ryan.freebern.org

I saw this image today:

Mourners take photos of the body of Pope John Paul II. (AP Photo by Gregorio Borgia. Used without permission.)

It struck me that these people have traveled from all across the world, some from thousands of miles away, and stood in line for hours upon hours with tens of thousands of others, and they finally get to the body of John Paul II and take his picture with… a cellphone? All that effort, and you’re going to end up with a grainy, blurry digital photo at maybe 640×480 resolution?

Makes you wonder where their priorities are.

Creators Syndicate is trying to bully a blog into removing a link to a Bill O’Reilly column, citing copyright violation. (Here’s the offending column.) This is obviously bunk, as it’s been decided in court that linking does not violate copyright. However, that doesn’t stop people from claiming that it does in order to get their way. This sort of behaviour by huge copyright-holder corporations not only makes a mockery of the whole notion of copyright, but it also threatens the entire structure of the web. If linking to something is violating its copyright, then any time anyone types <a href=”… they need someone’s permission to continue, or else risk facing a lawsuit.

On to the real reason for this post, however. I read O’Reilly’s column, about the Postcards From Buster debacle, and could hardly keep myself from laughing out loud. I thought, does anyone actually buy this sort of reasoning? Do O’Reilly’s arguments actually jive with anyone’s thought processes?

O’Reilly says that “introducing homosexuality into the little kid culture angers many Americans who believe sex in general is an inappropriate topic for small children”. I’m generally of the view that sex, as in the act and ramifications of sexual intercourse, isn’t usually an appropriate topic of discussion with small children. However, O’Reilly (and apparently the “many Americans” he refers to here) ignorantly conflates sexuality with sex. Sexuality is psychological, an ingrained preference for the company of certain other members of the species over others. It’s not the act of intercourse.

Why aren’t these “many Americans” up in arms about children’s toys or movies that show stereotypical princes and princesses getting married, having kids, and living happily ever after? That’s at least as sexual, and probably more, as showing a pair of lesbians in Vermont making maple syrup. Apparently, “many Americans” believe sex is an appropriate topic for small children as long as it’s good old-fashioned heterosexual sex.

O’Reilly asks:

I don’t want to be offensive here, but who in their right mind wants to explain Norma and Barbara’s lifestyle to their 4-year-old?

I do, Bill. How’s this? “Hey, 4-year-old child of mine. See Norma and Barbara? They love each other, just like your mother and I do.” That’s it. Explaining a homosexual relationship is as simple as that. But as long as people like Bill O’Reilly, and those who agree with him, consider homosexuality merely “selfish hedonism” (as O’Reilly’s comrade-in-arms Alan Keyes infamously said) and unworthy of being represented as a valid lifestyle, children everywhere will be taught that love only counts if it’s the “right” kind of love.

I’ve ranted in the past about how new music is largely overpriced when you buy it in physical form (i.e., a CD from a store). That rant mentions that I would feel much better if I was getting more for my money, and the example I used was Tori Amos’ Scarlet’s Walk limited edition. For $25, you get a whole lot more than just an album of music.

Well, my wife ordered Tori’s new album, The Beekeeper, and it arrived today. Once again, this is more than just an album. Along with the music CD is a DVD of music videos and a packet of wildflower seeds — creative and fun little additions that make the purchase price worth it.

So, props to Sony/BMG for going the extra mile to make this album special. (Jeers to them, though, for printing the FBI anti-piracy label directly on the CD, spoiling an otherwise beautiful design.)

Via Warren Ellis:

A test of the controversial US missile defence system failed on Sunday - the second time this has happened in recent months.

[...]

The MDA revealed on 14 January 2005 that this was caused by the interceptor’s internal safety system preventing lift-off.

If only every weapon contained an internal safety system like that…

I’ve been hearing more and more about a new service, YouSendIt. It bills itself as a simple way to send people files that are too large for email to handle — up to 1GB. You enter an email address, upload a file, and the recipient is given a link (active for seven days) to download the file.

I don’t think I’ve actually heard of anyone using it for its intended purpose, however; everyone seems to be using it as a temporary host for mp3s that they want to share with friends. They upload the file, get the link themselves, and then post it on their weblog or IM it to everyone who wants it, and voilá, a new kind of filesharing.

When I first heard about people using the service this way, my immediate thought was that they must be crazy to just trust that the service provider won’t rat out copyright-infringers to the RIAA. Before making any judgments, though, I checked their website. Right on the top of the page is a link titled “your privacy is guaranteed.” That sounded promising.

Clicking the link and reading their actual privacy policy, however, tells another story:

IP addresses are logged [...]

We collect the e-mail addresses of YouSendIt Delivery recipients and senders [...]

We may disclose your information if necessary [...] Disclosure may be required by law or if we receive legal process.

They claim to guarantee your privacy, and then blatantly state that they log almost every bit of information that they receive and will gladly give it up if the RIAA comes knocking with a subpoena. This is crap. It almost smells like a filesharing sting operation. While many people I know are gladly going about sharing files with this service, I’m wary of doing so, and I urge anyone else with concern for their privacy to avoid it as well.

A mashup is a home-spun mix of two or more songs, usually the lyrics from one overlayed on the backing music from another. The artist uses an audio editing program, chops samples out of one or more songs, and blends those samples in some sort of pleasing fashion with samples from other songs. The result, if done well, can be both fun and intriguing, as you hear some familiar sounds in a totally new context. (For instance, the Kleptones’ “A Night at the Hip-Hopera” is quite possibly my favourite album released last year, and it’s entirely mashups.)

The problem with mashups is that record companies really don’t like people chopping up copyrighted songs and redistributing them. They complain a lot and try to sue people for it. However, the mashing-up isn’t what they have a problem with; it’s the distributino of said mashed-up music. So why not get rid of that distribution? Why not invent a way for people to let other people listen to clever mashups without having to actually send them any copyrighted music?

Say there’s an audio editing program which, along with actually editing the audio, keeps track of all the steps you take to do the editing and can save those steps — essentially, a set of instructions describing how to duplicate the edits you’ve made — as a small, easily redistributable file. Imagine: you open songs X and Y in the editor, and remove the vocals from song Y, then chop a few small sections out of song X and lay them on top of the instrumentals from song Y, and produce a mashup, song XY. Meanwhile, the editing program not only saves song XY to disk, it also saves a file describing every operation the program performed on either of the songs, called XY’.

You then send XY’, a file that contains no copyrighted music whatsoever, to a friend. Your friend has his own copies of songs X and Y on CD, and his own copy of the editing program. He opens songs X and Y in the editing program, and loads XY’, and voilá: song XY (your mashup) is available to him, and — here’s the important part — no illegal exchange of copyrighted data has taken place.

Essentially, it’s an optimized macro-recorder for an audio editing program. Someone on the Audacity team get on this, okay?

With TiVo working hard to piss off its customers and the FCC working hard to screw over the entire U.S., I’m seriously looking into building a homebrewed Personal Video Recorder (PVR).

About a year ago, the FCC adopted the broadcast flag mandate rule (link to 430kb PDF) which, in a nutshell, requires any device that has the capability of recording a television broadcast of any sort to respect a flag telling it whether or not consumers should be able to record the broadcast. So, not going to be home for the new episode of Law & Order and want to record it? You might be out of luck, depending on if the TV studio wants you to be able to record it.

Luckily, this broadcast flag rule doesn’t take effect until July 1st, 2005. Any devices manufactured before that date don’t need to respect it — so, if someone like me wants a good, unrestricted PVR, now’s the time to build it. I’ve got approximately six months to plan, purchase, and build this thing, and as I make progress I’ll keep this blog updated.

(more…)

The chemical Dioxin has been in the news fairly recently with the poisoning of Ukranian presidential candidate (now president) Viktor Yushchenko. What is dioxin? It’s one of the most toxic chemicals known to science, a potent carcinogen, and a poison that has been linked to severe reproductive and developmental effects.

Why, then, do small amounts of dioxins occur in bleached cotton tampons, which are placed in one of the most sensitive, absorbent, and reproduction-related areas of a women’s body?

The FDA claims that it’s not a problem. They say the levels in most tampons are well below dangerous. However, dioxin accumulates in the body over time, so even these tiny levels can eventually be harmful — especially when you consider that the average American woman uses over 11,000 feminine hygiene products in her lifetime.

Additionally, as Heather Guidone says in her study entitled Endometriosis & Dioxin: a Toxic Link?:

Currently, the FDA requires tampon and related menstruation product manufacturers to monitor dioxin levels in their products; however, the results are not available to the public and the dioxin tests relied upon by the FDA are done by the manufacturers themselves. That’s a little bit like having the fox guard the hen house!

So the FDA, trusting giant manufacturing companies to put consumer safety over profit margins, tells us that bleached cotton menstrual products are safe.

What’s a concerned woman to do? Well, in the course of researching a rumour regarding asbestos in tampons (which proved to be false), Snopes’ esteemed Barbara Mikkelson reached the conclusion that the best bet is to buy unbleached organic cotton tampons, which are just as effective as any other tampon while being much safer. And Guidone suggests that you write to your state-level political representatives and urge them to support legislation mandating independent testing of feminine hygiene products to determine and warn consumers about the dangers of dioxin.

I’m normally not that cranky about the invention or adoption of new words, but I must express my extreme displeasure with Xeni Jardin for her use of the word “pheblogenomenon” today. Boo, hiss.

When I first saw the trailer for The Polar Express, something about it struck me as disturbing. Since then, I’ve come across more and more reviews that echo my opinion. Then, yesterday, I learned about the Uncanny Valley, and it all made sense.

It’s like this: as an objects resemblance to real humanity grows, people’s empathy for it also grows, until a certain point where empathy drops severely into what is called “the Uncanny Valley”: a place where something looks both amazingly realistic while remaining not quite right. In my opinion, and apparently in the opinions of many others, The Polar Express falls quite neatly into this valley: it looks like the moviemakers attempted to create realistic animated people in the film, but also tried to make them stylistic, like Chris Van Allsburg’s drawings. The end result is a bunch of creepy animated dolls who seem vaguely sinister for no obvious reason.

Suffice it to say, I won’t be going to see this movie.

(While doing some searching on this topic, I came across this great post on Mile High Comics’ blog on the same topic.)

If it isn’t blindingly obvious to my dozen faithful readers, I’m fairly liberal in my political leanings. It should come as no surprise, then, that I endorse John Kerry for President. Now it’s on the record.

If Kerry wins next Tuesday (as I fully expect him to), in the upcoming years, I will try and be a fair observer of his performance, and judge him no more or less harshly than I have Bush. I want you, my readers, to help keep me honest. I thank you all for challenging my opinions in the past few months that this blog has been operational, and I hope that you will continue to do so in the future.

That said, when I started this blog, I didn’t mean for it to be entirely political. That’s just been the main issue on my mind for months, so it’s been mainly what I’ve been posting about. From here on out, I’ll try harder to shift my mind away from politics to other topics occasionally, and make thoughtful and entertaining posts about them.

I’ve been busy with the transition between jobs for the past few weeks, so updates have been scarce. My life will probably be settling into a more regular pattern in the next couple weeks, and there ought to be more regular updates soon thereafter. Thank you all for your patience.

In the third Presidential debate, John Kerry said this:

I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney’s daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she’s being who she was, she’s being who she was born as.

In response, Dick Cheney said:

You saw a man who will do and say anything to get elected. And I am not just speaking as a father here, although I am a pretty angry father.

Lynne Cheney said:

This is not a good man. Of course, I am speaking as a mom, and a pretty indignant mom. This is not a good man. What a cheap and tawdry political trick.

A spokeswoman for the Bush/Cheney campaign said that Kerry is

backpedaling from what is a crass, below-the-belt political strategy to attack the vice president’s daughter.

Political trick? Attack Mary Cheney? What on earth are these people talking about?

Go read Kerry’s statement again. He says two things: one is the fact that Mary Cheney is a lesbian. This is indisputable, has been discussed many times by many different people, including her parents. It is not a trick to state the fact, since it is well-known, and it is not an attack, since being homosexual is not a bad thing. He also says that, in his opinion, she would tell you that she is who she is. This is an opinion, but it’s a pretty harmless one: he’s saying she’s herself, no more and no less. This is also not a trick, nor is it an attack.

So what on earth are the Cheneys talking about? Well, they’re trying to claim that merely bringing up Mary Cheney’s sexuality is a “trick” and an “attack” in and of itself. If this is true, why did Dick Cheney thank John Edwards for his “kind words” about Mary Cheney?

If the Cheneys want to get mad about an attack, why not direct their anger towards Alan Keyes, who infamously said that homosexuality is based on “selfish hedonism,” and that “of course” that assessment applies to Mary Cheney? That is an attack, pure and direct. It’s despicable and low, and ought to have enraged the Cheneys. But did they respond? Not at all.

(This strategy, of choosing the path of greatest political gain over the one that is actually right, is the same thing that drove Bush and Cheney to attack Iraq because they could paint it as possibly a threat while ignoring North Korea’s actual threat. This is a dangerous way to run a country or to live a life.)

So what’s really going on here? Well, it’s two weeks until the election, and the Bush/Cheney campaign has realized that they can’t let the voters actually spend their time thinking about actual political issues, because the Bush/Cheney record on those issues is so incredibly dismal that they’d lose the election without a doubt. So instead, they have to stoop to making up ridiculous, absurd, and patently false accusations in an attempt to paint Kerry as “cheap,” “tawdry,” and “crass” in the hopes that people won’t have the chance to pay attention to anything substantive until the election is over.

Who would want dishonest, manipulative jerks like this running our country?