Ranting and Roaring

As a Canadian, I don’t have a congressional representative but maybe you do. Here’s a message from Pandora‘s founder Tim Westergren that showed up in my e-mail today:

I’m writing today to ask for your help.  The survival of Pandora and all of Internet radio is in jeopardy because of a recent decision by the Copyright Royalty Board in Washington, DC to almost triple the licensing fees for Internet radio sites like Pandora.  The new royalty rates are irrationally high, more than four times what satellite radio pays, and broadcast radio doesn’t pay these at all.  Left unchanged, these new royalties will kill every Internet radio site, including Pandora.

In response to these new and unfair fees, we have formed the SaveNetRadio Coalition, a group that includes listeners, artists, labels and webcasters.  I hope that you will consider joining us.

Please sign our petition urging your Congressional representative to act to save Internet radio: http://capwiz.com/saveinternetradio/issues/alert/?alertid=9631541

Please feel free to forward this link/email to your friends – the more petitioners we can get, the better.

Understand that we are fully supportive of paying royalties to the artists whose music we play, and have done so since our inception.  As a former touring musician myself, I’m no stranger to the challenges facing working musicians.  The issue we have with the recent ruling is that it puts the cost of streaming far out of the range of ANY webcaster’s business potential.

I hope you’ll take just a few minutes to sign our petition – it WILL make a difference. As a young industry, we do not have the lobbying power of the RIAA. You, our listeners, are by far our biggest and most influential allies.

As always, and now more than ever, thank you for your support.

My grandparents always dreamed of the day their grandchildren would live in the dark.

The government estimates that replacing the 87 million incandescent bulbs in use across Ontario with more efficient bulbs would save six million megawatt hours every year — enough to power 600,000 homes.

Changing to more efficient bulbs is also the equivalent — in terms of greenhouse-gas emissions — of taking 250,000 cars off the road, said Ontario Environment Minister Laurel Broten, who announced the move along with Energy Minister Dwight Duncan on Wednesday morning.

We’ll see — they’ll have to provide a lot more light than the 40 watt ones I’m using around the house, or people will just start doubling and tripling them up.

Update: given the timeframe for implementation, that many people have started making the transition and that the price should fall significantly over the next 5 years, this looks like a very clever way of taking credit for something that was already happening.

Jim Treacher (via it comes in pints?):

According to MSNBC: “South Korea’s Foreign Ministry expressed its condolences, saying that there was no known motive for the shootings and that South Korea hoped the tragedy would not ‘stir up racial prejudice or confrontation.’” You know what? How about just expressing your condolences? If a white American guy shot a bunch of people in South Korea, would we tell the grieving families that we hoped it wouldn’t stir up racial prejudice?

Lefsetz:

• Hip-hop will not come back.
• Video has moved to the Web.
• Singles are death.
• The cost of production has gone down, irrevocably.
• The major labels will lose market share.
• The credible acts of tomorrow will not sell out.
• Music is not cool.
• Doesn’t matter what you think of music, its image hasn’t been tarnished, it’s been TRASHED!
• People have tuned new music out.
• Music should be paid for.
• People only want to see stars.
• Melody never goes out of style.

Also this quote:

As for modern music like Justin Timberlake, that’s seen as a vehicle to bump bodies in the club, it’s not something you want to listen to on the stereo at home.  And until that desirable listening experience comes back with new music, and people haven’t changed, they still want it, kids still sit in front of their computer or fall asleep with their iPods to Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, we’re fucked. 

I’ve watched the all three races of this F1 Season and it’s turning out that this may be the best on to watch in years:

• there is a three way tie for the driver’s championship with Alonso, Räikkönen and Hamilton with 22 points
• the #2 drivers, Massa for Ferrari and Hamilton for McLaren are turning out to be better and more exciting that the #1 drivers
• anything can happen yet in the team standings, as second place Ferrari appears to have the better car this season
• Rookie British driver Lewis Hamilton has been on the podium in his first three races and shows a very amusing level of aggression on the track

Nice rant about freedom and a cautionary tail for Canada. Read it all, as they say:

When did we decide to allow the police to smash into private homes without knocking and identifying themselves? Recently, in the suburb I live in, a special police force dressed in black Nazi style uniforms busted into a suburban home without warning and dragged a school teacher out of her house with an automatic weapon at the back of her head. They forced her to the ground, handcuffed her, and hauled her away while her neighbors watched. They did it without a warrant and without consequence. Why? A misunderstanding. That is precisely why we need checks in place, to avoid misunderstandings and abuses. The police chief said, “When we realized it was a mistake, we all had a good laugh.” If a group of unidentified men dragged his wife away at gunpoint, I wonder if he would still think it was funny.

When did we decide it was okay to strip search an old lady at the airport because the pin in her hip set off the metal detector? When did we decide it was too risky to take a cup of coffee on an airplane? When did we decide it was reasonable to make a nursing mother drink her own breast milk to prove she wasn’t a terrorist? When we impose such extreme levels of security, haven’t the terrorists already won? Haven’t we willingly given our freedom to the government and the terrorists in the name of security?

[...] I believe there was day when most Americans accepted that life was risky. They accepted that bad things can happen to good people. They accepted that risk was an inherent part being free. They didn’t need a new law or government program every time something bad happened.

Interesting idea in The Economist:

One of the most ambitious ideas has been developed by Sky WindPower, a company based in San Diego and led by Dave Shepard.

[...]

Mr Shepard’s flying generator looks like a cross between a kite and a helicopter. It has four rotors at the points of an H-shaped frame that is tethered to the ground by a long cable. The rotors act like the surface of a kite, providing the lift needed to keep the platform in the air. As they do so, they also turn dynamos that generate electricity. This power is transmitted to the ground through aluminium cables. Should there be a lull in the wind, the dynamos can be used in reverse as electric motors, to keep the generator airborne.

Mr Shepard estimates these rigs could produce power for as little as two cents a kilowatt hour. That is cheaper than the three to five cents conventional energy generation costs. It is an attractive idea, but a flying generator is difficult thing to build—and there is a limit to how helpful existing helicopter technology will be. Aircraft require maintenance after a few days of operation, if not sooner. To operate cost-effectively, wind turbines will need to keep turning for many months without upkeep.

Mr Shepard, however, thinks he has a way out. Stabilising and directing a conventional helicopter requires that the pitch of the individual blades be adjusted with every rotation—up to a thousand times a minute. That puts massive stress on the turning mechanism and wears it out rapidly. On a four-rotor arrangement, you can achieve the same effect by changing the pitch of one or two whole rotors, rather than adjusting the pitch of individual blades. Mr Shepard reckons that this will make a big difference, and will increase the periods between maintenance enough to make the project viable.

See also:

• Canada’s Magenn Power, 1km floating turbines

Just for a laugh, I thought I’d give the Green Party a visit and see what’s making news for them.

Green Parties of Canada and United States warn of disastrous consequences of an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities

Canadian and U.S. Green Parties are jointly calling for a comprehensive and open dialogue to stop the escalation of tension in the Persian Gulf OTTAWA – At the initiative of the Leader of the Green Party of Canada, Elizabeth May, the Canadian and U.S. Green Parties are jointly calling for a comprehensive and open dialogue to stop the escalation of tension in the Persian Gulf. The escalating tension, combined with suggestions the U.S. may have a war plan that includes targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities, led the Green Parties of the U.S. and Canada to state today that nuclear facilities should never be targeted for deliberate attack.

Does the Conservative Party issue joint press releases with the Republicans? The Liberals with the Democrats? Yet Canadian Green Party leader, the American Elizabeth May, somehow thinks us colonials need a little transnational help from our betters, south of the border.

“There can be no justification for attacking nuclear facilities,” said Janina Komaroff, Green Party of Canada critic for International Cooperation. “The consequences of such an attack would be disastrous.”

Nuclear facilities? It’s not like Iran has plants up and running. And the consequences for Iran’s nuclear program would certainly be disastrous, but I doubt it be much worse than any other “normal” attack. And it certainly sorted out Iraq’s program, all those years ago without “disastrous” “consequences”.

Citing the potentially catastrophic environmental and health consequences of such attacks, the Greens jointly called upon all parties in the current stand off to refrain from war and to enter into meaningful negotiations. The Canadian and U.S. Green Parties are collaborating with Green Parties in Europe on this issue.

OK, our final offer: you can kill half the Joos in a rain of fire, enslave one-quarter and deport the rest to Germany.

“Western governments know the dangers of attacks on nuclear facilities. The vulnerability of their own nuclear facilities to terrorist attacks has been an ongoing concern since 9/11,” said Julia Willebrand, Co-Chair of the International Committee of the Green Party of the U.S. “The idea that any western country would engage in or support such attacks on the facilities of another nation should be unthinkable.”

We, the sane, don’t really see the symmetry between a terrorist attack designed to kill Canadian and American civilians and a military attack design to stop a dictatorship from killing civilians and threatening neighboring nations. Sorry, we didn’t go to cuckoo school let you folks.

Global double standards are the crux of the current crisis over Iran’s uranium reprocessing. While the nuclear weapons states have failed to live up to their commitment made under the Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1970 to dismantle their own nuclear weapons, they have selectively allowed some states like Israel, India and Pakistan to develop nuclear weapons, while threatening and/or bombing countries like Iraq and Iran. Clearly, as this crisis demonstrates, the status quo is not working and is not providing security and stability in the Middle East or the world.

This paragraph is so bizarre, it’s hard to know where to start. We didn’t “allow” Israel, India and Pakistan to do anything; they just went and did it. How can any sane person — yes, I know — talk about nuclear proliferation in the 21st century and not work in a mention of North Korea? That doesn’t really fit into the negotiations, not bombs paradigm, does it? Iraq hasn’t managed to attack any of its neighbors in the last 16 years, so that’s a plus. Beyond that, it’s hard to see what this has to do with peace and security in the rest of the Middle East.

While the situation in the Middle East is complex and involves many issues beyond the current nuclear crisis, a de-escalation of the current nuclear crisis is essential to addressing these complex problems. It is time to end the threats and the war games and to enter into a meaningful dialogue that addresses the issues and concerns of all parties involved.

e.g. see our final offer re: the Joos above.

CBC:

[Potvin] added that “whenever I passed a TV or newspaper with a report on the ensuing U.S. war to capture Osama bin Laden, I secretly said to myself, ‘Go, Osama, Go!’”

but!

But on Friday, after parts of his column were reproduced in the media, Potvin offered two different apologies.

He told reporters in a brief statement: ”I apologize for the way my essay five years ago has been characterized in the media.

“Some sentences, out of their context, may appear insensitive,” he said.

“Sorry you’re too stupid to understand how sophisticated I am”

“How did people do politics before YouTube?”

And on the subject of proportional representation, here’s a letter in today’s National Post from someone who actually has experience with it:

Andrew Coyne casts proportional representation (PR) as the choice of geeks. As an academic who studies electoral systems, I’m as geeky as they come. Many academic geeks have looked at PR based systems and have come away less than satisfied. This is because proportional representation grants minority parties power disproportionate to their vote share because they are necessary to a major party in forming a coalition.

He argues that a switch to PR would transform Canadian politics away from state favours. He’s far too optimistic. We have rather strong evidence that the favours simply switch from being geographically-based, under the current system, to demographically based under PR. Mr. Coyne also suggests PR is fairer to voters. But here in New Zealand — where we operate under the MMP model, which Mr. Coyne labels a flawed version of PR that is nonetheless preferable to Canada’s system — our experience might dampen his enthusiasm.

It took six weeks after the 1996 election here to hammer out a coalition agreement; the coalition collapsed in 1998. Voters did not know for a-month-and-a-half who would form the government, and ultimately had no say in the matter. Why is it fairer to voters that governments be formed by back-room deals subsequent to the election?

Dr. Eric Crampton, Department of Economics, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand.

How about that, members of the Green Party revel in mass murder:

A federal Green party candidate in Vancouver-Kingsway is standing behind a controversial editorial he wrote more than four years ago in which he describes the falling of the World Trade Center twin towers as “beautiful.”

“When I saw the first tower cascade down into that enormous plume of dust and paper, there was a little voice inside me that said, ‘Yeah!’ When the second tower came down the same way, that little voice said, ‘Beautiful!’ When the visage of the Pentagon appeared on the TV with a gaping and smoking hole in its side, that little voice had nearly taken me over, and I felt an urge to pump my fist in the air,” Mr. Potvin wrote in the editorial.

Canada would sure be better off with proportional representation, eh Coyne, where these loons would get a say in things.

This is kind of neat — it’s convert your Flickr (and other) images into little business cards which they mail to you (via Coates).

This would make neat presents. Hmmmm.

“Flood Day“?

Sony has created a Second Life-type thing for the PS3 called “Home”. It looks really good, almost good enough a reason to buy a PS3. You know, if you didn’t have a first life.

It won’t be available until the Fall.

I have just made a number of posts over at the BlogMatrix and Onamap blogs.

The Liberals are not going to run a candidate against American Elizabeth May to increase the odds of introducing her rich-socialist-lawyer-American-style politics into Canada:

Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion will not run a Liberal candidate against Green party Leader Elizabeth May in the next federal election, the first time the Liberals won’t plan on having a full slate of candidates.

The leaders have agreed not to run a candidate in each other’s riding. They will hold a joint news conference about their deal on Friday in Halifax.

I can seriously see a day where Dion won’t be being invited to the Liberal Christmas party.

Belinda quits:

TorCamp Swarm member Kris Krug’s girlfriend Kim runs Discollection, a designer vintage clothing store in Vancouver. She's selling hand-made Suicide Girls-branded dresses and you can also check out her stuff at her blog/store at discollection.ca.

Update – from Kim's blog:

Recently I was asked to design a limited addition dress for the suicide girls to sell through their on-line shop. After a little back and forth communication between “Designer Suicide” and I, we agreed upon the dress. 30 dresses were made at Discollection, and shipped off to the girls, and now WHALH! they are for sale. I make a bunch of clothes that are equally as cute and they are for sale at Discollection, so if you like these, you should come check out my store…. 324 west hastings, vancouver.

Cute 4 minute-ish video here (via Kottke).

Juxtaposition of the day:

• Maher Arar, stuck by the man
• Nancy Pelosi, stickin' it to the man

Work it out with yourself.

Read about it on my Onamap blog.