Silflay Hraka

Downloaded a copy of the Grey Album yet?

More than 300 Web sites and blogs staged a 24-hour online protest yesterday over a record company’s efforts to stop them from offering downloadable copies of “The Grey Album.” A popular underground collection of music, “The Grey Album” mixes tracks from the Beatles’ classic White Album with raps from Jay-Z’s latest release, “The Black Album.”

The protesters billed the event as “Grey Tuesday,” calling it “a day of coordinated civil disobedience,” during which more than 150 sites offered the album for download. Recording industry lawyers saw it as 24 hours of mass copyright infringement and sent letters to the Web sites demanding that they not follow through on the protest.

Not that the New York Times, as Reuters did below, actually links to or even mentions any of the sites where the download is available. Not to worry–it’s easily found. < a href="http://www.illegal-art.org/index.html">Illegal Art still has .mp3s of the cd available for download.

Don’t expect a review–I know nothing about hip-hop in general and what I do know for the most part I dislike. I know less than that about mash-up, though the idea of it intrigues me. I do have some sympathy for Illegal Art’s arguments, though.

The laws governing “intellectual property” have grown so expansive in recent years that artists need legal experts to sort them all out. Borrowing from another artwork–as jazz musicians did in the 1930s and Looney Tunes illustrators did in 1940s–will now land you in court. If the current copyright laws had been in effect back in the day, whole genres such as collage, hip hop, and Pop Art might have never have existed.

The irony here couldn’t be more stark. Rooted in the U.S. Constitution, copyright was originally intended to facilitate the exchange of ideas but is now being used to stifle it.

EMI should have known better than to release the lawyers–it’s like no one at the company remembered what being banned did for “God Save The Queen“. They’ve done more for DJ Danger Mouse’s career than a dozen albums could have.

Paranoia from the right
Whenever they find out I’m a member of the NRA, they often refer to apocryphal stories about how the NRA has secretly sold out to the Brady lobby, and how the NRA is responsible for all gun control laws. It has a kind of Illuminati/Trilateral Commission conspiracy-theory air to it. One almost expects to hear that the NRA is actually a tool of the UN.

The Backlash is Building
I felt, and I still feel, that marriage should be left to the individual states. However, I am outraged by the condescending disregard of judges and elected officials for the legislative process and the will of the people. As a result, I have turned from a amendment skeptic to an amendment supporter. And there are thousands more like me.

Utah, The Volunteer State
The SL Olympics were such a success in terms of volunteers, the organizers of the Torino olympics in 2006 are interested in importing volunteers from Utah. Why? Because 1) it’s part of the Utah work ethic and 2) Utah has lots of foreign language speakers, especially less common languages like Romanian and Korean. So, for the cost of an intensive Italian language course in Italy, you too can catch that olympic spirit , be a part of the Torino Olympics in 2006 and eat lots of pasta and pomodori.

Rats! The @#$% condom busted!
… Ted Nugent, has got some child support problems. Oops! Don’t you hate it when that happens? From what the article says, the child (a son) is 8 years old and ol’ Theodore has admitted to being the childs father, but has never seen the child and pays minimal child support. This is kind of interesting since I just recently bought the Ted concert DVD, “Full Bluntal Nugity Live” and it has a little clip of him out hunting with his wife and their son. The current wife son in the DVD looks older than the 8 year-old child-support son , soooooooooooooo…

The Culture War has begun
In retrospect, the victory of the gay left in the Lawrence decision is similar to the Japanese victory at Pearl Harbor. It may have been a great triumph in the short term, but in reality it set into motion a series of events that eventually led to a crushing defeat. Make no mistake about it: The FMA will eventually pass Congress and be ratified by 38 states.

This is not your father’s ant farm.

“Children love them because they can observe a mini-world. Every member of the colony has a different job to do, some collect food, others defend the queen,” said Sebesta, who sells at least two colonies per day at around $126 each.

The biggest species he offers is from Southeast Asia and grows up to around two inches while others are barely visible, said the 28-year-old, who has been selling ants on the Internet since February 2000. He said most people preferred to come to his shop to handle the ants before buying them online.

Pity the poor German child who wishes to purchase a up-market ant farm for his very own after reading the above. Reuters, though it went to the trouble of mentioning that the ants can be bought online, did not think mentioning where that might be worthwhile.

Well, worry no more little Fritz and beaming Helga! Silfay Hraka will provide for you what Jacques did not.

Martin Sebesta’s online ant store can be found here. It’s called “Antstore” appropriately enough, making it a one-stop shopping place for all your Ameisennotwendigkeiten. Antstore also provides a gallery for those picky shoppers looking for just the right ants to present to a loved one on that special day. People who are creeped out by the whole thing probably shouldn’t view this picture, though my reaction to the whole thing can be summed up in one sentence.

I need someone to give me $1,764.

One of the sites we host is Sea-Coos. When pronounced out loud it sounds like an epithet for a slutty mermaid, but it’s actually an acronym for Southeast Atlantic Coastal Ocean Observing System, which is a fancy way of saying “we look at the water a lot.”

Anyway, they had a minor DNS problem, which I fixed, but in checking the fix I noticed an article on the site about the Fish Watch project.

Fish Watch is a project studying marine fish behavior, movements, and species groupings in continental shelf waters off the coast of the state of Georgia. Collaborating in this study are the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, Marine Resources Division, the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography, and the US Naval TACTS program. The study is funded in part by the Office of Naval Research, National Ocean Partnership Program. The study is conducted with an observational system of 6 underwater cameras that monitor the activities around an artificial reef habitat.

The Fish Watch Program home page is here, and the (mostly) fish clips can be found here. I especially liked the loon videos, in the Uncommon Visitors section.

For Hraka reader Kimberly Jacob, who has a project due but couldn’t find the lyrics to The Rainmaker’s Government Cheese online. While I couldn’t locate them either via Google’s web search, I did eventually locate them in Groups.

Government Cheese
Give a man a free house and he’ll bust out the windows
Put his family on food stamps, now he’s a big spender
No food on the table and the bills ain’t paid
‘Cause he spent it on cigarettes and P.G.A.
They’ll turn us all into beggers ’cause they’re easier to please
They’re feeding out people that Government Cheese

Give a man a free ticket on a dead end ride
And he’ll climb in the back even though nobody’s driving
Too goddamn lazy to crawl out of the wreck
And he’ll rot while he waits for the welfare check
Going to hell in a handbag, can’t you see
I ain’t gonna eat no Government Cheese

Prices for a used copy of the Rainmakers cd containing this song are now at $87.99 and up at Amazon. You can have a free taste here, though. You’ll need RealPlayer. (If you’re trying to listen at some date in the future and the link above does not work, it may be that I’ve removed the sound file to save on server space. Drop me a line and I’ll email you a copy or reenable the link.)

The 75th edition of the Carnival of the Vanities is hosted by Da Goddess, who is taking her second shot at it this week.

If you’d like to host the Carnival, drop us a line. Information on how to join the Carnival can be found here. If you would like to be added to the Carnival announcement list, send an email to cotvanities-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Upcoming Carnival stops include;

March 3rd American Digest Dodgeblogium!
March 10th Aaron’s Rantblog
March 17th Patterico’s Pontifications
March 24th Pete Holiday
March 31st Eric Berlin
April 7th Leaking Pure White Noise
April 14th BoiFromTroy
April 21st Southern Musings
April 28th WOLves
May 3rd The Thief’s Den
May 12th Confessions Of A Political Junkie
May 19th Dispatches from the Culture Wars
May 26th Spot On
June 2nd Tiger
June 9th Ambient Irony
June 16th Jessica’s Well
June 23rd A Single Guy In The South
June 30th quasi in rem

Places where the Carnival is, sadly, no longer welcome:

Yourish.com
Amish Tech Support

Be sure to check out the Carnival’s offspring:

The Bharteeya Blog Mela
Bonfire of the Vanities
Carnival of the Capitalists
The Kissing Booth
Carnival of the Canucks
The BestOfMe Symphony