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This election is the important one

In New Zealand, in the US, wherever: this election, the one coming up? This is the important one.

“If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.” – IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri in November 2007

We have three years to start making serious changes to how human life operates. These changes cannot be made at the individual level, or even at the local level. The needed changes must happen through governmental structures. Only governments have the ability to make these changes happen.
I do a lot of thinking about and talking about climate change and what the individual can do. I run a big programme in a university course on this subject, even. Driving less, consuming less, turning off your electronic devices at the wall, using the heater less, all of this is important. But right now, by far, the most important environmental action is political.
This was the message in Al Gore’s 20-minute followup to Inconvenient Truth, which debuted in March this year and you can watch it here, at the TED site. (Bonus: seeing him amend the Inconvenient Truth’s list of countries that ratified Kyoto to include Australia. The U.S. is now all alone in refusing.) This was a key message in the material supporting Annie Leonard’s great Story of Stuff short film resource on the consumption cycle. It’s been turning up everywhere. That’s no accident.
Let’s be clear: unless we, the citizens of our various democracies, forcefully put climate change on the agenda for the governments that will lead us through the next few years, then the entire mode of human life will be pushed into catastrophic change. This is, incredibly, not hyperbole. The stakes actually are that big.

“If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to the one on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, CO2 must be reduced from its present 385 ppm (parts per million) to, at most, 350 ppm” – NASA climatologist James Hansen, April 2008

This can happen. It is entirely possible. But it is up to us.
This TomDispatch is a good overview of 350 movement. Remember that number, you’ll be seeing a lot more of it in the next year or two.

Shihad, Flesh D-Vice and a Postcard

*** EDITED – SEE END OF ENTRY
So I’ve been listening the heck out of Shihad‘s new album, Beautiful Machine. (You can listen to much of it over on their MySpace page.) It’s good, and occasionally great, and I think over time will settle comfortably into “second best” in their album catalogue, right after the unbeatable Killjoy.
The ‘had are a funny wee band. A Welly high school metal covers band that grabbed its own sound and then never stopped evolving. Going through their catalogue and every single album debuted a new sound for them. They’ve never hit the big big time, but they make a living from their music and they’re pretty much entrenched as NZ’s favourite band. Their reputation as a live act is deservedly big. There’s apparently a band biography on the way that I’m really keen to read – squaring the circle on their many contradictions will make for some fascinating content.
So, nice album. But that isn’t what this post is about.
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When they started out, Shihad were managed by Gerald Dwyer, himself of seminal Kiwi hard rock band Flesh D-Vice. (Is that even the right label for Flesh D-Vice’s music?) This new album reminded me of a Flesh-D-Vice oddity I’ve had sitting in my drawer for a while now.
In ’06 I picked up the hardback ‘The List of Seven’ for a couple bucks at a book sale. This is a fun riff on Sherlock Holmes and pulp action by Mark Frost, co-creator of Twin Peaks. When I went to read it, a postcard fell out of the pages.
On closer inspection, it turned out it wasn’t a commercial postcard – it was a photo that had been used as a postcard. The photo showed a wee girl wearing a hand-knitted Flesh D-Vice jersey. The postcard on the back had a Wellington 1990 postdate on it, sent by “Jennie & Ian” to “Sue and Gerald” in London. The writing mentions getting back from a Faith No More gig and that “Shihad played really well”.
(Shihad’s 1990 support for Faith No More was one of their earliest big moments.)
As I looked at this card, eventually the penny dropped – this was likely a postcard being sent to Gerald Dwyer. Why else the Shihad mention + Flesh D-Vice knit? (I tried to check out some facts – was Gerald in London at the time of Shihad’s big gig? Was Sue his partner? No luck.)
Further realisation – the book it was in as a bookmark is a ’93 release, so at the time it was being used as a bookmark it was already three years old. The photo was a keepsake for someone, and should properly be returned. But to who? I didn’t have the first idea where to look. Dwyer himself died over a decade ago. I traded a few emails with Karl from Shihad, but he couldn’t figure it.
So I now hand over to the internet. Maybe someone will Google Flesh D-Vice or “Gerald Dwyer” and find this post. Maybe a reader will know someone who knows someone – everyone knows everyone in NZ. I’ve got this photo/postcard that someone might care about, and it’s easy enough for me to pop it in an envelope.
Here’s the card (click for big version):

EDIT: The postcard has been returned to its rightful owner!

Brevity Friday Linky

Okay, a brevity linky:
Stumbled across Kate Beaton’s comics for about the fifth time and this week I will linky them. They are good. Especially Napoleon eating cookies and Conversations With Younger Me.

Make your own Music television – a mashup of Last.fm and YouTube that searches YouTube for music videos that’re liked by people who like the music you like, like. Is good. Hattip to the imperator DavidR for this one.
Potsie Syndrome – characters on TV shows who still show up each week because the actor’s on contract, but just kinda stand around and never do anything because the writers just don’t have a clue why they’re there.
And did you catch the Ewok gospel, via linky in last week’s comments by Dave W?

Lamest. Scandal. Evar.

I mean, really, isn’t this the most inane scandal you could imagine?
ITV rigged the outcome of its call-in 2005 People’s Choice comedy award so Robbie Williams would be able to give an award to his mates Ant and Dec.
This is sad on so many levels it makes my head swim when I try to count them.
I mean, it’s clearly scandalous – those call-in votes cost money. But… but… Robbie Williams! Ant and Dec! People’s Choice Awards! ITV! THIS IS A STUPID SCANDAL!

Doctorow’s Little Brother

Since we were talking about Cory Doctorow the other day, I want to plug the man’s new book.
Important bit first: it’s free. You can download it in a variety of formats, including html and pdf, here. Doctorow practices what he preaches around this stuff.

What is it? It’s youth fiction with tech smarts, street savvy and one hell of a political kick, as you would expect from a conscious followup to Orwell’s 1984. Check out the blurb:

Marcus, a.k.a “w1n5t0n,” is only seventeen years old, but he figures he already knows how the system works-and how to work the system. Smart, fast, and wise to the ways of the networked world, he has no trouble outwitting his high school’s intrusive but clumsy surveillance systems.
But his whole world changes when he and his friends find themselves caught in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco. In the wrong place at the wrong time, Marcus and his crew are apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security and whisked away to a secret prison where they’re mercilessly interrogated for days.
When the DHS finally releases them, Marcus discovers that his city has become a police state where every citizen is treated like a potential terrorist. He knows that no one will believe his story, which leaves him only one option: to take down the DHS himself.

Go download it. Then read it. I’ve done the first, plan on getting to the second real soon now.
(But I’ve got the busy. Blog may fall silent for a day or two.)

How I Will Get News

Blogs are the future of news, for me.
In future, news will come to me via blog. I will subscribe to blog by subject matter. Each blog will serve as a curator for one news subject. Some will be very specific, others will be big-picture views of a field. One blog could focus on Middle Eastern news, another on general science news, another on news of the ecological status of the arctic, another on the Chicago Bears.
Each blog will build trust from its readers by reliably presenting every significant story connected to this subject matter. Each blog curator will add value by providing context, assessing the veracity of the story, and providing links to relevant background information. Blog curators will *not* deconstruct or attack stories on these blogs – this is not their function and will reduce value. This kind of comment can happen on a separate blog channel.
Of course, the simple act of selecting a story to cover, and providing context a certain way, does provide a sort of comment – it is impossible to escape some degree of bias and framing in any news service. Blog presentation minimises the problems associated with this by being self-consciously personalised. As a reader, I will select blogs on topics that are of interest to me, and over time I will get to know the personalities of the blog authors.
Curator blogs will voluntarily associate with each other to make semi-formal news networks. News networks will operate in a dense, flat network rather than a hierarchy.
News will come straight off the wire services, paid for by advertising leveraged across the whole network – the advertising, like much online advertising, will be content-specific and at a remove from the content providers, to remove undue ‘Manufacturing Consent’-style influence.
It will be easy to select the news content you are interested in following and build it into a single newsfeed. It will be possible to follow multiple blogs on one topic, particularly valuable if the topic is contentious (e.g. anything political).
Newsblogging is work. Some people will try and not do a good job. PR operations will set up shill curators. Other curators will be offered pay-for-play deals. Reputation will be everything. It will still be much better than the current system.
This system will effectively function as a parasite on the mainstream media services, while simultaneously raising the profile of good content from other news sources such as Indymedia. In time, freelance journalists will be able to offer their content direct to these news services – writing articles, then getting the word out wide to the relevant newsblogs, getting linkage and eyeballs in response, and earning their keep via the advertising revenue on their own pages. Some people are already doing this.
The infrastructure isn’t quite there, but soon it will be.
—
All the above speculation performed with not a single coffee in me yet today. Anyone want to deconstruct this or present a more plausible scenario?

[mediawatch] Pirates of the Copyright

I was going to skip this but this morning decided, no, I don’t want to. So I rag on another DomPost bit (again with a Greer McDonald byline.)
A regular feature in the Saturday DomPost is “The Insider”, a full-page overview of a major public issue, getting the reader up to speed on what is at stake and what is being said by all parties.
This Saturday, the issue was the copyright act amendment that was recently passed into law. The amendment addresses the digital era, and allows a lot of things that users are doing anyway, such as burning new copies of music for personal use, and getting around artificial access restrictions. However, it isn’t just about allowing things – there are plenty of restrictions made formal here. (The legally keen may want to check out this overview by Canadian copyright law expert Michael Geist.)
It’s an interesting topic. The interaction between new technology and old media distribution methods is contentious. No-one wants creative endeavours to become financially unfeasible, and copyright does tie into this. However, there is a solid argument that copyright’s role in protecting the artist is massively overstated or even just plain wrong. Sophisticated arguments for liberal copyright laws are easy to find, especially online where you can’t throw a virtual stone without hitting someone who follows Cory Doctorow’s take on these matters. (As detailed at uberblog BoingBoing.)
Sadly, this one-pager doesn’t do justice to its subject. Far from it. Just look at the entire list of parties quoted:

  • Consumer NZ’s website, pointing out the difficulties of pre-amendment law
  • The Internet Society of New Zealand, saying the new law is a “very modest step in the right direction”
  • The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry
  • The Recording Industry Association of NZ website
  • The Motion Picture Association
  • The NZ Federation Against Copyright Theft (NZFact)

Incredibly, the Exec Director of NZFact, Tony Eaton, gets about a third of the page to himself, as well as a dramatic boxout saying “What illegal copying is costing each year” (over $200 million, it claims). There is no hint that there is another way of looking at these issues, there is no suggestion that the figures deployed might be crafted to serve the producer’s message, etc etc etc. The bulk of this page is unanswered propaganda. (“Respecting copyright will ensure a vibrant creative economy for New Zealand and a bright future for the next generation of creators.”)
The big photo, of course, shows a teenager downloading some music. The caption is beautiful: “Teenagers downloading music from the Internet are targets of a campaign to have them respect creativity.” Notice the framing, swallowed completely from Eaton’s propaganda? Copyright isn’t about respecting corporate authority, it’s about respecting creativity. That, in fact, is the name of a competition run by NZFact: the “Respecting Creativity” contest.
None of this is new. It is, in fact, depressingly old, and this page is a huge missed opportunity to shed some light and get beyond the corporate spokes-fronts. No comments from musicians and artists, who almost without exception have considered and insightful and often fierce opinions on digital download copyright. (Needless to say, they don’t all agree.) No comments from anyone at all connected with the counter-copyright movement. Heck, even the aforementioned Cory Doctorow devoted space on BoingBoing to the merits of the new NZ law.
I am saddened that the issue page in the DomPost was turned over so thoroughly to the corporate propaganda machine. There are definitely sound arguments for copyright protection and enforcement, but this page doesn’t go near them and doesn’t even seem aware there are arguments against.
Verdict: DomPost = FAIL
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And on the subject of copyright stupidity – when you put a DVD in your DVD player and it forces you, every single time, to sit through a long advertisement against piracy? Well, you know what doesn’t treat you with that kind of disrespect? Pirated DVDs. Just saying.

Ain’t No Friday If There Ain’t No Linky

Museum of the World’s Worst Comics. Lots of wacky stuff from the 40s and 50s.
For fellow Wire-heads: Steve Lieber draws characters from the Wire in the style of The SImpsons. (And from the same link, Wire co-creator David Simon shows up in a blog comments section to beat on someone for the stupid. warning – blog post itself is detailed plot summary of a s4 ep so be careful if you’re not that deep.)
In a spectacular display of what missing-the-point looks like, many serious-minded technical people explain how the Death Star explosion caused a holocaust on Endor. (Dudes, it’s Star Wars. Your science has no place here.)
The incredible Future Perfect blog, in which a Nokia researcher talks about travelling the world to see how different people in different cultures make use of cellphones. There’s a list of countries and regions down the side – click on one and marvel. In my explorations so far I liked Tehran.
Joe Dante’s Gremlins feature in a BT ad in the UK.
And finally, again from the wonderful photoblog riotclitshave, I give you THE POWER OF METAL.

Moose Stomp


Moose don’t need antlers to stomp y’all.
I’ve been pushing hard these last couple days, and blogging has fallen right off the wagon. Maybe get some good linky tomorrow, we’ll see how that go. Up side = writing the last couple weeks has been hard, grinding, sore, thankless work, but writing the last couple nights has seen everything fall into place beautifully. Ah yes, that’s a good feeling.
(Image is another from the outstanding photoblog riotclitshave.)