Clampdown!

In one more attempt to grant a technology clampdown, Computer & Communications Industry Association was obstructed from taking part in the meeting on S. 2560, also known as the INDUCE Act, a proposal created for extend the power of copyright laws and debunk innovation. The stakes involved are high, because the law might affect several sort of devices, as VCRs, optical disk recorders, radio receivers, audio devices, IMs, personal computers, iPods (and other personal music players) and online music services. It simply covers every recording, duplication and information technology device today – even the Internet itself.

[ X - Hungry World ]

Mesh in Salvador

ITU TELECOM AMERICAS is to be held from 3-6 October in Salvador, Bahia. I'm almost certain that 3G will be addressed. Yes, because it is supposed to surrogate the DSL and cable broadband networks. For know, the developing countries have been watching the war between GSM and CDMA. But this is the iceberg's tip. In the undercurrents new and exciting technologies start to emerge, as Flash-OFDM and WiMax. Giants as Intel, Nortel and Cisco back the last. But, in my opinion, Wi-Fi mesh networks could be faster deployed in Brazil, instead of WiMax. Time will tell.

[ Guided by Voices - Everybody Thinks I'm A Raincloud ]

Venezuela From Below

Last weekend I've seen Venezuela From Below, a film by Dario Azzellini and Oliver Ressler, and it made my mind boils big time. It is a well-directed documentary about the revolutionary process by which Venezuela is passing through. The film is absolutely educational and begins with a historic overview introduced brilliantly by the philosopher Carlos Lazo. The ascension of Hugo Chavez, Lazo explains, is the result of a bourgeois process that excluded the left-wing parties from the political decisions. The outcome of this exclusion was inevitable: the reclaiming of a progressive constitution. It is staggering to note how Venezuelan people are politicized and how well they are versed in the participatory culture. The people, supported by the army, refuted two coup d'etat and several attempts of sabotage of the country's main economic asset: the oil production, concentrated in the oil company PDVSA, in Puerto La Cruz. By the way, the army is very embedded into the people environment, and Ressler's documentary has captured the proof of this concept, a show where soldiers and other officers play guaracha before a dancing popular audience. The revolutionary spirit has triggered a broad process of grassroots self-organization in vital areas like education (Mission Robinson, Ribas and Sucre), health care (Barrio Adentro) job generation (Vuelvan Caras) and alternative media (El23.net). Venezuela From Below is highly recommended for Brazilian investigative journalists, left-wing politicians and rappers.

[ Señor Coconut – Autobahn ]

Moog and Theremin

Ok. This is completely irresistible not point out to two thought-provoking documentaries. The first is "Moog" (2004), about Bob Moog, inventor of electronic musical instruments, the most famous one named after his name. The second is "Theremin" (1995), about the Russian inventor Leon Theremin, who created the world’s first electronic instrument, and it also bore his name. Needless say that I’m looking very forward to watch them.

[ Kings Of Convenience - Know-How ]

Je Ne Sais Quoi

Oil crisis is killing giant squids. Who is next? Tiburonia granrojo? Sick capitalism... Some are understanding the Pirate War as a Marxist struggle. Brazil, I'm by your side during the development agenda for WIPO attack!

[ Moss - Semantics is a Bitch ] [ Fantastic Plastic Machine - Beautiful Days (Reprise) ]

AdSense à la Benedict

Congrats, Kuja! Your Google AdSense application has been approved! I know it is a bummer sign a Certification of No U.S. Activities, but, hey, you might even earn some dimes if God help you. Congrats also to Anthony Bourdain, Les Halles chef, for have aroused in Kuja the K-line (see The Society of Mind, by Marvin Minsky) of the Eggs Benedict receipt!

[ Belle And Sebastian - Stay Loose ]

Radioactive Knee

My diagnostic was: osteoarthritis of the knee, result of an ancient war injury. The clinic doctor suggested a different approach of the trivial non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, so we've decided for a new technique known as intra-articular injection of sodium hyaluronate (hyaluronic acid), a product extratcted from rooster combs and filtered at molecular level. This is a natural polymer, breed of the glycosaminoglycans family (note that it is not "shenanigan"), radioactive components of extra cellular matrix. Wow! Feeling like Homer Simpson! :) The doctor had shot rightly on the spot, as if the syringe were an acupunture needle. Bingo! I give praises to him and to Hublog, who have had created the code for HubMed, a repository of papers with topics related with medicine and health. There I've found a curious abstract called Reduction of DNA fragmentation and hydroxyl radical production by hyaluronic acid and chondroitin-4-sulphate in iron plus ascorbate-induced oxidative stress in fibroblast cultures. And the classic Hyaluronic acid in the treatment of osteoarthritis of the knee, by E. C. Huskisson and S. Donnelly. In this study, they demonstrate that five weekly intra-articular injections of sodium hyaluronate (Hyalgan, in the case; in mine, Polireumin) were superior and well tolerated in patients with ostheoarthritis of the knee with a symptomatic benefit which persisted for 6 month. Beautiful. Hey, folks! I have also survived Service Pack 2!

[ Postal Service - Sleeping In ]

Point-to-Point Tunneling, The Other Way

TeledyN has delighted Ben Hammersley with its "Living Webservices" story. FlickR is really a scale-free network, since it tunnels, somehow, other galleries through RSS channels.

[ Telepopmusik - Genetic World ]

Brighton, 1999

Brighton, 1999
Originally uploaded by Kuja.

My wife, Maria Teresa, shot this in 1999. Before we'd arrived in this Albion gray and metallic coast city, we've stopped at Forrest Row, near East Grinstead. A guy from Scholle Müllerinnenart was returning to an earlier or less mature pattern of feeling...

Black Clouds over the Black Sea

Do you think the caucasian disputes are focused in Chechnya? No. You also have to mention Abkhazia, South and North Ossetia, Ingushetia, Dagstan and Adigeya. Ah! Don't forget Transdniestria and Nagorno-Karabakh.

[ Chichi Peralta - Un Dia Mas ] [ Sensation Junkies - Ollala ]

Bush Mix

Congratulations to all people who had courageously counterstroke the National Republican Convention in NY. Furtherfield and Anne-Marie Schleiner had promoted live and online multimedia performances - the first jamming the official media channels with staggering guerrilla broadcasts and the former launching the project OUT (Operation Urban Terrain), an artistic intervention of military games played out in public spaces. (This makes me get ashamed of how idiots are some Brazilian media "artists" who overstate their ridiculous public SMS messages as state-of-art interventions.) Yesterday, Bush Jr. had made his address in Madison Square Garden. How loath and nauseating is his overbearing arrogance! I almost puked when I heard this line: Some people think I have the swagger. In Texas, it means walking. Gosh! Who he thinks he is? Tom Mix? If so, Kerry is right when he says that the soul of America is in Hollywood.

[ Talking Heads - Stay Up Late ]

Orion Drooling Features

Orion Multisystems, Inc. is offering a home multi-thread super computer loaded with drooling features: Orion also announced a partnership with Wolfram Research, Inc., which pioneered the modern concept of technical computing when it launched Mathematica 15 years ago. Millions of users on every continent currently use Mathematica technology. The company's gridMathematicaTM combines the power of the world's leading technical computing environment with modern computing clusters and grids to solve the most demanding problems in mathematics, science, engineering, and finance. And Tableau Software is selling google-type databases with graphics a la Tufte.

[ Dzihan & Kamien - Sliding ]

Burnout Case

Robert Bryce has showed that US lost the Iraq war. Imagine Hitchcock's Saboteur crossed with an Arab version of They Might Be Giants (but instead of the oil galore, imagine a burn out field). Iraq today confirms Baudrillard's statement in Pataphysics of Year 2000, in which one can read that "political (...) exchanges have set loose a tempo of liberation whereby we have become removed from the sphere of reference to the real, to history".

[Bossacucanova - Mais Perto Do Mar]

No Pain, No Gain

If you hear Johnny Cash singing "Hurt" you'll feel a kind of bluegrass pain, spiritual or even physical. But what is "pain"? This question has been poking doctor's minds for centuries. Albert Schweitzer, for example, called it "the most terrible of all the lords of mankind". I've found his statement in a website about a medical Symposium which took place in 1998. More recently, a journalist friend of mine had showed to me The Hedonistic Imperative, a manifesto that proposes eradicate suffering in all sentient life by means of genetic engineering and nanotechnology.

[ Beck - Paper Tiger ]

Future of the Past

I've seen "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" yesterday and I liked. It is a "scriptwriter film", yes, but this is not a problem at all. Because it is also a kind of authorial film well conducted by a known videoclip director. I agree that there is an overacting of twist and turns, but the apparently chaotic narrative mirrors perfectly the to and fro love of Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet characters. It is a libel in favor of forgetfulness, an important cultural self-organizing resource, as affirmed by Eco. Nietzsche and Pope almost force the audience into believe that it is possible erase from the brain a sorted out memory. But I guess that Ingram Marshall, American compositor, is right: The all too familiar hymns of my childhood have come back to haunt me ... For me the research into memory is an important tool. We are, all of us, always searching our past in an attempt to understand the present. I’ve recorded his “Steal Across the Sky” piece from Radio@Netscape, which streams in Dolby AAC. Nice capture, if it is saved with a pure FhG codec (not LAME).

[ Unkle - Bloodstain ]

Puerile Dems

I've put some faith in the Blogistanis covering DNC 2004, but this kind of "covering", commited by Dave Winer, is childish and give to the tradicional media types ammo enough to smash them up without mercy: Blah blah blah John Kerry blah blah Kerry Edwards blah blah values values values blah blah John Kerry blah blah blah standing at a crossroads blah blah. There's a din in the room. I had to go get a Dunkin Donuts iced coffee to stay away. Zzzzz. Blah blah K-E-R-R-Y blah blah Kerry Edwards and you.

[Listening to: Jaffa - Star 67]

Fire in the Sky

NRO put out a funny story about the new paranoia that has taken over American citizens: Arab terrorists doing dry run assembling of bombs inside domestic airplanes. It has turned out that the "terrorists" inside Northwest Airlines 327 flight were just a band lead by the Syrian musician Nour Mehana. The situation could be only pathetic, if it was not tragic and has not awaken a new wave of jingoism and racism, as indicates one of the last posts of the neo-fascist Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds: Are we still frisking grandmothers and six-year-olds and letting Mohammed Atta-lookalikes cruise through metal detectors? If so, why? Reynolds got worried about the conclusions of 911 Commission Report and made a "call of action". I suppose he also got worried that America is suffering from a lack of foreshadowing and not just imagination, as affirmed by Tom Kean. God only knows to what sort of snake pit America is going down. If I were Reynolds, I’d vote for Crosby-Nash. (Layman might want begin with this masterpiece. Thank you, Vowe!)

[Listening to: Jim White - Bluebird]

Surreal But The Real

As I was searching for an old entry I've made about Max Ernst, I've found Jerzy Kujawski (1921-98), an obscure polish surrealist painter. Nice to know that my parenthood is not just natural backgrounds in Gunter Grass "Dog Years" (1963). Well, someone has digitalized and put in the Internet all Ernst's "Une Semaine de Bonte" (A Week Of Kindness). Surrealists are more vivid as ever. I guess even more than beatniks and hippies.

[Listening to: Kultur Shock - Tutti Frutti]

I Want to Ride My Bicycle

Not everybody knows Kraftwerk's Hütter bicycle-obsession. It is not by chance that the robot-man and his electronic band made an entirely piece about Tour de France. Speaking of the world's most famous bicycle race, not everyone knows that it has a blog (read all about the last Gilberto Simoni's prowess). I'm very eager to learn what might be Hütter's opinion about the Brompton folding bike...

[Listening to: Sonic Youth - Unmade Bed]

Global Idiocy

Following suit the post The Orkut Curse I have another considerations about how the mob gather itself as a unified mind. In the book "The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations", James Surowiecki explains that the "wisdom of crowds" emerges only in groups with many different points of view. Apropos, Thomas Paine has said, in 1783: I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies another this right makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it. And, as quoted by Kotke, "the problem with the global village is all the global village idiots" (Paul Ginsparg). That is exactly why I prefer a thousand times the isolated biodiversity of rappers in Senegal than a single group in Orkut.

[Listening to: Sun Kil Moon - Glenn Tipton]