Fred Rogers died today at the age of 74 from stomach cancer. He has hopefully joined Mr. Dressup and the Friendly Giant in a beautiful neighborhood somewhere out in the ether. Mr. Rogers taught me at a young age that asking questioning, wondering about things and using my imagination were very positive and powerful things to do.


R.I.P.

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The rumour of the day is that the word 'boredom' did not exist until around 1750. Today, however, it seems like being bored is part of North American culture. It also seems like no one is willing to admit that the source of their boredom comes from within. I ran across an interesting article on boredom today. The article mentions that today's "society is so saturated with movies, TV, video games and advertising that people are losing their sense of wonder" and that "we developed a tolerance to amazing events". That's pretty depressing stuff.

Here's some art to kick start your sense of wonder: Dan Witz' Amazing Street Art, Gottfried Helnwein's paintings and photographs, Justin Shady's photographs, and Dave Corsland & Debbie's drawings and paintings.

File this under "I'm glad I don't live in the US": US federal authorities charged 55 people with trafficking drug paraphernalia over the internet. Attorney General John Ashcroft called this "a great victory for the DEA" and John Walters, the White House drug czar was quoted as saying that "this [was] a devastating blow to the drug paraphernalia business". Do they really believe that busting a few internet water bong distributors is going to decrease the amount of illegal drugs consumed in the US this year?

I've got to get my hands on one of these.

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Winnipeg's own, The Weakerthans have been signed to Epitaph!

Are you afraid of dying? You're not alone... and your behavior has been shaped to help you forget this.

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Does a direct link exist between fear and consumption? (Never mind... just buy this.)

Would you like freedom with that?

Have you lost your inner child? Bill Beaty provides us with some instructions to help us locate the child within us.

Speaking of children... Paul Graham has written a very interesting article on nerds and the present state of the American school system.

Magnetic Poetry can spark creative fun.

Finance Minister John Manley and Prime Minister Jean Chr�tien have released the 2003 Federal budget. More money for health care, war, defence, the homeless... Read about it here.

It seems fairly obvious that our language influences the way we think, act and reason. The next logical question becomes, do fundamental flaws exist in our language? Flaws which make our language inadequate for solving the complex problems of today's world? ". E. W. Kellogg III and D. David Bourland, Jr. think so. They wrote a very interesting introduction to E-Prime, an English language derivative that eliminates use of the verb "to be" in any form (such as "am", "is", "was", "are", "were", "be", and "been"). They explain that "to be" causes us to believe hidden assumptions and to view the world through overly simplistic terms such as "true-or false", "black-or-white", "all-or-none", "right-or-wrong".

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that you can view the photographs I took at the February 15th (Winnipeg) March For Peace in the misc. section of the images page. Approximatly 6000 Winnipeggers braved the -30 degree (Celcius) weather in support of peace. War presents us with an overly simplistic answer to a very difficult problem. Imagine if the same amount of effort we waste on war went into peace and understanding. Instead, Bush ponders building more nukes. (What double standard???)

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One of my favorite hip-hop tracks of 2002 was DJ Format's 'ill culinary behaviour' featuring MC Abdominal. Well, Format is back and this time he's cooking up the beats for Charlie 2na and Akil from Jurrasic 5. Check out the video here. Format's new album is called Music for the mature b-boy, check out some sample tracks from the disc here. (You can also check out 'ill culinary behaviour', which is part of the Glutton Radio 2 mix in the sounds section.)

A global book club that crosses time and space... A reading group that knows no geographical boundaries... BookCrossing.

An addictive way to practice your typing... or waste your time.

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We have changed webhosts from doteasy to geekisp. If you are reading this message then the switch has been successful.

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The world says no to war. There will be peace marches around the world tomorrow as part of a global day of action to pre-empt President Bush's planned attack on Iraq.

If you live in Winnipeg you can find out more info on our local march, here.

I once had a daydream where we lived in a world where everyone greeted each other with the phrase, "Breaking down the barriers". The sentence was used just like 'Hello' except for the fact that you said it to everyone... not just to your friends and acquaintances. The purpose of this new greeting was to create a friendlier world by breaking down the initial verbal barrier that exists between most strangers. No more walking past fellow humans with your eyes fixed on the ground in front of you. A world full of best friends that just haven't met yet. Sounds a little too idealistic for you? Well I've discovered a guy named Scott who shares a common dream. He has spent the past 800+ days wearing a nametag in order to 'help enhance our society�s level of communication' in hopes of making the world a friendlier place.

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I was in a car accident this morning. Don't worry... no one was hurt. I hit a patch of ice and slid into another car while travelling at less than 5km/h. There was no damage to my car but I managed to crack the plastic bumper of the other vehicle.

Ever wonder which 100 records you should remove from your music collection???

After you throw out those records you should surf over to Audioscrobbler and setup a music recommendation account. (They monitor the music you listen to through Winamp and make music suggestions based on your listening tastes and those of the other members.)

I received an email today from Fat Power suggesting I check out their site. Check it out yo! There some nice pictures of street art as well as an interesting, "Are these your shoes?" section. The Fat Power links page also lead me there two fine Stickering pages: Stick It & Wooster Collective

US hypocrisy???

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The truth about hydrogen power?

Some stunning photographs.

For all you (wanna-be) musicians out there... Read up on some production tips or brush up on your music theory.

What's the deal with Lomo and Fed 5 cameras? Super cheap and super hyped on this site.

Some new stickers have been added to the images section.

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I'm fucking sick of it. We all know the problems, we've all seen the numbers, and we don't do shit about it.

Here's a refresher courtesy from Paul Hawkin taken from his book, Ecology of Commerce:

• Every day the worldwide economy burns an amount of energy the planet required 10,000 days to create. Or, put another way, 27 years worth of stored solar energy is burned and released by utilities, cars, houses, factories and farms every 24 hours.
  
• If our standard of living doubles in the next forty years - the accepted projection - we will quadruple our impact [on the planet], a physical impossibility.
  
• Each person in America produces twice his weight per day in household, hazardous, and industrial waste, and an additional half ton per week when gaseous wastes such as carbon dioxide are included.
  
• In some Thrid World countries, pesticides kill more people than do major diseases.
  
• We are losing 27,000 species a year, seventy-four per day, one every twenty minutes, due in no small part to the 500,000 trees that are cut every hour in tropical rainforests.
  

Hawkin also notes that "no major piece of environmental legislation has ever been supported by corporate America. When business does acknowledge ecological issues, as it is increasingly forced to do, it proclaims unbounded optimism in the power of technology. When scientific data foretell resource depletion, toxic contamination, or detrimental impacts on human communities, thes predictions are overridden by a religious belief in the ability of humankind to devise new technologies for offsetting the hazards of the old technologies. Common sense advises us to doubt this logic, which not only requires faith in technology, but - predictably - rationalizes the further unshackling of industrial capitalism to use more of the earth's resources to fuel future ingeniousness."

So we gotta start doing shit about this... but what? post ideas.

rant rant.

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The facts of life (Offline). (Lyrics)

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One of my favourite hip-hop producers, Sixtoo, has signed a three record deal with Coldcut�s record label Ninja Tune. This news comes only months after his Sebutones partner in crime, Buck 65, released his entire Language Arts series through Warner Canada.

Underground sound magazine is runnning an interview with my current fav. MC/Producer, J-Live. Their online magazine looks great design-wise and contains some very dope interviews and music reviews. (Check the archives)

The hip-hop edition of the Dig Your Roots compilation will hit the streets on March 3rd, featuring some amazing Canadian underground talent, (including Winnipeg�s own Frek Sho). The DYR site also features many fine tracks that didn�t make the cut for the CD.

Still on the hip-hop tip, the Break Bread crew will be performing at the West End on February 14th as part of the CKUW Fundrive, along with The Panty Apples, RWPO, and the Giant Sons.

Keeping it close to home, check out the Kick It Till It Breaks site for some really nice political, music oriented, and skateboarding themed photographs. Or surf over to the newly designed Video Pool webpage. Video Pool is a nonprofit Artist-Run Centre dedicated to independent video, audio and computer integrated multimedia production, located here in Winnipeg.

Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity - In Words of Four Letters or Less.

And finally... Don't forget about DJ John Kelly at the Pyramid tomorrow night!!!

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Mash-ups, bastard pop, bootlegs, cut-ups, etc. The art of taking two or more (usually pop) songs and mashing them together to make something new and exciting. Sure, DJs have been doing it for years now on the ones and twos, but today's digital audio tools have helped bring this art to the masses. The only problem is that most of the mash-ups being created by "the masses" are really bad. Oh well... There are still some quality bastard pop songs being created today:

• The rough guide to the world's bootlegs
  
• Soundhog Bootlegs
  
• Dscio Bootlegs
  
• DJ Spec MegaMixes
  
• Dinbot Mash-ups (Check out the King Missle vs. Suzanne Vega track)
  
• How to create your own mash-ups (A very quick and dirty guide)
  
• How to create your own acapellas
  

This is the site that got me thinking about mash-ups again:

"It's been almost three years in the making, it took one record company employee more than six months of hard labour, 865 e-mails, 160 faxes and hundreds of phone calls to contact over 45 major and independent record-companies. A total amount of 187 different tracks were involved from which 114 got approved, 62 refused and 11 were un-trackable. It caused massive headaches and sweaty palms to employees of 'clearance centres' and record companies all over the world. But it's finally here. it's about 62 minutes long and there's 45 (or is that 46?) tracks on it. it took seven long days and nights to cut, edit, mix and re-edit it all together and it fucking rocks!"

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Articles like this, don't help anything. What kind of service is the media providing when they quote two random citzens and then make a claim for an entire nation? The anonymous Reuters author attempted to make this sample group of 2 look more believable by quoting both a car mechanic and a government employee.

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