brainsnorkel.com

Today, if we went into Iraq, like the president would like us to do, you know where you begin. You never know where you are going to end.
—George F. Kennan,September 26, 2002

Via War and Piece, a must-read article examining the planners of the war in Iraq, for whom “the War of Imagination draped all the complications and contradictions of the history and politics of a war-torn, brutalized society in an ideologically driven vision of a perfect future. [...] finally, for most Americans, the War of Imagination—built of nationalistic excitement and ideological hubris and administration pronouncements about “spreading democracy” and “greetings with sweets and flowers,” and then about “dead-enders” and “turning points,” and finally about “staying the course” and refusing “to cut and run”—began, under the pressure of nearly three thousand American dead and perhaps a hundred thousand or more dead Iraqis, to give way to grim reality”

Iraq: The War of the Imagination, by Mark Danner.

Kim Weatherall notes (in verse) that the Federal Copyright Amendment Act 2006 was signed into law on Tuesday by Whatshisface the Substitute Governor-General. The Attorney-General’s Department issued a press release titled “Copyright Gift for Consumers.”

In the end, it looks like the law is not as bad as it could have been. According to the Attorney General’s FAQ, you can still sing “Happy Birthday” in public, format-shift unprotected media, watch DVDs from other regions, and loan your music collection to household and family members. There are also exemptions to allow circumvention of technological protection measures to aid people with disabilities.

In the end the new rights consumers receive are balanced by the addition of on-the-spot fines with strict criminal liability (no “I wasn’t aware” defence) seems to be the downside for consumers. I previously noted that I expect that copyright owners and distributors will increasingly employ copy protection (technological protection measures) to provide for ease of liability determination in an attempt to limit casual piracy and format shifting.

The war on Christmas 2006 is in its last throes, so it’s time to post some 2006 retrospectives!

For many Nouvelle Vague’s Bande à Part is a disposable novelty album, for 80’s tragics like me it’s pure musical ambrosia. A treasure trove of both loved and unloved 80s songs beautifully arranged and adorned with fragile French-accented pronunciation.

Highlights include lovingly restored versions of Blue Monday, Don’t Go, Heart of Glass, Dance With Me and a cover of Billy Idol’s Dancing With Myself that fills that elusive Bossanova Rockabilly category in the record store.

From their site:

[...]re-arranging the greatest, but rarely covered early ’80s post-punk numbers in an original and personal way - we tried to once again re-evaluate music that was seldom considered in terms of ‘real’ songs.

I then had the idea to set these songs in a very different dimension, namely the Caribbean between 1940 and 1970. Just as on the first album I’d imagined a young Brazilian girl singing Love Will Tear Us Apart on a Rio beach in the ’60s, this time I envisaged a young Jamaican with his acoustic guitar singing Heart Of Glass in his Kingston township suburb.

At the same time, I also had another particular scene in my mind: a young blind girl singing Fade To Grey in the corridors of the Parisian Metro, alone with her accordion, ignored by everyone…

A stocking stuffer par excellence!

It’s nearly Christmas, and Santa has cut back his elven workforce (freeing them up for employment in the burgeoning World of Warcraft gold farming bubble) and leveraged inventory level optimization and logistic efficiencies by moving his distribution centre from The North Pole to MP3 manufacturer central in Taiwan.

The move came after the ice melted at the North Pole earlier this year and Santa’s House was set adrift. Turning an unprecedented disaster into an opportunity, the elves strapped a couple of outboard motors onto the house’s eaves and sailed South. Shortly after arriving in Taiwan, Santa thanked the elves for their service and increased the workplace flexibility of several who had drunk too much eggnog at the Christmas Party.

Oh yes, back to the subject.

Given the quantity of headphones and music players likely to be received this Christmas, it’s a good time to highlight a study about hearing loss and safe music player headphone use. Via Guy Kawasaki’s Blog, a report on how long you can listen to an MP3 player each day without greatly damaging your hearing (link).

To teach myself Flash and ActionScript I promised the kids I’d write Asteroids for them. This is a pale imitation but thankfully my kids have never seen the original game. Mr 6 said there should be a level boss with spinning blades and a nasty energy weapon, but this was probably OK for level 1.

I have learned quite a bit from the exercise, but you really don’t want to see the mess of code underneath. The terrible way it presents in a blog post is horror enough for your eyes, dear reader.

The planned Web Services and asteroid collisions with conservation of momentum will have to be debugged into existence another day.

IE users click here (until my ninja Flash embedding skillz improve).

What better time to dump a party leader than when your party is ahead in national two-party preferred polls: Federal Labor to hold leadership ballot on Monday.

It’s December, and December is dump the Federal Labor leader month.

Given John Howard’s likely reaction to Labor shenanigans, regardless of the outcome, Peter Costello should throw in the Liberal towel and run for Labor leader.

It’s your last best chance to tilt at a windmill for a long time, Peter!

Wake me up after the election.