wednesday, jan. 18

just a few mini posts for today.

sopa

i've never pirated a movie, all of my mp3s are legit, and my professional life thus far as been in the film industry, the main force in support of this bill. but i think it is reaching far beyond stopping illegal downloading and will be very bad if it passes.
i also think it's too big to really enforce if it did pass and that there would be a backlash of biblical proportions if it did.

but if the "stop online piracy act" does pass, i will have to go through nearly every post on here and remove the pictures that are not officially mine. so, that post from two days ago, where i listed all of the people i worked with, that'll be gone entirely.

apple
on my walks around campus today, i was listening to a recent podcast of "this american life" where the first act was a guy's story about his visit to the apple factories in china. he talked about the terrible working conditions there, noting that the cost for human labor is nearly zero, so that nearly all of our electronics (not just apple) are made almost entirely by hand. as his story went on and on, i started to feel guilty about the ipod that i was listening to this on.

the second act of the radio show was a discussion of the first act, with their team verifying pretty much all of the guy's story. but they also had an economist who, when asked if we should feel guilty about owning and enjoying all of these electronics, answered, no.
the reason, he said, is that while these conditions are terrible, this sweatshop lifestyle is still a better life than the destitute poverty that the people were living in before these factories came. i found that interesting and wondered if these are just growing pains of an industrial society. the u.s. and britain suffered through similar conditions a hundred years ago, about the same time that the u.s. became the dominant force in the world. and as china is emerging as the new economic super power, it seems that this may be the cost of that victory, but that, just as the american workers did a century ago, citizens will rise and protest in greater numbers and enact the changes for better working conditions. maybe the chicken has to learn to break out its shell itself.

or maybe i'm totally wrong.

3.
i can't remember what my third thought was. but i found some music for our video at work today (my 60s lounge groove was universally liked), and had success with the blue-screen compositing. i found out i'll need to buy a judo gi for my judo class, am hoping i can find another good art project for my mfa course, and am already staying at school until 10, working on homework.
until the computer froze.
at least i've got some good text friends to keep me company.