Archives for March 2007

Here we go. But it’s business. I’ll catch up with you later.

I’ve been meaning to weigh in, sometime, on the whole copyright war thing. This isn’t going to be much, just an observation or two.

Let’s imagine you create something, but for whatever reason, your creation is really difficult to secure. That is, it’s easy for people to steal. And, in fact, it’s so easy — offered up on a silver platter — that normally good people don’t even think of it as stealing. …People who would never in their lives imagine breaking into a locked building, or holding someone at gunpoint, taking stuff.

I’m not excusing it, but there’s some distinction to make, I think.

So what would you do? It’s yours. They’re stealing it. They’re not paying you for it. If you made more, they’d steal more. It’s not so much they like stealing, it’s that they like what you make. Will they pay if you make it easier and more convenient to pay for than to steal?

I don’t know about you, but I see an opportunity, a market. Now, I don’t think iTunes and whatever else is out there is necessarily the ideal solution, but I sure do like iTunes an awful lot. Even more than for music, I can get just about any TV show I want, without commercial interruptions, for $1.99. Get a whole season for about $15. Downloads in the background, automatically. I’m even thinking about getting an Apple TV box so that I can watch what I download on the big HD set in the TV room rather than at my desk. It begins to make me rethink the whole cable or satellite thing. Pay for what I want, and only what I want.

I’m pretty sure this is all going to work out OK and it’s going to be better.

One final observation is that I think what’s really got the big mega-producers’ panties in a bunch more than anything is an exploding amount of free content. I laugh every time I see an entertainment exec or industry expert interviewed and they always have to comment about how "most of it isn’t any good." Yea, well, feel free to argue with a million views of something not very good, but the underlying element, I think, is fear.

It’s really, really hard to compete with a free product that’s any good at all. Want to know what I’m talking about? Watch this. This one might even be better. There’s no copyright issues, the thing has been viewed worldwide at various sources an estimated 8 million times, and not a penny has changed hands. Yea, I’d be scared. And guess what? With that sort of broadcasting (hardware: the original barrier to entry) ability at the fingertips of virtually anyone, anywhere, the world just may be a changin’.

This is a necessary and logical consequence of the endless calls for "more police on the streets." The citizens (the morons) are just reacting to irrational fear hyped up by big media (the instigators), and all is fit & tidy for the politicians (the criminal-elite) to exploit the irrational fear of the morons as created by the instigators — the criminal-elite’s bedfellows and partners in crime.

Then, it all gets executed by the police (the criminal-thugs; the muscle).

I wish I could just chalk it up to mischief brought on by boredom, but these are real live adults presuming the authority to knock out your life on a whim, with very little at risk to them for making "an error." Just trust them. They’re professionals, you see. Of course there’s even more to it, and that’s just the plain fact that citizenship (in attitude) attracts morons, journalism attracts dishonest swindlers, politics attracts mafioso, and the police forces attract thugs.

Well. At least we know where all the bad guys are.

If it isn’t obvious from the general nature of the general content of this blog, I like mixing it up. Things get quiet, and my natural tendency is to locate some shit to stir, even if it goes nowhere and it’s just for my own edification in giving it a turn or two.

Sitting here, sipping on something alcoholic at 5pm, dinner at an Indian resto (that’s French — no shit) with friends in about an hour, I feel like making an entry. My RSS is read. Nothing there. Check the news. You’d have to torture me to blog about something in today’s head and sub-headlines. How about finance? The market started off on a welcome sell off on the worst new home sales figures in six years, but the moron bulls bought the dip and ended the day barely green. Fuckin’ morons.

But I got an email today about a lawsuit filed against my company, by, of all entities, Golden Gate Bridge, Highway & Transportation District. Guess why? Well, of course, because they hit us. Here’s the deal. The employee was in San Francisco, parked along the curb, exited the vehicle and was getting something out of the back seat when a city bus came along and smacked the open rear door of the company Jaguar. Now, of course, the bus wasn’t bearing down when she made her exit. It was clear. It came along afterwards.

It could have stopped. It could have gone around. Human beings do this. But this is the sovereign authority of the land, and, you see, they wrote a note to themselves (made a law). They wrote a note to themselves that says that if anyone’s in their way, they can plow right through, and, "legally," it’s the fault of the one in the way. It’s magical.

The insurance co. will take care of it, of course, and they’ll probably settle. You can’t fight government note-to-self writing.

Since I first posted about it, I’ve been idly checking around to see what comes of it. My glancing around is by no means exhaustive, and yet, the apparent absence of a very strong scientific counter broadcast far and wide tells me a great deal. Why wouldn’t they, if they had the goods? By broadcasting this far and wide, along with the obvious refutation, they could nail the coffin shut on dissenters far and wide. In its place, though, is a whole lot of attempts at various character assassination.

Character assassination, of course, is a pretty effective technique when you’re talking about opinions, rather than whether the link between Co2 and global warming is cause and effect (in the case of Co2 causing warming — never mind the even more dubious anthropogenic element), or effect of cause (the sun’s increased activity over hundreds of years slowly heats the Earth — imagine that — and increased Co2 levels are one of the many measurable effects).

What I think is devastating about this revelation for the man-made global warming sycophants falls into two broad areas: (1) it acknowledges a relationship between heating and Co2, and (2), I cannot imagine a better illustration of Occam’s razor.

The principle states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible [there’s your anthropogenic], eliminating, or "shaving off," those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory.

This, laddies and gentleman, is why I never for an instant bought into the global warming hysteria. Like many others, I was at first even unconvinced that there was any average temperature increase. But over the years, they convinced me that there is indeed warming. I’m not going to ignore plain facts, and this now seems to be the case. But Co2 is about 1/30th of one percent of the total atmosphere, and there are a number of natural phenomena that produce far more Co2 than man, like volcanic activity and biological respiration (of all organisms — especially in the oceans, the largest Co2 producer). It just never added up, and now it all seems to, and very neatly.

And in my layman’s eyes, it’s a pretty damn elegant explanation, too.

Then again, I have only to rely on my own senses, sense of honesty and integrity to facts and reason, and the reputations of those producing data, hypotheses, and conclusions. The fact that this debate has been so politically charged and motivated made me smell a rat early on, and I was convinced that there are legions of scientists out there who have sold their very professional beings for grant money, i.e., money that’s more often than not stolen from you. See how "legitimized" theft — not money — corrupts?

Brian Micklethwait has a pretty good roundup of the whole deal and who might be behind it, and why. Frankly, I don’t care if they’re commies or not (who isn’t, these days?). If they think that scientific truth will somehow advance their cause, then that (novel) approach to politics ought to be the least of my fears.

If it turned out that knowing the truth resulted in the absolute annihilation of the Earth and everything in it, I would have but one reaction: bring on the truth. Living a lie is the worst form of annihilation.

Regular readers may note that I have recently seen signs that this man-made global warming debate is peaking. This revolutionary new development is right on schedule.

Update: Billy Beck renders insights.

A couple of good short and funny clips from George, the first on religion, and the second on the Ten Commandments.

Enjoy.

A hard-hitting 20 minute speech by Christopher Hitchens on the clash of religion and free speech.

Take a look.

(van Bakel)

Four years old. My nephew’s "interview" with our friend Ray in his San Francisco video studio this last Christmas season. Singing at the beginning, funny dialog toward the end.

And without further ado: