Kookaburra Sits And Laughs While Men Work
Once again, dear readers, we will take a few minutes to revisit the concept of the borrowed melody, or as I’ve called it, kleptomelodica.
Apparently, some cases of misappropriated tunes take some time to come to light and be resolved. I was surprised to see in today’s news, that a band I was quite fond of, back in the ’80s, have lost a lawsuit over their biggest hit.
The BBC reports that Men At Work, an Australian band whose big hit, Down Under, had borrowed a bit of its melody from the old song, Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree. Let’s start by having a listen to Down Under…
Now that’s a bunch of bonza blokes who seem to be having a good time. Oh, yes… I do remember this one from my misspent youth, lo so many years gone by. And I even used to buy Vegemite at the local health food store, where I also had a bit of a crush on the young lady who worked there. Fun little tune. And funny that I didn’t notice the similarity to Kookaburra. Hell, even I knew that melody from my childhood. Here’s the Aussie song about the bird, then…
Now that I think about it, and listen to Kookaburra alongside the flute riff from Down Under, I can see (or rather hear) the similarity.
But I wonder why, in this performance, the lyrics are changed from “gay your life must be” to “rich your life must be”.
Probably to keep the boys from sniggering uncontrollably.
Ah, well. Whatever. The bottom line is – the courts have decreed that Men At Work shall compensate the estate of Kookaburra composer Marion Sinclair.
Good on yer, mates. And maybe an “I’m sorry” might not be out of place.
More soon.
They’re Coming To Take Me Away (hah hah!)
Hey, fellow music nerds! In the last few days, I ran across something completely unexpected. It’s one of those things that you really don’t think about until you see it, and then it becomes obvious – even inevitable.
Since it seems that all the good melodies have already been written, those bands who choose not to sample or rap are mining our musical past for golden nuggets. Here’s one such effort. Neuroticfish with a cover version of “They’re Coming to Take Me Away”:
Yes! Very nice! Wonderfully deranged, in a way that the original version from the 1960’s, by Napoleon the XIV, could never be allowed, back in the day… With the added benefit of the bass line from the Dr. Who theme. For comparison, here’s the happily bent little ditty that I first heard when I borrowed the LP from my neighbor, Mike Platt:
Ah, they don’t make ‘em like that any more. Sometimes, they make them even better.
Well, for a given value of “better”. Like the difference between making a fire “better” by putting water on it, or gasoline. It all depends on your point of view, really.
Google Bailing Out of China?
Wow. I did not see that one coming. This is the biggest news since the Internet’s 40th Birthday last year.
Google has had an uneasy relationship with China for several years. The search engine mega-corp (up until now) has been working with the Chinese government to censor and limit the search results returned to Google users in China. Apparently, when users in China search for things like “Tiananmen Square” there are no results. (Not so here in the US, of course. Today.)
But now, it appears that the gloves are off, and the search company whose motto is “Don’t Be Evil” is prepared to stand up to Beijing. Why? Reports are that G-Mail web-mail accounts belonging to Chinese dissidents (and others) are being hack-attacked by cyber-forces within China. And Google doesn’t like that very much. Sort of the last straw for the boys at Google.
So, will there be no more kow-towing to the Great Firewall of China? It’s a bit early to tell, but I think we’re looking at a “irresistible force vs. immovable object” situation here. And it’s a safe bet that the US State Department will get involved at some point in this new cyber-brouhaha. Trade agreements, loans from China to the US, Chinese imports, most favored nation status… there are so many factors that tie America to China at this point, that any disruptions could cause significant and unforeseen consequences.
Potentially, this is a good opportunity for China’s home-grown search engine industry to get a leg up. Baidu.com has been mentioned in some reports as a possible beneficiary of the cyber-snottiness.
One possible result: two Internets. BusinessWeek is reporting Bloomberg expects some serious tussles between the Western World and China over the shape of the Internet. The two visions – China’s desire for a controlled, stable, sanitary web, versus the American / European insistence on a democratic, open, accessible Internet – are going to be hard to reconcile.
Personally, I’d rather see China either open, or have their own bloody-minded, locked down Internet. I sure don’t want to see the rest of the world following the Chinese model.
Feel free to disagree. There’s space, just below. Go for it, and enjoy our open Internet, and the freedom of discourse.
Even More Silliness
Well, I did say that it was more random silliness.
And as I wrote today on my Facebook page, 2010 is bound to be better than 2009, especially if we all go out into the world, in the days and weeks to come, holding that intention in our minds and in our hearts. Spread a little compassion, a little joy, a little happiness. Here’s a start. Enjoy.
Happy New Year!
UFOs Over The Kremlin?
Boy, oh boy. For some reason, the 2009 solstice season has really given us some high-profile UFO sightings. I’m beginning to wish they’d just frickin’ land already, and get it over with…
The Russians seem to be having all the fun these days. Two separate videos of triangular or pyramidal UFOs, seen over the Kremlin, supposedly on two different dates. The first video shows what appears to be a large triangular or pyramidal UFO over Moscow’s Red Square.
I need to pay closer attention to the news wires. This daylight UFO sighting apparently took place on or about December 9th, about the time that Norway was treated to a massive blue spiral in their sky, which may or may not have been a failed Russian missile test launch.
The next video is a night-time sighting, shot from a moving car. It’s not very clear, but there does seem to be a triangular shape in the sky above the Kremlin, perhaps on December 18th. Very cool… My best advice is to click “full-screen” and watch closely.
Some sources are indicating that this second video is just disinformation, but I don’t really understand the reasoning behind that assertion. Another article on the subject can be found here.
Since the video images are so dark, I decided to grab some screen shots of still frames, and “bump them up” a bit, using Gimp, the open-source alternative to Photoshop. Here are the results. Click the images to see larger versions.
Okay. If that isn’t some seriously weird $#!+, then I’m Mary Queen of Scots. I’d be interested in seeing what other people make of this footage, and if anyone has similar results with photo enhancement programs.
(If you want to know what I did in Gimp, to get these results, just e-mail me, or leave a comment below.)
Back soon with more weirdness, or perhaps just something silly. You can never really tell with me, can you?
Oh, Those UFOs!
More UFO news last week. Yeah, I know. I should have mentioned it last week, when it was still actually news. (It’s been busy here at Maison D’Lock – sorry.) But if some of you have missed it, since the mainstream media have the attention span of a stunned guppy, let’s take a quick look.
First off, parts of Norway were treated to an amazing visual spectacle in the form of a spiraling blue light show in the sky, early on the morning of December 10th.
Looks pretty amazing! Many news services now seem to think the spiral light formation was the result of a Russian missile test launch, which failed in the upper atmosphere, going out of control. Check out the video – you can actually see the spiral rotating.
The very next day, news agencies and bloggers began reporting on the discovery of an “alien graveyard” in Rwanda, of all places. Claims of more than 200 bodies, in a 500 year old mass grave, are circulating on the ‘net.
But, given that the source seems to be the World Weekly News – home of Bat Boy, this may be more coprolite than fossil remains.
More soon, kids. Christmas approaches like a freight train on a downhill, with no brakes. I need to either get running, or get out of the way.
Peace and a happy season to you all.
UFOs? What UFOs?
Greetings, programs! I read today that our dear brothers across the pond have pulled the plug on their UFO research efforts. Yes, some 40 years after the US government did the same thing (officially, anyway) after publishing the Condon Report, the UK’s Ministry of Defence has decided that “in over 50 years, no UFO report has revealed any evidence of a potential threat to the United Kingdom.”
Well, sure. Right. No potential threat at all. Not if you believe that objects flitting through the sky above your country, at speeds you can’t hope to match, and going wherever they please, are no kind of threat. What kind of fuzzy thinking is that? Hello, McFly!
Maybe they should talk to the guys over at the Space Research Institute of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Their deputy director, Lachezar Filipov, seems to think that the aliens are already here, and are among us now.
Or perhaps have a chat with the folks at Chicago’s O’Hare airport, who saw something quite peculiar, just over three years ago. Workers on the ground and pilots both reported seeing a huge gray disc hover over the terminal for several minutes, in November 2006. And when it left, it just shot off, straight up, punching a hole through the clouds that took a few minutes to close back up. Probably swamp gas.
Here’s the reality – there is something going on in the skies, all over the world, and it remains unexplained after more than 60 years of research. Anyone you talk to will admit that much. But turning your back on the issue and pretending it’s not a problem, or doesn’t exist, is completely irresponsible.
And that’s what the MOD has done, and so has the American government. So have many other agencies world wide. This has led to a widespread belief that the major governments know something that they refuse to share with the public at large.
So, what shall we do about it, Dave? Petition the government to show us what’s in Area 51? Throw up our hands and shrug? Move to a cabin in the wilderness?
Maybe just keep an open mind, and remain skeptical. Don’t trust everything you read. Even this. And especially not the mainstream media. Do the research for yourself. Read a few books on the subject. Maybe even watch the skies some night, instead of the frickin’ boob tube. Grab your friends, family, maybe a few beverages, and go look at the sky. Yeah, I know. Better dress warmly if you’re going to do that tonight. It’s wicked cold here in Vancouver, WA. But the viewing is great! The stars are clear and bright.
I just can’t stay out for long. My eyeballs start to freeze.
P.S. If you want to have a look at the UFO report data collected by the UK’s Ministry of Defence, since 1997, you can find it all here. There’s not a lot of detail, but what there is may convince a few folks that our sky is a busy place.
More Random Silliness
Yes, another stupid bit of wordplay. Well, I thought it was funny…
I promise, I’ll post something much more serious, very soon.
Surfin’ With Sweet Little 16
Greetings, fellow web surfers! And my apologies – it’s been over two weeks since I last posted. Life’s been getting in the way. (And that’s getting annoying…)
But let’s get on with the fun, and revisit the “Stolen Songs” theme that I was doing a couple months ago. For some reason, this one came wandering through my head the other day like some sort of melodic vagrant, mooching for spare change. First, the original moldy oldie – from 1958, Chuck Berry’s Sweet Little Sixteen:
Chuck Berry is, without doubt, one of the biggest influences ever on rock & roll. Everybody learned to play his songs, covered them in bars and clubs, and his records were in every jukebox. That probably explains why The Beach Boys song, Surfin’ USA, sounds so much like it.
I’m kind of surprised that I never really noticed before. Chuck Berry sure did -in 1963, he apparently accused Brian Wilson of stealing the melody, and Murry Wilson – Brian’s father – seems to have agreed. He signed the rights to Surfin’ USA over to Chuck Berry… including the royalties for the lyrics!
And before I get slammed for ripping off someone else’s blog, I will insist right now that my connection between these two songs was not prompted by the October 15th entry on SoundsJustLike.com. But here’s the link, nevertheless.
Back soon with more goodies, everyone!
Happy Birthday, Internet!
So. The Internet turns 40 years old today! The very first interconnection between two remotely located computer systems took place on October 29th, 1969.
Warning: GEEK ALERT! This post is going to be excessively nerdy. If you find your eyes beginning to glaze over, you might want to read one of my most popular posts ever, “They Call This A Jeep?“
Now, back to the Internet’s Birthday… It was 1969. The first man had walked on the moon only a few months before, it was the Summer of Love, and Woodstock, the US Army was still in Vietnam, and the military’s research arm – DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency - had been working for years towards the goal of a massive computer network.
(Today, it’s become something that we take almost for granted, but even 15 years ago, most people weren’t online, and many people didn’t even have home computers. That’s a lot of change for such a short time.)
Getting back to 1969, it may have been a remarkable event, but it was little noted at the time. To quote Leonard Kleinrock, one of the people who invented the hardware and software that make the Internet work:
…on October 29, 1969, at 10:30 in the evening, you will find in a log, a notebook log that I have in my office at U.C.L.A., an entry which says, “Talked to SRI [Stanford Research Institute] host to host.” If you want to be, shall I say, poetic about it, the September event was when the infant Internet took its first breath.
Here’s Leonard Kleinrock himself, in a short talk about the event.
(And for more geeky fun, here’s the story of the first e-mail.)
This infant network went on to become ARPANET, the first wide-area network of computers that could “talk” to one another. And ARPANET was eventually opened to the public in 1990, when Tim Berners Lee created the “World Wide Web” – a way of “linking” documents (or pages) to one another on the network. (Click here for a complete timeline of the Internet’s development.)
From there, the changes have been rapid, not to say amazing. The amount of data that can be carried on the Internet has been radically increased, allowing users to watch videos, chat with other people anywhere in the world, and send messages, pictures, and documents to any computer on the planet. Or in orbit. Wow, huh?
There are, of course, a few problems. First are the unintended consequences such as economic disruption, and the social implications. The Internet has certainly changed dating and relationships for lots of people.
And there’s the issue of Network Neutrality. That’s the concept that all Internet traffic should be treated equally, no matter who originated it – little old you or me, or Fox News. A lot of people want to keep the playing field level, and allow small companies to compete with bigger concerns. Big companies with deep pockets could buy up all the bandwidth, crowding out the smaller competition. Not fair. Alaska Senator Ted Stevens tried to explain it, resulting in one of the favorite Internet quotes of all time:
The Internet is a series of TUBES!
So, now we’re more or less up to date, seeing where the Internet is at 40.
What’s in the future for the Internet?
As the Internet enters its fifth decade, one of the possibilities is something called the Semantic Web, another invention of Tim Berners Lee. The Semantic Web will rely upon the meaning and weight that visitors give to web pages, to establish their value and relevance. The social media phenomenon – Twitter, MySpace, Facebook – is the first step in that direction.
The Internet also has the capability of connecting to – and communicating with – virtually anything, anywhere. You might have an Internet-connected refrigerator that orders more bread and veggies when you run out, or an Internet-connected thermostat and Venetian blinds, allowing you to control the environment of your home from your laptop or iPhone.
Another interesting development: this week, President Obama announced $3.4 billion to be put towards modernizing America’s power grid. That will include making it “smarter” and more resilient to interruptions and attack, using some of these new Internet technologies.
Not to be outdone, DARPA and the military are getting in the act, developing a new, “hardened” military network protocol, intended to keep our fighting men and women connected under the worst of circumstances.
All of these developments in connectivity could usher in a new era of peace and freedom, or a new era of oppression and slavery. It’s up to us how they get used. A hammer can be used to build a house, or crack a skull. Tools are amoral. Humans can make a choice.
If you’d like to learn more about our options for the future, you can listen to the podcasts from Media Monarchy and The Corbett Report, and then examine the resources they offer. There is also Adam Greenfield’s Everyware site, for information on Ubiquitous Computing.
That’s the beauty of the Internet. You can use it to learn about anything, including the Internet itself.
The future of the Internet at 40 is exciting, and possibly scary. So is the future of humanity. I wonder where we will find ourselves in the year 2049?
UPDATE: 10/31/09 I can’t believe I forgot to include this. ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) this week chose to allow non-Latin characters for Internet domain names. According to Rod Beckstrom, ICANN’s President and CEO:
“This is only the first step, but it is an incredibly big one and an historic move toward the internationalization of the Internet. The first countries that participate will not only be providing valuable information of the operation of IDNs in the domain name system, they are also going to help to bring the first of billions more people online – people who never use Roman characters in their daily lives.”
This will supposedly save lots of keystrokes for Asian, Russian, and Arabic Internet users. And the beat goes on.
