This is old (all of almost 10 years now!!!) but so accurate and informative to those who may be close to coders and don't understand. An excerpt:

People imagine that programmers don't like to talk because they
prefer machines to people. This is not completely true. Programmers don't
talk because they must not be interrupted.
This need to be uninterrupted leads to a life that is strangely
asynchronous to the one lived by other human beings. It's better to send
e-mail to a programmer than to call. It's better to leave a note on the
chair than to expect the programmer to come to a meeting. This is because
the programmer must work in mind time while the phone rings and the
meetings happen in real time. It's not just ego that prevents programmers
from working in groups - it's the synchronicity problem. Synchronizing with
other people (or their representations in telephones, buzzers and
doorbells) can only mean interrupting the thought train. Interruptions mean
bugs. You must not get off the train.

Great video from The Onion:

Immigration: The Human Cost

I'll probably show this as part of the opener for a screening of Gigante Despierta sunday night at Dry River.

I'm in San Diego for a few days to show my Juarez film. I'm staying with friends whose house is like a major waystation for activists, journalists, and other cool people passing through town. Right now there's a Peruvian who's been staying at the Cucapa camp in the Colorado River "delta" for the last 2 months and travelling with La Otra Campaña before that. He's going back to the camp today with a photojournalist from Brooklyn who just arrived last night to take shots of the last high-tide fishing outing the Cucapa will do for the season. Another photojournalist, from Germany, is here taking photos of the border wall. He just published a book of panoramic photos from The Occupied Territories called simpy "Wall". They are beautiful and of course disturbing.

The Brooklyn photog brought a copy of the latest issue of National Geographic that has a really great piece about the border Wall, with incredible photos from all along the U.S.-Mexico border and text by Charles Bowden. Most of Bowden's text is focused, as an exemplar, on Naco. It's too bad that he apparently wasn't aware, when he wrote it, that the cross-border fiesta was going to be happening again.

The screening of my film had an amazing number of students turnout at San Diego State yesterday. This morning I'm showing it at City College as part of a series of human rights films there sponsored by the local Amnesty International.

The ocean air is wonderful here in San Diego.

As I mentioned as an upcoming event a couple weeks ago on this blog, a cross-border party happened in the tiny border town of Naco (Arizona and Sonora).
Here's the short video I made about the event:

You can also download the video here.

I can't believe it. This is the best news I've heard in ages. More proof that Brazil is extremely cool. Hopefully other cities, worldwide, will gradually follow suit, and someday there will be no advertising, anywhere, for anything.

So I got an anonymous message the other day from the contact form on my website:

"www.myspace.com/simonparks seems to be using one of your images in order to promote himself/ his band."

When I looked up the IP address of the person that sent the message, it was a computer (dhcp80ffad72.residence-rooms.uiowa.edu.) in a dorm on the University of Iowa campus in Iowa City. Which is notable for only 2 reasons: I'm from Iowa, and Simon Parks, the supposed infringer, is an aspiring rock star based in Iowa CIty. Which would seem to mean that someone who knows him wants him to get in trouble for copyright infringement, and somehow found the image that Simon is re-using, and yet isn't aware of my pro stance about the recycling of culture.

The funnny thing too is that *I* couldn't even find the image at first, which I recognized as a collaborative collage that I made with friends at a collage party I threw years ago in Portland. In fact now that I've located it online, thanx to Google, in some little-visted directory on my site, I am reminded that this particular collage is probably mostly the work of my friend Seth Ladygo. So the image itself and its presence on my site is the product of many infringements of others' "intellectual property" anyway.

Really a beautiful and wonderful example of the complicated intertext that is modern creativity. And really a funny, ironic thing if this anonymous undergrad in Iowa hopes to get this other person in trouble over it.

Relax, dude. Are you jealous cuz this Simon guy makes pretty good music? Or maybe he stole your girlfriend? How about you sample his songs and make something better out of it, mash them up with some Peaches or something, and then sleep with his girlfriend. No, the one he's gonna have after he dumps yours, when he plays his next gig at Gabe's. or wherever kids in Iowa City are watching shows these days. But anyway like I was saying, relax. have fun. it's how culture works.

I'm going to San Diego to show my film again twice, once at SDSU April 24 and then the 25th at San Diego City College.

I'm thinking about the summer, can you tell? I want to go to Chiapas at the end of July... Well details about why are right here.
I'm pasting this bit specifically, mostly so it's easier to find, because every time I go looking on the EZLN websites it takes me forever to find anything.

Communiqu

• steev's blog

The record industry is going to have to accept the fact that the words "copyright infringement" don't mean much to today's aspiring artists. Musicians have always had influences, now we just hear them in a more direct fashion. They want to take what's old and fashion it into something new. Reinterpret, re-imagine, reconstruct. Those are the key terms for a new and different type of artist, one that latches onto pop culture like never before and thinks about it in ways never conceived. The future is democracy. The future is access. The future is the ability to use whatever we want, however we want. The music industry has just seen the beginning with "Rock Band." The next steps will be brought about by people like Girl Talk [labelmate of mine on Illegal Art] who reinterpret what they have seen and heard into something new. But then again, isn't that an old-fashioned definition of art?

From Steve McDonagh's blog via Philo's blog.

Well, duh. That's what i've been saying for over 10 years.

another monday. another headache forming as i sit staring at my monitor.

interesting and fun weekend. Saw Yaqui tribal easter rituals, pretty fascinating stuff, amazing syncretism (mixing of catholic and native spiritual traditions) with crazy costumes, sacred clowns, fire, fireworks, music and dancing and parading, godparents beating off evil spirits with sticks, Judas burned at the stake in a pyre of garbage bags (yuk!), girlfriends crushing on teenage boys who dance like deers all night, old women chanting, water drums and scrapers.... and I have no photos or video or audio of any of this because recording, even sketching at these ceremonies is forbidden...

Earth First Journal annual pie party last night. yum. people/socializing overload.

amazing friendships. art, music, food, drink, dogs, love, lovemaking; coffee and juice. virus hoaxes. missing spreadsheets. need to go get groceries really badly.

and i would write more and more cleverly and clearly than this cursory stream-of-concious acccount if i could just not have this headache right now. sigh.