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I have discovered the kind of house I would like to live in. Small,
green, contemporary and completely prefabricated in a California
factory and shipped to location. Steel frame "house modules" 12 x up
to 57 feet that you can arrange with a good amount of freedom. Then surround it with "deck modules." Sounds a bit geeky but shoot it looks great. Throw in a bunch of solar panels and radiant heating then drop it on the edge of the woods and I'll be set. And I'll finally get the L.E.E.D. certification that I've been dreaming about. Then I'll drive to work in my Tesla wearing a suit made of wheat. This here is a house occupied by Mr. Marmol himself. Using four house modules and six deck modules, this prototype takes full advantage of the desert sun by getting all its power needs met via solar panel (or so the website claims). It is a bit pricey though. Happy new year everybody.
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|  NYTimes
OPINION | November 29, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor: Penny Foolish
By ERIC SCHLOSSER
Burger King refuses to pay an extra penny for tomatoes and
provide a decent wage to migrant workers.
"THE migrant farm workers who harvest tomatoes in South Florida have one of
the nation’s most backbreaking jobs. For 10 to 12 hours a day, they pick
tomatoes by hand, earning a piece-rate of about 45 cents for every 32-pound
bucket. During a typical day each migrant picks, carries and unloads two tons of
tomatoes. For their efforts, this holiday season many of them are about to get a
40 percent pay cut."
Merry Christmas. Not that I eat at Burger King anyway but now I can feel
more righteous about not doing so. A consumer boycott back in the 70s got Taco Bell to add that extra penny. Who knows, maybe this will work too.
In other news, I continue to be a humongous fan of Google:
As part of a project announced Tuesday, the Internet
search leader and its philanthropic arm will pour hundreds of millions of
dollars into a quest to lower the cost of producing electricity from renewable
energy sources such as wind and the sun. If Google realizes its goal,
the cost of solar power should fall by 25 to 50 percent, co-founder Larry Page
said in an interview. The Mountain View-based company initially hopes
to harvest cleaner-burning electricity to meet its own needs and sell power to
other users or license the technology that emerges from its initiative, dubbed
"Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal."
"If we achieve these goals, we are going to be in the
(electricity) business in a very big way," Page said. "We should be able to make
a lot of money from this." I hope they do make a ton of money, what step in the right direction. I had no idea Google had a "philanthropic arm:" Google.org
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| I have just become a fan of Radiohead. As you may have heard, yesterday they released their seventh album "In Rainbows." But they made it only available for download over the internet. And if that wasn't revolutionary enough, they decided to allow the consumers pay whatever they thought was a fair price. Whatever price you choose to pay, which does include the price of $0, err I mean £0. What an amazing idea.
How in the world would their record label tolerate such craziness? Well the thing is, they are currently don't have one. They started work on "In Rainbows" after their old 6-album contract with EMI expired in 2004.
 "For the first time, we have no contract or release deadline to fulfill — it's both liberating and terrifying." It makes you wonder, why should any well-established band even deal with record companies? Perhaps this is what they were thinking. I really hope that this album really takes off and becomes incredibly successful. And hopefully this willl inspire other musicians to do the same. I just bought the album for £1 and am listening through it now. I like it, more than I thought I would. Don't blame me, I gave up on Radiohead after my first and only exposure to them during the 90s with "Creep." Since then, I've heard friends and critics rave about them. But I never bothered to give them another try until now. And maybe that fact alone exposes a certain genius behind the plan. The 10 song album download is ~50MB. The songs are not bad quality 160kbps and DRM-free. This song "Reckoner" is pretty good. "With a band like Radiohead, it's not always wise to trust the first impression. I've heard In Rainbows only a handful of times. That's not enough time to decide whether it's a masterpiece or a holding pattern for this band, or something in between. But it is enough to know this much: There's some astounding music here." I wonder what the RIAA thinks of all this.
RIAA Hits a Sour Note With Its File-Sharing Witch Hunt. I love this article. RIAA's most recent activity involves suing a single mother of two $222,000 in damages for sharing a couple dozen songs on the internet. This is their first lawsuit among 26,000 since 2003 to reach trial. "Here's an industry so bloated with executives and middlemen, all of them greedily slurping up profit like bluepoint oysters, that the people who actually write the songs and play the music -- the "talent" -- are getting royally screwed in the royalty department. It's been like that for years. The Dylans and the Stones of the world might be able to rise above it and name their price, but for the rank and file it's "Dance to our tune, or go back and rot in that crummy little club." The usurious nature of the business is the main reason that the average CD, which at most costs a couple of bucks to produce, routinely sells for upwards of $20. Sometimes the songwriter makes out all right (forget about the singer or the musicians), but licensing and contracts have been sufficiently rigged by the boys in legal to ensure that the lion's share of the carcass goes to people who have absolutely nothing to do with the actual music."
 "Of course, Radiohead isn't the first to try to bypass the traditional record company release. In July, Prince gave away 2.5 million copies of his latest album. The CDs were slipped into Sunday papers in Great Britain.
"The strategy is this: most artists don't make money from their recordings," explains Aram Sinnreich, a media professor at New York University. "Artists view recordings as a form of marketing to bring people into concerts. When Prince decided to distribute CDs for free through the paper in UK, he was essentially throwing his hands in air and saying, "I don't hope to make money on recording again. But I hope to get royalties from radio and concerts. Actually, I can probably make more fans this way." Sinnreich says some complained that Prince's move devalued music, that it implied his songs were worth no more than the advertisements stuffed in the newspaper alongside it.
"Radiohead is saying their recorded music does have some market value," says Sinnreich. "They're also placing a trust in their fans that was not implicit in Prince's move." Sinnreich says that while their approaches may be different, both Prince and Radiohead are really sending out the same message -- that the old-school record industry doesn't work any more."
This may the beginning of a trend, I hope. hmmm, I sure did do a lot quoting in this post. Usually I lose interest when I see this much text, oh well. Radiohead says, "hope you are enjoying listening to the download of In Rainbows. its a relief to us all that finally its out there. its been a mad couple of weeks.. as i'm sure you can imagine..."
Now go download that album already. 
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Well I think that's all the growth I'll be getting out of them this year. These Asian pears seem to have sensed the days getting chillier and are refusing to sprout any more new leaves. When the existing leaves fall, they'll be moving to garage where they'll stay for the winter. I sure hope they survive until spring, what a shame it would be otherwise after coming all this way. My "days old" calculator.
  
In other news, I am advertising for Amazon's mp3 store. All the songs are:
- 89-99 cents
- DRM-free
- 256 kbps!
I've been irritated that for the longest time iTunes only offered 128kbps songs. So when Apple started with their higher quality DRM-free stuff, I was pretty happy. That is, until I discovered that the price was increased to $1.29/song. But even so, I figured that this was a step in the right direction and thought the price hike was worth it. But NOW, Amazon comes out with even cheaper quality music? For the first time, I may turn loyalty away from the mighty Apple, Inc. Just thought I would let everyone know. Amazon still does not have the billions of songs available on iTunes but I'm a patient man. And yes, I have convinced myself that I can tell the difference between 128 and 256kbps. Please don't ask me to prove it though. I'm surprised that the digital music business has done so well even though it's terribly easy to download whatever you like for free off BitTorrent or Limewire. Music is such a great gift and worth paying for. Is my music collection 100% legal? nope not really, my "preview"songs off Limewire are still there but I'm working on fixing that. Feel guilty with me and do something about it. Listen with a clean conscience.
Song o'the week is "I'm Not Who I Was" by Brandon Heath. It's one of the better songs I've heard in a while. Another good one is "Baba O'Riley" by the Who. I didn't really start liking this song until I watched the "Control" episode (ending scene) of "House," first season. I recently got hooked on that series and now have to stay away from the library or I'll end up checking out both seasons on DVD thereby dropping productivity to nil.
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