Puck

poem by Robin Pugh Yi

The first people
invented flutes
before combs.
Music
penetrates
through
flesh and scent
deep into
the new brain,
stripping us
naked
like no other
animal can be,
inviting
uniquely
human
intimacy.

I think the general public, that gang of knavish sprites, is finally catching on to the hell that is digital rights management. The issue appears to be slowing creeping into the mainstream press. (Other than news about kids and single moms being sued by the RIAA, I mean.)

I could be wrong. Easily. Have sales of iPods really declined? No. And if jah people were really concerned about the creative commons (and DRM is the anti-cruise of creativity), they’d stop buying iPods. (I just bought a Sansa; it’s OK; at least as good as any generation of iPod I’ve tried.) In any case, I blame DRM Hell on the Beatles breaking up and the “Sue Me, Sue You Blues.” (Copyright is an old bane, by any measure. Victor Hugo, the modern inventor, was clear that ownership should only extend through the lifetime of the creator; screw the blood-sucking heirs.) Read the rest of this entry »

I’m getting ready to do a bunch of news writing and recruiting video production for the students and faculty in WSU’s landscape architecture program. The faculty, especially, are all pretty a much a bunch of greenies. So I went stumbling to see what I could see and to what LEED-like activity might be going in other parts of the world. I found this hobbit-like habitation in Wales:

You are looking at pictures of our family home in Wales. It was built by myself and my father in law with help from passers by and visiting friends. 4 months after starting we were moved in and cosy. I estimate 1000-1500 man hours and £3000 put in to this point. Not really so much in house buying terms (roughly £60/sq m excluding labour).

What is going on in Wales that passersby stop to help you build your house? The last time a passerby stopped to help was when I was moving in a subletter for my old place in San Francisco. He helped mightily, hefted heavy boxes, the whole nine yards. And also gummied the back door so that the next day, when no one was around, he could slide on in and steal the subber’s laptop. Read the rest of this entry »

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Snips from the Washington Post:

Vanessa Alarcon saw them while working at an antiwar rally in Lafayette Square last month.

“I heard someone say, ‘Oh my god, look at those,’ ” the college senior from New York recalled. “I look up and I’m like, ‘What the hell is that?’ They looked kind of like dragonflies or little helicopters. But I mean, those are not insects.”

No agency admits to having deployed insect-size spy drones. But a number of U.S. government and private entities acknowledge they are trying. Some federally funded teams are even growing live insects with computer chips in them, with the goal of mounting spyware on their bodies and controlling their flight muscles remotely.

The Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems project aims to create literal shutterbugs — camera-toting insects whose nerves have grown into their internal silicon chip so that wranglers can control their activities. DARPA researchers are also raising cyborg beetles with power for various instruments to be generated by their muscles.