Copyright and the Superman

So there was a pretty big ruling concern the ownership of Superman (i.e. the copyright to the character). A Court of Law has reverted half of the copyright to Action Comics #1 and the character of Superman as defined therein. This to the heirs of Jerry Siegel according to a piece of copyright reform. Artist and co-creator Joe Shuster's estate (Shuster having no heirs) will have its chance at its half of the copyright according to a separate piece of copyright reform come 2013. This applies only to the U.S. DC Comics maintains its international interests.

Some thoughts:

1) I'm going to be pissed if this adversely affects All-Star Superman (it'll likely be finished before DC Comics' appeal on the ruling is even processed).

2) Copyright reform is going in the wrong direction.

3) Superman should be in the public domain.

4) Copyright should last no longer than 25 years. Even that's being generous, I think.

The origins of copyright lie in not creating a continuous cashcow for your life, and the lives of your children and their children, but to let you profit for an extended period from successful work as way of inspiring creativity and continuation thereof. Copyright has lost its way. It'd be best to scrap the whole system and start anew, except for the massive Media Conglomerate Lobbies that have already ruined copyright would still be at the forefront. As can be seen in the case of the Music Industry v. the Internet and the Advancement of Technology, copyright should be the benefit of Artists and not Record Labels.

Live Blogging Earth Hour

7:53. Watching TV. Oh, shit it's almost 8 o'clock.

7:54. Start turning off lights. Think I'll boil some water, make a tea first.

7:55. Start unplugging non-essential appliances (everything but the fridge?).

7:59. Water boiled, tea made. Everything else turned off. Computer powered down, internet disconnected.

8:00. Sitting in dark, candlelit, reading.

8:01. Start making calls on my cell phone.

Mexico

Clarifying my post from yesterday. Mexico, this shit sucks. While I'm not a fan of emo culture, I'm less a fan of hate. Non-ironic hate. And yeah, you know what? Comparing Mexico to the Nazis seems justifiable here. But lets not blame some non-entity Mexico*. Countries are concepts. This hateful violence was apparently organized by Mexicans, people, individuals, over the internet. There's no Hitler to blame here, just a whole lot of little Eichmanns. What is when everyone's following orders? Groupthink. Bystander effect. Genovese syndrome. Disgusting

*At no point am I ever referring to the government of Mexico. God, I'm going to need more and more clarification posts.

Mexico's Emo-Bashing "Problem"

Courtesy of Time Magazine

Problem? We didn't got no steenkin' problem.

Sounds more like a solution, a Mexican Final Solution.*

Sorry, was there a line I just crossed over? No? What? I can't hear you. La la la.

*This blog has to start justifying its namesake.

Weekly Wikipedia Find: Dieter Dengler

I wish I was coming upon these entries more randomly (as was my original mandate), instead of featuring some entries that I've actively gone to Wikipedia to look up (i.e. weeks 5,6,13,14,15,16), but we make do with what we have.

Dieter Dengler, former US Navy pilot and Vietnam War POW (actually by the Pathet Leo in Laos), famous (in media) from Werner Herzog's documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly and film Rescue Dawn. I came to him by way of Herzog, the latter of which I watched the other day with Christian Bale as the man. Films being films, inspired/based or not, I went to Wikipedia for the true details. Truth by Wikipedia™.

Either way, there was one particular thing in Dieter's entry, something that undoubtedly aided in his time spent as a Prisoner of War:

Dengler had a reputation from his experiences at the Navy survival school, where he had escaped from the mock-POW camp run by Marine guards three times. He had also set a record as the only student to actually gain weight during the course - his childhood experiences made him unafraid of eating whatever he could find and he had feasted on garbage.

It takes a special brand of hero to gain weight during prisoner-of-war survival training.

In conclusion, I like saying "little Dieter needs to fly" in a faux-German accent. A lot.

Wikipedia by Week

Week Sixteen: New Jerusalem
Week Fifteen: Technological Singularity
Week Fourteen: Numbers Station
Week Thirteen: Culper Ring
Week Twelve: Mary Sue
Week Eleven: Byford dolphin diving bell accident
Week Ten: Deep-sea gigantism
Week Nine: Bloop
Week Eight: Rat king
Week Seven: Gustave Doré
Week Six: Tomorrow
Week Five: Borscht Belt
Week Four: Swampman
Week Three: Chinese room
Week Two: Ambrose Burnside
Week One: Lolita fashion

Hiatus

Well, it looks like I took the week leading up to Easter off, a sort of hiatus if you will. In that time, I've been trying to find myself. Turns out, I've been watching Battlestar Galactica*.

I'll put myself back to work. It might be slow, but I'm a real trooper. Let me indulge.


*Coincidentally, the Season 3 out on DVD March 18. Coincidentally.

Weekly Wikipedia Find: New Jerusalem

Well, Wikipedia has failed me. Okay, technically not. But I'm disappointed. I couldn't exactly find what I wanted. It's there a little, but lacks the depth, the depth of argument, that I wanted.

What I'm talking about is New Jerusalem. But not any New Jerusalem, but what Wikipedia has filed under secular New Jerusalem. Thus, this week will be rather terse.

New Jerusalem is the city of the future, the ideal, the utopiate (I portmanteau'ed the shit out of that; "utopiate" is mine, bitches).

I was looking for something more, though. I swear there's a New Jerusalem associated with American Politics, if not here, then in my mind. I will find you. My Camelot. The American Camelot.

Until then, here's a Crime and Punishment reference to satisfy my painful hard-on for Crime and Punishment:

"[M]asses set these criminals on a pedestal in the next generation and worship them (more or less). The first category is always the man of the present, the second the man of the future. The first preserve the world and people it, the second move the world and lead it to its goal. Each class has an equal right to exist. In fact, all have equal rights with me -- and vive la guerre éternelle -- till the New Jerusalem, of course!"

--Dostoevsky. Translation by Constance Garnett.

Wikipedia by Week

Week Fifteen: Technological Singularity
Week Fourteen: Numbers Station
Week Thirteen: Culper Ring
Week Twelve: Mary Sue
Week Eleven: Byford dolphin diving bell accident
Week Ten: Deep-sea gigantism
Week Nine: Bloop
Week Eight: Rat king
Week Seven: Gustave Doré
Week Six: Tomorrow
Week Five: Borscht Belt
Week Four: Swampman
Week Three: Chinese room
Week Two: Ambrose Burnside
Week One: Lolita fashion

Reading the News I

Dolphin guides stranded whales out to sea

The first thing I thought when I read that headline was "Man, dolphin guides are jerks."

But apparently I'm the only one living in a world with specially designated dolphin guides. Everyone else lives in a utopia with naturally helpful dolphins.

David Lynch's America: McDonald's

"Well, you know I like uhhh I still like McDonald's, I must say uhhh but I don't go there too often. But I like the Filet-O-Fish sandwich and the chocolate shake and fries, tha-the combo uhhh, but ummmm I like coffee shops very much."

Weekly Wikipedia Find: Technological Singularity

Finally, we address the elephant in the room. Singularity. The singularity. The Singularity. It's coming. Time is fluid. It's already here. Maybe not temporally, but spatially.

You just shit your pants, right? That's alright. For when the Singularity comes, we'll all be shitting our pants. (But who'll be the one to change us all?)

"Comes"-- that's almost not the right word. Almost not even in the realm of being in the same sentence as the right word. "Happens", maybe. More simply, "is". The Singularity is. The Singularity bes.

The singularity is the hypothesized point in time, when technology, computers, artificial intelligence, surpasses human intelligence through rapid technological progress to the point of becoming a self-improving intelligence. It will be able to build its own successors, humans will be out of the picture. We having built our own successors, the Singularity. It's coming. If? When. It's here.

Wikipedia by Week

Week Fourteen: Numbers Station
Week Thirteen: Culper Ring
Week Twelve: Mary Sue
Week Eleven: Byford dolphin diving bell accident
Week Ten: Deep-sea gigantism
Week Nine: Bloop
Week Eight: Rat king
Week Seven: Gustave Doré
Week Six: Tomorrow
Week Five: Borscht Belt
Week Four: Swampman
Week Three: Chinese room
Week Two: Ambrose Burnside
Week One: Lolita fashion

Songs the World Ends To I

The Smiths, "How Soon Is Now"

This apocalyptic sound, sounds the bell, the tolls, this is how the world ends.

Seek it out. Fair forewarning, on my part, though, if the world happens to end at the same time.

One Line Synopsis III: Monkey Shines

Monkey Shines is the monkey version of The Shining with paralysis instead of alcoholism-- oh, and monkeys instead of ghosts.

Top Five III: The Films of Stanley Kubrick

Mr. Kubrick died 9 years ago today.

1. A Clockwork Orange (1971)
2. Barry Lyndon (1975)*
3. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
4. Paths of Glory (1957)
5. The Shining (1980)

Unseen: Killer's Kiss (1955), Fear and Desire (1953)

*The first 30 minutes or so of Barry Lyndon (i.e. until Redmond Barry first leaves for the European continent) remain the finest, more perfect thing ever committed to film. Why yes, Mr. Kubrick is perhaps my most favoured filmmaker. Biased much? Heavens no.

The Duelists: Aaron Burr

Aaron Burr lived from seventeen fifty-six until eighteen thirty-six and he was a politician of the United States. He was also war hero, adventurer, vice-president to Thomas Jefferson.

While vice-president, Aaron Burr's honour was offended by Alexander Hamilton, former first Secretary of the Treasury and current face of the ten dollar bill. Consequently, Burr shot Hamilton with a Wogdon dueling pistol with a hairpin trigger and mortally wounded him in the agreed upon duel. Hamilton had chosen the pistols. Aaron Burr fired true and he had his satisfaction that day. Alexander Hamilton died one day later.

The year was 1804.

In Media

Burr, Gore Vidal

Saturday Night Live, A Digital Short, "Lazy Sunday":

"You can call us Aaron Burr from the way we're dropping Hamiltons."

Weekly Wikipedia Find: Numbers Station

Unknown origins. Possibly espionage. Mysterious numbers. Threatening numbers. Those numbers, they freak me out.

Numbers station are radio broadcasts, shortwave, containing the reading of numbers. Okay, not just numbers, but they're called numbers stations. And the streaming reading of numbers is unsettling, no? There's a lot of speculation, not a lot of facts, beside what we can observe. Isn't that always the way.

Wikipedia by Week

Week Thirteen: Culper Ring
Week Twelve: Mary Sue
Week Eleven: Byford dolphin diving bell accident
Week Ten: Deep-sea gigantism
Week Nine: Bloop
Week Eight: Rat king
Week Seven: Gustave Doré
Week Six: Tomorrow
Week Five: Borscht Belt
Week Four: Swampman
Week Three: Chinese room
Week Two: Ambrose Burnside
Week One: Lolita fashion

Man in the Mirror: Hyperreal

Does the fact that I act as a parody of my real self make my existence postmodern?

Interpretation of Dreams I

I had a dream and Robert Evans was in it. Worst dream ever, right? A group us were going but I had to run back home and grab something. My home circa 1986-2006 in Blue Collar, Ontario.

So I yell back to Robert Evans, "Robert Evans, are you taking the bus?" "Yeah." "Which bus?" "Haven't you ever taken the bus downtown before? The Grey Goose."

Damnit, The Kid, you can't ride a bottle of vodka downtown. Uptown maybe, but not downtown.

(Picture in B&W to deflect any of the orange glow that emanates from The Kid's skin.)