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Let’s Call It…
When I was submerged about a month ago I heard the guitar from Martha and the Muffins “Swimming”. We have a pool in this place no one uses but us. With goggles, it’s all flailing kiddie ankles up there, me holding at the bottom thinking of out by the church at North River where you could dive down to loll about with trout or the double falls at Greenwood if you knew the half-mile path through the spruce to find it. My man in Portland has taught me to body surf at 59 F in the real sea where nothing stands between you and the Azores, your arse facing at Maine. [I also learned being called a big fat sissy apparently works with me as an educational strategy.]
The CD Then Again – A Retrospective arrived in the mail today, 16.98 CND all in direct fromMartha and the Muffins / M+M headquarters. I also got the M+M “The World Is A Ball” tour badge 1986, tin pin type. Like the Spoons and Doug and the Slugs, these were songs between the Duran Duran at Cabbagetown, the basement dance bar on Spring Garden at South Park in the brief time of my life when wearing what looked like fishing tackle from your ears was OK, when people dressed like characters in Lexx. Did Martha write my address on the envelope?
ISSNs and Personal Websites
I had an interesting set of exchanges today on the topic of the ISSN. I noted a few days ago that Steve’s site had an ISSN or international standard serial number – scroll down lower left to see it. Wanting all that Steve has, I applied for my own. This morning I received a nice email which stated:
Thank you for your application. At the moment, we are no longer assigning ISSN to weblogs, but the situation is under review. The question of whether weblogs will be able to be assigned ISSN is under discussion in the international ISSN Network. The question hinges on the scope of the ISSN but also on the very real consideration of the limited staff resources of ISSN centres worldwide.
In further emailing I learned that the global ISSN system is run out of Paris; that last October they put the halt on listing new personal web pages, web logs or blogs under ISSN; that the ISBN system relating to books does not apply; and that there are global meetings in Paris from time to time on the ISSN system. Very neato.
The person with whom I was having this conversation then went to the effort of called me at work after tracking me to my house. Apparently there are only two staff at the National Library of Canada who administer the ISSN system in the country and they have been overwhelmed by requests for blog registrations particularly – but apparently inadvertantly – after this posting by a Joe Clark who Steve (of the now coveted ISSN) knows as an web accessability writer. I suggested that I might help the National Library of Canada and its application crunch by way of a post to this old ‘osphere.
There is an answer, however, to the nerd who want another registration number in their life. While my helpful friend in the National Library of Canada ISSN office, who will go unnamed (even though there is a 50% chance of you guessing which one it was) indicated that ISSNs for web blogs get you little but are a real headache, the good folk at CIPO will take 50 bucks on line for a one-time registration of Canadian personal web sites under the Copyright Act. While copyright is inherent in that it arises with the act of writing, registration provides proof of the fact of your writing as of the time registered. This still allows you to grant Creative Commons licenses at all that as they are licenses granted under copyright interest to your own works. Plus you are paying so can expect you are providing for the resources you are using.
Consider the lot of the poor ISSN registration worker. The ISSN has now registered over 755,000 serial titles worldwide and grows at an annual rate of about 50,000 new listings. As a reult, even though the Guardian recently pointed out that of the 4 million things called blogs, only 50,000 are updated daily, the scale of blogs to periodic serials is clearly daunting and, for two librarians kind enought to pick up the phone, overwhelming. Let them be, oh bloggers, let them be! Then lobby Paul Martin for more funding for the National Library.
News from Mars
Steve gave me a heads up by instant message and I spent two hours at the end of yesterday listening to the landing on Mars live from NASA. I tagged Mel, too. Here is the site for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Get some Tang and food in tubes and follow along.
The photo right is the rear view mirror shot or as NASA describes it
This image taken by the hazard avoidance camera on the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit shows the rover’s rear lander petal and, in the background, the Martian horizon. Spirit took the picture right after successfully landing on the surface of Mars.
I wish I came with a hazard avoidance camera.
To do Sunday…umm…now: Watch NASA Mars landing live on web.
Trip Stateside
Foggy view from the Thousand Islands Bridge, late afternoon
With freezing rain impeding our trip north to Hull, Quebec and the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit, we decided to go south instead and explore Jefferson County, New York. We checked out Sackets Harbor which was lovely but largely closed, saw the War of 1812 battlefield there, went to a Hannafords in Watertown to buy a stack of New York newspapers, look for goofy US food like B&M “Brown Bread in a Can” from Portland, Maine (home of so much goodness), treats now denied Canadians like Campbell’s Cream of Shrimp soup – not to mention the topic of our kids’ favorite ska tune, Mephiskapheles “Bumblebee Tuna”. I picked up a six of Lake Placid Brewery 46er IPA as well as Sackets Harbor 1812 Ale – the former is drinking better than the latter. We went to a Borders at the mall and the Red Lobster, a fast food place which has never seen my face before but which won me over with $6.99 broiled flounder. Both were a good surprise but the latter gave rise to a mystery which I humbly ask you to pursue sympathetic to the rather private circumstances of the moment…what is the dimple for? I am thinking an ash tray but do folk really do that?
Spam as Crime
I noticed this over at Will’s: Bill C-460, An Act to Amend the Criminal Code (Unsolicited Electronic Mail). Sure we all hate spam but this is too much:
- It is too late. Email is lost. Why criminalize activity in a medium which constitutes more than 50% of activity on the medium. You may as well outlaw cross-posting on Usenet.
- Is spamming really a crime? What gets to be crime? Not just bad things.
- The offenses are insane. Up to a quarter million dollars and/or two years for a first offence.
Have a look at a real data related Canadian criminal code provision, s. 181:
Every one who wilfully publishes a statement, tale or news that he knows is false and that causes or is likely to cause injury or mischief to a public interest is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years.
This section actually addresses the wrong – “that causes or is likely to cause injury or mischief to a public interest” – and caps the maximum imprisonment at two years. Under C-460 a second offence can get you five years and there is no requirement to do any harm. Maybe I have lived a charmed life but I in my seven years as a web nerd have never seen a “sexually explicit pop-up”. Do they exist? Apparently he is a commando in the fight to combat what he terms commercial “cyber wars” with crime control credentials.
Don’t worry. It is only a private member’s bill so has gone nowhere, it’s natural destiny. It was the efforts of Mel’s local MP, Dan McTeague, who apparently believes the annoying and vulgar should be criminalized. Most of my friends are annoying and vulgar. McTeague appears to be the only Liberal in Canada not to be a cabinet minister under either Chretien or Martin.