Links for May 13th

First, some background music, Irene by Beach House (hat tip: Chris).

The first several Boeing 787's are going into service. Why is this interesting? There are two main airline manufacturers in the world: Boeing and Airbus. They've both moved to composite materials to reduce weight and increase the range their planes can travel. This changes the routes airlines can fly - it's game changing; new hubs, longer distances, smaller cities being connected, more diffuse growth in general. Where they differ is in size. Airbus went huge with the A380 and Boeing downsized with the 787. In my opinion, one of the lessons of recent history has been to downsize: smaller baseball parks, smaller cars, smaller laptops, smaller homes, smaller cameras. I'm betting on Boeing but to be honest I think the contest will mostly just be awash.

It's no longer illegal to tape record police officers in Illinois. How anyone thought that police officers being immune to public scrutiny in this manner benefited citizens I will never know. In my opinion every police officer should be wearing a camera at all times. Tiny cameras that can fit in sunglasses already exist. Why shouldn't we be allowed to see the activities of those who have been entrusted with such immense power and responsibility?

Apparently being unemployed is bad for people. No shit? Among other negative side effects, people commit suicide more often when unemployed. So yes, in the long run the economy will fix itself, but by sitting idly by we are in fact collectively allowing an entire generation of young (and old) Americans to suffer. Krugman on the matter (sort of).

Oh, and college is expensive. Colleges response: “I didn’t think a lot about costs. I do not think we have given significant thought to the impact of college costs on families.” - the president of Ohio State University

My Mom Really Needs a Bottle of Ripple

Muppets outtakes.


Feist - Graveyard (live)


Cults - Go Outside

Picturequote

"When making a decision of minor importance, I have always found it advantageous to consider all the pros and cons. In vital matters, however, such as the choice of a mate or a profession, the decision should come from the unconscious, from somewhere within ourselves. In the important decisions of personal life, we should be governed, I think, by the deep inner needs of our nature." - Sigmund Freud

Not a huge fan of Freud but that one reminds me of one of my favorite passages from Hagakure:

"Among the maxims on Lord Naoshige's wall there was this one: 'Matters of small concern should be treated seriously.' Among one's affairs there should not be more than two or three matters of what one could call great concern. If these are deliberated upon during ordinary times, they can be understood. thinking about things previously and then handling them lightly when the times comes is what this is all about. To face an event and solve it lightly is difficult if you are not resolved beforehand, and there will always be uncertainty in hitting your mark. However, if the foundation is laid previously, you can think of the saying, 'Matters of great concern should be treated lightly,' as your own basis for action." - Hagakure (27)

This is my friend Garret Santora playing at the Streetside Bar in Chicago.

This is a random unedited video of them playing that night:

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"You fight your superficiality, your shallowness, so as to try to come
at people without unreal expectations, without an overload of bias or
hope or arrogance, as untanklike as you can be, sans cannon and
machine guns and steel plating half a foot thick; you come at them
unmenacingly on your own ten toes instead of tearing up the turf with
your caterpillar treads, take them on with an open mind, as equals,
man to man, as we used to say, and yet you never fail to get them
wrong. You might as well have the brain of a tank. You get them wrong
before you meet them, while you're anticipating meeting them; you get
them wrong while you're with them; and then you go home to tell
somebody else about the meeting and you get them all wrong again.
Since the same generally goes for them with you, the whole thing is
really a dazzling illusion empty of all perception, an astonishing
farce of perception. And yet what are we to do about this terribly
significant business of other people, which gets bled of the
significance we think it has and takes on instead a significance that
is ludicrous, so ill-equipped are we all to envision one another's
interior workings and invisible aims? Is everyone to go off and lock
the door and sit secluded like the lonely writers do, in a soundproof
cell, summoning people out of words and then proposing that these word
people are closer to the real thing than the real people that we
mangle with our ignorance every day? The fact remains that getting
people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them
wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then,
on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we
know we're alive: we're wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget
being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But
if you can do that -- well, lucky you." - Philip Roth, American Pastoral

Here's some instrumental music from "Dark Was the Night."

Prepping a boiler in Mokena, IL to be re-tubed. It's one of the more physically demanding things we do. One person rests while the other fights with the roller (a drill the size of your torso).

Reading from Wired

Cool British guy makes vertical hydroponic-type vertical gardens that cover buildings. Really pretty; not sure if it has an advantage over ivy. More water transpiration maybe?

Two budding conflict photojournalists talk about one anothers work (there's even mention of the format I shoot in, medium format).

Monkey music. Must read/hear.

Craigslist kicks everyones ass. This article explains how and why; basically just very simple yet counter intuitive business thinking.

... and Paul Krugman on debt now versus WWII. Really short.

The Music Industry

Recently the Pirate Bay has been in court in Sweden. Which is kind of a big deal because Pirate Bay is the largest bit torrent tracker and Sweden has some pretty lax laws regarding copyright protection. If you search Wired there are dozens of articles on the whole thing. For any of my readers, all 3 of you, who don't know what that is, a bit torrent is a downloadable file such as a music album or movie. What makes them unique is that the actual material (often copyrighted) is stored on user's computers, so the actual copyrighted material never touches a bit torrent trackers servers. The trackers such as Pirate Bay just point you towards the users who have the file. When you download a bit torrent you download it from several people at once. Hence, it creates a nice legal shelter.

Anyways...

EDIT (I misrepresented this quote): "Yes." - Per Sundin of the IFPI and Universal Music when asked if "people would have purchased every music track they got [for] free file sharing."

I wonder if he actually believes that? What a ridiculous thing to say.

I've pondered the whole pirating thing for a long time and haven't come to many substantial conclusions. I mean, it is stealing in the sense that it costs money to produce an album and the artists should get paid, but at the same time they're shoving an antiquated business model down our throats.

Here's what I've noticed with myself:

1 - My music taste is much broader because I am exposed to so much more online. I've noticed this with others too.

2 - Because of my increased musical palate I attend more shows. A lot more. This brings in far more money for a band than me purchasing their CD's.

3 - I don't buy CD's at all. Who plays CD's with any regularity?

4 - Downloaded music is popular because of the variety of choice, ease (you don't have to leave your house and it comes in MP3 format), lack of DRM, and if you don't like the music at least you didn't waste any money on it.

Going off of #4, I'm sure many people download music illegally mainly because it's free, but I feel like the vast majority of people do it for the other aforementioned reasons. What this signals to me is that people are pirating media in large part because illegal downloads offer something that their legal counterparts do not. It seems painfully obvious that this industries business model is dead. The iTunes store may be closer, but I say they fail too. What don't these people get? You must offer a superior product, a cheaper price, or preferably both. iTunes isn't any cheaper than buying a CD for the most part and a CD certainly isn't a better product. You have to convert it into an MP3, and how many people don't know how to rip a CD?

Regardless of how you feel about the legality of it all one fact remains. These companies exist to make money and right now they're contracting. What they're doing isn't working and they need to adapt or disappear. The album is how you get people to buy merch and go to shows. Therefore, make it as available as possible. If I were in charge I would experiment with pay what you wish album sales, free album downloads, extremely cheap album downloads ($1-3), and I'd send my bands out on far more tours. The last shows I've bought tickets to were: The Books (sold out in a week, show added, sold out), Iron and Wine (sold out the same day before I could get tickets), Kings of Leon (sold out, tickets were going for 5 times face value), Beck and MGMT (sold out, tickets were going for 3 times face value), etc, etc. If shows are selling out that means they're missing out on revenue; deadweight loss anyone? And the fact remains that I don't own a single tangible copy of any of these bands albums. That's right music execs, illegal downloading brought you my business and I bet I'm not unique.

Picturequote

Shut Your Eyes by Snow Patrol.

"Age and truth.— Young people love what is strange and interesting, regardless of whether it is true or false. More mature spirits love in truth that which is strange and interesting in it. Heads fully mature, finally, love truth also where it appears plain and simple and is boring to ordinary people: they have noticed that truth is accustomed to impart its highest spiritual possessions with an air of simplicity." - Friedrich Nietzsche from Human, All Too Human I

This is a pen and ink drawing I finished today.

Messed with in photoshop

Daily Photo and Music/Quote

Not the best recording, but this is Milk by The Kings of Leon. Whom I get to see at the Aragon on Halloween. I even have an extra ticket. Too bad I didn't buy more. They're being scalped for a lot.

I came across a great page in my all time favorite book series, The Bathroom Reader. The whole page is from famous psychologists. This one is their Collosal Collection of "Quotable" Quotes.

"When all you have is a hammer, all your problems start to look like nails." - Abraham Maslow

Maslow was a psychologist famous for his theory of the hierarchy of human needs. Interesting stuff.

And finally... Evan as a younger man. He was a hilarious little kid. The Energizer Bunny didn't have shit on him.

Your Moment of Zen

Homage to the Daily Show.

Music.

Someone please prove me wrong that this isn't a black widow. This is the underbelly. Found it in a garage today.