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Critical
Commons vs. Hitler: resource for free/open media and fair use
Critical Commons has created its own entry in the great Hitler in the
bunker remix meme. Steve Anderson sez, "The video is also promoting the fair
use advocacy site Critical Commons, which is a fair use advocacy and media
sharing site, funded by the MacArthur Foundation. This is currently the most
radical media-sharing site on the open internet. Designed for media
educators and students, Critical Commons makes high-quality, copyrighted
media publicly available by placing it in a critical context and informing
users about their rights under fair use."
Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude via the cupboard under the
stairs on 1/21/10
Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano
Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him
to Europa, Jupiter’s moon, to discover ice.
At that time Macondo was a small planet of twenty low impact aluminum
houses, built on the bank of a dry canal full of stones polished by an
ancient ocean that now lie white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs.
This planet was so recent, terraformed only a couple years ago, that
many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was
necessary to point. Every year during the month of March a family of
ragged aliens would set up their tents near the village, and with a
great uproar of pipes and kettledrums, that was how their language
sounded to us, they would display new inventions, older than the ages
for them, but new and wonderful for us. First they brought the magnet.
A heavy alien with an untamed hair, two heads, and sparrow hands, who
introduced himself as Melquíades, put on a bold public demonstration of
what he himself called the eighth wonder of the learned alchemists of
their home planet, unknown to humans and far beyond betelgeuse. He went
from house to house dragging two metal ingots and everybody was amazed
to see pots, pans, tongs, and braziers tumble down from their places
and beams creak from the desperation of nails and screws trying to
emerge, and even objects that had been lost for a long time appeared
from where they had been searched for most and went dragging along in
turbulent confusion behind Melquíades’ magical irons. “Things have a
life of their own,” the gypsy proclaimed with a harsh accent. “It’s
simply a matter of waking up their souls.”
José Arcadio Buendía, whose unbridled imagination always went beyond
the genius of nature and even beyond miracles and magic, thought that
it would be possible to make use of that useless invention to extract
mineral from the bowels of this new land, valuable for the federeation,
and according to him unknown back at earth. Melquíades, who was an
honest being, warned him: “It won’t work for that.” But José Arcadio
Buendía at that time did not believe in the honesty of aliens, so he
traded his mule and a pair of goats, for the two magnetized ingots.
Úrsula Iguarán, his wife, who knew that those animals where given to us
for the colonization of the planet, was unable to dissuade him. “Very
soon we’ll have minerals enough to move to a city in the central
planets,” her husband replied. For several months he worked hard to
demonstrate the truth of his idea. He explored every inch of the
region, even the dry canals, dragging the two iron ingots along and
reciting Melquíades’ incantation aloud. The only thing he succeeded in
doing was to unearth a suit of armor from an ancient race with several
arms, which had all of its pieces soldered together with rust and
inside of which there was the hollow resonance of an enormous
stone-filled gourd. When José Arcadio Buendía and the four men of his
expedition managed to take the armor apart, they found inside a
calcified alien skeleton, strange and astonishing, with a copper locket
containing a human woman’s hair around its neck.
-SF recast of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude
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Ms. Curtis
2. Still in literature, I never appreciated Hemingway until I read A Moveable Feast. That led me to read a bit of F. Scott’s. I couldn’t help but feel Hemingway and F. Scott were sharing something truly gay (this was before I checked online) while Zelda could only go crazy and ballistic. They’re dead so…
3. I don’t claim to know Salinger’s works like the back of my hand. Give me a break. I use the nick to get him out of hiding before he dies.
4. I only started reading The Hardy Boys when I was in high school already. I wanted them to be my best friends. That’s when I knew…chuckle, snort, snort…
5. When I was in first year high school, a senior named Israel took an interest in me. Suddenly everyone thought and was curious if he was my boyfriend. We used to talk on the phone for hours about nothing of importance, and he wanted to be in our field trip bus instead of their class’s but he wasn’t permitted. That gave me a glimpse of what it was like, but we never were. I didn’t even find out what he wanted from me. Then I came out to whoever asked. I came out in other, crazier ways too…
6. Consider performing impromptu a Spice Girls song in front of an audience during a lull at a press conference. It was well received.
7. I was destined to be a geek but don’t know how to do the dirty bits properly: can’t do calculus (probably can, but too lazy to review), can’t program (probably can, I used to when I was elevenish but I never mastered any language and by the time I was in college, I got distracted, bored, lazy).
8. I firmly believe in only a few things: I could be wrong most of the time, nothing is impossible. Let’s hope I’m right this time.
9. I got stuck here.
10. I’ll be 27 in May, despite the lack of evidence and my admission.
11. I’ve been in the labor force since I was 20. That’s when I dropped out of college.
12. Speaking of unfinished business…I still haven’t returned my ex’s books. They’re in the shelf, actually..now if I can only find Calvin and Hobbes.
13. Unfinished business still…when I was a child I wanted to build my own RC fleet: boats, cars and trucks, planes, tanks, blimps. But the neighborhood kids wanted to play Chinese garter.
14. To control what changes you make that get published on Facebook, go to Settings, Privacy, News Feeds and Wall. I was able to change my relationship status without the whole world knowing. The recent one was a mistake. I mean, it was a Facebook bug, I wasn’t really “in a relationship”. So, yes, I am still single.
15. ^KC, ^KV, ^KS, etc. I was amazed with WordStar cir. 1994, hypnotized by the almost infinite blue field, wondered what was on the other side. MS Word came along…
16. My recurring dreams are about earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, alien invasion, and flying (usually to escape the enemy, it’s more efficient and effective than running, dammit the flight control!)
17. Will probably go to hell, by popular standards, if this isn’t it already.
18. Having an unhappy childhood doesn’t make me want to do crazy/cruel things. I just want to punch someone from time to time.
19. I find it hard to explain what I do for a living, so I just say Research and Consulting. If I need to explain further, I say Business Research, Competitive Intelligence. If that confuses them further, I say, companies hire us to research on their competitors, markets, industry. Then they say, ah! like ACNielsen! Or, a call center? But here’s the definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive
20. I will not forget what they did to Alan Turing. And Oscar Wilde, among others.
21. According to last.fm, my most listened to artists are Jason Mraz, Mariah Carey, and Michael Buble (?). Something is wrong.
22. I’m 30% done with the whole Discworld Series.
23. I am grateful to the Ateneo Glee Club for teaching me how to sing bel canto.
24. I look forward to the perfection of cloning, nanotechnology, quantum computing, and the art of intellectual orgy.
25. It took me a day to finish this.
- Music:Cross My Heart - EBTG
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