notebook

The group won’t be bearing the cost of its sudden popularity; that is being taken care of by companies like Google. Its music videos are streamed by Google-owned YouTube, and most of the discussion about it happens on Facebook and Twitter or third-party blogs and news websites. Its own server is hosted in the USA, the land of milk and honey and bandwidth so cheap it’s nearly free. Its demo CDs are created on a home computer at a price that can be measured in cents per unit, and even its very slick and highly stylised videos were made for next to nothing.

According to Anand, the idea was first conceived by an Indian physics professor at the University of Maryland, who, in his travels around India, realized how widespread bribery was and wanted to do something about it. He came up with the idea of printing zero-denomination notes and handing them out to officials whenever he was asked for kickbacks as a way to show his resistance. Anand took this idea further: to print them en masse, widely publicize them, and give them out to the Indian people. He thought these notes would be a way to get people to show their disapproval of public service delivery dependent on bribes. The notes did just that. The first batch of 25,000 notes were met with such demand that 5th Pillar has ended up distributing one million zero-rupee notes to date since it began this initiative. Along the way, the organization has collected many stories from people using them to successfully resist engaging in bribery.

Die Antwoord

Astoria Scum River Bridge

The unauthorized bridge is a gift to the pedestrians of Astoria in the absence of successful municipal efforts to ameliorate the problem.

The bridge was made at zero cost entirely from recycled materials: an old work bench found on the curb, rescued screws from a disassembled desk, and a metal plate from an expired electrical component.

Cooking Grill No. 1

Naoko Ito

Ubiquitous
2009
Jar, tree
35 x 70 x 50”

So, for now, here’s the bottom line: EMI won’t let us let you embed our YouTube videos. It’s a decision that bums us out. We’ve argued with them a lot about it, but we also understand why they’re doing it. They’re aware that their rules make it harder for people to watch and share our videos, but, while our duty is to our music and our fans, theirs is to their shareholders, and they believe they’re doing the right thing. http://okgo.forumsunlimited.com/index.php?showtopic=4169

» Missed connections

» A how-to site for community journalism.

http://www.viddler.com/explore/marsdd/videos/68/

» Why Culture Isn’t Free - Andrew Keen

“

There are some societies today completely untroubled by moguls, like,
say, Sweden. You look at all the statistics that technocrats use to
determine where people are doing just great, where society is thriving,
and Sweden’s been in the top five percentile for decades. Sweden does
everything perfectly from a technocratic policy perspective, Sweden’s
like Oz, apparently.

And then you ask Swedes about their future and so forth, and they’re
like: “Bring the razor and the bathtub! When can I die?” There are
penniless, vitamin-deprived guys in the Dharavi slums of Mumbai who are
upbeat and perky compared to Swedes.

— http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/373/Bruce-Sterling-State-of-the-Worl-page01.html

Can we have the Gulf stream back now please?