I drool in my sleep

theatlanticvideo: You Are Here: A Whole-Sky Time-Lapse of the...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 17:33:45 -0500

You Are Here: A Whole-Sky Time-Lapse of the Galactic Center

Beautiful, deep view into the Milky Way’s core

"The song “Happy Birthday to You” is widely credited for being the most performed song in the world...."

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 08:42:49 -0500

“

The song “Happy Birthday to You” is widely credited for being the most performed song in the world. But one of its latest venues may be the federal courthouse in Manhattan, where the only parties may be the litigants to a new legal battle.

The dispute stems from a lawsuit filed on Thursday by a filmmaker in New York who is seeking to have the court declare the popular ditty to be in the public domain, and to block a music company from claiming it owns the copyright to the song and charging licensing fees for its use.

The filmmaker, Jennifer Nelson, was producing a documentary movie, tentatively titled “Happy Birthday,” about the song, the lawsuit said. In one proposed scene, the song was to be performed.

But to use it in the film, she was told she would have to pay $1,500 and enter into a licensing agreement with Warner/Chappell, the publishing arm of the Warner Music Group. Ms. Nelson’s company, Good Morning to You Productions, paid the fee and entered into the agreement, the suit says.

“Before I began my filmmaking career,” Ms. Nelson said in an e-mail forwarded by her lawyer, “I never thought the song was owned by anyone. I thought it belonged to everyone.”

The lawsuit notes that in the late 1800s, two sisters, Mildred J. Hill and Patty Smith Hill, wrote a song with the same melody called “Good Morning to All.” The suit tracks that song’s evolution into the familiar birthday song, and its ownership over more than a century.

But although Warner/Chappell claims ownership of “Happy Birthday to You,” the song was “just a public adaptation” of the original song, one of Ms. Nelson’s lawyers, Mark C. Rifkin, said in a phone interview.

“It’s a song created by the public, it belongs to the public, and it needs to go back to the public,” Mr. Rifkin said.

”

- The New York Times, “Birthday Song’s Copyright Leads to a Lawsuit for the Ages.”

Today in Lawsuits I Hope the Plaintiff Wins.

(via inothernews)

laughingsquid: How to Create Instant Ice From Regular Flowing...

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 17:44:00 -0500

laughingsquid:

How to Create Instant Ice From Regular Flowing Water

0:56 “The secret to instant ice is just about as simple as placing your bottles in the freezer. I let these ones sit for 2 hours and 45 minutes, exactly.”

Um, that’s a little misleading, isn’t it.

kqedscience: Stanford X-Rays Bring a 200-Year-Old Opera Back to...

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 17:24:09 -0500

kqedscience:

Stanford X-Rays Bring a 200-Year-Old Opera Back to Life

“When, 216 years ago, someone mysteriously blacked out pages from the French opera Médée with charcoal, the music was lost to history. Now, scientists at Stanford University’s National Accelerator Laboratory have brought those long-lost notes back to life.”

Read more at KQED Science.

bostonreview: NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden speaks to Glenn...

Sun, 09 Jun 2013 23:09:00 -0500

bostonreview:

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden speaks to Glenn Greenwald about his decision.

Starting at 7:53, Snowden answers why he chose to flee to Hong Kong.

peterfeld replied to your quote: I am sorry that Snowden chose Hong Kong as his… By all...

Sun, 09 Jun 2013 23:06:00 -0500

peterfeld replied to your quote: I am sorry that Snowden chose Hong Kong as his…

By all means let’s second-guess the refuge choices of whistleblowers risking decades in prison and receiving the Bradley Manning treatment.

Well, I see no conflict in supporting a whistleblower while wondering about his choice of refuge. I don’t think Fallows is suggesting that Snowden should stay in the U.S., but if Hong Kong is being trotted out as some sort of shining exemplar against government intrusion (which, by fleeing there, is how Snowden’s actions appear, whether that’s his intent or not), then that makes for an odd choice as refuge.

Update: See this video. Starting at 7:53, Snowden answers why he fled to Hong Kong.

"I am sorry that Snowden chose Hong Kong as his point of refuge […] Hong Kong is not a..."

Sun, 09 Jun 2013 22:19:22 -0500

“I am sorry that Snowden chose Hong Kong as his point of refuge […] Hong Kong is not a sovereign country. It is part of China — a country that by the libertarian standards Edward Snowden says he cares about is worse, not better, than the United States. It has even more surveillance of its citizens (it has gone very far toward ensuring that it knows the real identity of everyone using the internet); its press is thoroughly government-controlled; it has no legal theory of protection for free speech; and it doesn’t even have national elections. Hong Kong lives a time-limited separate existence, under the “one country, two systems” principle, but in a pinch, it is part of China.

I don’t know all the choices Snowden had about his place of refuge. Maybe he thought this was his only real option. But if Snowden thinks, as some of his comments seem to suggest, that he has found a bastion of freer speech, then he is ill-informed; and if he knowingly chose to make his case from China he is playing a more complicated game.”

- James Fallows on Edward Snowden’s choice to seek refuge in Hong Kong

If crooks are in charge, should we let them pick our pockets?...

Sun, 09 Jun 2013 20:24:34 -0500

If crooks are in charge, should we let them pick our pockets?
If we don’t want trouble, should we not try to stop it?
We could just sink into the quicksand slavery we’re born in
But fighting endless wars for greedy liars is getting pretty boring
They think they got us trained, so we’ll think we’re living free
If we got time and money for junk food and TV
But it’s plain honest people never stand a chance of winning elections
They just let us pick which liars take our rights away for our own protection

The corporate propaganda paralyzes us with fear
Destroying our ability to trust
Fear keeps us fighting with each other over scraps
Starving to death in the dust
Organized religion really helps you submit
But the meek are inheriting the short end of the stick
Think twice (think twice) we’re awaking from the dream
Think twice (think twice) we don’t like what we see

Fear surrounds compassion like a layer of mold
And weakens our defenses so we’re too weak to be bold
Life could be heaven, but this corrupted system
Takes away our rights, expects us not to miss them
The middle class is shrinking while the lower class grows
If we don’t wake up soon, we’ll have no class left to lose
But at least we’re getting by, and there’s heaven when we die
It’s hard for honest people to recognize a lie

It’s an American dream, there’s no pie in the sky
We’re running out of credit, we can’t afford to buy it
If it weren’t so sad, it’d be a goddamn riot

Think twice, the change that we need can be found
Think twice, just don’t expect to get it handed down
Think twice, right now it’s up to you and me
Our hearts guide our minds to make greed obsolete
Don’t run in circles all your life just hoping
To grab a horse on a debt carousel

When Your Data Is Currency, What Does Your Privacy Cost?

Sun, 09 Jun 2013 19:52:00 -0500

When Your Data Is Currency, What Does Your Privacy Cost?:

Americans are happy to give up all sorts of information to private companies, but we cry foul when it’s revealed that the government has been collecting our data. Why?

Amazon or Apple might know all about you, but the thing they’re most likely to do with that in practice, so far, is try to sell you stuff. That’s where the theory that the economy of trust in private companies can be extended to government hits one of several major snags.

We “trust” private companies to be reliably self-interested, and we don’t believe there’s a self-interested reason for them to read our email other than, worst-case scenario, to sell […]

Government has no such transparent single motive, like profit, but a variety of motives, not all of which people are confident they know about. What you believe to be the motives of a particular administration or government agency depends on a complicated, often highly charged calculus of politics, policy, media consumption, and internalized constitutional theory that you may not have even verbalized but know in your gut. (The Fourth Amendment, really, has been developed by courts but is historically rooted in our collective sense of, “They can’t come in my house and do that when I didn’t do anything wrong.”)

Furthermore, government has powers that private companies don’t have. Target and Apple can’t arrest you, deport you, fine you, jail you, try you, charge you, tax you, or confiscate your stuff. What’s more, they are the final arbiters of nothing; you have potential recourse in court if they wrong you. Your only recourse, should the tentative trust you place in government prove misplaced, is…more government. Other branches, levels and segments of government. And, ultimately, your ability to vote for somebody else.

The problem is that if it proves to be true that because of these programs, the loose trust you place in Google is now extended to the government without your consent (or knowledge, until now), you don’t have a choice […] You can’t opt out of that part. The benefits remain the same — your free email, your chat applications, your cloud storage — but the costs are different.

vimeo: This is Shanghai by Rob Whitworth With the help of urban...

Sun, 09 Jun 2013 11:53:46 -0500

vimeo:

This is Shanghai by Rob Whitworth

With the help of urban explorer JT Singh and some recommendations from Shanghai locals, Rob Whitworth has once again raised the bar for timelapses.

shortformblog: Top image: A pitch from BeautifulPeople.com for...

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 20:55:44 -0500

shortformblog:

Top image: A pitch from BeautifulPeople.com for their new jobs site, which allows employers to choose applicants strictly on their looks.

Second image: What happens when you click on the “See job listings here.” If you notice, my screenshot has a hard to read line of text below it. Here’s what it says:

Businesses incorporated in the District of Columbia, BeautifulPeople is unable to accept job postings from your business as it would be in violation of District of Columbia state law as framed in the Human Rights act.

Which is a nice way of saying “this is a site that openly discriminates against job applicants.”

But what if you’re too pretty to work?

midcenturymodernfreak: Now’s your chance to unleash your inner...

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 11:18:00 -0500

midcenturymodernfreak:

Now’s your chance to unleash your inner Le Corbusier, I.M. Pei, or Philip Johnson!

Via

Grover Norquist is a secret Muslim

Sat, 01 Jun 2013 19:26:00 -0500

Grover Norquist is a secret Muslim:

President Obama isn’t the only secret Muslim around. According to a recent presentation given by Texas Eagle Forum president Cathie Adams to the Far North Dallas Tea Party, so is Grover Norquist. How does she know? It’s because he has a beard. And married a Muslim woman. But the beard cinches it.

Well, by that standard, so is Abraham Lincoln. They’re taking over our country!

"Tumblr: The Large Print Edition"

Fri, 31 May 2013 15:04:47 -0500

“Tumblr: The Large Print Edition”

- Instead of Tumblr giving Yahoo its fountain of youth, Yahoo has instead given Tumblr its senior moment.

smithsonianmag: The Evolution of the Treble Clef The curving...

Fri, 31 May 2013 14:56:36 -0500

smithsonianmag:

The Evolution of the Treble Clef

The curving flourishes of music notation have always been something a mystery to me, although every day I, like many people, use other arcane symbols without thinking twice about it. The at (@) sign, the dollar sign ($) and the ampersand (&), for example, all function like ligatures or some sort of shorthand. They’ve been demystified by popular use in email, clues on “Wheel of Fortune,” and their inclusion on computer keyboards. But music notation is a semantic system that is entirely different from the written word; a non-spoken alphabet of pitch and rhythm. So, with apologies to the more musically inclined reader, I looked into the origin of the treble clef and the answer was quite simple. The treble clef, the top symbol you see in the photo above, is also known as the G-clef, which gives you the first clue to its origin.

So for my own edification, if nothing else, let’s start with the basics. A clef is a sign placed on a music staff that indicates what pitch is represented by each line and space on the staff. The history of Western musical notation describes an effort toward the development a simple, symbolic representations of pitch and rhythm. It begins near the end of the 9th century when notation for the Plainsong of the Western Church, better known as Gregorian Chant, was first recorded with “neumes”. These were simple dashes or dots above lyrics that indicated a relative change in pitch. At the end of the 10th century, musical scribes increased the precision of his early notation by introducing a horizontal line to indicate a base pitch (see above image). The pitch of this line was indicated by a letter at its start – typically F or C and, as higher range songs become more common, G. Neumes were no longer relative only to one another, but to a standard. This was the beginning of the musical staff.

Continue reading at Smithsonian.com

All these brands and their GIFs...

Thu, 30 May 2013 12:12:00 -0500

…remind me of a sad old man who thinks he can fit in with the kids now because he’s learned to say “groovy.”

texaspublicradio: jeffbradynpr: This was recently uploaded...

Thu, 30 May 2013 11:23:02 -0500

texaspublicradio:

jeffbradynpr:

This was recently uploaded to http://www.postsecret.com/

The public radio community can’t be beat.

Just wait until they come asking you for money.

latimes: A toast to a rising beverage underdog: TeaDomestic tea...

Tue, 28 May 2013 16:50:47 -0500

A tea bag seen during a tour of the tea department of The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf with David De Candia, director of tea, in their plant in Camarillo, Calif.

A sample of the change in color of the coffee beans during the roasting process at the The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf in Camarillo, Calif.

A variety of teas are on display in the tea department of The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf in Camarillo, Calif.

latimes:

A toast to a rising beverage underdog: Tea

Domestic tea sales in restaurants, grocery stores and shops hit $15.7 billion last year, a 32% jump from 2007.

So where is all of this new demand coming from?

The tea-drinking demographic is widening. Aging baby boomers and Redbull-swigging youngsters are expected to buy more tea. Asians, long a key revenue source, form the fastest-growing racial group in the country. Rising interest in ethnic cuisines is drawing foodies to Japanese matcha, Indian Darjeeling and African Rooibos teas.

And some of the downsides to coffee are helping tea ascend up the beverage ladder. That hangover-like daze that follows a spree of over-caffeinated brews and the rising cost of a cup of Joe are pushing more people to consider coffee’s less-potent competition.

But it will still be a while before tea is able to completely overtake coffee:

Last year, the American tea industry pulled in $987 million in revenue at the wholesale level, a tenth of the $9.6 billion for coffee manufacturers…

Photos: Anne Cusack/Los Angeles Times

Fuck yeah tea.

arstechnica: How crackers ransack passwords like...

Tue, 28 May 2013 12:47:00 -0500

arstechnica:

How crackers ransack passwords like “qeadzcwrsfxv1331” http://ars.to/Zr5vdV

thisistheverge: Instagram’s latest feature means one more...

Tue, 28 May 2013 12:45:00 -0500

thisistheverge:

Instagram’s latest feature means one more online identity to monitor

One month after adding one of Facebook’s most famous features, Instagram finds itself on a slippery slope