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Well, with some trepidation my wife and I have just reached a verbal agreement with a seller to buy our first house. Details are forthcoming, if you can’t hold out and want more info, contact me and I’ll hook you up.

Today was a historical occasion. For the first time, I recorded Freakwitch live, with 16 tracks of recording capability. In the past, we were limited to 10 tracks, which were actually 9 due to some technical details.

We did another round of studio upgrades recently. Everything is installed and running. The new setup means that we can record the entire band playing at once, along with having more than one source for sound for each band member. In other words, we get the sonic benefits of the old overdubbing paradigm, along with the ability to capture the energy of a complete band performance.

Our capability just went up an order of magnitude. This is a very good thing. We have a busy month, lots of recording sessions (including a session at another studio), as well as a gig at Geno’s in Portland on 4/4.

In other news, it’s spring.

About time….

Very strange things are afoot, as anyone who pays attention to the world will tell you. Of course that does not differentiate our present age; strange things have always been and always will be afoot.

I think it’s just the particular character of the strangeness.

In the middle of our hallway in our apartment building, a Suzy Boggus Greatest Hits CD materialized, and was lying on the ground.

It’s still there. I’m not sure what to make of it.

Perhaps it is a sign. Perhaps a Suzy Boggus Greatest Hits CD is the early-21st-century equivalent of The Black Spot or, even worse, a severed horse’s head.

After all, what sin could we have committed to be presented with such a ghastly artifact?

They just keep coming:

A new study in the Journal of Political Economy by Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf has found that illegal music downloads have had no noticeable effects on the sale of music, contrary to the claims of the recording industry.

Entitled “The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis,” the study matched an extensive sample of music downloads to American music sales data in order to search for causality between illicit downloading and album sales. Analyzing data from the final four months of 2002, the researchers estimated that P2P affected no more than 0.7% of sales in that timeframe.

The study looked at time periods when German students were on holiday after demonstrating that P2P use increases at these times. German users collectively are the #2 P2P suppliers, providing “about one out of every six U.S. downloads,” according to the study. Yet the effects on American sales were not large enough to be statistically significant. Using this and several other methods, the study’s authors could find no meaningful causality. The availability and even increased downloads of music on P2P networks did not correlate to a negative effect on music sales.

“Using detailed records of transfers of digital music files, we find that file sharing has had no statistically significant effect on purchases of the average album in our sample,” the study reports. “Even our most negative point estimate implies that a one-standard-deviation increase in file sharing reduces an album’s weekly sales by a mere 368 copies, an effect that is too small to be statistically distinguishable from zero.”

After this, I think the RIAA needs a new motto: Have You Sued Your Customer Base Today?

…that I love living in Maine. The Maine State Legislature passed a resolution refusing to participate in the Real ID Act.

It’s worth reading both of those pages, especially the first as it is far more succinct.

One of my favorite writers of all time, Robert Anton Wilson, apparently died early this morning.

As long time fans of RAW will know, this is not the first time RAW has died, and he is no doubt highly amused by the whole thing….

One of the forums I frequent had a link to a Brainwave Frequency Listing chart that I found fascinating. Particularly the bottom 1/3 of the chart, since those are the frequencies that fall within the audible spectrum.

In the first few hours of their control of Congress, The House today passed a “9/11 security bill”, which “implements some of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.”

Whew. I feel safer.

I’ve thought for a long time that one should not base governmental policy on fiction, much to the dismay of Christian neocon nutjobs who think the Bible should tell us how to run society. So the Dems are really making a difference. Have they revoked the Patriot Act? Have they sought a true investigation into the events of 9/11 (not that it matters, but it would be nice for SOMEONE in the government to say that the 9/11 Commission report is fiction)?

No.

Instead, they will intrude upon privacy even more, as now every shipping container that enters the US is eligible to be searched without warrant.

On another note, I ran into a christian Bu$hite supporter the other day. This doesn’t often happen to me in Maine, in the circles I travel in. Whenever I encounter someone claiming to be both a Christian and a Bush supporter, I ask them this question: Can you name me one single, tangible thing that George W Bush has done in office that is in line with Christ’s teachings in the Bible?

Not one of these people has ever come up with one single answer. They always evade my question.

I can’t imagine why….

It’s true. I’m sitting here in Portland Maine today, and at 2:15pm it is nearly 60 degrees.

Context is everything.

As I’m sitting here next to my wide-open window enjoying this bizarre weather, I read about how
ExxonMobil was waging a tobacco-like disinformation campaign on global warming science:

“ExxonMobil has manufactured uncertainty about the human causes of global warming just as tobacco companies denied their product caused lung cancer,” said Alden Meyer, the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Director of Strategy & Policy. “A modest but effective investment has allowed the oil giant to fuel doubt about global warming to delay government action just as Big Tobacco did for over 40 years.”

Very much worth reading. At least today “everyone” recognizes that smoking tobacco is harmful to one’s health. When will we realize that burning too much oil is harmful to the planet’s health?

So I saw 2 interesting things about intellectual property in my news readings today.

First, a blatant example of what happens when you blend draconian Information/IP policies with a neoliberal, globalized economy. From Britain:

Britons flying to America could have their credit card and email accounts inspected by the United States authorities following a deal struck by Brussels and Washington. By using a credit card to book a flight, passengers face having other transactions on the card inspected by the American authorities. Providing an email address to an airline could also lead to scrutiny of other messages sent or received on that account.

Hardly surprising, though. Gee. America wants to snoop on you. Go figure.

Second, and this is the fun one, the RIAA is suing a website called AllofMP3 for 1.65 trillion dollars. That’s not a misprint:

As part of their claim, the labels are seeking $150,000 USD for each of the 11 million songs that were downloaded from June to October 2006 from the AllofMP3.com website.

“AllofMP3 understands that several U.S. record label companies filed a lawsuit against Media Services in New York,” an unnamed “senior company official” stated. “This suit is unjustified as AllofMP3 does not operate in New York. Certainly the labels are free to file any suit they wish, despite knowing full well that AllofMP3 operates legally in Russia. In the mean time, AllofMP3 plans to continue to operate legally and comply with all Russian laws.”

Interesting question of jurisdiction, no? If Russian companies are subject to American laws, then truly we do live in an age of Empire.