2002 July archive at Black Arts Diary

Archive for July, 2002

Jul

Porky Pies

By Anton Raath Closed

Categories: Politics

“American forces may have breached human rights and then removed evidence after the so-called wedding party airstrike that killed more than 50 Afghan civilians this month, according to a draft United Nations report seen by The Times.”

This is the explosive first paragraph of an article published by The Times in the UK. The UN report states that there is no evidence to support the story that US aircraft were fired on from the ground, and that there were “discrepancies” in the US accounts. In other words, someone is lying, and it ain’t the dead people.

The UN sources suggest that the US government and military themselves are covering this up, stalling for time in the hope that this will go away. And guess what? It probably will. Somewhere, on a very high level, the UN investigation will probably be made to go away. Is it any wonder the US government doesn’t want to be part of an international court of human rights?

The US public themselves will never know about this, about how the government they trust (and some even believe they elected) are lying and cheating and playing dirty just like any Enron or Worldcom. The decent American public will never know because most of them don’t read the British Times, and the American media are not reporting this story.

As of this writing, the Times story was published 24 hours ago. I have since read reports on this in the Flemish, French and Dutch media, all of them front page items. Yet, at this moment, there is no mention of this story on the front pages of USA Today, FOXNews, MSNBC or – most incredibly – Yahoo News. Shame on the US government, and shame on the US media.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Jul

Carmen the Cigar-Makeress

By Anton Raath Closed

Categories: Language, Literature & Linguistics

In an English synopsis of the opera Carmen, spotted on a programme in
Genoa, Italy: “Carmen is a cigar-makeress from a tabago factory who
loves with Don Jose of the mounting guard. There is a
noise inside the tabago factory and the revolting cigar-makeresses
burst into the stage. Carmen is arrested and Don Jose is ordered to
mounting guard her but Carmen subduces him and he lets her escape.”

milk.com

Popularity: 7% [?]

Jul

Hello Kitty Stress Test

By Anton Raath Closed

Categories: Fun & Humour

A Hello Kitty psychological test. Whatever will those crazy people in their funky white coats come up with next!

www.sanriotown.com

Popularity: 7% [?]

Jul

MIT Gallery of Hacks

By Anton Raath Closed

Categories: General Geek Culture

One of those lovely things you occasionally seem to forget about and then rediscover is the MIT tradition of “hacking”. Not the way the dictionary defines it, and certainly not the way the press waves it about, but “a clever, benign, and ‘ethical’ prank or practical joke, which is both challenging for the perpetrators and amusing to the MIT community”. Like adding the Elvish script first seen on Tolkien’s classic ring to a gold band around the MIT Great Dome. Or building an elevator that seemingly disappears down into the rubble of a demolished building. Take a walk down the archives, the first of April will certainly never impress you again.

hacks.mit.edu

Popularity: 7% [?]

Jul

Theo’s wunderbare Welt der Bandfotographie

By Anton Raath Closed

Categories: Music

Welcome to the freak show that is German rock & roll. Allow Theo to take you through the bizarre and often simply depressing world of German musicians trying to impress, sometimes amusing, often frightening. Certainly not our civilization’s finest hour.

www.immerrocknroll.de

Popularity: 8% [?]

Jul

Accidental Video Game Porn Archive

By Anton Raath Closed

Categories: General Geek Culture

All classic video games, all porn, all the time. You know you want it.

www.classicgaming.com

Popularity: 7% [?]

Jul

Kosovo Goes Up in Smoke

By Anton Raath Closed

Categories: Politics

Associated Press reports that police and NATO peacekeepers in Kosovo have destroyed marijuana plants covering “about one acre (0.4 hectares)”. Disregarding for the moment the fact that the UN troops and NATO peacekeepers are in place as actual peacekeepers rather than DEA stooges, we have to ask: why destroy the plants at all?

According to a 1968 study of the effects of marijuana on humans, these include “a tendency to sleep”, “decreased body steadiness”, “feelings of relaxation” and “self-confidence”. Isn’t this exactly the kind of populace the tin soldiers are there to establish? What exactly is it the UN want, a military truckload of ethnic cleansers biding their time, or a brightly painted bus full of giggling hopheads scoffing snack food?

Pleas for sanity in the US-led drug war aside, shouldn’t we at least define some priorities in war-stricken areas?

Popularity: 8% [?]

Jul

Pre-viewers and Pre-Texts of the Lord of the Rings films

By Anton Raath Closed

Categories: Cinema

Bertha Chin and Jonathan Gray have written an excellent text on the phenomenon of (mostly web-based) communities reviewing a film before it’s released, specifically the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

www.cult-media.com

Popularity: 7% [?]

Jul

A Douglas Adams Gift From Beyond The Grave

By Anton Raath Closed

Categories: Language, Literature & Linguistics

Long the subject of speculation among die-hard Douglas Adams fans, his posthumously published book The Salmon of Doubt has now been out for a month or two. It’s not part of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy series, nor part of the Dirk Gently series. It’s all a bit of this and that, nicely encapsulating one man’s genius. In an excellent review of the book, Tasha Robinson writes: “It’s basically just scraps, and many of the scraps weren’t even written by Adams himself. But it’s still a hilarious, warm, funny collection that paints an aggregate portrait of Adams as a complex and very human figure who struggled with depression, low self-esteem and writer’s block, but also dove into life as a glorious and highly amusing venture.”

www.scifi.com

Popularity: 8% [?]

Jul

Nothing So Strange

By Anton Raath Closed

Categories: General Geek Culture

Who really killed Bill Gates back on December 2, 1999? What conspiracies lie hidden in this murky pool of hatred and deceit?

www.nothingsostrange.com

Popularity: 7% [?]

Jul

On artists trying to protect their work

By Anton Raath Closed

Categories: General Geek Culture

This is the digital age, and if you’re an artist, sooner or later someone is going to steal from you without your being able to do
anything about it. It’s like computer security: the only safe computer is one that’s in a locked vault, not plugged in, without a screen or keyboard. And even then it’s dodgy.

If you publish in the digital age (and this includes text, images, video, programming code, any kind of intellectual property) someone somewhere CAN steal it. Doesn’t mean they will, but if nobody wants your stuff even when it’s free, that’s no compliment! I’ve had pictures “stolen” , I’ve had programming code “stolen”, and I’ve had text “stolen”.

The advice I’ve given artists before was to evaluate why they didn’t want people to “steal” their stuff. Is it because of loss of revenue? Even when digital copying does lead to a loss of revenue, you have to ask yourself how many additional sales you make due to being on the Net, as opposed to sales you lose by people copying stuff. Invariably you end up several sales ahead.

Of course, the other predominant reason artists don’t like people “stealing” online is because they’re precious about “their” stuff. I know I am. But it’s the nature of digital media, and like me, every artist in the world (no matter how unwilling) will have to learn how to live with it.

It’s like the industrial revolution and Ned Ludd – you can smash as many cotton mills as you like, the age will still outlive you. Right now it’s digital media, and it’s easy to copy. In a century or two people will either be shaking their heads over how backward we were to believe in intellectual ownership, or they’ll be shaking their heads over our backward technology that couldn’t protect the rights of the artist. Either way we’ll all be dead, so tough luck to us.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Jul

On websites that play music at you

By Anton Raath Closed

Categories: IA & Usability

I’ve always been ambivalent about music on websites. Well, not exactly ambivalent, I’ve called it the digital equivalent of a “Whites Only” sign before. Doesn’t go down well with clients; doesn’t go down well with employers. The problem with audio is that, despite being nice when used correctly, it keeps people from accessing your site. Decent quality audio files, like video, are really big. Unless the audio is your page’s main feature, most people aren’t going to bother waiting for the page to load. It’s a barrier to entry. Other people simply don’t like it.

People with slow Internet connections or slow computers (which is most of the Internet population) will experience difficulties. People without speakers or with their speakers turned off will wonder why the page took ages to load, and will never know. (And yes, Mr. or Mrs. I-Have-Speakers-Built-Into-My-iMac, some people really don’t have speakers.)

When used correctly, music on a web page can be nice, but it risks turning a user-driven experience into a televisual experience, one that triggers something that makes users want to sit back and be taken places. Which, of course, Internet users don’t do, they’re impatient and have less of an attention span than the classic M-TV generation. The M-TV kids of the 90s had a measured attention span of around 7 seconds for advertising purposes (which means you had to catch them in the first 7 seconds of your ad), and this has shrunk to less than 4 seconds for the Internet generation. They want instant gratification, and they want it yesterday.