Tuesday, 24th of September, 2002

This does indeed sound like fun.

Don't like the EULAs that companies like Microsoft force you to accept before you can install their software? Well just modify the agreement, print it out and send it to Microsoft!
Warning: no guarantee this is legal…

Monday, 23rd of September, 2002

Amusing. I did the "how indie are you?" test (acb is a "scenester" apparently) and it turns out:

i am an indie snob!


How indie are you? test by ridethefader
You're just too cool for school, aren't you? You're pretty narrow minded and opinionated with regards to music (and probably most other things as well). But you're allowed to be, because you really are better than everyone else. You take pride in obscurity. You probably prefer vinyl too, you elitist bitch.

Fair enough. I like vinyl but I don't prefer it. But I am better than everyone else. Oh yes. My favourite music mag (UK's The Wire) isn't listed in the test's options. Ha! I'm better than them!

Thursday, 19th of September, 2002

Hm. Funny.

I wish I'd realised earlier that the first episode of The Chaser's new TV show was on tonight, and I would've taped it. Follow the link above for a web-wise approach to the material (without the comic timing).

Wednesday, 18th of September, 2002

Jon Courtenay Grimwood's latest series, beginning with Pashazade and continuing with Effendi this year, is a fantastic exploration of a near-future alternative history, set in the Middle East. His historical and social extrapolations are excellent, and the characterisation is very lucid… and the science-fictional elements are fascinating and exciting.

I just found a recent (April 2002) interview with him over at SFsite, with some interesting commentary on how alternate history can relate to current affairs, and on the writing process. I'm just now reading ReMix, to be followed by RedRobe, his previous two novels. These are somewhat more "ultraviolent" affairs – described, quite aptly, as "William Gibson meets Quentin Tarantino". But still, his research is impeccable (with a different alternate history here in which the Napoleonic Empire lives on, and the Fourth Reich is about to overrun Paris, while a rogue nanovirus is eating through all the steal in Europe, from East to West…), the politics convincing and the science (what living with the moon's 1/6th gravity would be like, for instance) interestingly described.
Grimwood's known (from the first series) for the bursts of extreme violence, and there are a few – but I actually haven't found them too extreme… Certainly I think the current series is far better than these books (despite their being very good indeed) – and the violence is toned down somewhat. But I think Grimwood's also gotten better at constructing plots, worlds, and characters. The "Arabesk" sequence could well be one of the best and most rounded sf series of recent years. Can't wait for the next one :)

Sunday, 15th of September, 2002

The ending of female circumcision is surely one of the most important human rights issues there is. It's caught up in cultural and religious issues, which only goes to show that universal human rights cannot be pursued within a post-modernist cultural-relativist framework. Amnesty has a Women's Human Rights focus page showing how women are still at best second-class citizens in much of the world today – and treated more akin to property, not people, in many cultures. Female circumcision, in which part or all of the clitoris is removed, is not only a painful and mutilating ordeal visited upon a girl (who has no choice in the matter), but is deliberately aimed at removing or diminishing the sexual part of a woman, not just physically but psychologically. Not surprisingly, the scars it leaves are not just physical either.

New Scientist, these days a very progressive magazine with much editorial interest in Green and social issues, has a report this week on a last-minute resolution from the World Summit in Johannesburg that attempts to end female circumcision by insisting that healthcare services conform to "basic human rights and fundamental freedoms". This is a deliberate move to insert universal human rights into an agreement that otherwise referred only to "national laws and cultural and religious values". Naturally Islamic nations were not happy about this, but remarkably the Vatican and the US supported them in opposition – being concerned that a human rights reference could endorse abortion and contraception. Critics dubbed these countries the "axis of medieval" (yes yes YES).
It seems that the US caved in, however, and the resolution was passed. Who knows whether it'll make a difference though?

The US's support, in effect, of female circumcision (regardless of the circumstancial reasons they claim they had for it) has a lot to say about their self-proclaimed high moral ground in world affairs. Not that anyone with the slightest human-rights or Green leanings could possibly imagine the US to have a high moral ground on anything…

Friday, 13th of September, 2002

Ahhhh… cable. I chewed up 1.5Gigs, that's half my monthly usage allowance, in TWO DAYS. Scary.

There's lots of noo moosic to update in the column, but I'll leave it till next week probably when I receive a few other items.
The lovely Mark of Clue to Kalo (previously Superscience) did a fabulous remix of Trust, FourPlay's new single due out next year. My remix is coming along, but I'm totally blown away by Mark's version, which reminds me a little of Dntel's latest offerings…

If you enjoyed Cory Doctorow's story linked below, you may enjoy this h4x()r'd images…

Tuesday, 3rd of September, 2002

YES, me am realise me am out-of-date with my reading/listening lists, but me am busy. Me am wait until me am back from skiing. Next Monday, cable will be installed, and all will be rosy and shiny and I will never want to leave my room again. Scary really.

In the meantime, I just have to point out that the Anti EP and EP7 by Autechre are the fucking dog's bollocks. Oh so yummy. Glad I decided to take a little historical walk through my Autechre collection instead of listening to the ever-increasing piles of newly purchased music and downloaded mp3s.

But I must get back to my remix of FourPlay's Trust – although it's not hugely urgent at the moment, but we're on track with wanting to get it released. The lovely Jason Forrest, who himself makes awesome cut-up experimental drum'n'bass-y stuff as Donna Summer (see recent sidebar rave) had lovely things to say about its current half-finished manifestation in an email communication, which was very encouraging I must admit. YAY.
When it is finished I hereby promise to post a high-quality mp3 of one version (I plan on doing a couple of different tacks on it) up on the Raven page for a little while, and will put up probably the previous FourPlay remix as well, and the glitched-up version of I carpet bombed the old school. Rejoice!

Well now, Cory Doctorow, friend of Charlie Stross's and he of boing boing fame, has a fantastic story partially about the whole copyright-protection idiocy going on at the moment between software/hardware companies like Microsoft and copyright-owning bodies like Hollywood, the RIAA and so on. Being the sort of hard science-fiction that I love so much, there's also some fairly intense speculative stuff about what it could be like if we could hack our own physiology. Go read!
Check it out here, as it is The Real Thing:
"0wnz0red". You get to learn some hax0r-speak while you're at it…