The Red-tailed Hawk is one of the most common birds of prey in this part of North America. It’s a most beautiful animal, whilst also being a seriously impressive hunter. We regularly see these guys slowly gliding in circles, high above most of the “common” birds, or perched high by the side of motorways. In either location they clearly scare the local avian population.

Recently, The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia has been lucky enough to have a nest of Hawks established by one of its windows. Being a bunch of clever and righteous dudes, the museum not only managed to get a carpenter to improve the stability of the nest, but they also created a 24/7 Hawkcam that provides a wonderful window into the lives of baby Hawks. The best bit is that the eggs haven’t hatched yet so if you keep your wits about you, you may get to watch them fledge!

Some dedicated readers of this blog will know I published a potentially amusing YouTube video the other day. It would seem that YouTube have kowtowed to the increasingly bewildered music industry and included some sort of audio fingerprinting technology into their upload process. In particular their cutting-edge technology accused me of using Michael Jackson’s “Ain’t no sunshine” in the video. Now, I didn’t even know that Mick had recorded a version of this song. But even with that knowledge I would never consider playing it let alone using it in a video. Nonetheless my dispute was rejected and YouTube told me they had banned the video from the entire civilised world as a result. Firstly, I have indeed used copyright material for the audio of this film, but for the purposes of stupid comedy for the easily amused. Also, I used less than 30 seconds of each song. That is fair use. And I don’t care whether some lawyer or other agrees with me, because it clearly fucking is. Watch it! It’s not damaging anyone’s intellectual rights. If you want to have a conference-call/seance with Marvin Gaye, Shabba Ranks and Barry White then I’d be only to happy to be included.
Secondly, the ban seems not to be working from the US at least, yet the thieving fucktards have placed links under the video offering to sell punters copies of the Michael Jackson song that isn’t even in the video!
I sent a complaint to them, together with a suggestion of where they could licence a better audio fingerprinting system 🙂 but they haven’t responded as yet. The fact that the video is still live makes me wonder if they understand the ridiculousness of the situation and are just letting it lie…if so, thanks guys.

What is the difference between the international banking system and a Ponzi scheme ? This is a serious, non-rhetorical question to which I’d really like an answer. The more I think about it, the only difference seems to be the exact nature of the con, and the honesty of the people running it.
If the owner of the bank/Ponzi is truly honest they’ll admit, to themselves at least, that it can’t work in the long run, and acknowledge it’s just a con. This is when it becomes a Ponzi.
Cowardly, stupid, or dishonest people will just continue to work at increasing the scale of the scheme without thinking about the obvious consequences and the inevitability of collapse. These are the bankers.

Seriously, I can’t think of any other differences. They work in the same way:

• Firstly they encourage a chunk of investment by producing glossy brochures claiming to be able to increase the value of your investments using some financial magic.
• Banks then use this money to invest in debts. They offer massive loans to people, in return for massive amounts of interest. Even though they may never get this money back, it is accounted for as a profit. Ponzi schemes don’t bother with the debt selling bit, they just declare the profits. This is actually better for investors because it saves a lot of overhead on selling and administering the loans.
• Investors receive statements showing how much their money has grown. Everyone’s happy!

In both systems, the numbers on the statements are fictitious. If all investors attempted to withdraw their money, the scheme collapses as the money isn’t there! It’s a con!
All of this stuff about “toxic assets” is a red-herring; they’re all toxic assets. Neither scheme can support itself when everyone is permanently in debt.

Bernard Made-off obviously had enough integrity not to ask for a government hand-out, and instead owned-up. So we should give him a lot more respect than anyone in AIG, Citi or RBS.

As usual, Tom Tomorrow explains it far more clearly.

Sometimes you have to have some time off work to get your head together. I’ve taken a couple of days to calm down, do some reading, engage in some quality family time and generally relax. Two days is all I took but I’m already enjoying it. Some stuff:

• Our first home-made porn film
• An update to our little video rant against anti-pedestrianism (scrub through to 2 minutes in if you saw the previous one) [Update – ack! fixed the broken link]
• London begins curfews in preparation for Norsefire
• Awesome 303 emulator on the iPhone

First, here is Nick Cohen’s latest rant against the left.

Compare that to the response by Sunder Katawala who, unlike Nick Cohen, seems to have some facts to hand.

Now reappraise my assertion that Nick Cohen is a deluded, over-privileged, wanker.

Night night.

So the argument is that the bonuses were a legal obligation made before the bail-out. Apart from that being obvious bullshit, there is a simple solution to this problem that will avoid the legal quagmire:

Simply ask for the money back, and then publish the names and home-addresses of those that decline! You could print them in newspapers, or on huge billboards, together with driving directions, gun adverts and bomb making instructions.

The “talent” will swiftly and willingly comply.

Busy busy busy, and no time to get brain-air for something interesting to say. So here is a list of stuff…helps jog my memory if nothing else:

• Voice-over classes are most enjoyable – I can now confidently sell posh cat-food, and “Macho-man” Iron pills…if anyone would want me to.
• Audio watermarks are becoming more interesting by the day.
• John Stewart proves that despite hosting a comedy show, on a comedy network, he is one of the, pathetically few, serious journalists left in the US [watch all three parts].
• Red-tailed hawks nesting at the Franklin Institute.
• Here’s a tiny, really rough teaser of the film we’re making about anti-pedestrian attitudes in America.
• The Criterion Collection version of The Thief of Baghdad.
• Michele’s Amazing Enchiladas!

From now on, as well as the usual cobblers that make up this blog, every week I’m going to try and nominate a bird for the “Bird of the Week” and this week is the beautiful Red-winged Blackbird.

We first became aware of this beautiful little guy last year during our drive to work. We noticed a bunch of odd little birds flying across the road at the same point of our journey every day, but flying in a most peculiar way; rather than just flying in a straight line they give a little burst of wing flapping, which caused them to gain altitude, followed by a short glide, during which they drop again. It gives them a sort of sawtooth flight pattern. On a few occasions they flew close enough for us to notice that they had red go-faster stripes on them.

Once we’d managed to identify these lovely little guys, we noticed from the pictures that rather than go-faster stripes, the red markings are actually more like the epaulettes of some dodgy military dictator – right down to the gold trim.

Over the winter we haven’t seen them at all and were beginning to wonder whether we’d imagined them…until last week.

Waiting over the road from my office, at the bush that designates the bus-stop, I noticed a swarm of odd little birds. They flew past me into the distance and then, two minutes later they appeared behind me and flew past again – all the time in a peculiar sawtooth flight pattern. This went on for about ten minutes before I realised…the red-wings are back! Now that the temperature is rising, they’ve come back to make babies and hang out in Philly!

Now, I know I do bang on about the depressing, soulless, pit of malfeasance that is King Of Prussia a great deal, but it’s so difficult to paint an accurate picture. Fortunately, the job has now been made easier by the geniuses at Google who created Street View; now you can take a virtual tour of the area where I spend most of my weekdays.
In fact, I’ve become so obsessed with the anti-pedestrian sentiment of the entire area that this Saturday we’re going there to make a film about it.

More details later.

Last week it snowed. Heavily. This week is warm and springy. The robins and red-winged blackbirds are back.

American news media doesn’t really cover many stories that aren’t directly related to America or Americans. So ever since Obama was elected all we’ve heard on the mainstream media is a perpetual discussion of what he said today, conjecture about the implications, random predictions of how it will pan out, and how the Republicans reacted. Obviously the Murdoch organs are emphasizing that last point more than anything else, but what do you expect from media run by Beelzebub himself. But it’s clear that the twitching, wrinkled, mephitic remains of his revolting earthly manifestation are getting desperate. A Monkey ? Really Rupert. Face it, you lost this time. Now just pop off and die in a fire would you ?

The bewildered Republicans have been throwing their toys out of the pram since Obama decided to spend a load of government money on the poor majority, to the almost negligible cost of the rich minority. The only thing I don’t understand is why anyone would object to reducing tax breaks from the very rich to pay for healthcare. How can anyone possibly think that is anything but straightforward common sense ?

The top end of the economy is fucked. Over here that means that the poor are in serious trouble. Not the bankers who are directly responsible, but the poor. No bonuses for them, just the dole queue. And not like the British dole queue, because this one is fatal. If you get ill, you could easily die, because you can’t go to to the doctor. Healthcare is really, really, really, seriously expensive. If it wasn’t so expensive then Blue Cross couldn’t possibly afford to have their logo on top of the tallest, shiniest, pointiest, most phallic skyscraper in Philadelphia.

So the idea of these massive, wasteful, cash-cow health insurance companies being threatened by the spectre of public heathcare worries Republicans. Even the poor ones.

You see Republicans here all suffer from severe mental illness. They will fight to the death to remove their own rights, pay more for it, and die in the process; all in the name of Freedom(tm), Liberty(R) and Democracy(C). Of course in reality they don’t know what freedom means, and if they did they’d hate it. They want to be told the right thing to do by an avuncular leader who will banish crime from the streets (by simply recruiting violent thugs to join the law enforcement agencies), and pay for what they use to Free(tm), non-governmental, private companies – all of which are owned and run by the same people who run the government.

But I’m alright Jack! My first iPhone app got put out to the app store today and it even got a good review!