Image by keso

The Washington Post published an article this morning, which reveals that Major Nidal. M. Hasan had tried to get the message through to his superiors that Muslims serving in the US would have moral conflicts. He suggested that, as conscientious objectors, Muslims should not be required to be deployed to fight against other Muslims. But they didn’t listen.

Neither did the Washington Post. Instead of analyzing Hasan’s suggestion, the article speaks of “threats within the ranks”, a much more fearful mental image. The Post paints a picture of a dangerous and imbalanced individual who instead of lecturing on “medical” topics, lectured on “suicide bombers and threats the military”. But wait, he is a psychiatrist! He is a doctor, of course, but his concern is mental health. But the stereotype of the soldier is a mindless hero, who cannot have a conscience it seems.

But manufacturing fear sells news, and money is the god of the world. When people are afraid, they buy things. The media live on gossip and war, because they fatten their wallets. When greedy news corporations, who sadly are the conscience of a nation, polarize everyone, create fear, and refuse to see the full spectrum of colors, what can we expect? The truth shining out? I’m afraid not. We see news anchors and their slaves, the politicians, paying homage to the gods of money and political correctness, distorting the truth, creating shame and suffering for millions of people. Think of what Honduras is going through because of the dishonesty of Telesur and CNN.

But, why am I defending Hasan? He became a murderer. I’m defending him because I think there is a deeper point here. Yes he deserves to pay for his crime; but can he expect a fair trial?. By painting posterized, don’t-make-me-think stereotypes, the media are wasting the moment for the US to reflect on a very important and complex issue.

The US is undergoing an identity crisis, but that is an opportunity for it to shine. But in order to shine, it needs to understand the truth. Who are United States? What should be the role of the military? How does Islam fit in? What is Islam, really?  What is the war on terror really about? Israel? Oil? The weapons cartels? Religion? Truth?

A friend of mine emailed me a link to this video. It has some VERY disturbing images, and may not be safe for work. Yet it makes a very important point very strongly: Corporations don’t merely want your money, they want your soul!

I am currently involved with two music acts, The Ted Williams Show, a whimsical rock band with blues elements and a heavy debt to Lennon-McCartney, and Miguel Torres, an acoustic guitar, folksy, Spanish, bohemian solo artist. Neither is very mainstream, although creative and talented, with great material. Interestingly, both are producing albums, both with “amateur technology” and on Macs.

How can small music acts succeed in a world where the major music labels and the RIAA are dying out? The suggestion is a simple formula that both desperately need to understand:

Connect with fans + give them reasons to buy = financial success.

The tough part is finding out a way to do it. Piracy is not an issue; for instance iTunes successfully competes with free, by giving us reasons to buy. The labels, used to their monopoly, are kicking and screaming, and refusing to succeed any other way. Their doom is sealed unless they embrace change. This torrent freak article articulates the reasons for the music labels’ decline better than many I’ve read.

The Ted Williams Show are renting a 900-seat theater for a concert the first of August, our biggest gig yet. Miguel Torres is thinking of quitting his day job to concentrate on music. As self-appointed technology consultant for both, I’ll soon create websites for them, and will share some of their music with you.

As always, your opinions and suggestions are more than welcome.

Image by Nine Inch Nails, used with a Creative Commons license

I re-discovered Internet radio last week through website Deezer.com. While the concept has been around for a while, and has been launched by giants like Yahoo (Yahoo Music), selection has been very limited, and many people couldn’t take advantage of it because of slow connections.

I think there is only one final step to be taken, to combine the internet radio station and the music store. The result would be a website where people go to discover music, and buy it. Poeple could listen to the music free of charge, but be able to buy DRM-free downloads in order to store tracks in their iPods, PDAs or computers.

Who loses with such a scheme? Only those recording labels who greedily refuse to relinquish the absolute control they enjoyed in the 20th century. Do they necesarily need to lose? Of course not. They need to see themselves are music vendors and not CD vendors. If they embrace change, they can take advantage of opportunities that could turn them tremendous profit.

A few years back, no one but Apple dared to make an internet music store, even though the concept was an obvious one. The iPod, and the iTunes music store weren’t original, they are simply very daring. Apple would never have been successful if they hadn’t taken the risk, and embraced change. Everyone else was afraid of being sued to oblivion by a legion of lobotomized lawyers.

Only a large company can successfully navigate the treacherous gauntlet that protects the profits of media moguls. I hope the right companies come ahead with web sites like this. And, even better, that the music labels recognize that they have much to learn and gain in the process.

I despise sequels. I abhor them. I hate hate hate hate them. They are an insult! Imagine Leonardo painting Mona Lisa II, La Gioconda en Paris, or Shakespeare writing a sequel to Hamlet or Macbeth!

Of course I mean the sequels that are not better than the originals. Who needed a Matrix trilogy? The original was much better left alone. Who needed a Pirates of the Caribbean franchise? I didn’t even bother to watch Shrek the Third. The greedy, evil corporate-minded studio executive responsible for the last two Mummy films should be shot, ritually disemboweled, flayed, embalmed, and then prominently displayed on Hollywood Boulevard.

One of the worst offenders lately is Disney, with anemic movie sequels that go direct to DVD, sending cash into their wallets, but prostituting their brand, and the memory of their former glory. Disney is now a beautiful corpse. Pixar was their antiseptic, their last hope for resurrection.

Disney originally had the wisdom to grant Pixar creative independence, to save it from decay. But now it’s meddling, and will probably slaughter the proverbial goose that lays the golden eggs. You can see the upcoming lineup in the following article: Disney and Pixar’s Full Animated Line-Up Through 2012

Normally, a year or two separates each Pixar movie, resulting in a slow-cooked, delectable final product. But Disney is now planning to mass-produce and spit out a Pixar movie every year. They are also planning 3D re-releases of flagship Toy Story 1 and 2

Pixar has traditionally been opposed to sequels, but now, under their Disneyan overlords, its preparing to bring out another sequel to Toy Story, Toy Story 3, and, -gasp- Cars 2. Cars, in many opinions, was a weak movie for Pixar. In comparison, Brad Bird’s The Incredibles begs for a sequel. But, I bet the merchandise and DVD sales numbers surrounding Cars and Toy Story were too tempting for Disney’s strategists.

The story line behind next year’s Pixar release, Up, seems slightly bland. Newt, an upcoming 2011 movie about the last two remaining newts on earth having relationship trouble, seems to be an animal version of WALL·E.

Pixar is the only studio to capture my imagination in the past decade. Now it seems it was too good to last. Greed defeats art yet again. Pixar, please prove me wrong.

Image by Luis Ramirez, used with a Creative Commons license. Disney, Pixar, the Disney Logo, and the Pixar logo are trademarks of the Walt Disney Company.

The Only Thing We Have to Fear is…

• The Chupacabras
• Phobophobia
• The Alarm Clock
• An Artificially Blanched Pop Star in a Bathrobe
• Terror Management Theory
• Panic and Greed

The current ongoing panic at Wall Street comes from a fundamental misunderstanding about the randomness of things. Optimistic and greedy capitalists see no end to their enrichment, and any loss threatens their vision and hope of becoming the next billionaire. It’s not a perverse impish demon delighting in stirring the financial anthill, it’s merely math. More specifically: chaos theory.

Have you noticed how slight imperfection is beautiful in nature? Ripples on a lake are more beautiful than a flat mirror. Uneven bark on trees, and their seemingly random branches, leaves, fruit and flowers are more inspiring than an orderly plantation. An uneven mountain is more beautiful than a perfect cone. But these things, while chaotic, still obey a mathematical rhythm, structure and balance.

Greed is unbalanced. What goes up must come down. The faster the rise, the faster the fall. You can’t get rich quickly. Lottery winners often lose all their prize money within a year or two. Wealth must be patiently cultivated. This is the principle that investors are stubbornly ignoring, to their peril

A celebrated mathematician, Benoit Mandelbrot, has studied stock market economics and mathematics, and has published books on such subjects as “The Fractal Geometry of Nature”, and “The (Mis)Behavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin, and Reward”. In those books he shows how randomness is not necessarily difficult to understand, and more importantly, that the models economists have been basing their wealth on are too optimistic; they are seriously and recklessly flawed. Sadly, no one paid attention to him in time to avert our current disaster.

When something is rhythmic and orderly, it tends to remain so. But, alter the system a bit, and randomness appears. Try to balance a broom in your hand. If you do it slowly, you will succeed. But, once you start to move too quickly, it becomes increasingly difficult to control.

By analogy, stock market rallies are doing exactly the same thing…moving too quickly. That’s why the gains evaporate just as fast as they came. The more violent the upswing, the worse the crash will be. The icon of the stock market should be a sheep, not a bull. They mindlessly stampede their false beliefs over the precipice.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his inaugural speech, in the midst of the great depression, called for truth, frankness and boldness. People only remember his trademark phrase about not being afraid of anything but fear, but ignore the rest of his speech. For instance:

“…the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance…”

“…the rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men…”

“…Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish…”

“…Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men…”

“…We do not distrust the future of essential democracy. The people of the United States have not failed. In their need they have registered a mandate that they want direct, vigorous action. They have asked for discipline and direction under leadership. They have made me the present instrument of their wishes. In the spirit of the gift I take it.

In this dedication of a Nation we humbly ask the blessing of God. May He protect each and every one of us. May He guide me in the days to come.”

Image by Marco Belli, used with a Creative Commons license

Youtube has increasingly become a favorite place to listen to music, and as such, a thorn in the flesh of greedy RIAA henchpersons. Gotta be PC you know (henchmen, hench-women, hench-children?, etc …). A few days after anyone uploads anything worth watching or listening to—that isn’t a commercial, of course—it will be taken down.

In response to this, MTV recently launched a video streaming site, mtvmusic.com, with thousands of music videos which can’t be seen (legally) anywhere else in the internet.

Funnily or eerily, take your pick, MTV decided to censor out the words “Morpheus”, “Grokster”, “Limewire” and “KaZaA” from their video of Wierd Al Yancovic’s ridiculous anthem “Don’t Download This Song”. What were they thinking!? Scorching and flattening irony!

Speaking of iron and magnetism, Lars Ulrich, Metallica’s drummer, is specifically mentioned in the lyrics because of his outspoken opposition to music piracy, and his subsequent lampooning on the utterly distasteful cartoon cesspool, South Park. Note the smiling sharks at the end of Yankovic’s video, and this explanation of why they’re there.

My favorite part of the song, barely audible at the very end, is when Yankovic says “You cheap b*****d”! Al, you’re my hero.

Source, this Techdirt article

I quipped a few months ago that I was converting to the Mac religion. Neuroscience seems to have something interesting to say about it, according to this study.

Hasbro wants to shut down a perfectly legal knock off of it’s popular word game Scrabble. Copyright law offers very limited protection for games. Not even the name of the game is protected. Only the written instructions, artwork, logo, etc. are protected.

Consider this quote from US copyright law:

The idea for a game is not protected by copyright. The same is true of the name or title given to the game and of the method or methods for playing it.

Copyright protects only the particular manner of an author’s expression in literary, artistic, or musical form. Copyright protection does not extend to any idea, system, method, device, or trademark material involved in the development, merchandising, or playing of a game. Once a game has been made public, nothing in the copyright law prevents others from developing another game based on similar principles.

Some material prepared in connection with a game may be subject to copyright if it contains a sufficient amount of literary or pictorial expression. For example, the text matter describing the rules of the game, or the pictorial matter appearing on the gameboard or container, may be registrable.

Scrabulous, written by Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla of India, is one of the most popular applications on Facebook. The game is also offered at their website, scrabulous.com.

Instead of shutting down Scrabulous, Hasbro should buy the game from the creators, or at least offer a competing game online. The company probably fears that an online version of Scrabble would cannibalize sales of its board-game version. This is very short-sighted. Young people are much more likely to play a game online than using a physical board. Hasbro will lose their customer base, and will end up selling board games for old people! A web version is an excellent marketing tool to raise interest in buying the boxed version.

Wake up corporate America! Embrace technology! Don’t be another Kodak, who lost their leadership because of their stubborn refusal to invest in digital photography until it was to late. Embrace the internet, or lose your customers.

Image by Karen, used with a Creative Commons license

Last night, with a master stroke of public relations wizardry, Hugo Chávez was prominently displayed on CNN. The Colombian communist guerrilla were unilaterally freeing hostages as a gift to Chavez. Perhaps they felt that after his fiasco at the polls, he needed some boosting. It is no secret that they are allies. For decades the FARC have fought a guerrilla war to overthrow the Colombian government with violence.

But, they are presented in a positive light by the media. Instead of presenting Chávez’s ridiculous outbursts, they present Ingrid Betancourt’s husband saying that it was Uribe, the president of Colombia, who had an “outburst of anger,” and that his actions were “inhumane”.

HELLO, who is the kidnapper? Is it Uribe who kidnapped all these people? Absolutely not. Who was cursing on TV? Uribe? The King of Spain? Of course not; it was Chávez.

What is Chavez after? He wants, at the very least, a communist neighbor to continue his legacy, now that it is clear he is leaving office. At worst he could be plotting a coup in Colombia, since Venezuela was denied to him. Wasn’t Uribe right to defend Colombia’s sovereignty?

Sadly, western nations are secretly the ones at fault for this circus. The U.S. economy is in horrific debt, and to sustain it, there must be war. The U.S. and allies preach life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but these ideals have long been abandoned in favor of war, money, and the pursuit of oil.

The hypocrisy of the west is the breeding ground for all the woes we see across the world. Greed, the scourge of capitalism, has corrupted them and is consuming the very riches it desires. It is resuscitating the ghosts of the past. Socialism and Islam have never been so attractive; the U.S. as seldom had so many bitter enemies.

Unfortunately, the people of the U.S. are beginning to pay the consequences. Declaring yourself a friend of the U.S. is to place yourself in the line of fire. Their young men are coming home in flag-draped coffins. Because of the need to maintain artificial prosperity, jobs are moving away. The dollar is falling.

But will replacing the current republican government restore sanity? Sadly no. It is not the people, or even the government who rules the U.S. anymore. It is the need to profit, the lust for money, a root of all evil. It is not religion that is the opiate of the people anymore, it is riches. The people do hold tremendous power, but they are too busy building McMansions, and spending their riches on pleasure to see that they are just as enslaved as the impoverished billions they see on television. The people are too busy pursuing riches to care about them. The government rocks the cradle and sings the lullaby. But they do no see that a cradle is also a prison.

The people of the world need to see the hypocrisy and evil going on and realize that we can do something about it. We need to grow up, and reject the baby-formula. We need to see the world, and set people free with truth, so we can enjoy peace.

Image by Jean-François Schmit, used with a Creative Commons license