April 11, 2012
‘Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity’ is a 2004 book by law professor Lawrence Lessig that was released on the Internet under the Creative Commons Attribution/Non-commercial license.
The book documents how copyright power has expanded substantially since 1974 in five critical dimensions: duration (from 32 to 95 years), scope (from publishers to virtually everyone), reach (to every view on a computer), control (including “derivative works” defined so broadly that virtually any new content could be sued by some copyright holder as a ‘derivative work’ of something), and concentration and integration of the media industry.
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April 11, 2012
Remix culture is a term used to describe a society which allows and encourages derivative works. Remix is defined as combining or editing existing materials to produce a new product. A Remix Culture would be, by default, permissive of efforts to improve upon, change, integrate, or otherwise remix the work of copyright holders.
In his 2008 book, ‘Remix,’ Lawrence Lessig presents this as a desirable ideal and argues, among other things, that the health, progress, and wealth creation of a culture is fundamentally tied to this participatory remix process.
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April 11, 2012
ccMixter.org is a community music site that promotes remix culture and makes samples, remixes, and a cappella tracks licensed under Creative Commons available for download and re-use in creative works. Visitors are able to listen to, sample, mash-up, or interact with music in a variety of ways including the download and use of tracks and samples in their own remixes.
Most sampling or mash-up web sites on the Internet stipulate that users forgo their rights to the new song once it is created. By contrast, the material on ccMixter.org is generally licensed to be used in any arena, not just the ccMixter site or a specific contest. The ccMixter site contains over 10,000 samples from a wide range of recording artists, including high profile artists such as Beastie Boys and David Byrne.
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April 11, 2012
WhoSampled is a website and database of information about sample-based music founded in London. WhoSampled compares original songs with covered songs or songs that ‘borrowed’ samples, it serves as a historical line of where songs have come from and where they’re going. Registered users can submit information about a sample, remix or cover and subject, waiting for moderator’s approval that will let the entry to be published on the site.
The visitor of the site gets a comprehensive list of who that artist has sampled and how, and how that artist him/herself has been sampled. The comparison of original song and the song that sampled, covered or remixed it, is done side by side with embedded tracks or videos. All audio and video clips shown on the site are embedded links to content hosted by third party services, such as YouTube or DailyMotion. The process and idea of the site of being a tool for research and music discovery, is similar to another project called Music Genome Project, both wanting to ‘explore the DNA of music.’
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April 11, 2012
A remix is an alternative version of a recorded song, made from an original version. Sometimes this term is also used for alterations of media or recreation other than song (film, literature, beverages etc.). In remixing, a person (often a recording engineer or record producer) takes a familiar song, splits it into different parts called tracks, and changes the song’s music, instruments, layout, and or vocals to create a new version of the same song.
It is called remixing due to mixing being the putting together of all the parts of a song, and remixing being the putting together of the parts of the song differently than the original. Remixers, that is, people who remix, are musicians who use a variety of tools, primarily electronic, to create the new song versions. Remixing can be simply moving song parts around; it can also be creating new music for an old song lyric. The most popular types of remixing are production remixing, where new instruments are used with the old song vocal, and mashups, in which two old songs are mixed together.
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April 10, 2012
Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog is a 2008 musical tragicomedy miniseries in three acts, produced exclusively for Internet distribution. Filmed and set in Los Angeles, the show tells the story of Dr. Horrible (played by Neil Patrick Harris), an aspiring supervillain; Captain Hammer (Nathan Fillion), his nemesis; and Penny (Felicia Day), their shared love interest.
The movie was written by writer/director Joss Whedon, his brothers Zack Whedon (a television writer) and Jed Whedon (a composer), and Jed’s wife, actress Maurissa Tancharoen. The team wrote the musical during the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike. The idea was to create something small and inexpensive, yet professionally done, in a way that would circumvent the issues that were being protested during the strike.
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April 10, 2012
Triclosan [trik-loh-san] is an antibacterial and antifungal agent found in consumer products, including toothpaste, soaps, detergents, toys, and surgical cleaning treatments. In 2016, the FDA announced that effective September 2017, it would prohibit the sale of ‘consumer antiseptic washes’ containing triclosan or 18 other ingredients marketed as antimicrobials due to the FDA’s findings of the lack of efficacy in these products.
Despite being used in many consumer products, beyond its use in toothpaste to prevent gingivitis, there is no evidence according to the FDA that triclosan provides an extra benefit to health in other consumer products. A comprehensive analysis from the University of Michigan School of Public Health indicated that plain soaps are just as effective as consumer-grade antibacterial soaps with triclosan in preventing illness and removing bacteria from the hands.
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April 9, 2012
Orgasm Inc. (2009) is the first feature documentary by award-winning director Liz Canner. It premiered at the Hot Docs Documentary Film Festival. In the documentary, filmmaker Liz Canner takes a job editing erotic movies for a drug trial for a pharmaceutical company called Vivus. Her employer is developing what they hope will be the first Viagra drug for women that wins FDA approval to treat a new disease: female sexual arousal disorder (FSD). Initially, she plans to create a movie about science and pleasure but she soon begins to suspect that her employer, along with a cadre of other medical companies, might be trying to take advantage of women (and potentially endanger their health) in pursuit of billion dollar profits.
The film continues from Vivus onto the more general question of whether there is a solid scientific foundation to medical industry claims about what constitutes ‘healthy’ female sexuality and whether drugs and surgery are a suitable first-line approach to obtaining it. The film documents an emerging medical industry intent on convincing women that they have medical problems, and that those problems are best solved by expensive and dangerous medical treatments.
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April 9, 2012
Food faddism refers to idiosyncratic diets and eating patterns that promote short-term weight loss, usually with no concern for long-term weight maintenance, which enjoy temporary popularity. The term ‘food fad’ may also be used with a neutral connotation to describe the short term popularity among restaurants and consumers of an ingredient, dish, or preparation technique.
‘Fad diet’ is a term of popular media, not science. Some so-called fad diets may make pseudo-scientific claims, but others labeled ‘fad’ are based on science. According to one definition, fad diets claim to be scientific but do not follow the scientific method in establishing their validity. Among the scientific shortcomings of the claims made in support of fad diets: not being open to revisions, whereas real science is; and observations that prompt explanations are used as evidence of the validity of the explanation.
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April 9, 2012
Tarsem Singh Dhandwar (b. 1961), known professionally as Tarsem, is an Indian film director. He began his career directing music videos, including those of ‘Hold On’ by En Vogue, ‘Sweet Lullaby’ by Deep Forest, and R.E.M.’s smash hit ‘Losing My Religion,’ the latter of which won Best Video of the Year at the 1991 MTV Video Music Awards. He has directed dozens of commercials for brands such as Nike and Coca-Cola.
Tarsem’s feature film directorial debut was ‘The Cell’ (2000), starring Jennifer Lopez. His second film, ‘The Fall,’ debuted at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival and was released theatrically in the United States in 2008. His third film was 2011’s ‘Immortals.’ He directed an adaptation of the Brothers Grimm story of Snow White, called ‘Mirror Mirror’ in 2012.
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April 9, 2012
‘On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft’ by Stephen King, published in 2000, is a memoir of the prolific author’s experiences as a writer, and also serves as a guide book for those who choose to enter the craft. The first section of the book is an Autobiography mainly about King’s early exposure to writing, and his childhood attempts at writing. King talks about his early attempts to get published, and his first novel ‘Carrie.’ He also talks about his fame as a writer, and what it took to get there. This includes his relationship with his wife, the death of his mother and his history of drug and alcohol abuse.
The second section is practical advice on writing, including tips on grammar and ideas about developing plot and character. King himself describes it as a guide for how ‘a competent writer can become a good one.’ This includes his beliefs that a writer should edit out unnecessary details and avoid the use of unnecessary adverbs. He also uses quotes from other books and authors to illustrate his points. The third section is also autobiographical, in which he discusses the 1999 automobile accident in which he was struck by a vehicle while walking down an isolated country road. He describes serious injuries, his painful recovery and his struggle to start writing again.
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April 6, 2012
Artists and repertoire (A&R) is the division of a record label that is responsible for talent scouting and overseeing the artistic development of recording artists. It also acts as a liaison between artists and the record label; every activity involving artists to the point of album release is generally considered under the purview of, and responsibility of, A&R. The A&R division is responsible for discovering new recording artists and bringing them to the record company.
They are expected to understand the current tastes of the market and to be able to find artists that will be commercially successful. For this reason, A&R people are often young and many are musicians, music journalists or record producers. An A&R executive is authorized to offer a record contract, often in the form of a ‘deal memo’: a short informal document that establishes a business relationship between the recording artist and the record company. The actual contract negotiations will typically be carried out by rival entertainment lawyers hired by the musician’s manager and the record company.
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