Posted April 26th, 2010, in: Humanity, Culture, Philosophy, Politics, Ethics Etc| Ideas, Observations, Opinions, Rants Etc
Crunchy is Granola
I lady I know was given a mix tape by an old boyfriend and I asked her to make a copy of the mix for me because it contained a lot of interesting tracks.
For one, it contained this really obscure, super left-wing, hippy folk song from the Eighties about Nuclear Power. To me, it sounds like a very familiar if not cliche kind of ‘folk’ music: Celtic influences, singer-with-guitar, political message, Etc. The kind of thing you’d expect to hear at a protest rally.
“Power to kill!” it exclaims, in a ferocious, dare I say militant-sounding female register. It’s interesting to me how popular opinion about nuclear power has changed so much. I don’t mean that I think everyone loves it now, but it seems like we are a little more rational.
I can still remember how afraid we were of ‘nuclear’ anything in the Eighties. I was a little kid. But the movies at the time had really scary scenarios in them. War Games (1983) and Dreamscape (1984) come to mind.
Cover of a Metal Album I Owned When I was 13
The Russians were going to blow us up at any moment. Then we were going to blow them up automatically and the sky would turn red and there would be air raid sirens as the burning flesh is torn off our bodies by an impact blast just before everything is completely vaporized. All life on Earth would be destroyed except cockroaches. And if there was anyone anywhere that survived, they would be deformed because of the radiation. Or maybe some part of the species would retreat underground for hundreds or thousands of years. Anyway, I think we were scared, and possibly a little too scared.
This song seems to be a pretty good manifestation of that hysteria. And now that I just looked it up, I see that this song came out before the Chernobyl disaster! Wow.
I wonder what issues we are overly afraid of today. Privacy online? Genetic Engineering? I’m not saying I believe we should be less worried about anything per se, but it’s interesting to ponder. I guess we’ll know in thirty years.
Anyway, back to the song. The origin of the song was a mystery to me for a long time. I’ve googled, trying to figure it out a number of times. Finally, I have success!
The cover of the album. The Smiling Sun was designed in 1975 in Denmark. The logo soon was adopted by the anti-nuclear power movement. In 1977 the Smiling Sun was trademarked by Denmark's OOA (Organisation for Information on Nuclear Power), an anti-nuclear energy group.
I googled some of the lyrics I found a page crediting a Nigel Gray as writing the lyrics (as a poem only) (Lyrics Below). So I googled the name of the poem and the name of the poet and voila! I found awebpage for the album. Super crunchy!
It’s called “Nuclear Power No Thanks!!?”
So according to the track listing and credits, this must be the vocalist (see video):
Alison McMorland (what a voice! …the less flowery one)
Finally, here are the lyrics to the once mysterious song, a musical adaptation of a poem by Nigel Gray:
Sleep well my little son and dream
Time flows faster than a mountain stream
I wish you happiness in Spring
Come Autumn it may be too late to sing
While you sleep necessity drives
workers down uranium mines
repair men into the jaws of Hell
radiation through the human cell!
Sleep well my little girl and dream…
Madmen tear the earth apart
like werewolves at the human heart
The powerful crave more power still
Nuclear power; power to kill!
Sleep well my lover and dream…
Acid pond. Poisonous leak
Ships collide. Plutonium slick
Yellowcake waste. Lead-lined tomb
You’re not even safe in Mother’s womb!
Sleep well my unborn babe and dream
Time flows faster than a mountain stream
I wish you happiness in Spring
Come Autumn it may be too late…
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Posted April 11th, 2010, in: Art Etc| Ideas, Observations, Opinions, Rants Etc| New Media
Mostly, when it comes to finding new music, I’ve retreated to music recommended by friends and/or software-based recommendation systems like Last.fm. I mean, I generally don’t listen to ‘Radio’ with the exception of my local NPR station, KQED, which I mainly listen to for News/Culture type programming.
But Erika.net plays such a high percentage of music that is interesting to me that I end up seeking out music I hear on Erika probably about as frequently as three times per hour! And the rest of the music I hear on erika.net is almost always totally welcomed.
So in a nutshell, I think these people, whomever they are, have awesome taste in music. From their homepage:
erika.net has been broadcasting a 24 hour mp3 stream since 1999. We hand-pick music and organize it freeform style: all types of music at all times of the day. Our goal is to bring you music you can’t hear on other radio stations, presented in a unique style. …[can be found] in the ‘Eclectic’ section of iTunes radio.
If you have more conventional taste in music, try erika.net when you’re recovering from surgery or, for whatever reason, under the influence of hallucinogenic substances.
The page that displays what they are currently playing and what has recently played is HERE
(about as eclectic as it could possibly be)
erika.net is a serious improvement to my quality of life. I am listening to them frequently now. I wish I could stream them while driving.
erika.net people: If you read this, thanks! You are awesome.
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Posted April 7th, 2010, in: Humanity, Culture, Philosophy, Politics, Ethics Etc| Ideas, Observations, Opinions, Rants Etc| Videos
P’ansori or Pansori is a form of Korean music/story-telling. It’s kind of like Opera in form. The singing is very beautiful and strange to me.
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Posted November 3rd, 2009, in: Computer Problems and Fixes| Evil Robots| Humanity, Culture, Philosophy, Politics, Ethics Etc| Marketing/Advertising In The Cloud| SEO, SEM, SMO Etc| Technology| WordPress
The site links to sites who are also under attack and when the bug is running correctly on those sites, the sites redirect the hits to the final destination,
which is http://www.zml.com/
I don’t know if zml.com knows this is happening. I mean I suppose it’s possible that some unscrupulous SEO or Marketing guy promised them traffic and then resorted to this to get it. I’m contacting them now to inform them of this uncool practice being committed on their behalf, and if they are not willing to cooperate on putting an end to it, I will have no choice but to give them some negative attention.
The process of extracting the bad links from the content was long and hard since the strings of code inserted were very inconsistent.
The following is a list of the sites being linked thru, which I assume are all victims of this malware. If you own one of these sites, feel free to drop me a line and I will point you in the right direction as far as putting an end to this.
- http://blog.segd.org
- http://www.investorsunited.com
- http://www.oca-gla.org
- http://www.thunderstruck.org
- http://subway.com
- http://verdadeabsoluta.net
- http://yourrnc.com
- http://wordpressthemesbox.com
- http://mp3db.org
- http://webconsultingdc.com
- http://turtlesurvival.org
- http://turtleconservationfund.org
- http://truenorthbrass.com
- http://tarabooks.com
- http://kolenalaila.com
- http://techbostonacademy.org
- http://pie-flex.com
- http://www.philebrity.tv
- http://www.landmarkwine.com
- http://artsinbushwick.org
- http://brettmartin.org
- http://bsf.org
- http://www.popandpolitics.com
- http://womanhonorthyself.com
- http://www.brainstorm9.com
- http://webdev.entheosweb.com
- http://www.topicus-healthcare.com
- http://www.vfilings.com
- http://constantinessword.com
- http://www.dopiska.com
- http://writingcenters.org
- http://www.radisson.com
- http://notjustaprettyface.org
- http://www.arizonacriminaldefenseblog.com
- http://www.sembrarpaz.com
- http://www.apostilla.com
- http://www.geektechs.net
- http://johnquiggin.com
- http://blog.pdma.org
- http://bluesheaven.com
Message to ZML:
Hello,
I am a developer and recently one of my clients who is running WordPress for her personal website was attacked by some Malware that inserted thousands of links throughout her content. Those links resolve to your site, but via redirects thru other sites that I assume are also victims of the malware.
You look like you’ve built a pretty nice site here. And I’m writing to give you the chance to get on board with fixing this problem before I am forced to create some negative attention in the blogosphere and social media.
It doesn’t seem like you would want to be resposible for malware. But it also doesn’t seem like anyone would go through the trouble to make all these links back to you unless you were paying them. Perhaps you hired some marketing or SEO people and were not aware that they would be using these tactics? Please write back soon as I have very little patience for this kind of thing.
Thanks,
Andrew A. Peterson
Some samples of weird code that the bot inserted:
<wp:tag><wp:tag_slug>%d0%b0%d0%b2%d1%82%d0%be%d1%80%d1%81%d0%ba%d0%b8%d0%b5-%d0%bf%d1%80%d0%be%d0%b3%d1%80%d0%b0%d0%bc%d0%bc%d1%8b</wp:tag_slug><wp:tag_name><![CDATA[????????? ?????????]]></wp:tag_name></wp:tag>
<wp:tag><wp:tag_slug>%d1%81%d0%b2%d0%be%d0%b1%d0%be%d0%b4%d0%bd%d1%8b%d0%b9-%d0%bc%d0%b8%d0%ba%d1%80%d0%be%d1%84%d0%be%d0%bd</wp:tag_slug><wp:tag_name><![CDATA[????????? ????????]]></wp:tag_name></wp:tag>
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Posted October 31st, 2009, in: Humanity, Culture, Philosophy, Politics, Ethics Etc| Ideas, Observations, Opinions, Rants Etc
I don’t even remember how I found his website, which is beautiful.
I mainly wanted to draw your attention to a thing Mark “Jake” Baker wrote that was touching to me. It’s sort of a manifesto for modern life called ”The Human Condition.”
It’s an interesting Internet find. It says so much!
HERE it is. I think we will all be wiser people if we read it.
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Posted September 26th, 2009, in: Humanity, Culture, Philosophy, Politics, Ethics Etc| Ideas, Observations, Opinions, Rants Etc| Intellectual Property| Music Industry| New Media| Technology| Web 2.0
I just got a newsletter update explaining that they support a three-strikes policy for file-sharing.
Our meeting also voted overwhelmingly to support a three-strike sanction on those who persistently download illegal files, sanctions to consist of a warning letter, a stronger warning letter and a final sanction of the restriction of the infringer’s bandwidth to a level which would render file-sharing of media files impractical while leaving basic email and web access functional.
How backward-ass!!
As an artist, I am going to have to revoke my membership if they don’t do some serious back-peddling in the next few days.
I thought the FAC was a forward-thinking organization. Maybe not.
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Posted August 18th, 2009, in: Art Etc| Ideas, Observations, Opinions, Rants Etc| Projects| Visual Art
Juicy Butt Sweats
A few years ago I noticed this new paradigm in logo placement on clothing. I think it was the Company Juicy Couture that first put their logo right on the ass of the customer. I’m not sure if they were indeed the first, but the word “Juicy” is the first word I remember actually reading from the seat of the pants of a young lady walking in front of me on the street.
I don’t need to explain why the the word “juicy” is so provocative when placed prominently on a woman’s rear end, and perhaps this is why I remember it as the beginning of this era, whether or not the credit (or blame) is really owed to the JC clothing line for making this a trend.
Fast forward a few years and many colleges and indeed even my twelve-year-old niece’s junior high school’s athletic clothing line has the institution’s name featured in this manner.
But not on the men’s/boy’s shorts and sweats. Only on the women’s/girl’s.
Hairy Butt Jeans
I have therefore decided to examine the cultural subtext of this phenomenon further by adding a twist to it, which I shall be wearing around town in search of truth.
Behold, the unveiling of the Hairy Butt Jean by Andrew A. Peterson.
Sorry for the camera-phone pic. I’ll have better photos as soon as I’m ready to do a proper shoot for this amazing new addition to my artistic legacy.
Also, I know I’m not the best butt-model but I work with what I have.
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Posted July 19th, 2009, in: Ideas, Observations, Opinions, Rants Etc| Marketing/Advertising In The Cloud| Music Industry| New Media| Reviews & Thoughts About Products| SEO, SEM, SMO Etc| Technology| The War on Free Culture| Viral Marketing| Web 2.0
OK so I have to admit that I’ve overestimated the popularity of Last.FM. At least, I am realizing how different LastFM is for a user like me that mostly has mp3s on my hard drive, and users who stream music from lastfm.
PowerPlay isn’t going to do a lot of good for me very quickly since I’ve chosen to buy impressions on radio streams for artists that are pretty obscure. I did this because conversion rates (see web marketing 101) are higher in a narrower target, so if I try to compete for impressions/plays on Bjork’s radio stream, the chances that the users will actually like my music are considerably smaller than if I target people who like more obscure music like the constellation acts or something. Going for Bjork is more like going for Britney Spears in that there’s a fairly diverse audience and the users are more likely to be fairly mainstream (Bjork being one of the strangest things they like). Going after a band like Excepter or HRSTA is a better bet for me because these are people looking for fairly unconventional soundtrack-y experimental music.
In ten hours since I launched my first $20 Powerplay campaign (100 plays on radio streams of ten artists I chose), I’ve gotten ZERO plays.
On the upside, twenty bucks is going to provide my with at least 3 months of entertainment since I’ll have one more site to check in with a few times a day when I’m being neurotic.
The music industry is a mess. The best discovery tools suck because the content owners are afraid of change, while the best music delivery systems are either incomplete (legal or illegal but private) or unreliable (illegal but public).
And legal or not, there’s no real integration between the streaming services and the OS environment.
Maybe the Chrome OS or the Smartphone market will change that. I’m sick of storing tons of MP3s.
OH! If these other music acts are so obscure, maybe I should buy their Keywords from Google. Hmmm…
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Posted June 28th, 2009, in: Cultural Acceleration| Data Portability (DataPortability)| Humanity, Culture, Philosophy, Politics, Ethics Etc| Ideas, Observations, Opinions, Rants Etc| Semantic Web| Social Software and The Social Graph| Technology| The Semantic Web (Giant Global Graph)| Web 2.0
The following is a bunch of predictions. Mark my words. Three areas to pull out your wallet for.
- Personal Web Hosting/Cloud/Sync/Backup Services – I’m not sure what to call this space that I think we’ll be seeing a lot of. I don’t believe that these kinds of services will be bundled with mobile accounts anytime soon, but that’s clearly what will happen. The definition is this: Add-On ISP-like services that make mobile and desktop apps work together more effectively. This would include backup services and services that bridge gaps across the various hardware networks we use.
- Genealogy – The Baby Boomers love this stuff, and actually so do humans in general. Who doesn’t want to know their own family history? And with DNA analysis becoming more and more standardized, I think that Social-Media-Driven Genealogical Information will probably be mashed together with known hereditary data to create really compelling information services for average people. The word “Rich” comes to mind but that’s really in the hands of designers and visionaries. Imagine what’s going to happen in this space. It blows my mind.
- Library Sciences Related Anything – The so-called “Public Library” is probably about to explode into something much more tangled with our daily lives. I believe that tax-funded Public Libraries are increasingly getting closer to being able to easily use cutting edge Information Technology to serve the public. The abolition of hard-copy card catalogs went slowly. But we’re in the age of Moore’s Law. It’s no stretch of the imagination that soon there will be title-to-isbn translators that cross language barriers and so on… But that’s just the beginning. Imagine the Public Library as place that has cached, categorized databases from all sorts of sources, and Librarians as people helping you to mash data together (while you’re still at home in your underwear or on a train heading to work) …This idea is so hard to see for some people. I could go on for pages about the possibilities. And for you asshole cynics, remember: Facts Cannot Be Copyrighted. “(b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.” …Libraries are worth so much to us as people. And when they merge into a global archive of ‘verified’ sources, we’ll really start to see the Web’s potential.
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