bonglonglong

We were happy passengers on the fabulous Unicorn Chaser.  The entertainment system, which runs under Linux, worked fairly well.  It had the usual assortment of free games that come with any GNU/Linux system, Creative Commons licensed videos, and unsurprisingly, some fun problems involving video overlay colors.  But really, should anything on an airplane be "beta"?

 

 

As always, Lawrence Lessig is better at explaining my views on copyright and art than I am. It's a 19 minute video, but I couldn't recommend it more. If you are working in art at all, please, PLEASE watch it. You might thing that copyright law is boring, or that it's obvious that you want to hoard and protect your work zealously so you can make more money... but please give this a watch.

Kelley sent me a youtube video of a girl who is deathly afraid of pickles

Bela Fleck is currently touring China with three other muscians under the name of Sparrow Quartet. An English language blog about China called Danwei recently did an interview with the group. The video shows the quartet jaming with two members of a Tibeten band. Bela Fleck gives up the banjo for a brief moment to try his hand at a traditional Tibetan instrument. The quartet was sponsored by a cultural program to do a tour of Tibet. This apparently is the first cultural exchange from a foreign country into Tibet. They also discuss how some of the folk songs that both bands play are very similar. We're not so different after all.

Now I'm not one of those people with the "Free Tibet" stickers everywhere. I do think that the traditional Tibetan culture is being threatened and the Tibetan culture is changing. Whether this is due to the Chinese government's "invasion" or the recent tourist "invasion" that is unclear. I have read that the residential population in Lhasa is only 30% Tibetan. There are diverse view from within Tibet as to whether this change is for the better. On the one hand you loose some of the tradition herding nomadic life style, on the other we now get to read blogs from and about Tibetan life. Yes, Tibet should be free, free to choose.