Michael W. Dean and Joseph Matheny chat on the phone and there’s no way these two talkers could interview one or the other. So they rap together, in a concentric hypertextual parenthetical way, TCP over IP, about how to make money by releasing things for free, the coming apocalypse, a secret underground lair, and much more.

Indie media mavericks Michael W. Dean and Joseph Matheny interview each other. (Part two of two. from alterati.com)

Get the podcast here.

(You should be of legal age to view this):

Animated GIF of a ferret attacking a rubber schlong in a bathtub.  (If you’re a guy, this may make you a little queasy. Personally, it just makes me giggle.)
Was created years ago by my friend Li’l Mike. The pet has long since passed on to the great ferret field in the sky, but the GIF lives on.

Went to look for a FireWire cable today, had to fight through a huge box of tangled junk. Had too many of everything, all my cable crap from the past 15 years…stuff not being used, but taking up space (and taking up sanity when I go to find something.) I had cables representing technology from 1920 to now.

I ended up throwing out:

11 USB cables

3 FireWire cables

1 S-video cable

2 Coax cable TV cables

3 CAT-5 networking cables

2 telephone cables

7 assorted audio micro- and mini-cables

3 guitar cables

6 RCA audio cables

2 DSL modems

1 Wireless router

1 two-prong ungrounded extension cord

3 new printer cartridges from a printer that died and got replaced by a better printer

2 computer monitor power cables

5 “wall wart” power adapters for gear that died a long time ago

…….and a partridge in a pear tree.

I thought about putting them on Freecycle.org, but I really hate having people come to my house. Also thought about putting it all up on a MySpace bulletin and mailing the box out to someone, but MySpace recently blocked one of my sites and called it “head lice”, so I don’t like going there any more.

The “obsolete/excess technology” idea of having all these cables and boxes I don’t use made me think about one of the only performance art things I’ve ever seen that I loved. It was Attaboy and a friend standing on a couple tons of last year’s computers in 1999 at the San Francisco dump, doing an impassioned spoken word thing about the tentative nature of evolving technology, in front of a crowd of about 60 really happy people. I loved it.

Great pix of our gay switchy littermate boy cats, Fuzzbucket McFluffernutter and Peanut McFluffernutter.

A very cool guy named Torodd Eriksen from a town called Kirkenes (in Norway, on the Russian border) asked me to come tour the region with DIY or DIE and do Q&A and filmmaking seminars. He wrote me:

And after Kirkenes and Norway - you do the same thing in Russia. Russian societies are so hungry for artistic and political impulses. Generally speaking Russia is a safe country, but still it is one of the most unsafe countries for journalists. For that reason alone the skills and tools of citizen-journalism and documentation is very important in Russia……..

Beautiful sunny downtown Kirkenes:

I replied:

Three years ago I would have jumped to do this, and probably would have tried to meet a pretty girl there, get married, and stay.

However, now I’m married here, really happy, and feel I don’t want to travel in an unstable region where journalists get kidnapped. I basically believe I would be considered a “journalist” by some people, because I write for this well-known media company O’Reilly, for the O’Reilly Digital Media site:
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/3220

How about this. Why don’t you tour this region in my stead, show DIY or DIE, keep the money, and you can bring a laptop and I’ll do a Skype Webcam question-and-answer period at each show? You can hook me up to the video projector, you’ll take questions from the audience, translate to English, ask me, I’ll answer, and you can translate back.
Much respect,

MWD

Debra Jean Dean reads the US Constitution:
http://www.debrajeandean.com/constitution/index.htm

Free Creative Commons audio book.

United States Constitution (with all amendments), read by Debra Jean Dean, engineered by Michael W. Dean

Audio file covered by Creative Commons, feel free to share and link.

“The best recording with the best voice of any free, non-DRM audiobook of
the US Constitution, anywhere.”

My friend Lydia sent me this:—
You can order a phone call (19.95) or a “telephonic appearance” by Brandon Cruz of the Dead Kennedys for $300.
—

There’s a bunch more people who ain’t getting much other work these days who will call you on the phone for money too:
http://www.hollywoodiscalling.com/
—
I find that so incredibly sad.

MWD

Come January 1, 2008, France will extend its ban on smoking to bars, discotheques, restaurants, hotels, casinos and cafes.

It’s the end of the world, and I feel sick.

Xmas gift I just got from my insurance company, along with the warning that was included.

Jesus Christ. I used to have a dentist who gave me candy after each visit, but this is unbelievable.

As soon as I saw it, I photographed it, took it outside and threw it in the trash inside a tied plastic bag, came in and washed my hands.

I just called them.
I asked to take me off their mailing list. She tried to tell me it was “probably safe”. (!)

I said, “My mother and daughter both died of cancer. I don’t want things coming in the mail that say ‘may cause cancer.’ TAKE ME OFF YOUR MAILING LIST.”

She said “OK”.

I make it a point to never turn down an interview. Ever. I tell people this in my books, and in person, and it’s a matter of pride for me. I don’t care if it’s NPR, the BBC, or some kid in his bedroom with a e-zine that no one reads, I do every interview, and take time with it.

I got a request from a guy the other day to be interviewed on his podcast. He hasn’t started the podcast yet, so essentially has no audience. But I immediately said “I’ll do it.”

The next day, I changed my mind. See, the guy had mentioned people he’s friends with that I’m friends with. (This is common, gives some legitimacy, and I have no problem with it. I do it myself when trying to get people to do stuff for me.) He mentioned three people I know. I like two of them a lot, and respect their work. But the third was an ex-sex partner who stalked me hard after I dumped her. For years.

This morning I woke up and sent the guy this:

You know what, I’m going to decline this interview.
I don’t want to think about ___________, and communicating with someone who is friends with her makes me think about her.
I mean no disrespect to you, I checked out your stuff and it’s solid. But whatever she told you that would made you think I’d respond favorably to having her name mentioned when approaching me…..whatever it was, it wasn’t the truth.

She’s a “predator posing as a house pet”. Which is not to say she’s dangerous, but she is the most annoying person I’ve ever encountered. She does not know the meaning of “You’re bothering me. Go away.” If she and I lived in the same city, I’d have long ago taken her to court and put a restraining order on her for her years of endless harassment by phone, e-mail, MySpace, and snail mail.
Good luck with your podcast,
Respectfully,

MWD

I told my friend Skip about it, and he asked me “so what’s the story? What did I miss? I replied:

I dumped this chick I had when I moved to LA. She’s in Frisko.
I had her down to LA to stay a week once. I dropped her after, because she was calling me every day after I told her to call me less.
She started calling me more. I said “Just go away”. She kept at it. I blocked her e-mail address, she made new ones. I moved. She got my new phone number. I told her about 30 times, in an escalating yelling voice “GO THE FUCK AWAY AND NEVER CONTACT ME AGAIN!!!!!”
She kept it up. she still, to this day, writes me letters and mails packages to my PO box. I throw them in the trash at the post office without opening them. She still e-mails me once in a while, all weepy with “please like me” shit in the sig line. I delete them unread and she eventually starts a new e-mail address to try to get through to me. She knows I want nothing to do with her, and knows I’m now married, and still sends me stuff.

She has systematically followed in my footsteps, becoming a filmmaker, and an advocate of DIY artists. I’m fine with that, only mention it because it seems pertinent to the story. I don’t mind influencing people, but I really value my privacy.

The chick has unresolved daddy issues from 35 years ago that have nothing to do with me, but she insists they do and that I need to help her solve them. She’s told me that.

The guy who contacted me is a podcaster in Frisko who wanted to interview me via Skype, dropped her name, along with a few of my real friends’ names, as people he knows, to get me to want to do something with him. She probably told him that I’m her friend.

I almost would have done it anyway, but he also said “I can do it by Skype or come to LA to interview you”, I thought that was very odd (it’s a fucking long drive). I imagined she’d jump out of his trunk or something when he got to my house.

–MWD

At 01:36 AM 12/7/2007, Chris <gedgec@gmail.com> wrote:

My name is Chris and I help with the running of www.godfrey-diy.co.uk

I was looking for sites containing anything DIY related and I found your site diynow.org in Google. I was wondering if you would exchange links with us as……

No. Our sites are not about related topics. At all.

www.diynow.org is the site for my book on do-it-yourself music creation and promotion. It has nothing to do with home improvement. You’re confused because of the difference between the UK and US meanings of “DIY”.

Good luck,
MWD

Photos of Brian Childers, my friend who recently passed away. Photos by Barbara Vaughan, used with permission.

————–

Brian in 1985

————–

Brian (middle) in front of CBGBs in 1988

————–

Brian (left) with cute girls (Barbara Vaughn on far right)

————–

Brian (left) in 1990

————–

Brian in cool creepy makeup while in Bomb.

————–

Brian eats the worm.

————–

My good friend and old roommate, Kurt Shute; Greg Johnston, Brian Childers.

—

(click here if you are over 18 to see this photo, it’s got Jay’s dick in it.)

Brian when he was in Bomb. L to R, Michael Dean, Tony Fag, Brian Childers, Jay Crawford.

——-

Obit I wrote for Brian is here.

Guestbook for Brian, put up by his friend Dave, is here.

Edgar Ivan Carranza (”Eddy Sky” to friends) was my good friend, and a was a roadie/go go dancer on tour for my band Bomb.

Eddie died of AIDS in 1995.

I am really missing him today for some reason.
Eddy was a really sweet guy. Great painter. Smart. Funny. Very beautiful. Very bisexual. And loved pleasure in all its forms. Including needle drugs.

His grandfather was the president of Mexico:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Revolution#Venustiano_Carranza
Eddy told me that his grandfather’s heart is in a clay jar in a museum in Mexico City.
Here’s a song I wrote for Eddy:

http://www.kittyfeet.com/lil25.htm

http://www.kittyfeet.com/stuff/little25.mp3
It’s got an answering machine message from Eddy at the end of it. Telling me to come visit before he dies. I did.
Here’s the list of dead people I know:

http://www.kittyfeet.com/dead.htm
MWD

Jesus, I’ve had two friends younger than me die in the past two months. I’m depressed about it, depressed about the loss of Brian and of Liza, and don’t really have the energy to write an obit for Brian that does him justice, but….

Brian Childers was a great guy. Met him in Charlottesville, Virginia 1984 when I started playing guitar in his band, The Beef People. We stayed in touch, and he later moved to New York and was in the popular hardcore band, Crawlpappy. At some point, Brian joined my band Bomb for one tour, singing some and playing bass some, to free me up to just sing.

Brian lived in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, which is literally the Last Exit To Brooklyn, and the setting of the novel and movie by the same name. Rough place. Last time I saw him (when Bomb played at CBGBs and was recording with Laswell at Greenpoint Brooklyn in 1990), we stayed at Brian’s house (directly across from the Red Hook Projects, the largest housing projects in the world, and a damn dangerous place to be). Brian showed me the spot three blocks from his home where some kid had shot him through the shoulder from a distance for target practice. He thought the kid was aiming for his head and missed. Brian was a tough motherfucker, and sweet as hell.

I am told Brian died of kidney failure.

Brian died last Saturday, November 17th, 2007, in Washington DC. I’ve confirmed this with two friends of his, including Rick from Crawlpappy.

Photo at top of Brian from six years ago sent to me by J Braltar. Thanks man! More photos of Brian are here.

(I have been trying to find Brian on the Internet for a few years, and don’t have a photo more recent than the one below, of me playing guitar and him singing, in the Beef People in 1985. If anyone has a more recent photo, please e-mail it to me and I’ll post it.)

I just got word that my friend Liza passed away from complications from treatment for Leukemia.

She was a great person, a wonderful dancer and had a really sparkly personality. Quick-witted, sharp mind and I really dug her.

Meh.

I hadn’t had an e-mail from her in a while, and just got the news.

She’s in DIY or DIE. I’ll upload her extras segment today.

MWD

Get episode 0053

Thurs, 25 Oct 2007

YUP! IT’S BEEN ONE YEAR TODAY!

EPISODE 55

976-BeckyChat! (3)

Michael W. Dean and Debra Jean Dean have a chat with our special little friend, Becky Haycox. (Part 3 of 4)

Checking out womens’ racks over your wife’s shoulder, sexism, ominsexual people, San Francisco, how to deal with your boyfriend working at a strip club, feminist strippers, couples who like the same pornography, taking your girlfriend on a date to see the strippers, why women like romance in their sex, other ways that women differ from men, why these chicks hate male bashing, sleeping with more than one person without being a slut, how to get rid of a panhandler, why there’s no such thing as spare change, seeing the Sex Pistols in San Antonio on January 8, 1978 at Randy’s Rodeo, Pink Floyd never murdered anyone, Syd Barrett rocks, and how to freak out the youth of today.

Photos of the day here.

Entire episode recorded on location on the street in Ventura, California on the Zoom H2 portable handy recorder.

My dad just sent me another cool thing connected with John Eddy being flim-flammed in the oil scam. It’s a letter that John wrote from a mental hospital in Los Angeles to his sister Ida (my great aunt, who lived with us when I was a little kid.)

My dad said John was shell shocked from WW I, and ended up in the sanatarium. The letter is rather paranoid, talking about the different times someone tried to poison him to get his land.

I don’t think the letter was ever mailed, it was in this envelope (note three-cent stamp.)

The envelope is pre-addressed to one of the companies that was ripping him off. (It was probably a pre-paid envelope to make his monthly “land development” payments with.)

By the way, I talked to my buddy John Murphey at the New Mexico historical society today, he’s going to be the Los Angeles area this weekend and may be able to come over to get the papers and have dinner. Yay!

Here’s the letter:

I talked to a buddy of mine the other day for the first time in a while. He’s one of the most creative people I know.

I asked him what he’s doing for a living. He said “experiential marketing.” I had to say “What’s that?” He said, “I’m paid by cell phone companies to go into bars with two hot chicks. We party with people and show them our new video cell phones. We drink with them, take photos, let them use the phone, then get them to give us their e-mail address and send them the pictures later. They end up having a great experience and associate it with that particular cell phone brand.”

He’s not supposed to tell the people he works for the company. He’s supposed to be just a cool dude with some hot chicks who happen to like this particular cell phone.

BLEAHHHHHHH!

This seems really sinister to me.

And as everyone knows, the same thing is done on the Internet, with splogs (fake blogs), and on useful, established forums, personal blogs, user reviews on sites like Epinions.com and Amazon, and on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. People are paid to do this. They’re instructed to register as regular users, ingratiate themselves to the community, master the “lingo” and worm their way in under the guise of a non-commercial average Joe, and casually drop wording into their posts about the stuff they’re paid to shill.

Media sharing environments are full of this stuff. There are a lot of new videos on YouTube that look like they’re done in someone’s bedroom, yet have big money behind them. This is done to either sneak in mentions of a product, or launch a “hip & happening D.I.Y indie video channel” (think “lonely girl”, but even sneakier.)

I have no problem with commerce on the Internet. In fact, I love it. I order most of my stuff on the Web, and am loving that services like eMusic and iTunes store may one day help put major labels and studios out of business (if iTunes ever nixes the damn DRM.)

My problem is when it’s deceptive. And I know why companies do it: because people have stopped paying attention to conventional commercials. People mute the TV, or use TiVo. Or just ignore commercials. Or just look at the pretty colors and dig on the bland, loud, crappy fake rock music and forget the message.

But when I go look at a forum of user reviews, I want it to damn well be by actual users, not by subcontractors of subcontractors of the manufacturer posing as users.

HERE’S MY IDEA:

How about coming up with a free basic service that would utilize user tagging like social bookmarking sites (Digg, Del.icio.us) and like Akismet Spam use to identify abusers by I.P. address, habits, links they post, and other machine-learned indicators. Then integrate this with a database connected to a FireFox plug-in to make posts by those users (and sites entirely run by those companies) simply not show up. We could “keep the lights on” with revenue from licensing commercial and multi-user licenses.

I think a great name for this service would be “Stink Fight.” Because it would fight the stink on the Internet.

Any programmers or companies who want to do this, contact me. I’ll help do some of the other heavy lifting to get it off the ground.

– Michael W. Dean

(Idea somewhat inspired by that silly “De-Xeni” FireFox plugin.)

I’m curious……does the  Coriolis Effect apply to slam dance pits, as well as water rotation?

Every slam pit I’ve ever seen in my travels (which only include North America and Europe) has gone counterclockwise. I wonder…..Do slam pits go clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere?

MWD

A friend just wrote me and told me that he purchased an item on eBay called “Film School Low Budget eBook Guide” from a scumbag seller with the user ID: cr3ativo

The eBook turned out to be a bootleg of my “$30 Film School.” And this seller says they have “99 available.”

This user appears to be based in Australia. Anyone know who it is? He’s also selling a bunch of bootleg eBooks under fake names and covers.
I don’t mind so much if people give away copies of my stuff, but I think the idea of someone making money of it AND duping the users is icky. They made up this fake name and a fake cover (with a picture of an Academy Award, which is TOTALLY antithetical to the mission statement of my book.)

And then they used my own ad copy:

“You don’t need big bucks to make great stuff. Computers have made it possible to make great films on very little money. They say that whatever effects the big studios have are four years away from the desktop, that is, four years away from your computer desktop. Big effects at low prices are here now. But great effects aren’t what make a great movie. Neither is money…..”

from my book in their fake pitch.

I turned them in to eBay as selling bogus stuff.

=====-

FOLLOW UP ON OCTOBER 3rd:

eBay has removed the listing:

But not the user. User is still on there, apparently ripping off other authors and buyers.

But the guy who notified me about this  scam, who got scammed by buying the book, has posted a comment about it on the seller’s feedback page:

And you can’t get those removed without going through eBay to do it.

Last night in our hotel room, I was talking to my wife about penguins. I was gesticulating wildly while pacing around (I like penguins, a LOT) and was eating peanuts at the same time.

I started choking. I choked for more than a minute, worse than I’ve ever choked. Debra Jean was about to do the Heimlich, but I motioned her away (the Heimlich is for when you cannot breathe at all, I was still taking in tiny gasps of air.) Finally, my airway cleared, I stopped turning pink, and went back to my penguin story.

It all made me think, and made me appreciate life more. Today is me and Debra Jean’s FIRST WEDDING ANNIVERSARY (YAY!) and I’m 43, and want to live to be at LEAST twice that (86).

I think it would be damn ironic after years of being a junkie, and a drunk who probably could have easily been beaten to death in a bar, and deserved it, for me to be felled by a peanut. But at least I’d go out doing what I love most, telling a good story.

If you know me you know that when I was 14 I signed a deal with the devil in blood whereby I got to “make great music, travel the globe and sleep with any woman I could make laugh” (mission accomplished.) I was to die when I was 43 (I am now 43) and the devil would get my soul. After I did all this at 14, I got freaked out and confessed this to a Catholic priest, and he burned the contract and said if I believed in Jesus, the contract was annulled. I believed for a while, and put it out of my mind.

I think I angered the powers yesterday by having a cool podcasting Catholic priest bless my H2 (and me).

Or more likely, I would have died and didn’t because the priest blessed me.

—–

Oh yeah, the peanut is still lodged in my windpipe, but I am resting comfortably and can breathe. It will wiggle its way out, hopefully not while I’m speaking on a panel to a few hundred podcasters in two hours.

I love free speech, but “It’s not free speech if you steal it.”

If someone who is as much of a jackass as Andrew Meyer
http://youtube.com/watch?v=HgrFSHZfD1o

interrupted me while I was speaking, I’d taser him myself.

–

Update later: Article that says Andrew brought his own camera to the event, handed to a girl to hold so he’d be sure to get his actions on camera, and then egged the cops on before the part of the clip he uploaded to YouTube. And he has a history of jackassery and of uploading his exploits to YouTube for attention. (But then again, who doesn’t, these days?)

George Earth sent me another creepy cool issue of his “Cheap Comix.” I love this thing.

George is a good friend (one of my three true friends in Los Angeles), and I’m always happy to see what he’s up to.

6-meg PDF download of comic.  

…OR “Why You Should Move Here..pt 2″

Seems like this is a hot topic these days. China is exporting low-price
and low-quality goods like mad, and we love it, don’t we? Well, way down the
blog I wrote about “Why you should move to China”. Here are two more
magic letters : QC.

That’s right folks ..step right up and be a Quality Control Inspector!
(On-the-job training provided). Foreign companies don’t want to sell toxic
toys or poison pencils, so they are contracting other non-Chinese companies to check on stuff over here. These companies then hire expats like me, ‘cause I already live here in China. This saves them the trouble of flying all the way to China for every order.

I went to a factory, took some snapshots, filled out an Inspection report,
and I gotta say; that’s the easiest 800Y I’ve ever made. Oh, and over here, that’s a half-month’s rent! And before you start ranting about the working conditions
of the poor Chinese workers, you should know that if the foreign buyer has a conscience, I can report on that, too. I think that costs extra though.

FYI, this factory looked like the one my dad worked at in the 60’s, except
way more relaxed.

Stop complaining and be part of the solution for once, like me. I’m looking
into my Chinese crystal ball, and it says that many, many more positions
like this will soon be available. Again, I love living here since I am “In Demand”, whereas in the USA, I’m virtually unemployable! How about you?

So c’mon cyberpunks, ..join the party! (pun intended)

…On the other hand, hey, both me and MWD probably ate a lot of lead paint when we were kids, and just look at us now! (*:

~Skip Lunch, China correspondent

Ps: That cool-ass plane is a made-in-the USA Flying Tiger, when our pilots helped’em kick-ass on the Japanese. GO USA!

There’s a 2004 documentary called “Michael Moore Hates America”. It’s finally all up on YouTube. Watch it here, in many parts.

“Michael Moore Hates America” is sort of a parody of a Michael Moore movie….From the inclusion of the documentarian as a subject, the documentarian being the narrator, the timber of the narration, to the “I’m from small-town America” bent, to the use of ironic animated sections…to the fact that the filmmaker spends the film trying to interview an evasive famous person. Which should be mildly amusing, but I just don’t like “Michael Moore Hates America”. It’s a cheap shot at a guy who’s trying to make a difference. I think the director, Michael Wilson, just wants attention. (Which is often kinda the case with anyone who bases their entire career on a resentment to another person.)

I don’t always agree with everything Michael Moore has to say, and do agree that he uses “creative” editing, but I really like Michael Moore. “Roger and Me” is the reason I started making documentaries. And I wish there were ten more Michael Moores and ten less of whoever makes those horrible 100-million-dollar blockbusters foisted on us every summer.

The worst thing I can say about “Michael Moore Hates America” is it’s boring. I watched the whole thing, but after the first 8 or 10 minutes, it was hard.

Anyone ever notice that the audio (music videos and interviews) on MTV Tr3s (The Spanish-language dance music MTV) sounds horrible? It’s crunchy and the treble is boosted WAY too much.

My theory is that they do it intentionally to sound good to people on cocaine. I know some guys who used to play in disco bands in the 80s and said that the producers used to do the same thing on some dance cuts.

I dunno, I can’t watch this channel, even for a song, it hurts my tired old sober ears.

I was messing around with the AltaVista Bablefish program. Bablefish is a Web page that translates from one language to another. It’s especially fun if you take something non-concrete, like lyrics, and put it English to French, French to German, German to Spanish, Spanish to Portuguese and back to English. You’ll be rolling on the floor, laughing.

Computers are amazing with math, but not yet great with language. There are too many variables, to much “human-ness” to it: i.e. logic circuits do not do well with idiom, sarcasm, humor, in-jokes, etc.

I tried AltaVista Bablefish with the lyrics to the Bomb song, “Madness” (link to MP3 of song) and put it through all five languages. Here is the original:

Anna takes me in her mouth and spits me out in catholic guilt. She would like to show me all the pretty things inside her room. But I don’t want to go in there cause all I see is madness. You gave me lies. On that I based a book. You wrote a couple songs for me but I always wrote the hook. You paid my rent. All I see is madness. I fucked your friends. Walking around here with Band-Aids on your eyes? Happiness abounds in cryptic fields where the muse is cheap - she’ll sleep with anyone. And children have nice names. And privates run the wars. Anna your child’s gone unto the Garden of Eden. Anna blast a hole into the Garden of Eden. Anna your child’s gone to the Garden of Eden. Anna don’t you know your secret’s safe with me?

and here is the round-robin Bablefish result:

Ana makes the relative examination the opening me and escupe of the external part in the catholic of culpability. He has wished to the exposure of the inner part to me to all the graceful things of the relative section. But all he has not wished to comprise a cause, that is a verruecktheit of sees. They had given the lies to me it. In me I have created a book. The songs of a connection for me had written, but I have always written the hooks. They had paid my leasing. A lot that the v, are verruecktheit. I have kissed the relative friends. It encircles here with dae (the dispositive automatic rifle of input) of the adhesive tape in the relative eyes? The fortune has the abundance in the hidden zones, where the MUSE is little expensive - when duer me without the material, of that one. And the children have pleasant names. And the those that prevail execute the wars. Ana relative boy IDO to the garden of Eden. Ana interests affinchè perforates in the garden of Eden. Ana relative boy IDO to.

I’ve noticed a lot of websites (hosted by several different hosts) down lately, for a few hours at a time. I’ve noticed e-mails taking hours to arrive.

I asked my friend JP about this today, and he said, “Maybe it’s the beginning of the end. Maybe it’s companies illegally instituting anti-net neutrality intentionally. When we’re sick enough of it, they’ll say, ‘Well, if you’re willing to pay more money each month, we’ll make it right for ya’.”

Yikes.

Concerned? Check out SaveTheInternet.com

Or “Should We Worry About the Large Hadron Collider?”

A hadron is a subatomic particle. A collider is an underground racetrack that will propel this particle to near-light speeds. Still under construction in Geneva, the Large Hadron Collider is going to be the biggest particle accelerator in the world, with a circumference of 17 miles. Scientists hope to finally isolate the “Higgs boson,” a theoretical particle dubbed “the God Particle,” whose discovery could solve many mysteries of the physical world. Scientists believe this elusive particle could reveal what matter really is.

So why should we be worried? According to the venerable Wikipedia and the Lifeboat Foundation, a technophobe watchdog group, “People both inside and outside of the physics community have voiced concern that the LHC might trigger one of several theoretical disasters capable of destroying the Earth or even the entire Universe.” Apparently, when you energize particles to such high speeds, there are some safety concerns, namely the possibility of creating micro black holes and strange, unstable matter. The chance of this happening is infinitesimal, but not zero. I think the inadvertent destruction of our world would be a major bummer, not just for the Earth, but for the whole Universe. So until the Spring of 2008, we’ll keep our fingers crossed. Whether we unlock the key to the universe or destroy it, I say, “Let the colliding begin!”

By the way, the unofficial particle acceleration competition between CERN and Fermilab is the subject of the upcoming documentary film “The Atom Smashers.”

Hmmmmm……This may be a solution (but not THE solution) to Apple selling stuff that’s either DRM-crippled, or encoded at a lower bit rate.

As Jon Stewart said (and I’m paraphrasing, can’t find the exact quote): “Sure, Wal-Mart is destroying small-town America. But hey! Nine dollars for a refrigerator!”

From the article:

“The retail giant just began selling digital music free from copy protection today, at just 94 cents per song, versus $1.29/song on iTunes. Let the DRM-free price wars” begin!

Link

Sunday, August 26th is the 87th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote. It was just the beginning, the first step for women to gain equal footing with men under the Constitution.

Generations later, we’re still waiting.

“Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” Text of the ERA, as proposed to the States in 1972 by the 92nd Congress.

The Equal Rights Amendment was originally penned by suffragette Alice Paul (pictured above) and introduced in Congress in 1923. It wasn’t passed until 1972, and then only with a deadline of seven years for ratification by the states. Even so, 35 states did approve the amendment, but before the necessary final three could approve it, Phyllis Schlafly and the moneyed forces of evil shot it down, with tales of doom and unisex toilets.

Many Americans are unaware that the ERA never passed. Today, women’s rights aren’t guaranteed by the Constitution, but instead rely upon various statutes like the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, executive orders, affirmative action, and court interpretations promising things such as equal educational opportunity. All of these could be dust in the face of the wrong political wind.

And let me tell you how that wind has been blowing: “Separate-but-equal” single-sex public schools are allowed for the first time since 1972. The new Roberts Supreme Court has already chipped away at Roe v. Wade, and limited women’s right to sue for pay discrimination. Both major political parties have dropped the ERA from their platforms; the Republicans in 1980, and the Democrats in 2004.

Ask your candidate when she stands.

I’m writing the “three-level outline” my agent requested for my new book.
I’m in hell. I hate doing that shit.

I remember being in high school, being told to write outlines for term papers. I remember seeing those roman numerals and A,B,Cs and saying, “How’s this shit gonna help me in later life? I’m going to be a rock star and dead by 30.”

(me at 27 as a dying rock star)

Scientists can now drugtest a whole city by testing a spoon fulla municipal waste.

From http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070822/ap_on_sc/citywide_drug_test :

“‘Wastewater facilities are wonderful places to understand what humans consume and excrete,’ Field said….

“…She said that one fairly affluent community scored low for illicit drugs except for cocaine. Cocaine and ecstasy tended to peak on weekends and drop on weekdays, she said, while methamphetamine and prescription drugs were steady throughout the week.”

“‘The EPA will ‘flush out the details’ on testing, Benjamin Grumbles joked.”

(Thanks Debra Jean for that one!)

By the way, I remeber reading where someone (I’m pretty sure it was either Ray Kurzweil, or Alvin Toffler) suggested toilets that analyze your leavings to monitor your health and make a doctor’s appointment for you if there’s a reason to.

I love a study in modern 21st century style contrasts, for example I have two browser windows open and one is a buncha gadget geeks arguing the merits of Blu-Ray vs HD DVD discs. New data has come in this format war, showing 2:1 lead by one of the Blu-Ray format in disc sales. It appears despite Blu-Ray outselling HD DVD, the decision makers at Paramount & Dreamworks will no longer manufacture in the currently leading format. Huh? I fortunately have not yet begun to worry about this consumer crap conciousness fight, and do not look forward to ever joining. So in a tech-centric world, it’s shamefully hard for me to muster strength to care…

As I imagine it is overseas in Moscow. Today the International Herald Tribune and sister NY Times website’s both feature a fact of life piece that in Moscow, supposedly one of the world’s top cities, in summertime the city deals with massive hot water shortages. Huh?

Apparently, under communism it was long ago decided that instead of individual boilers like we use in the US, the Russians centralized hot water distribution, which basically collapsed even before their empire. Each summer, due to repairs, the Moscovites in the market are riper than the fruit…