I saw a concert by Pink Martini in Seattle with the crew. It was a good concert, though I think that one of the other bands that was opening for them stole the show. They had this Samba band that was just fabulous. Samba music is so .. spontaneous and has this awesome rhythm - it was fantastic. Not to mention some ridiculously scantily clad girls wiggling their butts at the audience. I think I really like spontaneous music - when musicians / bands make music rather than play music. Improv vs. not. As part of their encore, Pink Martini played "Brazil" along with the samba band. Awesome stuff. All in all, $20 well spent.
Let me start out by saying that I'm not a Howard Stern fan. I don't listen to his show. I've heard it at times and I find the humour repetitive. There is only so many times you can talk about anal sex without grossing people out. The FCC recently fined Clear Channel Communications, which carries Stern's show, about half a million dollars in indecency fines. In the words of the FCC (pdf), "[the program materials] included repeated, graphic and explicit sexual descriptions that were pandering, titillating or used to shock the audience"
Being the engineer that I am, the first question that pops into mind is "what are these indecency rules, who defines them and how strictly are they enforced?". So I pop over to the FCC site, search for indecency and reach the obscenity FAQ. A quick perusal shows that broadcast obscenity is not protected by first amendment and is a direct violation of the law. The rules for obscenity are pretty strict and it would be hard for material other than straight out hard porn to fall under this category. The indecency regulation is a lot more interesting. From the FCC website: The FCC has defined broadcast indecency as "language or material that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community broadcast standards for the broadcast medium, sexual or excretory organs or activities." . As measured by "contemporary community broadcast standards": ie FCC's discretion. What a piece of crock! So the FCC decides what America does and does not consider indecent.
What troubles me most about this is that the FCC can now decide, based on this heavy fining precedent, about what is permissible for the "general public". Nudity and sexual behaviour is often used as an art form - would the FCC ban this as well? Can the FCC control what people access through the internet? Blogs for example? Maybe all it takes is for a site to post something that the FCC terms offensive and *bam* you (or your ISP) get slammed with a hefty fine.
I'm not sure how to protest this - Howard Stern's people are protesting by flooding FCC with complaints about alleged infractions in other shows (Oprah being the big one). I don't see this as doing any good. Worst case, the FCC will just stamp down on those shows itself, set more stringent guidelines and throw the First Amendment out of the window. I'm hoping that someone sues the FCC for this fine - preferably people at the EFF or some other organization of that sort.
My precious old Acura is up for sale. The sale of this car will hammer home the end of grad school. Sigh. I guess all good things must come to an end.
Kristin has a unique website rating system: she rates a site by its reflection of its author's age. Thus, her own site is rated at a 13 (looks like it was made by a 13 year old) while my site is rated as geriatric (or infinity). Un-acceptable. So I got around to hacking the CSS a bit. Good composers borrow, great composers steal. Stravinksy, apparently. (Am I blowing my own horn, again?) Got around to stealing major chunks of CSS from Anne Galloway's site. I have a draft version of the new site up - have a look and send me your comments!
PS: The new site has a Kristin Rating&trade of 29.884. She offered to bring it down to the ideal 24 if I was willing to put a goofy picture of myself up there. The matter has not been resolved yet.