I'm back, with some Synthosaurus

I'm ending my little break from the blogging, and plan on returning to a schedule of some sort (coincidentally, the next couple of days might be busy for me.... but other than that....). This is "Teens in Love, in Space" by The Synthosaurus, aka Brendan McGuigan, who does a lot of different synth-dance/awesome stuff. He's on MeFiMusic, if you'd like to keep up with his work. I'm not sure if I want to continue doing my daily web clips. They're maybe too easy, and seem to be polluting the site. They give me the opportunity to say, "Hey Me, do you maybe want to do a substantive post today?" "Well, I already did web clips, I think that'll be fine." Maybe I'll make it a weekly thing and figure out something else to do daily, though I'm willing to keep them daily if people like them. Let me know what you think. Anyway, I come back with more experience and some new ideas for posts, that I'll be getting out there soon.

Cool Thing Of The Week: FSI Language courses

Our government, obviously, has a strong interest in training its agents in foreign languages. As such, the Foreign Service Institute has spent a great deal of time and money developing language courses for diplomats, field agents, and other government officials. The thing is, since these courses were developed with taxpayer funds, they were never copyrighted or patented, since technically the patent holders would be all US citizens. As such, sever companies, such as Barrons and AudioForum, have made a ton of money by packaging and selling these courses for hundreds of dollars. Or you can get them for free. FSI Language courses is a site dedicated to hosting digital versions of these courses. They are uploaded by people who purchase old copies of the originals, then scan the books in and convert the old cassette tapes to mp3's. As such, many courses are incomplete, but you should still check it out. A word of caution, this is not "Learn Spanish in a Flash!!!!!!" The courses are focused on grammar, pronunciation, and over learning. They were also designed for classroom use. That said, they're regarded as being highly effective. I'm a suspicious fellow, so I've decided to try out the Basic Spanish course and keep a detailed log, periodically testing myself. I'll post monthly progress logs here on The Tartar Sauce. This way, I've committed to something publicly, which means I'll actually do it. After all, I don't want to lapse in my obligations to Strangers on the Internets. That would just be unconscionable. Note: This is the original site, though it is updated less often the the first one I linked to. You should check both out, as one might have material the other is missing.

Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus

I'm not sure if this is Epically Awesome or Epically Stupid, but either way it's certainly Epic in some degree. On second thought, I'm going with Epically Stupid.

Belated Album Review: Easy Star's Lonely Hearts Dub Band (Also, why I don't like Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band)

No, this isn't a really really belated review of a Beatles album that I spelled the name of wrong. The album I'm reviewing was released a few months ago this year. It was produced by the Easy Star All Stars, who are known for other reggae cover albums, such as Dub Side of the Moon and Radiodread. I haven't listened to Dub Side of the Moon (a reggae version of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon) very much, but I own Radiodread (a reggae version of Radiohead's OK Computer), and to be honest I don't like it very much. The Toots & The Maytals cover of "Let Down" is absolutely incredible, better than the original in my opinion, but the rest of the album kind of falls flat, especially by comparison. To be fair, this is partly a matter of personal taste for me; I love old-school reggae that doesn't have lots of production, and most of the album, notably excluding "Let Down," is really production heavy. But I also think that there are other issues as well; for one thing, Radiohead's music doesn't always work as reggae. It was a noble effort for the All Stars to tackle the 3/4 time "Subterrainian Homesick Alien" using a genre that is almost always in 4/4 time, but the end result shows why reggae is almost always 4/4. It's kind of boring (well, so is the original song), and it just kind of sounds like, well, a reggae band trying to play a Radiohead song, rather than a reggae band making a Radiohead song completely their own. 

Anyway, tribute albums usually suck, so while I didn't particularly like Radiodread, I wasn't disappointed by it, since I didn't expect to like it in the first place. For that reason, I was pleasantly surprised by Lonely Hearts Dub Band. 

Now, just for a little background information, I don't like the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles. I think it's one of the most overrated albums of all time, mainly because it's all over the fucking place musically. It's a concept album with no concept. The band starts out by introducing themselves as an imaginary band, which is a pretty cool idea, but then they just drop acid around track 3 and forget about the concept entirely. By the middle of the album they start introducing a magical kite and bastardizing Indian music and we have absolutely no idea what the fuck is going on. I've heard tons of hippie assholes tell me that the album's so cohesive, which is bullshit. We have a sitar song next to an old-timey woodwind ensemble one. How the fuck is that cohesive? I've also seriously heard people say "man, Sgt. Pepper is so great! It's got all the classics on it, like Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane." (Those songs are from Magical Mystery Tour, which is my favorite Beatles album, because it's cohesive and has all the classics on it.) And don't even give me that bullshit about how it's better when you're stoned, because all music is better when you're stoned. Why do you think dub music has an audience? Using that argument is like saying "Don't say McDonald's tastes bad, it's better when you're hungry." Of course Sgt. Pepper sounds incredible stoned, but an album that's actually good will sound even better! Sgt. Pepper is also proof that people don't necessarily make better music when they're on drugs. Frank Zappa did way cooler shit in the 60s, and he never smoked weed in his life. If Frank Zappa had done drugs, he probably wouldn't have recorded Uncle Meat and would have wrote something shitty like "Good Morning Good Morning" instead.

Anyway, I don't like the Sgt. Pepper album. If you want to read more about why it sucks, read this fantastic piece by Jim DeRogatis. Also, just to clarify, some bands, particularly They Might Be Giants, have made exquisite albums that have absolutely no musical consistency. They're a band who knows how to pull that off. The Beatles never were. That's why no one ever listens to the white album all the way through, and if you say that you don't skip "Revolution 9" you're a pretentious asshole.

Anyway, the fact that I don't like Sgt. Pepper probably made me like the reggae version of it way more, even though I love OK Computer and didn't really like its reggae version, which is strange, but also kind of makes sense. Since I love OK Computer, I didn't really want anyone messing with its songs (except of course for Toots & The Maytals. They can mess with any song they want as far as I'm concerned. Everything they touch turns to gold). On the flipside, I don't like Sgt. Pepper, so I like the fact that someone is actually making it's songs good. Now to be fair, the original album does have a lot of good songs on it... oh, wait, I checked the track listing, and it actually only has one really good song on it: "A Day In The Life," which, despite how I feel about the album, is my favorite Beatles song ("Eleanor Rigby" and "Happiness is a Warm Gun" round out my top 3. I guess I like all the morbid, depressing Beatles songs). But still, not all of the songs on the album are bad. Sure, "Within You Without You" goes on for way too long and is just George trying to recreate "Norwegian Wood" and "Love You To," the Beatles were on way too much acid when they wrote "For The Benefit of Mr. Kite," and "Good Morning Good Morning" just sounds like a cartoon exploding, but all of the other songs on the album are solid and just suffer from this lack of consistency. But the great thing is that Lonely Hearts Dub Band solves this easily. It's impossible for a reggae album to suffer from a lack of consistency. The only thing a reggae album can suffer from is too much consistency.

LHDB really shines because it makes the entire album consistent and really allows the actual songs to shine, rather than get covered up by bizarre, self-indulgent production. The other thing that's great about it is that it has fucking amazing guest artists on it. The track listing reads like a list of reggae all stars. We have The Mighty Diamonds, Max Romeo, Ranking Roger, Steel Pulse, U-Roy... shit, everyone on this album is fucking incredible. So now it's time for the song by song review process! (BTW, you can listen to the whole album on youtube, so I'll be providing links to each song.)

The first song essentially serves the same purpose as it does on the original album: just an introduction. It's not particularly exciting, but then again, this song never was the high point of the original album either (that might be another reason why the original suffers: it has a weak opener). The next track, Luciano covering "With A Little Help From My Friends," is a million times better than anything Ringo has ever done, including drumming for the Beatles (ok, I admit that was a little too harsh). The original version of this song just kind of lumbers along and has no passion in it, but Luciano's version manages to be both upbeat and mellow, and has terrific vocals.

Next we have "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds," which I will henceforth be abbreviating as "LSD." I've thought for a while that LSD would make a great reggae cover; I always imagined it starting out with just a sick descending bassline and some phenomenal reggae singer doing the first verse over it, and then you'd hear a pickup of high-pitched snare drums before the chorus, which would be upbeat and full of sound. This version pretty much starts exactly how I imagined it, but I think the drums come in way to early. Still, it's pretty cool. Frankie Paul is great, especially when he changes the lyrics a little to include a reference to the Ethiopian flag (cellophane flowers of red gold and green...). Still, I think the song should speed up a little more at the chorus. But that minor complaint doesn't keep this from being an awesome cover.

"Getting Better" by the Mighty Diamonds is truly phenomenal - old school reggae style performed by old-school reggae greats. It incorporates the jagged guitar line and tight harmonies from the original Beatles song perfectly. "Fixing a Hole" is the "Let Down" of this album. Originally an average song, it's saved by an insanely talented singer, in this case Max Romeo. It's also odd how some of the lyrics to this song resemble the lyrics of Max Romeo's own songs. Basically, this is another nearly perfect one.

Next, we have "She's Leaving Home," the one which I was most nervous about. How are they gonna take a harp song in 3/4 time and make it reggae? Kristy Rock's answer? Go the completely opposite direction: make it upbeat in 4/4 time with prominent horns. No depressing song has ever made me want to dance this much. This is one of the highlights of the album, just because of how daring the arrangers were. In fact, the original was one of the most daring ones on the album, so in a way the reggae cover is appropriate.

I was also worried about "For The Benefit of Mr. Kite," but this one has Ranking Roger on it, and he can do no wrong. Mostly your typical reggae fare, but it's Ranking Roger, and the parts where he toasts are awesome. Plus the fact that they were able to make this bizarre, strange song typical is impressive.

Next... what the fuck... it's Matisyahu. Doing "Within You Without You." I never thought I could hate anything so much. It's about as bad as I expected it to be, and it's appropriate that they gave the most pretentious song to the most pretentious singer. But this kind of interrupts all the good vibes that the album had before. I don't like the strings, I don't like the sitar, I don't like the song, I don't like the fact that it's 5 minutes long, I don't like Matisyahu. This one's skippable. In fact, this one is inconsistent with the rest of the album, which is what I hated about the original.

The other thing which makes this song suffer as a reggae song is that, as Jim DeRogatis points out, the original version has no rhythm. One of the defining features of reggae is its rhythm. To take a song with no rhythm and turn it into reggae is really challenging, and I wouldn't expect anyone to pull that off. Especially Matisyahu.

Ah, the next one makes me feel better! "When I'm 64" is such a cheery song, perfect for reggae. Somehow, the original was too cheesy, but this cover just makes me happy! It's got a sick beat, a sick bassline, a sick melody, and that trombone just takes me back to my high school skanking days. I didn't even expect this one to work so well as reggae, but I think this is a case of the cover being better than the original. My only complaint is that Sugar Minott had a great opportunity with the line "doing the garden, digging the weeds," and he didn't do anything with it. Still, I really wish I had had the idea to turn this song into reggae when I was in a ska band.

"Lovely Rita" is another song that was made to be turned into reggae. It's upbeat, it's happy, it's in 4/4 time. But I think Bunny Rugs could have done a better job with this one. It should be a little faster, the drums should be a little bit more high pitched, the vocals should be a little less airy... but the fact that he invites Rita to get high with him is pretty awesome, and so is the trombone solo, although I wish that part were longer. The song picks up when he starts toasting. 

Next we have "Good Morning Good Morning," which I would say is the worst song on the original album (although there are some other really bad ones). If anyone could save it, it's Steel Pulse, a fucking incredible reggae band. And they do save it. Steel Pulse are another band that are just always solid. Seriously, just listen to that song, or watch any video of them live. If you're looking to get into any reggae other than Bob Marley's Legend album, Handsworth Revolution by Steel Pulse is a really good place to start (I'd also recommend the Trojan box set Originals and the soundtrack to The Harder They Come). Anyway, this song rocks. Steel Pulse rocks. 

The next one's a reprise of the first track? Who cares?

Actually, it's pretty sick. Give it a listen.

Finally, we have "A Day In The Life." As I said before, this one is my favorite Beatles song. You might think that because of this I wouldn't want it to be covered, but in fact this is another one that I've always thought would work great as reggae. To be honest, this version doesn't work as well as I expected. But this one's really just a matter of personal taste. As I said before, I'm more of a fan of older reggae, and this one's a bit more dubby. I always imagined the reggae version of this song (which I always imagined being called "A Dub In The Life") consisting of a main part that sounds more like the bridge of this version, and more of a ska rhythm on the bridge. But this one's still good. I just didn't like it as much partly because of personal taste, and partly because I love the original (which I guess also falls under the category of personal taste). Still good though.

Anyway, LHDB is a solid, solid album with lots of high points and only a few low points which really aren't very low. This is in contrast to the original, which is so all over the place that all of the points on the album are too far away for us to see their location. No offense to all the hippies out there, but I like this one better than the original. And I don't think that's really an insult to the Beatles. I think it's a complement to their songwriting abilities that their songs can so easily be played in other genres. As I kind of implied before, Sgt. Pepper is really an album that got bogged down by self-indulgent production. Most of its songs are good; it's just that on the original album we're not really allowed to actually listen to the songs. All we can listen to is the bizarre, random shit that was put on top of them. LHDB allows us to listen to what was going on underneath the sitars, woodwinds, echoes, and animal noises. It makes the album consistent, which compensates for its biggest weakness.

And in case anyone replies by saying that I can't understand the impact the album had when it came out (which you really aren't allowed to say unless you were there at the time), I've already prepared my response: Sgt. Pepper doesn't sound good now. It sounds like a relic of a time when people thought that bombarding our senses with absolutely no subtlety was a good idea. A classic album should be timeless. Sgt. Pepper isn't. It just sounds like it was made by a bunch of hippies with too much money.

(BTW thank you for reading the whole thing if you made it this far. I'm aware that this post was way too long).

Don't Miss This: Ubisoft Action Deal

Good Old Games is hosting yet another great sale, this time offering two of Ubisoft's finest entries - Beyond Good & Evil and Prince of Persia: Sands of Time at 30% off. If you buy the two together, it's a whopping 50% off. If you enjoy video games in any way, shape, and form and don't already own the GOG versions of these two games, then you must take advantage of this offer. About a decade ago, Ubisoft approached Jordan Mechner, the creator of the original Apple II Prince of Persia game, about reviving the series, but made the rather unusually decision of giving him full creative control. The result was a massive hit in 2003 that lead to two sequels, a rather lame "re-invisioning" game and an upcoming movie - and for good reason. SoT is one of the single best gameplaying experiences I have ever had, second only to Planescape: Torment. Unlike that title, which requires a massive investment in time and emotion, SoT is lighthearted, simple, and completely forgiving. For those who have never heard of the game, you play as a Prince (naturally) who is accompanying his father to visit a nearby sultan. Along the way, they realize they've forgotten to bring a gift, and in order to avoid a rather awkward faux pas they raze a nearby kingdom to the ground and steal its valuables and women to present to the Sultan. In doing so, the young prince loots the Dagger of Time, a powerful artifact that allows the bearer to rewind time. Once the caravan arrives at the palace, a traitorous Vizier tricks the prince into unleashing the Sands of Time, turning everyone in the palace into Zombies. The rest of the game consists of the prince parkouring his way through some pretty awesome scenery and acrobatically slashing sand zombies into tiny pieces. Best of all is the rewinding time feature - at any time you can rewind about 15 seconds into the game. This one feature means that most of the frustrations of a platformer simply disappear - if you miss a tricky jump, there's no need to replay a section, simply rewind and try again! It's fun, it's fast, and it's broken into manageable chunks. SoT also benefits from the fact that Mechner is a professional screenwriter. It's tale is incredibly well crafted, with believable characters who actually grow, humor, and an overall sense of completeness that's missing from most games. Buy it. You won't be disappointed. Beyond Good & Evil, on the other hand, serves as a poster child for how poor marketing can kill a product. Ubisoft released this title with little fanfare in the Christmas rush, pretty much guaranteeing that it would be lost in the deluge. Which it was. Which is a shame, because BG&E is one of the most imaginative, heartwarming and joyous games I've ever played. That may sound strange, especially with a plot involving conspiracies, abductions, and some fucking scary aliens, yet BG&E goes about its business with such goodwill and enthusiasm that it's infectious. If you do not feel charmed by Hyllis, then you have no soul. As for the game itself, the best way to describe it would be Zelda grown up. Much like that venerable series, the game is an action adventure that sees the player traversing a fleshed out world exploring, fighting, and collecting. Unlike the Zelda games, the protagonist is one of the best written characters in videogame history. Not to say that the gameplay isn't entertaining (because it is) but Jade, and her interactions with the other characters, is what makes this game. Even if you don't consider yourself a gamer, or don't really play games, I encourage you to purchase this one and try it out. How many action games have their protagonist wield a camera instead of a gun? Finally, both these games have kick-ass soundtracks, and when you buy them from GOG you get that as well! Also keep in mind that GOG games do not have any form of copy protection whatsoever, and come in a convenient downloader that installs perfectly on XP or Vista. Buy them. Seriously, do it. It's 10 bucks for two of the best games of the last decade that are easy to get into, even for a non-gamer. You don't even need super duper awesome hardware - these games are 5 years old, and scaled well even when they were new. Buy them, or you are not my friend. You have until Monday.

Cool Thing Of The Week: France

Howdy folks! It's been awhile since I've brought your last Cool Thing Of the Week, and that's because I've been in France, where permission to board the Internets costs anywhere from 2-8 Euro an hour. So for this update, I'd thought I'd share all my musings about our old friend France. To be specific, I was in St. Jean de Luz (Basque country) in the south, and it's a tiny little town that plays host to French tourists during the summer.

• This is somethings I've noticed in alot of countries that aren't the USA, but in France, it takes a long time to get almost anything done. Meals, airport check-ins, everything except trains, which are refreshingly quick and punctual.
• Speaking of meals, there's no concept of turning tables. During the evening, a restaurant will seat all its tables, and then usually close down. Combined with the fact that waiters are on salary and don't rely on tips, and you find that dining is a drawn out experience. Which isn't bad at all. In fact, usually it's quite lovely.
• I don't think I've ever eaten so much bread in my entire life. It doesn't help that nothing opens before 7:30, and nothing serves anything other than baguette, crepes, or pastry before lunch.
• French is hard. I got along just fine, and it's amazing how far a little can get you, but French slang is a ridiculous combination of "Hey let's arbitrarily swap the subject and the verb!" and not using correct tenses. Fuck that. I already speak one overly convoluted language that makes no goddamn sense, and that one I learned by speaking it since birth.
• On the other hand, the Spanish I heard might as well have been dialogs out of a textbook. Definitely got to file that as the easier language.
• For a country that abhors the idea of mixing it up, France loves to parade its military around. Most monuments had a trio of soldiers armed with FAMAS rifles patrolling around. The effect is somewhat diminished as the weapons didn't have magazines seated.

This is a work in progress, and will grow as I think of more things/get more time. Feel free to chime in with your own experiences.

Moments of Unoriginality: AV Q&A

I don't know how many of you read the Onion AV club, or how many of you read it as religiously as I do. For those who don't, this is what could be considered the "legitimate" end of the Onion's news empire. It's kind of like what we do here: a lot of pop-culture commentary, reviews, and general snark/sass/sarcasm. It's pretty damn good stuff, well worth following if you don't already. And now here's my angle beyond the plug: they have a number of features beyond reviews, like long-lasting series delving into a particular genre and inventories of, say, spectacular awkward moments in film. But there's one feature in particular that delights me, and that's the Q&A, when the staff answers a question about their own personal pop-cultural tastes. I've found that I end up answering the question myself as I read the responses, so I developed a (highly derivative) idea to test out, namely that I'll try and post my own answers to whatever question they have for the week. Or is that too unoriginal? Does anyone really care what I think about some random cultural question of the day? Does it matter? So, pending any change of heart, I present the first installment of what could become a series of shameless knock-offs of other established websites. And so it figures that the question for our first installment would be kind of a dud. A reader wonders, what hitherto unformed artistic collaborations would you (not I) like to see/hear? And now I waffle. My problem is that from a film standpoint, there aren't many special things I'd like to see that combine other things I like. Sure, I'd like to see Danny Boyle tackle something new, or to see Sean Connery act one last time in something a little more legit than "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," but I don't really think in terms of "I'd like to see Director X take on Screenplay Y with Actor Z." I don't believe in remakes generally, and like to keep my fiction and my movies mentally separated (case in point, the Harry Potter universes from the books and the movie), which means that I don't read something and immediately wish it was a movie. I guess the closest thing I have to a Dream Collaboration in mind for a movie would be to have, in the next Batman movie installment, Christopher Walken play the Penguin. I think that would be fucking incredible, and hopefully make the next film as good as the last one. Oh, and I've always thought that Asian Dub Foundation should score some kind of action-thriller type thing. Just an idle wish. And again, musically I don't have that much to say off the top of my head about collaborations. A lot of the music I like is by dead guys or not especially suited for covers/collaborations, like jazz and funk. I also don't know enough about hip-hop to really speak authoritatively about collaborations there, but I will say that if DJ Nu-Mark and Cut Chemist did anything (really) with Devin the Dude I would be eternally appreciative (or for a J5 reunion actually; I just tried to draft an all-star rap group and it turned into a compendium of rappers I like guesting on "Quality Control"). Actually, I have a few ideas now: Little Jackie could do a cover of "Son of a Preacher Man." Hopefully it would be awesome; I've got high hopes for those kids and want to see them do something new. But does it really count to just cover something else that's soulful? This experiment is going nowhere, so I'll comment later if I have anything remotely constructive to say. In the mean time, I encourage y'all to join in the larger discussion, and hopefully we can pull some good out of what hopefully doesn't turn into a failed exercise.

The Past and Future of LOLcats

For some reason, LOLcats have been in the news lately. Well, at least they've been in the news that I read. Maybe that can tell you something about how informed I am.

First of all, the world's first LOLcat was recently discovered.

I found out about it from Language Log (although I don't know what it was doing there). This picture is from 1905 and predates our current versions of LOLcats by about 100 years.

Also, an off broadway musical is being made about LOLcats. What that could possibly involve I don't know. All I can say is

(Maybe) Please Don't Miss Out On This One Too!

Wow, Steam's been going crazy with these weekend deals lately, I mean, what with the indie deal last week, and now this.

So yea, I feel like a dirty promo salesman, but this weekend Steam is selling every Half-Life game for %66 off. meaning you can buy EVERY Half-Life game (including Team Fortress Classic) for $17. OR you can buy them individually for the %66 off.

The only real bummer about this promo is that it's likely you already have most of these games (hell, these games are usually the only reason people installed Steam in the first place). Still, this means it's a good time to gift if you know someone who's never played Half-Life 2 (you can get it individually for just $7).

Of course, if you don't have any of these games, get them. There's no doubt they are of the highest quality. I mean, the Half-Life series is Valve's freakin' crowning achievement. You can get the entire Half-life 1 anthology for just $5, so they've obviously accounted for the fact that you'll have some/most of these, but geez, these are GOG.com prices on what must be the most critically acclaimed PC games ever.

So get out there, get your H.E.V. Suit on, and kill some combine.

(Unofficial) Wiki of the Week: Wikitravel

I know Wiki of the Week normally isn't my thing, and it hasn't even been a week since the last one, but there's one wiki that I have to endorse, because it's been a lifesaver for me recently.

Wikitravel is what it describes itself as: a free travel guide. And it's actually a really good one. It contains tips for every country and every major city about what to see, where to stay, what to eat, how to stay safe, and how not to offend anyone, among other things. It's a really useful asset to have when you're traveling and your plans can change at any moment. Plus, it's also really great to consult if you're thinking about going somewhere and you want to know how safe it is, or what it would cost. You can't make reservations or anything through it, but it links to sites where you can, and it contains nearly all the information you'll need for any particular place. In fact, for very large cities like LA or Tokyo, wikitravel devotes entire pages to specific districts within those cities. 

Basically, wikitravel has made traveling way, way easier for me. If you're planning on doing any travel soon (Juje, Bobbicus), then you should definitely consult wikitravel for wherever you're going.

Web Clips for 8/15/09

Just saw District 9, pretty awesome, totally unpredictable. The whole apartheid thing was majorly apparent, though. that's not a bad thing.

I've run into some free time, so expect a more frequent stream form me, I hope.

Twitscoop is twitter on steroids, with very beefy live-search features and such. What's interesting is the information you can get by just checking the tag cloud every so often. I used it as a clock today, as the time will grow in popularity every hour.

Some of Niel Blomkamps (director of District 9) other stuff.

Head-fi-ers talking about how they lost their ear virginity.

Web Clips for 8/14/09

Speaking of food, this looks delicious.

So the once great IM app Digsby has pulled a 180 and is now a total POS. Appalling really. It's time to uninstall.

Audiosurf and some other game reviews coming from me soon. Oh and part 2 of the l4d reviews.

Will Wheaton is writing a short story, inspired by Left 4 Dead.

This still amazes me. A photo every day.

Righteous Anger: "Food Inc."

Before I begin, this is going to be a little rant-y and digressive and angry as far as reviews go, and I have a strong feeling that this reaction is exactly what the filmmakers wanted. But the question is, how to direct the anger? Make a big change and start buying local produce? Go after the agribusiness conglomerates? Go completely off the grid (as one friend is doing), as it were, living entirely vegan off of fruits and berries? I choose the other option, namely blogging about it for the internet to read, and then letting everyone make their own decisions after I've criticized their ways. I think a movie review is in order before the ranting begins. "Food Inc." is our subject for today, a documentary with heavy input from both Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan and a tone somewhere in between. It's wide-reaching in its specifics, but the basic target is agribusiness and how our food has become so preposterously mechanized and industrialized. This takes on a merry cinematic assault on the various large corporations and their evils: inhumane conditions for animals, inhumane conditions for workers, putting chemicals into food, lack of sustainable farming practices, and a general deviation from all that is natural and good. Unfortunately, that's a lot of subjects for a single movie to hold, especially one that I remember clocked in at about ninety minutes. This leads to a kind of disjointed feeling in the otherwise logical presentation of arguments. However, the arguments are all pretty simple- by looking for cheaper and easier food, we've managed to tacitly induce a world in which agribusiness corporations milk us for our money in exchange for environmental aberrations and food that doesn't make us much healthier. A few of the segments are especially good, though, such as one in which the Monsanto corporation is exposed; they managed to patent a gene in soybeans (which, in addition to corn, make up the vast majority of our food, says the film) that made the soybeans resistant to pesticide. Because they patented a gene, they've made it so that if a farmer saves seeds from non-patented soybeans, the farmer can legally be charged with patent infringement. Evil shit right there. There's also the sad story of a young boy who died from e. coli as a result of agribusiness negligence, the standard tales of how we are breeding chickens and cows to grow unnaturally large, so large that they basically are grown like plants (because the poor animals can't walk or move on their own accord). And then the animals get to be mistreated on their way to slaughter, which takes place in all of eleven (I think it was eleven, in any rate some preposterously small number) slaughterhouses in the country. The bad guys largely remain faceless, except for some semi-morally ambiguous characters (a farmer perfectly content to make money off of unnatural chickens, Wall-Mart execs expanding into organic food), and the heroes are many: farmers fighting the power, being abused, or simply shaking their heads sadly about the decline of their noble profession. The best are one semi-nutty farmer in Virginia, who takes a rather gung-ho approach to growing the best food he can naturally and locally, and another farmer who sadly bemoans the state of soybean growing, but offers the closing words of hope in such a rousing manner that I couldn't help but be moved to cheer inside. But for all the heroes, stories, angering statistics and discussions with Eric and Michael, the film still doesn't offer much new advice. Basically we know it all: buy locally, read labels, learn what's in your food, and every one can make a difference. I guess after all that stored indignation I was prepared for more of a manifesto, a shared plan for the audiences to meet up and rebel, schematics for kidnapping money-grubbing execs, but instead it's just the same schtick that we grew up hearing. Anyways, my final judgment here is that this is a standard documentary, a little boring in some of the CGI infographics but with above-average interviews; while the end message is not new, it is still hopeful, which is important, and the powerful drive that the film arouses in viewers can definitely be put to a good use, so long as viewers aren't overwhelmed and fail to do anything. Review vastly too long and now over. Now, almost a week later, I don't have as much ranting and bile within me for the "how to change the world" proposed section of this post, so here's the short and sweet version: watching "Food, Inc," the obvious solution to me was the bleakest one: there are just way too many people on this planet for us to continue living in this way. And by "living in this way," I'd like to imply that there is a huge cultural aspect to the general world-is-ending problem, but specifically in the problem addressed by "Food, Inc." Basically, I see it boiling down to an American cultural desire and belief that everyone can achieve whatever they want, which is all fine and good until people start expecting to be able to eat whatever they want all the time, and cheaply. This leads to weird shit, like tomatoes in winter and fresh swordfish in the Midwest. Which would be fine if people wanted to pay the exorbitant costs of being able to eat what would be considered luxury food items in a natural world. But instead, agribusiness sees the opportunity to make a little cash and, using the power of capital to invest and coordination of transportation and all sorts of technology, manages to provide these food items (which should be considered artificially occurring) for a relatively cheap cost. Then lots of people buy them (because everyone wants to be able to do whatever they want whenever they want) and agribusiness gets very rich and can use this capital to keep on perpetuating the system. The people are happy because they can have sushi in North fucking Dakota and get food for vastly cheaper, freeing up more money to spend on useless shit like cable TV with nothing on and third cars and what have you. I'm starting to lose it here, but I hope you catch my drift. Main points: people want whatever they see everyone else having, especially the wealthy. They also want cheap things. Agribusiness uses their clout and all sorts of unnatural production and transportation measures (read bad for the planet) to provide what the people want for less. Then agribusiness profits while the people are contented, and the cycle perpetuates. Of course, that doesn't even begin to get at the problem in its entirety, because everything connects. In order to deal with this problem in its entirety, we'd have to solve for poverty, a way for people in large urban areas to get food directly from the farmers, a way for the price of good food to go down, a way to get people to listen, and oh my god my brain just short circuited from not being able to deal with this mess that we've managed to get ourselves into. A practical solution is for people to just realize, culturally, that if you live in the Northern hemisphere, you can eat tomatoes in the summer, and can preserve them for the rest of the year. Or that certain foods should be really expensive because of the energy that goes into producing them, like beef. Little things like that. I'm finding myself turning into a crotchety old man these days, and one of my favorite refrains is for a return to pre-industrialized revolution society, when there was no globalization and you only worked when there was work needing to be done. I realize it's an impractical ideal, and that there was mad plague back then, but there's something to be said for living a more natural lifestyle, one where we ate what was in season or around, and didn't haul food from all the corners of the globe to fill our ravenous western appetites. I think that if we can manage to think (as Michael Pollan says, bringing it all home) about where the food comes from, and realize that if certain foods don't make sense (like non-seasonal fruits and veggies), we probably shouldn't be eating them, then we'd be on a clear track to fixing this problem of food ceasing to be real food. And the impractical solution? Jack up the price of gas, vastly improve public/rail transportation, and bring back a village lifestyle to rural communities. People would have to focus on eating locally (too expensive to transport lots of food all over the goddamn place), and farming villages would be able to provide the food by rail to the major urban areas. Also, village life seems so cool. Go read "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and tell me that's not how we should all be living (minus the incest). And hopefully the pandemic won't come around just yet, because that will be nature's solution to this problem, reducing the number of motherfuckers on the planet demanding more food than they could possibly need, and eliminating the number of dudes out there who start blog posts and don't finish them for a week, thus forgetting everything they wanted to say and consequentially ranting aimlessly to the finish.

Wiki of the Week: Encyclopedia Dramatica

There's a lot to be said about Encyclopedia Dramatica (besides, "in lulz we trust"), and it's place in the internet. It's hard to describe for one. Maybe think of it as "4chan lite" or a "best of 4chan" kind of place. While a lot of it is simple documentation of troll internet culture and humor, a lot of actual discussion is done there. Popular topic pages are often updated extremely frequently, making a weird sort of conversation within edits (since most is done with the wiki format). The New York Times described the site fairly well (if a little pretentiously), "an online compendium of troll humor and troll lore."

Anonymous is here, they have power, and there's a reason they exist in this new thing we call the internet. It may not be apparent until we are able to really step back and take a look at how these constant connections are affecting us.

But maybe I'm taking this too seriously, and should probably just have fun reading some lulz instead.

Encyclopedia Dramatica.

and "Encyclopedia Dramatica" on Wikipedia.

Web Clips for 8/13/09

Opera Unite is sort of like a personal server/ sharing site crossover thingy that you can use with opera. It seems cool (though a tad vague), but I'm pretty sure it's not going to pick up like they say.

It probably won't do anything but give Redmond a headache, but tiny content management company i4i won a lawsuit against Microsoft, with the ruling banning Microsoft from selling Word in the U.S.

This guy made some live action retro game pictures.

Happy 10th birthday, System Shock 2.

Lulz of the Time

Spock?

Web Clips for 8/12/09

Well, PayPayl is being a dick.

And, LEGO is being a dick too.

Why we quit playing games, besides, you know, RL. Seriously his first example is the exact reason I haven't played Fallout 3 in months. I made a bad decision and realized that the game hadn't autosaved. It brought me back a good two hours worth of play. Replaying those two hours still doesn't seem appealing.

A friend just finished the show (and loved it of course) and I was reminded of why the wire is (or was) the best show on television.

Web Clips for 8/11/09

This media player is apparently very good. I personally haven't had enough time to play around with it yet, though. I'll review it when the time comes.

So, the Add-Ons manager is out, build some shit.

15 Twitter desktop clients.

Anil Dash talking about Apple's secrecy being harmful to them. I dunno though, to quote bill gate on Google (and this quote has been going around, "The more vague they are, the more interesting it is."

Reputable Sources: TechCrunch Fail

So, I was browsing around these here internets, when I came across an article over at TechCrunch (read it). If you could call it that. It was 4 paragraphs long. The writer was complaining whining, saying that Firefox 3.5 kept crashing on him. He then assumes it's happening to everyone else, and then shit-talks Mozilla, saying they really need to fix this issue.

Wait, he doesn't really assume it's happening to everyone else before doing research and figuring out if it's true, right? Of course not, he writes for TechCrunch, so he's gotta be on his game. Right? Of course! So as proof, he posts this image, which shows six people over 2 days complaining of Firefox crashes. Six people in the entirety of Twitter.

He says Firefox crashes for him, "when I have too many tabs open (like 15 or 20, which is not unusual for me towards the end of the day)."

Erm, ok, lets see how many tabs I have open now .....47. Really? yea, proof, click and see:

Yup, I use around 40-50 tabs daily. Firefox has never crashed for me. But of course, that's not proof of Firefox's stability, it's just me. And I wouldn't generalize and rant about it on a reputable website for no reason.

And here's the kicker, straight from the article, "I’ve been patiently waiting for the crashing to stop as Mozilla releases patches and updates. And I’m on a developer build, so maybe I’m just asking for crashes."

Yes, yes you are. Why would you assume everyone else is having this issue when they're using a completely different browser. Nobody's really using the developer builds, especially not the people you cited as users of Firefox 3.5.

Geez, even 5 seconds of googling got me to this support page. I doubt the writer has tried any of these methods, but instead chooses to whine. He's most likely using some useless and memory hogging add-on that's causing it. Also notice the number of people who had the same problem: 69. 69 people reporting crashes for a browser with millions of users.

Honestly, though, this isn't what annoys me. If I got ticked off at every single guy whining on the internet about software, then I'd probably kill myself.

What annoys me so much is that this guy writes for freakin' TechCrunch, one of the hugest technology sites out there. These guys are supposed to know shit, and have some sort of professionalism, and they're supposed to be reputable. But then why the fuck is this guy whining about his own bullshit on the main page?

Honestly, I have a lot less respect for TechCrunch. It depresses me that they can get away with this and still be seen as trustworthy. I dunno, I've always been more of an Ars guy anyway.

Web Clips for 8/10/09

Did you buy it yet? Because there's not much time left.

Cut things in this fun physics puzzler.

This is way too fun. The rings don't go that far, but you can eat them (btw what's with all of the consumerism?).

Stick it to the apple.

Notice our Twitter link? Isn't it twit-tastic?

uTorrent finally learns to play nice. I would wait for the stable release though, or at least for a stable beta to show up on filehippo. I tried it out and there were too many crashes for a program that needs to be on 24/7. No doubt they'll all be fixed by the time it's ready, but until then I'm gonna stick with 1.8.3.

Please Don't Miss Out On This One!

No, really, don't miss out. I'm actually sorry for not posting this earlier- as there's not much time left, but seriously, the Steam Weekend Deal is an insane collection of some of the best indie games out there for $30. I doubt these will be cheaper than this for some time. The games are: Audiosurf, Blueberry Garden, Braid, Crayon Physics Delux, Darwinia, Everyday Shooter, Gish, The Path, and World of Goo. All of these are top-notch, innovative, shining examples of PC indie gaming at its best. Even with some underrated gems like Gish and Mr. Robot. You could buy the cheaper one for $20, but seriously, the other one is only $10 more and has 5 more games including AudioSurf and Darwinia. so why buy it? Even if you already have some of them, you can give the extra ones as gifts. Some of these were $30 when they came out alone, but today you can get ALL OF THEM for $30! so do it. Do it NOW!

Adventures en France

So I have not been posting any updates recently, but it's for a good reason: I'm in France, doing things. So for the next week or so, I'll try to get a few posts in on some of my experiences. I'd thought I'd start of with this: The French are total nerds. Seriously, next to my hotel is at least four video game stores, two trading card boutiques, and a wargaming store. The newsracks also carry, in addition to trashy teen magazines and covers that would be reserved for porn mags in the US, Vie Victus, a wargaming hobbyist magazine. It's so odd - there's seriously a magazine with Sharon Stone topless on the cover right next to a magazine about recreating historical battles with tiny metal men. Also, comic books (BD) are huge, an entire art form. Book stores will have entire floors dedicated to graphic novels coevering every subject under the sun. It's really quite fascinating. It's actually pretty refreshing to see brick and mortar game, record, and hobby shops since they've all died out in the US. It's not due to a lack of online sources, either (although Steam's refusal to acknowledge the strength of the Euro is pretty infamous.) Thanks to Socialism, France's internet connections are fast and cheap. No, it seems that these stores are still around because in France, there's still a market to wander into a store dedicated entirely to music, or games, and chat with people face to face who are also interested in your hobbies. Lucky bastards.

Left 4 Community love: A Review of New Add-On Campaigns

So, there's a new Add-Ons manager for Left 4 Dead, and it's pretty sweet. It allows for basically one-click installation of third-party campaigns and mods. This has led to a huge surge in the use of community campaigns. A HUGE one. I don't have numbers, but every time I've looked for games, at least a third of campaigns in the browser that show up are third party. Community maps never get that kind of attention. This is awesome, and it's exactly where PC developers need to be going, because this is the shit that makes the PC awesome (It's also the shit that makes us PC gamers pretentious, but hey, we're only pretentious because we're better). So, with this surge in community awesomeness, there's interestingly enough, a few campaigns that have stood out as being more popular than others. I've played them, I've played the shit out of them, they were delicious, and have definitely kept my interest in a game that supposedly lacks DLC. Let's take a look at them, shall we? First off, Death Aboard:

From what I've seen, Death Aboard is the most popular Add-On campaign by far, and for good reason. It's freakin' great. It was the first full custom campaign to come out, so by the time the manager was available, many of the bugs in the campaign had already been ironed out.

But anyway, in Death Aboard, you start off in a dark and eerie prison complex, and have to find your way from the maze of dark corridors of the prison complex through some sewers to a prison yard, all the while fighting undead inmates. From there, you enter the prison yard, and break out into some urban area, and then to the docks. Use one of these as a safehouse, and then enter the huge cargo ship.

This is one of the coolest parts, the ship is beached, and on it's side, so you have to adjust to the screen being tilted at about a 30 degree angle or more sometimes. There's a lot of water damage and rust, and you must climb up railings and such with caution. You exit through the ships propeller, in one of the most difficult panic events I've come across, and dash into a beach house.

From there you climb up a cliff to a lighthouse for the finale, where you are rescued by a freakin' hot air balloon.

So already, we see there's a ton of creativity here. The only part that I would say really lacks anything is the early prison levels, since they tend to get repetitive. I mean, it is a prison, so the repetition doesn't seem unrealistic, but there's definitely some copypasta going on in some of the corridors. A minor gripe really. The panic events there are also pretty easy even without much planning (and I play everything on at least advanced).

But man, does the ship make up for it, by leaps and bounds. It's been months since I was genuinely scared by L4D until I played that. Even after replaying it several times it is extremely difficult to tell where the hoard will come from. That's something the official Valve maps don't have. There's also an extremely difficult panic event where you try to open the large metal door to get out through the huge propeller. Here pretty much no matter what you do, you will be surrounded by zombies. God help you if a boomer comes.

I'm making it sound a little unbalanced. It's not like it's impossible to do, but on expert I haven't been able to do it in one try. It's tough, but it's set up for some of the greatest gaming moments I've had in months.

The lighthouse finale is actually a tad easier than the boat, though not by much. It reminds me of Zombie D-day, as you're sitting on top of a large beach/hill/cliff/lighthouse, and you can see the hoards come from miles away. This is the opposite of the ship, but works just as well in creating fear, because after unloading a few sniper rifle magazines into the mass of zombies running toward you, you'll realize there's still a ton more. Oh shi-

This would make the tank easier to defeat, but (spoiler) he doesn't always come from the beach, and I've found myself struggling to keep up with the group as we rush from the lighthouse back down to the beach, being pursued by a towering inferno. You also get rescued down by the beach, so there's a ton of different ways to do the finale, all of which are challenging, and really fun.

Wow, that was bit longer than I wanted, anyway, let's check out Night Terror:

Night Terror is significantly more buggy than Death Aboard, but it's totally forgivable, because Night Terror is just filled with awesome. Night terror isn't really a coherent campaign or story, but instead, each level is just something awesome. It was created (mostly) by Nipper, who did a bunch of weird (but awesome) CS 1.6 maps like crazytank. The first level is the mansion from 28 Days Later. You have to progress through it, and there is (of course) a panic event where you hold out in front as the zombies come across the lawn. You really feel like you're in the movie for this one. The second level is an almost exact replica of the Haunted Mansion ride in Disney World. There is a ton of attention paid to detail here, and a lot of work was done to replicate the tacky effects and holograms, all of which become actually scary when zombies come swarming out of every grave. There's even a panic event where you trigger a cart and ride through the graveyard, all the while defending against MASSIVE (and somewhat unbalanced) hoards of zombies. If you make it through, the cart quietly pulls into the exit area, as if nothing happened. It's a great moment. The next level brings you to the freakin' Mines of Moria from The Lord of the Rings. There's a lot of attention to detail in this one as well, though the actual mines get pretty repetitive (the giant hall with pillars is pretty much just that, a lot of pillars). The Tank actually always comes at the same time in this one. Right when you cross the bridge of Khazad-dum, a tank comes where the Balrog does in the movie. And here's the kicker: the fastest way to kill the tank there, is to have one of your members sacrifice himself and jump off of the bridge, the tank will follow, killing you both. FLY, YOU FOOLS! It's fucking epic, and fucking amazing. The next level I'm actually kind of embarrassed about, as I assume it must be from some movie, or book or something, but I can't put my finger on the reference in this one. It's still enjoyable, though, and reminds me of a classic jungle level from Serious Sam. It's jungle ruins, with long corridors lit by moonlight. It is the weakest level. There's not a lot of memorable events and some copypasta is pretty apparent. Though, all is made well when you discover that the next level, the final level, is the cabin from The Evil Dead. You enter through the cabin, and go through a passageway to the wierd, vortexy version of the house from The Evil Dead 2. There you hold out, and get rescued through a vortex, headed toward The Army of Darkness. It's thoroughly enjoyable, though not as difficult as it should be. Still, you will be satisfied. Well, these are going on a tad longer than I'd want, so I think I'll leave Dam it! and Back to School for part 2. Night Terror and Death Aboard are really must-plays, so get out and kill some zombies!

Web Clips for 8/9/09

Oh America, sometimes, you make me sigh. Blackberry twitter clients. Speaking of which, you can now follow us on twitter! We're so cool and hip with the times yo! I'll add a link shortly. I'm not sure what will go there except just post updates, and a way to easily get in touch with us. I'll figure it out I suppose. Collaborate with stubborn people. Pretty old, but interesting stuff on dialog.

All Around The World

I knew it was gonna happen eventually. The Hangul writing system has spread outside of Korea and is being used by people in another nation.

For those of you who don't know, Hangul is the writing system used in Korea, for the Korean language. You may have seen it before. It looks something like this.

Hangul is probably the easiest writing system in the world. It was created by King Sejong of Korea in the 15th century for the sole purpose of raising literacy rates in Korea. Until then, Chinese characters were used, and only the elite could read. Afterwards, most people, including the poor and uneducated, were able to read. King Sejong claimed that a smart person could learn Hangul in one morning, and a stupid person could learn it within 10 days (how he proved this I don't know). If you think about it, a writing system that allows everyone to read is an incredibly equalizing force. 

And now, a tangent: there's been a movement in America for a while to simplify English spelling. I read an article about it in The Believer a while back. Basically, people in this movement use the same argument that King Sejong did: that a complicated writing system favors the elite, and that a simple writing system would raise literacy rates and make it easier for everyone to read and, as a result, give everyone access to more information. English writing is complicated because it was standardized before the Great Vowel Shift, which was a point in history where the pronunciation of English words dramatically changed. So when English spelling was first standardized, everything was spelled the way it was pronounced, but then pronunciation changed and spelling stayed the same. Anyway, I'll come back to English later.

Now back to the substance of the post: For a really really long time the Hangul writing system was only used for Korea. But it has now spread outside of Korea and is being used by a minority tribe in Indonesia. They're not changing they're language to Korean, they're simply using Hangul as the writing system for their own language. I don't think they will be the last people to adopt Hangul. The English writing system is more versatile than some other writing systems (Japanese, for example), but from all I know (which honestly isn't a whole lot, since I don't know how to read Hangul, although I'd like to think I could learn it in a morning), Hangul seems way easier than English characters. So I do think that as more tribes try to preserve their indigenous languages by creating writing systems for them, many will turn to Hangul.

Which raises the question: if Hangul is so easy, why hasn't it spread already? Well, that's largely because right now English is a global language. I wrote about it before on my other blog (which I haven't updated in forever): as a result of British military imperialism and American cultural imperialism, English is the closest thing to a global language that exists right now. We can argue about the implications of this all we want, but the fact is that I've spent the last 4 1/2 months in three different countries, all of which were in Asia, and in all of them English was somewhat of a second language. I've seen Chinese people talk with Japanese people in English, because it was the only language both of them spoke. I've had people from Japan, Korea, Finland, Denmark, Argentina, and Croatia come up to me without knowing where I was from and speak to me in English, because they had learned it in school and they assumed that I was likely to understand it. English is a global language.

The reason for this is not because English is easy. English is insanely difficult to learn. It's just because English-speaking countries have had a huge global influence. However, having a huge global influence isn't the only important thing. Many economists are predicting that China will become the next world power, at least in terms of economics. However, many linguists are predicting that Chinese will not become a global language, basically because it's one of the world's most difficult languages to learn. It's a tonal language (meaning that one syllable, said with two different tones, can mean two entirely different things), it uses kanji (characters that symbolize words, rather than sounds, which can be pronounced different ways and are insanely difficult to write), and it has no phonetic writing system (unlike the slightly easier Japanese, which uses both kanji and phonetic characters). For one thing, a global language would probably be taught to kids from the time they're young, and teaching kids Chinese is definitely harder than teaching kids English (although English is still really difficult). But more importantly, a global language would have to be able to take words from other languages as well, and this is something that would be very hard in Chinese. 

This is the other reason why English is a global language. It's had a huge global influence, but it can also absorb words from other languages really really easily. This is because English has a massive sound inventory; in other words, many different sounds can exist in English. This is untrue of some languages, such as Japanese. No matter how huge of a global influence Japan has, it would be very difficult to make Japanese a global language. Japanese isn't as hard as Chinese, since it has no tones and has a phonetic writing system, but it's phonetic writing system is nowhere near as versatile as English's. A Japanese word, such as すし (sushi), can easily be written in English, but an English word such as "hamburger" (which was actually taken from German), can't be written perfectly in Japanese. It ends up looking something like ハンバーガー, which is pronounced "hanbahgah." The limits of the writing system are an indirect result of the fact that Japanese's sound inventory is much smaller than English's. To put it another way, there are way more consonant and vowel sounds in English than there are in Japanese. And on a larger scale, English does have a relatively large sound inventory: the average one contains 23 consonants and 9 vowels; English contains 25 consonants and 19 vowels. To put it into more perspective, Japanese contains 15 and 5, Spanish contains 17 and 5, and Nepali, which rivals English, contains 27 and 11, still a total of less sounds than English. Basically, English has many different sounds at its disposal. That's why it can borrow so many words from other languages.

But on the other hand, that's one reason why it's so difficult for many people to learn English: they have to adapt to new sounds that don't exist in their native languages. One of the other main reasons why it's so difficult for people to learn English is the spelling. Which brings me back to Hangul. If Hangul raised the literacy rate in Korea so dramatically, then I think it would be a perfect global writing system. If Hangul were used worldwide, then it would probably be easier for people to communicate globally. Clearly Hangul is being used as a writing system for another language already, so it could probably be used as a writing system for one global language, or for many global languages, whether they be English, Chinese, Spanish, or whatever. Again, from my limited knowledge of Hangul I can't really say whether it could be used in conjunction with English or Chinese (I'd say probably not Chinese, because of the tones), but maybe Korean could be a global language? It's a longshot, but maybe? Once again, this is me speaking with a very limited knowledge, but while Korea hasn't had a huge global influence in the past, it could grow in influence dramatically in the near future, and even if it doesn't, Korean could still be taught in schools the same way that English is now. I don't know how easy the Korean language is in terms of speaking, but I've heard that it's very similar to Japanese, which isn't all that difficult in terms of speaking, although it's insanely difficult in terms of writing. But clearly Korean isn't. I dunno, this is just me rambling at this point. Basically, at the very least, Hangul has huge potential to be a global writing system. And when we talk about global writing systems, generally issues of other languages being destroyed as a result of globalization arise. But we can see that already Hangul is being used to preserve languages rather than destroy them. In conclusion, Hangul rocks. Time for me to peace out.

Web Clips for 8/8/09

What does a computer think of death? How to read a research paper. A good transitional add-on for those of you who aren't yet ready for RSS. Though it's good by itself. Also, please use RSS. Speaking of which, our RSS feed now uses Pubsubhubbub, meaning real-time, instant updates, which is pretty awesome. I've also added a "Subscribe by email" link, that pretty much does what it says, allowing you to receive updates via email. Last year on The Tartar Sauce: A gamepad review. Everything you need to know to start your linux journey.

Web Clips for 8/7/09

How to download from IRC. A perfect circle. Removing securom. still works for me. Feel like a secret agent, use self-destructing messages.

Hippie Yoga Farmers vs. Internet Video Archivists

Every once in a while, something happens on the internet so bizarre, so random, and so borderline terrifying that it really makes you think about all the strange people who live out there, and what a truly horrifying yet fascinating place the world is. This is a story about one of them.

Maybe about a week ago the blog Coilhouse did a post about the website Everything Is Terrible. I hadn't heard of Everything Is Terrible before I read this post, but I've been reading Coilhouse for a while, and if you don't read it then you should, it's a really great blog about art and pop culture. Anyway, as Coilhouse describes, Everything is Terrible is a website where people link to bizarre tape-recorded videos of random strange things they found on TV. The Coilhouse post didn't really do anything more than praise the website and link to a few of the videos on it, but it was one of these videos that got them into trouble. This video was one entitled "Weird Hippie Yoga Farmers."

I wish I could show you this video. I really, really wish I could. Suffice to say that involved a guy with bleached blond hair singing cheesy kids country songs about yoga with the help of "Rasta the Rooster," a stereotypically Jamaican rooster character, both of whom taught yoga to a bunch of kids in a slightly creepy, new-agey, touchy feely way. And just for your information, I'm trying to be as unbiased as possible in this description. The reason why I can't show you this video is because the person who owned the copyright to this video was a colossal douchebag. I mean, someone trying to protect her copyright. 

Apparently, this was an edited video of clips from a late 90s show called "Ei Ei Yoga." This show starred some dude named Max Thomas, a yoga teacher working in LA, apparently a very good one. The show went nowhere and was forgotten for a while, but some nerd taped it a while back and uploaded an edited clip of it to Everything is Terrible, where everyone proceeded to make fun of it. The clip lingered on that website for a while making almost no impact, until a writer for Coilhouse found out about the website and generated traffic for it, and especially for the yoga video, which she directly embedded in the blog post. When Robin Maxwell, the wife of the Ei Ei Yoga guru, found out as a result of this increased traffic about this video making fun of her husband, she immediately pulled it from youtube and Everything is Terrible, and shortly afterwards EIT had all of their videos pulled from youtube. 

Meanwhile, a yoga website, upon seeing this video, did a post where they encouraged everyone to "make fun of the hippy dippy Ei Ei Yoga farmer." Robin Maxwell was not too pleased, and wrote a comment on this post, which led to the website doing an update. In her comment, she essentially describes Max as a saint who has great wisdom and teaches yoga to sick children. She also paints the viewers of EIT as stupid idiots who did nothing but demonize a good person, and quotes youtube comments that use insults and racial slurs as evidence of this, which is kind of unfair, since there are comments for every video on youtube that have insults and racial slurs. There are lots of other problems with her comment as well.

For one thing, she says, "[Max] was one of the first yoga teachers to acknowledge that if children were taught yoga we would be living in a much saner world," as if this is something that has been scientifically proven, and as if this even has any grain of truth to it. First of all, I've worked with children before. It's hard to get them to sit still, let alone to master yoga positions. Plus, kids could seriously get hurt doing yoga. Maybe some kids would take well to learning yoga, but definitely not all of them. Second of all, yoga is not the key to living in a saner world. That idea displays so many levels of ignorance I don't know where to begin. Yoga can't change the way a person thinks. Yoga can't change the way society functions. And if yoga involves stereotypically Jamaican roosters, I don't see how it could lead to people living in a saner world. 

That's another major issue I have: Rasta the Rooster. While Max may be a hero who feeds the bodies of criminals to starving children, I still can't forgive him for allowing Rasta the Rooster to exist. That character is nothing more than a gigantic insult. First of all, Rastafari is a religion. It's one that I don't believe in, it's one that I have a lot of issues with, but it's still a religion, and it should be shown a certain level of respect. Naming a character "Rasta" is basically the equivalent of naming a character "Jew," especially if that character talked in a stereotypically Jewish voice and had curly hair and a beard (Rasta the rooster had a fake Jamaican accent and massive dreadlocks). The inclusion of Rasta the Rooster is representative of a problem many wannabe progressives have. They are fascinated by "exotic" cultures, such as India, China, and in this case Jamaica, and appropriate the aesthetics of these cultures without knowing anything about what they really mean. I recall one time when I went to a reggae concert on a college campus. I ran into someone I knew after the show. I said something casual to him along the lines of "Hey man, did you enjoy the show?" and he replied by saying "Yeah, Jah, Rastafari!" I immediately left, thinking to myself, "Wow, you have absolutely know idea what that actually means." Rastafari is a religion. A postcolonial, nationalistic, deeply spiritual, homophobic religion. Not an image.

I also take issue with Robin's decision to shut down EIT. Her decision to pull the hippy weirdo yoga video from youtube is kind of an ethical grey area for me. Basically, I think that videos generally shouldn't be put up for free if the creator of it hasn't made much money off of it already, but that if someone uses footage in a video, any footage, they should be able to put it up as long as they cite their sources. On one hand, this video was technically not an original, since it was chopped up, so according to my ethical code it was technically ok for whoever edited it to put it up. But on the other hand, it wasn't edited that much. It was just chopped up, I wouldn't go as far as calling it a remix. It was more of a montage. Also, on one hand the crazy yoga people probably hadn't made much money off the original video already. But on the other hand, there isn't any way they would have made any more money off of it than they already did. And on one hand, whoever edited it did so in a way to make fun of someone who was probably a decent guy. But on the other hand, the show seems really creepy to begin with.

Still, getting all of EIT shut down is just not ok. Robin did not hold a copyright on every video on the website, and there were probably some videos on there that did not violate copyright. And in addition, most of these videos were remixes, and the original copyright holders would not make any money off of them anyway. As with most instances of this happening, this whole ordeal was free publicity for Max Thomas. He could have turned it into good publicity, but instead he turned it into bad publicity. This is also an instance of what Sarinee Achavanuntaku talked about in the interview Bobbicus linked to; the whole idea copyright holders have that "I'm not going to use this product I own anymore, so that means no one can ever see it."

On the other hand, I do feel that I have to criticize EIT just a tiny bit, in a little bit of a hypocritical way. As I've said before, I love making fun of stuff, but sometimes I do feel bad about the people I make fun of. Despite all of Max's cultural insensitivity, creepiness, and douchebaggery, he seems like at least somewhat of a good person. I guess I have to criticize some of the viewers in this case. It was out of line for them to call him things like a pedophile. That said, criticizing youtube comments is one of the stupidest things anyone can ever do, and EIT is definitely far more in the right here.

The only completely innocent party in this story, however, is Coilhouse, and their role is without a doubt the most fascinating one to me, largely because I'm a blogger. It's amazing in this story to see the powerful role that a relatively small blog can have. Coilhouse linked to a website that they thought was funny, and as a result the website got shut down just two days later. It amazes me that a blog post can generate that much traffic and essentially slightly change the course of the internet in such a short amount of time. This makes me feel an incredible sense of power, and makes me want to be careful about what sites I link to, and who I make fun of. Coilhouse definitely gets more traffic than us, but they're still not an insanely popular blog by any means. And if one blog post by them can get an entire website shut down, think about what better power that can be used for. 

Anyway, feel free to chime in with who you think is in the right in this story. Also, EIT will probably be back up soon, so all is not lost.