brooke maury

I never thought I’d have a video of Colin Powell on my blog, but these are strange times. This is a remarkable statement by Colin Powell. His endorsement isn’t shocking given his statements over the last few months, but his frankness and honesty are stunning. I was really moved watching this.

Among other things, the McCain campaign seems to be drifting into the unsavory ranks of alleged copyright infringers and digital pirates against whom the senator no doubt has voted time and again on the senate floor.

Wired magazine is running an article today that the McCain campaign has complained to YouTube executives that the company is way too stringent with regard to the company’s take-down policy for content that a copyright holder claims violates their copyright.

Evidently, the McCain campaign has seen several of its ads removed from YouTube after copyright holders complained that the content contained material that was copyrighted and not cleared to be used by the campaign. McCain says the ads are protected under the Fair Use doctrine. Fair what? Poppycock, McCain! The ads may or may not be protected under fair use, but the point is that your campaign doesn’t seem to realize that there may be legal issues at stake when you use content that isn’t original. Says the Wired article:

The letter is notable both because YouTube and online video generally have become prime platforms for communicating political messages during the 2008 presidential campaign, and because this is one of the rare instances when a member of Congress is speaking out in favor of fair-use rights, after experiencing for themselves the onerous burden put on citizens using media to express ideas.

Snicker. Who the hell is running this ridiculous, Orwellian mockery of a campaign? This isn’t the first episode of McCain’s campaign misappropriating content, and even people, in their advertising. Remember the whole Paris Hilton fiasco?

The McCain campaign, and John McCain himself, seem to have completely lost their way. I truly hope that John McCain can return to congress when this is all over and rediscover some of the good qualities he once possessed. Given his recent copyright travails, maybe he can now take up the mantle of fair use and end the strangle hold copyright holders have on creative expression once and for all.

I just stumbled upon a really pretty music visualization project. Flokoon uses Last.FM data to make a sleek network displays of artists.

When one clicks the ‘i’ icon on a particular artist, an information pane pops up with artist bio and discography information.

One can also browse the tagspace for a particular artist, and then browse the network via a tag.

It’s very well done. There are some items I’d like to see. For example, I’d like to have a visual representation of where I’ve traveled in the graph. If I go from Wolf Parade to Handsome Furs, I’d like that vertex colored differently or something. Also, tapping into audio for each artist would be nice.

Flokoon isn’t just about music . They use the same approach to visualize YouTube videos and images from fotolio.

I can’t stop giggling about McCain’s VP pick. It seems so completely daft and comic. Sarah who? Is this a joke? Who the hell is this person? What qualifies her to be a heartbeat away from the presidency?

The thinking seems to be that putting a woman on the ticket might attract some Clinton voters who are disillusioned with Obama and really want to vote for a woman. On the face of it, this makes sense. But I don’t buy the argument that women voters are out there just blindly voting on gender regardless of policy considerations. Palin is an anti-abortion, gun rights advocating evangelical Christian. Is that the candidate who will support women’s rights? She’s basically a conservative hick governor. She’s no Susan B. Anthony.

The Times ran an article this morning about some of the problems with this selection. One of the main ones is that it discredits McCain’s central argument that a young, relatively inexperienced candidate is ready for office. McCain has been banging away on the experience issue, and he “now needs to convince the public that it can imagine in the Oval Office a candidate who has spent just two years as governor of a state with a quarter of the population of Brooklyn.”

He he. The veep debates will be interesting…

My wordpress software was updated a week or so ago, and evidently it resulted in some downtime on the blog. I’ve been traveling and on the move the last couple of weeks so I wasn’t able to attend to this problem. Now that I’m settled I’ve had some time to deal with the blog. It’s fixed and running again. Stay tuned for updates on my new Brooklyn digs and life and times as a PhD student in NY!

Happy Flu is an interesting experiment in information diffusion on the interwebs. Jeannie, as my sole reader I’m relying on you to make sure my blog is not where the interwebs ends. Please. Via Ryan

This past weekend was a fine celebration of San Francisco. What follows is a quick run through of the highlights. But first, a song to play while you read this. The Submarines have nothing to do with any of the above, but this song just keeps playing on my iTunes mix and I thought I would share it with my loyal and adorable readership. This is off their new album – Honeysuckle Weeks. Note: if the song doesn’t play, visit this link to hear it.

On Friday, Kelly and I went to see Kid Beyond and the Honeycuts at the Independent. Neither band is exactly my cup of tea, but Kid Beyond’s beatboxing is something to behold. He multitracks his own beatboxing to create nuanced rhythms and melodies, then sings over them. He’s pretty entertaining.

During the day Saturday, I rented a Zipcar to run some errands. Said errands took me through many of the city’s neighborhoods on a gorgeous, sunny, cool day. I hit up the Presidio, Fort Mason, Upper Haight, the Sunset and touched my hands in the Pacific at Ocean Beach.

Saturday evening, after a quick stop at Olive, we visited the new Owl Tree and then went to more tiki bars than entirely necessary (although it wound up being a very fun night). I have another post planned about the new Owl Tree, but my main observation is that I was so happy to see the new owners honor the former owner Bobby and his desire to keep the name the same and the owl theme alive. They did right by him. They did a great job with updating the owl theme.

The New Owl Tree




Inside the Owl Tree

Last night was the coup de grace – a dinner of mexican food at Puerto Allegre with some out of town friends, then Erykah Badu and the Roots at the Paramount in Oakland.

I’ve never been to the Paramount, and I missed Erykah Badu the last time she was there. I’ve always wanted to go to the Paramount, and I can’t think of a better line up to see there. It was a great show, although the acoustics could have been better.

Erykah Badu is a true performer. I love her.

Badu w/ The Roots @ Paramount!



The Paramount in Oakland

Happy Monday Kids!

SF – Image Courtesy of SFPhotorama.com




My Living Room

Well, Philly anyway; then onwards to New York in the Fall.

This morning I gave notice to my building manager that I’ll be moving out of my wonderful apartment of 6 1/2 years on July 5th. The countdown is on! I’m moving back east to return to school (once again), this time to continue my research into the rapidly evolving intersection of music and technology. The next 4 years will be filled with many challenges, hard work, and surely rich rewards.

I’m very excited about the program and being closer to my family; but I’m also very sad to leave this wonderful city, my dear friends here, and a life that couldn’t have been more fulfilling in nearly every way.

More to come on exactly what I’ll be researching and learning in future posts. In the mean time, for those who are curious, check out the PhD program overview

And if you’re so inclined, clock the flickr set if you want to check out my lovely apartment. It’ll be refinished and available for rent (probably) in August. Also, some of this furniture is for sale. Contact me if you’re interested!

I’m really digging the new Roots album. As ever with their albums, there are one or two immediately appealing songs, then a couple that creep up on you the more you listen to them. This is a hip-hop band with 8 studio albums, each one pretty unique and innovative. In many ways they have transcended hip-hop, or perhaps more accurately never fully fit in the ‘genre’. At any rate, I’m looking forward to seeing them next month at the Paramount in Oakland, and digging deeper into this latest release.

Here’s the track that’s getting heavy rotation at home and on my decks.

Update 2008-06-09: This track is no longer available to embed on a website, so I’ve removed the player…

Copyright NYTIMES.com

This is the best news I’ve read all day. Via tailrank and The New York Times, John Edwards has endorsed Barack Obama’s candidacy! This is big news for several reasons, among them: the “white, working class” vote that Hillary has been bragging about, Edwards’ solid domestic policies, Edwards’ 19 delegates that will likely go to Obama now, and another high profile super delegate going in Obama’s column. This was a coveted endorsement. Great news for the Obama campaign. Next up, Al Gore?