October 10, 2007
Liars! All of them. It saves lives. Suren will agree with me. Many a time, his sorry ass has been saved by a bottle of vodka. Why, this one time he nearly died of ethylene glycol poisoning and he had to self-administer shots of vodka every half an hour. Poor chap. Fortunately, it is a very good antidote and saved his life. How many people in his position have died because they have too strong a moral stance? How many religious nutcases have destroyed a suicidal man’s life by proscribing vodka? When will we learn the beauty of this lovely liquid, something that one in three Russian men can already see?
Posted by roshan.george under Musings, Random | Comments (6)
October 10, 2007
Dave Peters of Throwdown on P2P music file-sharing
I have a hard time seeing it as stealing…when I don’t see any money from cd sales to begin with.
Throwdown asks you to steal their album, so that you can bury the label. Dave Peters also slammed his record label because he had to tour for 9 months a year just so that he could make ends meet. I don’t know what “make ends meet” means for this guy, but if he says download, then I’m not saying nothing. After all, it’s the artists that count.
So here you go: A bunch of torrents and Their latest album. Too bad they’re awful!
Posted by roshan.george under Internet | Comments (2)
October 7, 2007
Every now and then you come across a little bit of information from our past, some titbit that reminds that all those people fighting in all those wars are human too. It is unlikely that each one of those soldiers has some real reason to hate the man on the other side. It’s like all those stories about cock-fights, except here the roosters are these soldiers.
It’s inevitable that at some time these people will realise that they have a lot in common and see each other as just other people to spend an afternoon with. This is what happened on Christmas Day in 1914 in the famous Christmas Truce when informal truces were declared across much of the Western Front and soldiers from the the two sides sang carols together, ate together and played a game of football (3-2 in favour of the Germans :) ). They didn’t let the truce go to crap either:
The Germans then asked the British to join in [their singing]. At this point, one very mean-spirited Tommy shouted: ‘We’d rather die than sing German.’ To which a German joked aloud: ‘It would kill us if you did’.
This wasn’t just an isolated incident either. Groups of soldiers on both sides would frequently arrange for their mortars and artillery to fire at specific places at specific times so that they would completely miss the ‘enemy’. Some such arrangements were reached soon after a particularly bloody skirmish.
Some people claim that this was the last instance when soldiers adhered to the principle of “Respect For The Enemy” or some such thing. I just think it shows how pointless their wars were, they had more in common with their ‘enemies’ than with those who commanded them. I don’t think that has changed.
References:
Posted by roshan.george under Musings, War | Comments (7)
October 1, 2007
In Rainbows can be downloaded off their site for just as much as you’re willing to pay. There you go, you’ve complained for ages about how things are too expensive for you to pay for. You’ve rationalised your piracy by claiming that art should be able to reach even those who can’t “afford” it. You’ve spoken at length on how you’d pay for an album if it were a 100 rupees. Well, go on then. If you like Radiohead, put your money where your mouth is. Show them how much you think their music is worth.
Of course, if you’re one of those cheapskates who can’t put $2 in, don’t download the album. No need to waste their bandwidth.
Posted by roshan.george under Art, Internet | Comments (5)
