subdee

Google settled with AAP (Association of American Publishers) for 125 million, proving (once again) that it's easier to beg forgivess than to ask permission.

Summary from mass corporate email, condensed:

( The corporate rah rah take on the settlement )

...Which doesn't address the really scary thing about Google Library Project (to fiction publishers), which is that every new book published will now have to compete with every book ever published (and scanned by Google). Especially with print on demand services on the rise.

On the other hand, new books already compete with library books and used books, and you can't stop the tide.

Publishing is supposed to be a "conservative" field but we are so far ahead of the RIAA (and MPAA) right now. And not just because Google did all the hard work: music had muxtape, didn't it? Before the RIAA shot themselves in the foot when they shut down the site. Maybe it's because digital books aren't really direct competition; maybe it's because public libraries have been around for ages; or maybe it's because the book industry was never very profitable to begin with.

Passing along the word from Zentronix:

For many states, the voter registration deadline is SATURDAY, October 4 or MONDAY, October 6th.

Click here to check your state.

Briefly exchanged comments with magicnoire during the VP debate here and here. I am not personally in the "every time Sarah Palin speaks I want to punch her" camp. On the contrary: I wish Palin would keep opening her mouth, so she can keep putting her foot in it. >_> Palin, and the economy dying over and over again, are what will swing the election, if anything will.

Not that I'm happy with the state of the economy, just happy that the meltdown has been timed so conveniently wrt to the election cycle.

Besides zentronix above, I've following Ross Douthat at the Atlantic, who occasionally posts about nerdy pop culture things in addition to being my -- and, I suspect, many liberals' -- favorite Republican to point to as proof that the "other side" agrees with me/us. XD;

In other news, the sign-up period for "real people in historical fiction" @ bibliophages ended yesterday. But you can still read for this round! Here is the recommendation list.

Last point: saw Transsiberian today. This is a movie that could have been made ten years ago -- everything from the speeches comparing the USSR to the "new" Russia and finding the later lacking, to the flashback reminders of key plot points, reminded me of movies that were playing in theaters when I was in middle school. Basic plot: Hapless American tourists fall prey to good-looking con artists and are entangled in a drug-trafficking scheme aboard the Trassiberian Express...actually, the Americans aren't totally hapless, or blameless, which was a pleasant surprise. But man, wasn't it CONVENIENT that Carlos ( spoilers )

Did you know that half of all cigarettes bought in the US are purchased by people with a history of mental illness? At least that's what the introductory-level psychology textbook I am skimming for work said. I suspect bias though - in the introduction to another chapter, the same book reports that 50% of all USians admit to having been "mentally ill" (mostly depressed or paranoid) sometime in the last 12 months, 80% at some point in their lives. Granted, the number of people who've had periods of suboptimal mood (the basis for point #2) is less than the number who've been in therapy or state-mandated treatment (the basis for point #1), but still.

Another claim in this book is that cigarette-smoking may not be just a form of self-medication for the depressed, but may actually cause depression. There's no proof, but we suspect this to be true, the book says, because the frequency/duration/severity of bouts of major depression in suseptible individuals is so closely correlated to the total number of cigarette smoked. Personally I think that coming after a paragraph that links depression to any kind of unhealthy activity -- like drinking or not getting enough exercise -- the claim is dubious at best.

I don't even know why I'm defending cigarettes, it's not like I smoke (or even have too many friends who do). But I hate unsupported claims.


Shows:
Spring Awakening - Saw this Broadway musical with a friend from college last Wednesday. If we'd spent 20 or 30 dollars (each) it might have been worth it, but half-price tickets were sixty-six dollars. $132 at full price! That's crazy. Anyway, the premise of the play is that in a provincial German town in the 1890s, teenagers are oppressed by parents, teachers, and the church, but nonetheless have Urges. Urges represented by 1950s rock'n'roll monologues while the other actors freeze and the lights go crazy. XD; Eugene didn't approve: he thinks that people in musicals shoud sing to each other, not to the audience. Otherwise, you might as well see a rock show! I like rock shows, though, apparently, because I had a pretty good time -- up to and including the point where the two leads sleep together (the culmination of an entire act of foreplay, omg).

Then the second act happened. ( Cut for spoilers and WTF-ery )

Mixed messages/wacky plot aside, the play was good. By which I mean, the staging was nice, the leads were attractive, the music was good (if not particularly memorable), and the vocal performances were very good. But next time I'll see either a musical, or a rock show, or a play -- none of this hybrid nonsense.


Empires and Mark Rose - Saw these bands in Hoboken with summertea last Friday. Empires is an unsigned band -- on a national tour. But! You're thinking. Without a record label and management team etc etc, how are they getting people to come to their shows? You can be an unsigned and have a strong local following, but once you leave your home town, probably no one has heard of you. The answer is The Internet -- Empires spreads the word through their website and myspace; the band members blog; one member is an ex-member of The Academy Is..., the band that built a following through amateur-looking webskits. (Althogh we're not supposed to talk about that: I was looking for interviews and downloads, right, in preparation for this show, and I found one radio interview where the members spend like three minutes explaining that which bands they were in has no bearing on what they're doing now, while the host tries to tell them that he understands, no really, he does, but couldn't they just please namecheck the bands already, he's trying to help them out here. XD)

In theory, using the Internet to build support is a great way to sidestep managerial interfere and develop a rapport with fans. In practice, it means your fans look like people from the Internet. ^^; Not that I can talk. Anyway, the audience was 95% female and 100% nerdy -- attractive guys mostly belonged to the bands and attractive girls mostly wandered in from the bar.

The music was okay. It was loud, and there was a lot of distortion, but you couldn't really dance to it. (It's better for singing along to, which of course was impossible.) I surprised myself by liking Mark Rose a lot more -- I reallllly don't like his old band, Spitalfield -- boring music for boring teenagers like Something Corportate, but without SoKo's sense of humor (just look at their name!). But Mark Rose as a solo act had a little more kick, was slightly more interesting. Mostly, though, I think it was because of this (the first article on eye contact. Sean from Empires had his eyes closed the whole time).


Speaking of shows, I kind of really want to go to this on Wednesday. The Cure! The Smiths! $12! Only in the Alternate Reality of cover band shows would Coldplay open for either of these two bands, let alone both. XD; And Wednesday is the perfect day, too, since I don't work until late afternoon on Thursdays. Unfortunately (?), I'm already driving to Upstate New York, thence Montreal, on Wednesday after work.

...Did I mention that I'll be in Montreal this weekend? Thursday afternoon through Sunday morning. Dropping my brother off at school and mini-vacationing. I, uh, must have forgotten to mention it.

(Just for this post, RL will mean something different. For the usual RL, see this post at my other journal.)

What does it mean that of all the countries in the Parade of Nations, the US was the only country whose athletes were branded? (No, seriously, the polo horses on the lapels of their Ralph Lauren suit jackets were huge.) I get that RL is an All-American Designer, but do we have to put state-sanctioned ads on our "emissaries" at a heavily politicized international athletic event? Does being American mean wearing a brand?

On a related note, what was with all the suits on Parade? Tracksuits and native costumes are out, Fashion is in? I liked the double-breasted white suits, though. Also the business skirts, even if they did make the female athletes look like airline stewardesses. Also, I liked the panama hats -- I wish RL had dressed the American team in panama hats, and not those stupid Scottish hats that made them look about 15 years old, like adolescent boarding school students. (In general I don't like to see black men dressed like boys because some white man said so. Call me old-fashioned!)

Making too much of this? Probably XD. But I gotta call it like I see it.

Quick Linkblog:
Computer beats Pro at US Go Congress
The person running the Go mailing list I'm on (don't ask) said: "A happy day for computer go, and considering that it took 800 4.4Ghz processors, a pretty good day for human go too."

The "Amazing" Girls
Gonna go out on a limb and suggest that there are drawbacks as well as advantages to caring so much about how you are perceived by others. It's the kind of thing where you (general you -- if I were British I'd use "one" here) want the results without the baggage; life doesn't work that way. On the other hand, I *DO* like this business of exposing muse types in classic literature as the shallow -- yet compelling -- people they are.

Lebateleur on Stephanie Meyers, with Spoilers
There's been lots of hilarious commentary on Breaking Dawn XD, but I liked this post the best.

NYT article on Internet trolls
Trolllllllls! I got this link from faxumbra, who comments that it "exposes the underlying sociopathy of internet trolling." But I disagree. I think the issue with trolls is less a lack of empathy, more a tendency to put every human being by default into a "bad persons" category, with only personal acquaintances of proven loyalty being moved into a "good persons" category. (However once you are there, you're there for life -- which is why trolls can be such good friends, when they ARE your friends.) In order to have empathy for strangers you have to be able to believe that people you've never met before are good people, which is something you learn when you're young (unless you learn the opposite).