I think it’s important to recognize the contributions of blackstronauts before they are forgotten. It’s all too easy to forget just how far we’ve come in terms of racial integration. But of course, that obscures just how far we still have to go.
For more on the Old Negro Space Program, check out the Wikipedia page.
(via MeFi)
If you’ve been paying any attention to the news, no doubt you’ve read about the uproar over a bowdlerized version of Huckleberry Finn recently released in which the offensive word “nigger” has been replaced throughout with the allegedly-less-offensive “slave.”
Now, in Canada, comes news that the Dire Straits classic “Money For Nothing” will have bowdlerization enforced upon it. A person complained that the use of the word “faggot” was offensive.
So, I have decided to do the world a favour and combine those two crimes against political incorrectness.
Noting that the full text of Huckleberry Finn was available online, I imported it into a word processing program and did a quick find-and-replace for “nigger / faggot”. The two words are pleasingly similar with their double-g centres and consonant/vowel distribution. The whole process took no time at all. There were only a few hundred replacements needed.
So, I hope you enjoy the “Knopflerized” version of Huckleberry Finn, which you can download right here, in .doc format.
(Image, above, appears to be Huck Finn and his pal Faggot Jim, sharing a snooze together, perhaps after smoking each others’ corncob pipes?)
So, assume that we’re not talking about hostage-taking, AK-47-wielding Somali cargo ship commandos — you know, pirate pirates — and that instead we’re talking about middle-class, white downloaders of entertainment — you know, fake pirates.
If we’re talking about those “pirates” — or, less inflammatorily, “copyright infringers” … or, more romantically “copyleft freedom fighters” — then the following post will make a lot more sense.
We all know the “You wouldn’t steal a car…” line of reasoning, right? It appeared (and for all I know, continues to appear) at the start of movies in a ad for the RIAA.
You wouldn’t steal a car, goes the reasoning, so why would you steal a movie?
Leaving out the god-awful production values of the ad (don’t these people work for, you know, Hollywood?), it’s tempting to respond with a facile — “actually, I would steal a car, if I thought I could get away with it.” Or, more honestly, and a little less flippantly, “I would definitely download a car, if I could point my laptop at a neighbour’s vehicle, and create a perfect copy without depriving him of his own.” And wouldn’t GM be in trouble then!
Come to think of it, we’re ages away from Star-Trek-style replicators, but I wouldn’t be surprised if simple 3-D printing was only about a decade away from being a reality like desktop publishing is now.
Imagine if you could buy bags of potato starch, bring them home, stuff them in your “printer,” and have new, biodegradable, items printed out every day.
Potato starch isn’t good for everything, of course, but it would be great for children’s toys — a new one every morning, if you’re good! — and I’ll bet with a good-size device, you could even make patio furniture with it.
I wouldn’t be surprised if someone figured out how to make 3-D printing work with ceramic and glass, too, which opens up a whole range of household goods you could make.
Instead of just having a little miniature printing plant in your home, you’d have a little miniature factory.
Of course, your home printer didn’t completely obviate the need for real printing plants (and neither will the iPad), nor did it completely kill the publishing industry.
But I know a lot of people who are printing their wedding invites at home, rather than having a professional do it. (Of course, they’re all buying wedding-grade paper, and cool design kits, so it’s not like there’s zero industry there.)
But imagine the hypothetical post-scarcity society — one in which your super 3-D printer would be like a magic box that could give you anything you wanted. Just say the words, and “tea, Earl Gray, hot” would appear steaming in your just-created mug.
Wouldn’t that devastate the tea farmers? Would there be an industry backlash? Would people accuse tea-replicators of stealing from the farmers? Would the tea farmers’ union pop little ads on the side of the bags, “You wouldn’t clone a human…”?
Because the truth is that it would hurt the tea farmers. Just like printing wedding invites at home hurts independent print shops (who are largely out of business now, anyway). Just like me downloading all my mp3s has probably hurt a lot of artists — and the associated lawyers and executives who also made a living from them.
But it’s just that the post-scarcity society seems to have come to the entertainment industry before other industries. And while they’re going through the pains of a transition to some new economy, we’re all being guilted into sticking with the old economy.
(I wonder if there was a lot of guilt fed to consumers during the Industrial Revolution — think of all the people those machines are putting out of work?)
This really turned into a rant, but I intended it to be a short, quick-hit post. I only really wanted to embed this video, a parody of the RIAA “You wouldn’t steal a car…” ads.
So who does piracy really hurt? Oh, won’t somebody think of the gay porn models!
I got it from an excellent compendium of other parodies of the same. Watch the whole list at Freakbits.
As a child in elementary school, I was fascinated by the teacher’s staff room. In my school, the window on the door had a shade on it, so you couldn’t even peek inside. The only (rare) glimpses came when you happened to be walking by and a teacher came out.
And it was amazing.
I remember thinking, “There are couches in there! And a t.v.! Cooool.”
As I got older, into middle school and then high school, the staff room just didn’t hold the same magic for me. I had gone into a few for various reasons, and it was really no big deal. There was a coffee maker; some ratty old couches; a table and chairs. It was like a sad little one bedroom apartment.
Now there’s a series on YouTube, simply called The Staff Room, offering a satirical look into what goes on in a high school staff room. The characters are total cliche’s, but the whole thing is a parody, so it works. And it’s really funny.
Here’s the first episode:
(via MeFi)
I find Charlie Booker’s column in the Guardian to be somewhat hit-or-miss, but this send-up of television news reports is full-on hit. (Well, it’s maybe a little long — but so are most television news reports.)
It reminds me of a news story I read in the (I think) New York Times a few years ago, which did the same thing, but in text. Just try Googling it, though. I can’t find it for the life of me.
(Sadly, this is not really Werner Herzog. But I maintain that if he *did* read “Curious George,” this is how he would read it.)
(Shamelessly pilfered from the Facebook page of Tyler Shipley, who heads a great anti-capitalist band called The Consumer Goods.)
Often imitated, never duplicated, this video FINALLY shows people what goes into a proper cup of coffee.
How to Brew a Good Cup of Coffee from Ben Helfen on Vimeo.
(via BB)
I’m pretty sure I only appreciate this on one level, because I’m not really aware of Lady Gaga videos. But the above is apparently a parody.
All I know is that it’s typographically hilarious.
And that’s good enough for me.
(via the Daily What)
