Arachnophilia

If you don't like spiders... then beware this link. Actually, you probably saw the illustration, screamed and shut the browser. Thanks to BoingBoing for the link.

Cool desktop pet type thing which you can feed and play with. Strangely enchanting as long as you aren't phobic.

Tunng

My brother pointed me towards a new band he's started listening to, called Tunng. You'll find them here and here and here... and their own website is here.

I've been unable to stop humming the song, and keep going back to play the youtube versions of Bullet. Hope you like it too.

National Portrait Gallery Copyright... the gift that keeps on taking...

I am currently engaged on collecting together materials for my Quaker meeting's 350th anniversary. As you can imagine, Quaker paintings for the 17th and 18th century are a bit thin on the ground, so I was delighted when I found a picture which is apparently in the National Portrait Gallery, of Benjamin West the celebrated painter, and his father, John West, who was an Uxbridge Quaker at the beginning of the 18th century.

I contacted the National Portrait Gallery to find out about the cost of having a print of the painting and also to ask about permission to reproduce in the leaflet that we will be producing. This is likely to have a short print run, and be handed out to a few people during our open days in September and October.

I really expected that they would tell me that as the artist died in 1814 and the painting was first published in 1779, there was no copyrght payable. Not so, however. Unlike the US where you are unable to claim copyright in a photograph which only includes a work which is out of copyright, the National Portrait Gallery would like to charge me the cost of a black and white print for the painting and then £25.10 including VAT for the coyright fee.

It is possible for me to go to the National Portrait Gallery and take pictures myself, but if I do, they claim copyright on my photographs too! As it outlines on their web page (my italics and emboldening):

Copyright and the National Portrait Gallery
As a National Gallery, we have a public duty, not only to display and conserve the works in our collection, but also to ensure that the works are correctly represented in reproductions and publications of these works. As a result of continuing research, from time to time, adjustments are made in the attributions of both artists and sitters for paintings. It is also extremely important that pictures are represented in their most recent state of restoration. There are, in many other cases, issues for the artists, sitters, donors or lenders of works in the collection, to which, as an institution, we have to be sensitive. For these reasons, we need to control very tightly the circumstances and quality of reproductions from the collection.

In order to do this, we have a very active picture library and licencing department, which loans transparencies for the purpose of reproduction. We also exert strict controls on all photography in the Gallery, which is allowed only on the understanding that copyright rests with the us and that any further reproduction deriving from the resulting photographic materials is subject to our written permission.

The National Portrait Gallery is a strong supporter of free entry - we do not think visitors should have to pay in order to see the collection. Those who may never be able to visit us can still enjoy and learn about the collection through the images published in books, magazines, on the television and the Internet. The Picture Library raises money by licensing such reproduction, which supports the 'free entry' policy and the Gallery's main functions in looking after its paintings, drawings, etchings and sculptures, and in teaching people about the works.

I have written to protest about this abuse of their position. It looks as though I may be able to obtain the images without copyright fee from American museums, and if I can, I shall.

I will await the National Portrait Gallery's response with interest.

Bosnian Pyramids

Looking at the age of this stuff, I am astonished that I haven't seen it before.

As usual, I came by the story in a roundabout way. I was searching for free stone textures or pictures of stone to make into textures. I found a picture of a huge round ball, which was apparently found in Bosnia after an earthquake. I was struck by how similar they were to the south American balls that no one has ever explained.

Then I saw an article about the finding of a pyramid in Bosnia... and saw the pictures of the mountain looking very even and man made. There's even an Indiana Jones-like archaeologist in charge of the excavatation.

Anyway... dig around and see what you think....ah...I should have checked it out with wikipedia... they disbelieve the pyramids... have seen nothing about the balls,

London Bodies

Happened across the exhibition in the Wellcome Institute on Euston Road in London about London bodies. Skeletons from two thousand years of the city's history lie laid out in glass cases, with tantalising notes beside them.

An elderly man with evidence of rickets in childhood and another bone bending disease in adulthood. A baby with smallpox. A prostitute with syphilis. A young woman with no obvious disease.

The light is low, the skeletons all look roughly the same at first glance, and only the careful and brief notes with them distinguish one from another. Then, a shock. William Wood, exhumed from his grave from the 19th century. How would I feel if one of my 19th century ancestors had been laid out in this way for all to see?

The Institute is of course a temple to science, and scientific methods. It looks at the human and sees only the flesh and the bones... the things which can be measured, touched, documented and studied. But the remains of human bodies, these skeletons... once they were people, and they loved and lost and lived and died... maybe it should make no difference whether they are a nameless man from a Cluniac monastery from six centuries ago or a beadle from the 19th century, but somehow... it seems disrespectful, wrong, to bring someone out of the grave after so short a time in it. How would I feel, similarly displayed, in 2170?

We looked at them with interest, tried to compare the teeth of the Romans who ground them down, and those of the 18th century Londoners... rotten. I wondered what sort of lives these people represented... mostly hard I guessed, with broken bones badly mended, and signs of vitamin deficiencies.

Mostly I felt uncomfortable in a world which ignores our deeply spiritual nature, which cannot be neatly filed away in a box, in favour of the material witness to our existence, numbered and stored away for future reference.

However, it's very interesting - more detail here.

Keith Barry TED Talk magic

Indebted to BoingBoing once again for a link to an interesting Ted talk... Keith Barry seems to be from the same school of magicianship as Derren Brown.

I just had to add it to my mysterious miscellany.

Communicating dishonesty

Clicked on a banner on BoingBoing this morning that purported to be about a marathon chat using the IM system, which apparently raises money for good causes while you chat on Windows Messenger or Windows Live.

There was a character called Parker...here's what he apparently says about himself:

who am I & why am I doing this

My name is Parker, and I’m just a guy with a computer and good intentions. A couple of months ago, I found out about the i’m Initiative.

It’s a Microsoft program that gives to a social cause every time you use Windows Live Messenger or Windows Live Hotmail. I saw an ad that said, “The more you talk, the more we give.” So I thought, if I get a bunch of people talking for 30 days, how much will they give?

I hope you join me. Thanks for checking out the Talkathon!

So I started looking around the page, and it didn't take much intelligence or diligence to find this message at the bottom of the page:
Disclaimer:

If you’re reading this, your BS detector is chirping like a smoke detector with a dicey 9-volt. As you’ve probably guessed, this blog is fictional, but the causes, and the i’m Initiative most certainly are not. The purpose of this blog is to raise awareness of the i’m Initiative and the worthy causes it helps. If we rubbed you the wrong way in the process that wasn’t our intention, so “sorry, our bad.” The alternate was something called an “e-mail blast.” But, believe us that’s not nearly as exciting as it sounds. A herd of well-compensated legal professionals in Redmond, Washington, says we also need you tell you something:

The Parker Whittle character depicted herein is fictitious and his activities are described for illustrative purposes only.

Rubbed me the wrong way in the process?? RUBBED ME THE WRONG WAY IN THE PROCESS??

YES you rubbed me the wrong way in the process. The marathon is supposed to be about communication - people talking to each other. How, pray, am I supposed to communicate with a fictional character? This initiative illustrates all that is wrong about old marketing and why it is going to be really bad for companies if they don't think more carefully about how they communicate with their customers. Pages of negative comments, interspersed with a few people who seem to have traded in their bullshit detector for an ass-licking course (and are they real, or undercover Microsoft employees desperate to put in some positive comments?).

Everything in the who am I and why am I doing this is a lie, fabrication, artificial. Why couldn't they have wheeled out the truth? Presented the marketing man or PR company employee who came up with the idea and pitched it to Microsoft? Or found someone who could sign up to the idea with their own name and personality intact? Of course, it is true that I am terribly suspicious of any person purporting to promote anything nowadays... but this just seems so tacky and so artificial it is really not just annoying but insulting.

Whoever came up with this, didn't think about the impact it would have on the sort of people who signed up to the IM campaign in the first place. People who hope they are contributing to something by signing up. Genuine and caring people... the last people any company should wish to annoy. It's only day 2 and they have already managed to diminish any respect I had for the company... which is at an all time low anyway, as I am struggling with problems caused by Windows Vista fighting with Second Life (vista is winning).

I'm wondering why the site blog has gone blank and what will appear there now.

Update: Even stranger... I have found a real person, maybe, maybe not, called Parker Whittle on myspace. It's beginning to mess with my head all this... is he and his myspace page real or not? If he IS real and not a figment of Microsoft's imagination, is he just being paid to do the Talkathon thing or will he see them in court? I think we should be told....

It seems likely they pulled the blog posts to be able to pull the comments which were pretty negative. I wonder if they will return when they fix up the posts? Any fule know that you don't pull posted posts unless desperate - or sober after an alcohol-fuelled ranting.