In his 1964 book Understanding Media: The Extensions Of Man, famed media scholar Marshall McLuhan wrote these words:

Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit from taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don’t really have any rights […]

The Peach Open Movie Project has released “Big Buck Bunny”, a very clever and well produced short CG animation created by the Blender animation community. Blender is an open source animation program that rivals many commercial pro-software offerings.

Big Buck Bunny from Blender Foundation on Vimeo.
Big Buck Bunny is impressive not just for the technical […]

So much for not blogging anymore today. Here’s two quick links to posts by Michael Geist:
Bell Hit With Quebec Class Action Over Throttling Practices
A class action lawsuit has been launched against Bel Canada for its admitted practice of throttling internet traffic:

The suit, which is seeking certification on behalf of all provincial subscribers, argues that […]

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My sister, Toni, sent this to me. Thank you, sweetie - that caught me at the right moment.
Today is starting off wonderful and will, no doubt, end up the same way. There will be grey in the middle of it. I’ve endured a lot of grey lately and I’m tired of it […]

Fred sent me this via Facebook and I just had to share.
I’ve loved Keaton’s work from back when I was a kid and through my own less than illustrious days as a clown and mime. His physical theatre is stunning and surreal and beautifully collected here with the mesmerizing sounds of Radiohead.
Enjoy and share.

Thanks, […]

Charlie Angus, the NDP member of parliament who is really good at poking Jim “Chickenshit” Prentice in the eye over the pending DMCA copyright bill and Bell Canada’s throttling of traffic, has introduced a private members bill seeking to ensure Net Neutrality as a right for Canadian citizens.

You can find all the details in posts […]

The Canadian government is secretly negotiating via the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) to revamp international copyright laws which could make the information on Canadian iPods, laptop computers or other personal electronic devices illegal and greatly increase the difficulty of travelling with such devices.
Michael Geist reports on this and you can find the leaked document in […]

Found this over on Gizmodo and thought it to be trés cool. It’s two German students at a centre for studies in artificial intelligence who have hacked the Wii balance board so they can literally surf through Google Earth and Second Life.
Just as Johnny Lee hacks the Wii to create cutting edge tech that […]

The current U.S. Presidential campaign is so ludicrously surreal as to make Vonnegut and H. S. Thompson seem as hard-core realists. I remember fondly this bald dumpy old fella with the personality of a sack of fertilizer who led a nation through military victory and subsequent cultural recovery. His parting words, alas, were […]

This post is apropos of nothing - absolutely nothing - to do with the copyfight, net neutrality, free speech, fucktards, politics, puppets or any of the other crap I tend to rant on about here in this pathetic excuse for a blog.
This post is just about crap - plain and simple.
Actually, it’s about a book […]

Cory Doctorow over at the ubiquitous BoingBoing leads the way to a Michael Geist post where we find 10 Questions For Industry Minister Prentice.
These are great and pointed questions crafted by Professor Geist that poke massive holes in the lie of copyright reform the Harper government is trying to quickly and slickly pass into Canadian […]

Michael Geist posted on Bell Canada launching a new video on-demand service and points out his own prescience from earlier in the year how Bell’s practice of throttling traffic would collide with their aspirations to serve video.

The major ISPs claim that throttling is needed to ensure better quality of service to all customers, yet it […]

Weezer has posted a video on YouTube for their new song “Pork and Beans” - and it features a vast array of internet “stars” - including having the bdan playing in the midst of a Coke + Mentos deluge.
Brilliant stuff.

I think Weezer has consistently held their thumb on the pulse of current culture. Can’t […]

Just reading that headline makes me laugh.
I posted a while ago in this pathetic excuse for a blog about how I thought the Wachowski sibling’s latest film “Speed Racer” was going to mark a new era in cinema. At that time, and certainly since with the dismal box office performance of the film, I […]

Industry Minister Jim “Chickenshit” Prentice is set to re-introduce the Canadian DMCA bill which caused such a deserved fuss the last time he proferred that turd before parliament.

While Prentice continues to claim that he is actively working on a bill that meets the needs of creators and consumers, the talk in Ottawa is that the […]