This is just too good not to blog. While walking down the street (Rue de la Roquette in the 11th to be exact), a bum, in the most natural, non-chalant manner possible, started to solicit us for money:
“Vous n’avez pas un milliard d’euros?”
Translation: “You don’t happen to have a billion euros?”
Classic. We couldn’t stop laughing for blocks later.
Who knows, maybe one day it will in fact work.
And perhaps someone needs to update (complete with translations..)
The New York Times on , the 18 year old French Net Activist who has, literally, taken the country by storm. He has appeared in full page spreads in , on virtually every French TV channel, on the radio, on , and , to name a few.
What is it, though, about Aziz, and his organization , that has really been able to bring net activism to the forefront of the media? First, at only 18, he has been an extremely eloquent proponent of digital liberties since the age of 12. Aziz has managed to make major connections in the French parliament, and he has forged a strong bond with the current leading candidate for the president of France in 2007, .
Second, his organization, together with lawyer/activist , has managed to be extremely effective in changing the course of French copyright law. Under French doctrine, there is an exception for private copying, and they have argued successfuly that the many downloaders that were put in jail (albeit temporarily) were covered under this safe harbor. They’ve also sought to legalize P2P in exchange for what they term a “global license” that would compensate artists based on fees paid to ISPs (the proposed bill was passed in the lower house, but then subsequently thrown out). As a result, creators would be able to see direct benefits from the already rampant downloading on p2p networks. They have made numerous connections in the French parliament, and have brought the issue of p2p and net activism to the center stage in France. They are currently fighting a that would impose stricter enforcement of .
Every once in a while over here at Reasoner we find a story that just transcends our bifurcated category system. I’m going to, however, maintain that this story was in fact reasonable, not on the part of the BBC, but instead that of the surprise guest.
Apparently the Guy Kewney, editor of , about an involving the Beatles’ Apple Records and Apple’s iTunes Music Store.
The other Guy had been standing in the studio, apparently with a name tag on, and was whisked away by the BBC and given a mic. Not only is this clip great (and the second Guy didn’t do such a bad job if you ask me), but he has the most amazing smirk on his face when he realizes that he’s being interviewed on TV. (See for yourself in the .)
Who knows, perhaps this is the beginning of TV career for the Guy mistaken for Mr. Kewney….
That’s right. You’ve read correctly. Who ever knew that and were actually the exact same thing? I did not. , however, this is true:
The doves are the 308 species of near passerine birds in the order Columbiformes. The terms dove and pigeon are used interchangeably, although smaller species are more likely to be called doves.
The species commonly referred to just as the “pigeon” is the feral .
(And as we all know, ...)
So the next time you’re attacked by an annoying herd of pigeons, just think of them as “Rock Doves,” and perhaps you’ll be able to forgive them.
Paris-based video artists have made some pretty damn good , as they call it en français, including where ’s Poney Part 1 is juxtaposed with fluffy jumping cats and dogs complete with neon accents. Talk about electropets…
We know you’ve all been waiting for it—so here it is. Our third podcast keeps the with lots of fun , but sways toward what we term “Bailectro”: the fusion of (aka Tired of Being Sexy) with MC Edi-style Funk. The mix spans from Baile Funk to Electro to Post Punk to to Grime to Brega to Samba Rock to everything in between. All of the artists are Brazilian—with the exception of the and tracks (and well, if they would just learn Portuguese, they might as well be).
Also, a note on the use of the term “Baile.” I know some people have been complaining recently that —that Brazilians call it “Funk Caroica.” Let me say, though, that my friends from Rochina have told me that Funk Carioca is really only what the mainstream media and the non-Funkeiro/as call it. Most people just tend to say Funk. Baile Funk may have originally referred to the associated parties, or “balls,” but it looks like as is often the case in the evolution of languages and genres, the name has stuck.
A group of young people yelled “Poland for Poles!” at Rabbi Schudrich, then Schudrich was hit and sprayed with pepper gas.
via CNN
Note that Oswiecim is the Polish name for the place known in German as Auschwitz.
Polish officials appear mainly concerned with negative press amidst the increased international attention surrounding the Pope’s visit to Poland. They dismiss the “incident” as isolated, ignoring the political conditions in Poland that allowed this attack to occur.
Extreme-right gangs in Poland have been growing in numbers and have been increasingly using violent tactics since the current right-wing coalition took control of the Polish government in late 2005. The coalition is led by the traditionalist, Polish-Catholic nationalist Law and Justice Party; it includes the extreme-right League of Polish Families.
Two weeks ago, a Polish anti-fascist activist was stabbed within an inch of his life on the stairwell of the building in which he lives, when he was attacked by an extreme-right/fascist gang. The group All-Polish Youth (Młodzież Wszechpolska), reviving the moniker of the 1930’s pro-Hitler Polish youth group, has substantially increased its activities and numbers in the last couple years. For example, they organized a violent counter-protest against peaceful marchers at the 2005 Warsaw Equality March.
The New York Observer recently had about the “divide” between North and South Brooklyn. To the North, we have Williamsburg, Bushwick, and Greenpoint; to the South, Park Slope, Brooklyn Heights, Carroll Gardens, and Fort Greene, among others. To the North, hipsters; to the South, babies. Living in Williamsburg, I’m the first to poke fun (indeed, I spent the entire weekend doing it in an effort to explain the place to Phildelphia- although, I admit that no one was listening): fashion-obsessed, self-obsessed, call it what you will, the young-and-hip are a strange, seemingly clique-ish lot, and it’s not immediately clear how they would jive with the somewhat more monied literary elite of the south. But to speak of “an unbridgeable divide”, as one Bushwick native observes, reveals more about the observer than the demographics. Williamsburg looks a lot different than Park Slope, certainly, but the aesthetic is largely inherited from an industrial past. The majority of the gentrifiers who have moved into both communities share sensibilities and styles (although the same economics that send some to converted warehouses and others to renovated brownstones are manifest in other instantiations of those styles), and it takes little effort to find welcome arms and great conversation at any of the Brooklyn G stops.
Our DVD players of the future may seem more like they’re contraptions out of Cold War-era spy novels if Sony has anything to do with it. , the Blu-Ray Disc Association, led by Sony, has developed a standard for self-destructing DVD players:
This controversial technology would require that disc players maintain permanent connections to content providers via the Internet, making it possible for discs that fail a security check to trigger a notification process, enabling the provider to send the player a sort of “self-destruct code.” This code would come in the form of a flash ROM “update” that would actually render the player useless, perhaps unless and until it is taken to a repair shop for reprogramming. The Blu-ray statement noted that certain elements of AACS have yet to be formally approved by the BDA.
So basically, if you put in discs (read: pirated) that the player doesn’t like, it will self-destruct. Not a huge surprise, perhaps, coming from the Company That Brought You The (tm).
have stated that at least 81 people have been killed, thousands of prison inmates have rioted, and at least 200 have been taken hostage in an outbreak of gang-related violence in the Brazilian state of São Paulo.
I was going to write a long monologue about this, but instead, I’m just going to say that the gang reported to be behind this, the PCC, apparently has “Peace, Justice, and Liberty” as its motto (at least in the above photo) and they’re “against oppression.” Now if only they could just stick to that slogan…
So much is unreasonable about the Gary McKinnon case that it’s hard to know where to start. As a bit of background: McKinnon, a citizen of the UK, is charged with breaking into computer systems serving the US Army, Navy, Air Force, Department of Defense, and NASA, over the course of several years. Why? Because he believed the US government has access to secret technologies that are extraterrestrial in origin, specifically technologies that would provide cheap energy without fossil fuels, and he wanted to expose them.
This part is reasonable. The US government has a long history of secret science and shadowy technologies that ought to be published, shared, and implemented, for one because science invariably accelerates with larger collaborations, and for two because there’s no way for members of a democracy to make informed decisions about their representatives without full disclosure (this is true in areas more far reaching than science of course). If the government is not willing to disclose its research (taxpayers’ money, elected officials’ decisions, etc.), I think it’s the citizen’s obligation to start digging.
Okay so who hasn’t seen the pretty cool (aka Chronicles of Narnia Rap) produced by those comedy guys ? It has essentially taken the net by storm (even professors were telling me about it), and has demonstrated the potential positive effects of the viral effects of the Internet.
Well, NBC just doesn’t get it. Although has probably done wonders for NBC and SNL by hosting the clip with 5+ million views, NBC has decided that it just cannot go on. They sent a takedown notice this week to YouTube claiming infringement of copyright and prohibiting them from continuing to host it. Now my bet is that SNL and the Lonely Island people don’t think this is such a good idea (after all, Lonely Island released some great shows under licenses), but NBC seems to be adhering to an ever-increasingly outdated model of content lockdown, even when doing the opposite would be more advantageous in many respects.
NBC is allowing users to watch it on their site—but only Windows users can reliably access it. They also now want people to buy it on iTunes for $2. As BoingBoing so pointedly put in their :
Attention all MySpace music fanatics. Here’s a link to your , except that you’re not exactly going to get paid. Instead, you will have the coveted opportunity of getting college credit for spamming the social networks with your oh-so-objective views. And don’t worry—no chance of losing MySpace cred. You won’t even have to tell anyone that you’re doing this as a job…
Do you blog, have lots of friends at your MySpace page, and love music?
[Sony Sub-label Epic] is looking for skilled, motivated interns to promote artists on social networking sites like MySpace, purevolume, Facebook & others.
This is a non-paying internship and interns must be able to receive college credit for their internship.
