You can read more at QuestionCopyright.org about how Nina was almost unable to release the film because of copyright restrictions on 80-year-old songs, which she eventually had to pay off at a total expense of more than $50,000.00 US. She took out a loan to do it, and she’s still paying that back. Whenever Congress extends copyright durations, especially retroactively, this is what it means for working artists. Three cheers for state-granted monopolies on culture.
After fourteen years, my car has finally given up the ghost:
I know it’s an inanimate object, but I still feel sad. 14 years is a long time. It was my first car, and hugely important to me both economically and emotionally (my parents bought it for me as a gift when I was 24 — thank you, mom and dad!). It enabled me to live independently when I was roaming the Midwest, first working at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, then later in Indiana starting Cyclic Software with Jim Blandy. When I lived for a year in China, Jim leased it and took excellent care of it (even saving all the service receipts; years later I inundated an extended-warranty insurance company’s fax machine with all our receipts, until the guy on the other end literally called back laughing and begging me to please stop, saying that he gave up and that the insurance company would pay for the new repairs). It was with me for nine years in Chicago, handling the winters just fine. In its last three years it drove across the country a few times, and for a brief period was my only home (that’s a long story; I won’t go into it here, but suffice it to say that a car like that you don’t junk lightly).
The above photograph is the last one I took of it, at the auto repair shop in Maspeth, Queens. They’ll tow it to its final resting place. But my favorite photograph of it is actually from a trip I wasn’t on. Micah and Stew took it up to Vermont last winter, and in this shot (of Stew pouring salt with help from Iggy) you can see it in its natural habitat:
We’re brainstorming a grant application over at QuestionCopyright.org — lend a hand if you can. Here’s the paragraph from the foundation’s page that made me sit up and take notice (emphasis added):
“Grants are also made to support efforts to strengthen areas that directly affect the context in which artists work. In 2006 the Foundation formally designated one of its grants The Wynn Kramarsky Freedom of Artistic Expression Award to recognize the work of organizations with a deep-seated commitment to preserving and defending the First Amendment rights of artists. Named in honor of the Foundation’s former Board Chair, the grant rewards outstanding advocacy, legal, and curatorial efforts on behalf of those whose rights to free expression have been challenged…”
I recently received this email (paraphrased), and didn’t have a good answer:
I work in the federal government, writing documents that are sometimes published in the Federal Register. I saw in the New York Times a reference citing you as someone who would like to see the government use version control software.
Keeping track of the changes in my work is important. Currently, we use the “Track Changes” feature In Microsoft Word. But before working here, I worked in open source software projects, where we used CVS to track our changes. I thought it would be easy to use the same methods in government work, but I haven’t found software that does what CVS does except for Microsoft Word documents. Do you have any information about what software would be needed to track changes in Word?
John Joseph Bachir and I did an interview about version control systems and open source development, way back in September of 2007. It was a great conversation, because he’s very technical but also interested in the social aspects of coding. Anyway, then all sorts of stuff happened, in both our lives, and the interview didn’t get online until now. But here it is. Hope you like it. Comments at JJB’s blog, please — he transcribed it, he ought to at least get the comments!
Sita Sings the Blues, Nina Paley’s beautiful and insanely inventive animated film, is playing in Dolores Park in San Francisco, at 8:30pm this Thursday, June 11th.
If you can’t be there, don’t worry: you can either download the entire film on the Internet or order it on DVD. Nina has released the movie available under a free license, so everyone in the world can share it with everyone else. If you like the DVD, burn a few copies for your friends! (Or send your friends to the store to buy it, if they want to support the filmmaker and get a beautifully packaged disc.)
Purchases made there support both Nina Paley and my non-profit QuestionCopyright.org.
Nina Paley is affiliated with QuestionCopyright.org (as Artist in Residence).
If you liked the film, or even if you just like the idea of the film, we’d love for you to donate to the Sita Distribution Project, which is helping Nina both distribute the film and collect money to pay off the music publishers who hold monopolies on some of the songs used in it.
But if you don’t want to get involved in copyright reform and the fight for free culture, that’s okay: it’s perfectly fine to go sit in Dolores Park and just enjoy an evening watching a great movie, too.
(Thanks to James Jacobs for alerting me to the screening.)
In Does the universe actually look like that?, Planetary Astronomer Mike finally satisfies everyone who looks at those beautiful photographs of galaxies in newspapers and wonders “Hmm, how much did they doctor that photograph to make it look pretty?”
The answer turns out to be more complex than just “a little” or “a lot”. P.A.M. explains how those pictures are actually made, and how the equipment’s characteristics basically force astronomers to do post-processing on the images, even just to be scientifically accurate (let alone beautiful). It’s a great post, very detailed but extremely readable.
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