An era ago I was introduced to Eva Cassidy by Jim & Esther. Her singing was intensely beautiful and mesmerizing. Only later I found out she had died way, way too early, only 33, taken by aggressive melanoma. Fast forward to this morning. I hardly ever watch any TV, but on Sunday morning, I occasionally watch an interesting live music program called “Vrije Geluiden” (free sounds), broadcasted from the music theater in Amsterdam.

Today one of the guests was Dutch singer Margriet Sjoerdsma. She told us that she was taken by Eva’s sound and was later asked by author Johan Bakker to sing a few of Eva’s song on the presentation event of his book about Eva, which in turn inspired her to do a tribute CD. What was really touching and special was that Eva’s brother Dan was one of the band members, playing the violin. He was also interviewed.

Open this link please. If it complains about Silverlight, click left bottom on “Instellingen” (settings) and change to Flash. Unless you’re interested in Czech composer Janacek, skip to 17:10. The interview in Dutch starts at 21:40. Dan, a slow speaking kind fellow, joins in, in English of course, at 26:50.

Very, very touching. Dan gave Margriet Eva’s metronome as a present. What a gem.

Way cool

Today, we’re releasing panoramic imagery of one of the world’s most spectacular national monuments: the Grand Canyon. These beautiful, interactive images cover more than 75 miles of trails and surrounding roads, making our map of this area even more comprehensive, accurate and easy to use than ever before.

In my country, up until yesterday, there were 32 prisoners serving a life sentence. Counter to popular believe, life means life as in “until death do us part”. Until a few years ago, 20 years was the maximum sentence under “life”, which, in accordance to popular belief, means 13.4 years when the prisoner behaves. This was regarded as too big a gap (I agree), and 30 years (being 20 for real) was introduced by new legislation.

Today, 3 from 6 suspects in a huge inter-criminal liquidation trial were sentenced to life, upping our “sentenced to life” population with 10% in one single trial.

The 30 years could not be sentences, as the murders were committed before the change in legislation.

Note that in a life sentence, the prisoner will try all means to change the verdict. After all there is nothing to loose. So it’s not over.

Piers Morgan stated the number of gun related deaths in the US per DAY is the same as in the UK per year. The UK has amongst the stricktest gun laws in Europe. My newspaper did some fact checking.

• US: 30 per day
• UK: 54 per year

He was lying, but not awfully lying.

How then about per capita?

• US: 3.3 per 100.000 per year
• UK: 0.1 per 100.000 per year
• My country: 0.3 per 100.000 per year

Is that US number the worst? Nope, Honduras and El Salvador are 10 times worse again.

Disclaimer: I am an anti-weapons guy.

I am reading this kinda sorta scientific book written by Bill Bryson. In my country it is published in a format not larger than a pack of cigarettes, on ultra-thin paper. 100o pages mind you. The quote starting part one, lost in the cosmos

And lastly, just consider our universe for a minute. Astronomer Geoffrey Marcy said, “They’re all on the same plane. They’re all going around in the same direction…It’s perfect you know. It’s gorgeous. It’s almost uncanny.

I have an old Apple PPC G4 that I use for browsing and reading email. All of the software products offered by the Mozilla Foundation stopped supporting the Apple PPC platform in April 2012 – how odd, how convenient.

I can’t help but wonder what relationships the Mozilla Foundation has crafted with third parties like Apple and Google, for example. The browser sponsored by Mozilla, Firefox, provides data about users in great detail to any website that a user might visit and provides little, if any, protection to the user of the “open” products Mozilla offers. No doubt any corporate URLs accessed via Firefox, those that “want” every tidbit of information about Firefox users they can get their hands on are happy when users of Firefox land on their sites. Firefox is “open source” in name only – their browser seems to be owned by the highest bidder. Hold what is important to you close – everybody wants what you have. Thinking back to that old SNL skit about landlords – can you say SCUMBAG?

So how do you email your elected reps in Washington? Simple answer is you don’t – because their email addresses are not available to voters in Alaska. I’d bet good money that some of the elites up here have email addresses for our elected reps; but we don’t. Instead all of the folks we elected to Federal positions use HTML forms for “citizen” inquires and comments. Just thinking that they (our elected officials) might be collecting data about the folks that ask them questions. So call me paranoid.

Lisa Murkowski

Mark Begich

Don Young

If you are a U.S. resident I’d suggest that you contact your elected representatives and ask them to give you their email address.

sondaji

A thread has popped up on The Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) listserv with the subject line “Conflict over file sharing.” It’s got me thinking about digital again in a very negative way. Digital imagining has decimated the marketplace and workplace for photographers – no income (CityKid made his living as a photographer for 30+ years). The Internet has trashed news outlets – especially local venues. Musician’s are loosing their shirts. All the while – big corporations are cashing in. The original post read as follows and provided a link to a post by David Lowery on The Trichordist: Artists For An Ethical Internet:

> http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/letter-to-emily-white-at-npr-all-songs-considered/
>
> I’m not crazy about the term “Free Culture Movement” and David’s arguments
> do not make me love the major music companies again. But this comes from a
> different side of the tracks
> from what we are used to seeing, and for that reason, is quite interesting.
>
> Uncle Dave Lewis
> dlewis@gmail.com
> Lebanon, OH

Later after some commentary on the list by some folks I have a great deal of respect for this post appears which links to an earlier post by Lowery at The Trichordist. Food for thought, leading to more angst:

> In case anyone’s interested, David’s extensive post from April
> [http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/meet-the-new-boss-worse-than-the-old-boss-full-post/]
> really gets into how musicians are losing out, and not just from illegal
> downloading.
>
> Chris

The problem is where money from the marketplace is going and who has the voice to convince “the users” what is really going on. This all leads me back to wondering if the problem is technological or if it comes from the businesses that own and produce digital products? I suspect the answer is complicated. More to come no doubt.

Have a nice day (Solictace – daylight in ANC today: 4:21 AM – 11:42 PM)

European legislation forces member states to keep their deficit under 3%. The administrations (left and right) of my tiny country have not been saving and restructuring enough when the tides were high, and so now we’re slipping into 4% – 4.5% area. And of course our right winged administration (with a minority in parliament and held prisoner by the ultra-right xenophobic party) started negotiations to salvage 18 billion Euros, even drawing in the ultra-religious party in their desperation to make it. Doing that in a cyclic pattern (as opposed to anti-cyclic) is of course killing the economy further and driving more people into (relative) poverty. The negotiations failed yesterday, after 7 weeks. It is next to certain the administration will hand in their resignation tomorrow and new elections will be held in September.

As far as I am concerned: the sooner the better.

In the mean time, we will surely not hit the 3% mark, and the added political inertia will result in a degraded credit rating (we’re still AAA now). Well, f*** ‘m, the power of the “financial markets’ and the ‘credit rating bureaus’ has grown way out of proportions.Откъде да купя иконаидея за подарък