Sometimes, I am less than sympathetic to anti-copyright campaigners

Boing Boing has a story - Youtube nukes 7 hours' worth of science symposium audio due to background music during lunch break.

a) Who puts up a 7 hour video unedited? Complete with the lunch break?
b) Yes, that music is owned by someone (probably several someones). Feel free to lobby for the law to change, but you don't get to use someone else's recent music without their permission. I think copyright overreaches a lot, and would limit it severely, but "I put someone else's recently-made music in my video" is definitely something copyright should cover.
c) For God's sake, edit the lunch-break out of the video and put it back up. And while you're at it, chop it into sensible chunks and put them up as separate videos - how hard can that be???

Interesting Links for 26-11-2014

• It’s Incredibly Rare For A Grand Jury To Do What Ferguson’s Just Did
  (tags: law usa )
• When Does a Consciousness Test Not Test for Consciousness?
  (tags: consciousness psychology pigeons )
• FactCheck: how many black Americans are killed by the police?
  (tags: race police USA )
• Advice columnist responds to search terms. Some great ones in there.
  (tags: advice search )
• 2015 may see the emergence of a Diamond Age of Microelectronics
  (tags: electronics diamonds computers technology )
• The lonely programmer building a temple to the God who speaks only to him.
  (tags: mentalhealth programming religion schizophrenia )
• Harvard, positive discrimination, and a hard place
  (tags: race university usa viasupergee )
• Leaked: The Oil Lobby's Conspiracy to Kill Off California's Climate Law
  (tags: USA oil globalwarming )
• Life in a world where the denizens of the oceans took to the sky
  (tags: short_story scifi )
• Race and Justice: Much More Than You Wanted To Know
  (tags: race law police )
• A working Lego particle accelerator
  (tags: Lego physics viafanf )
• Female bosses are more likely to be depressed, and it's down to gender stereotypes
  (tags: women work society depression patriarchy management )
• Revealed: victims of UK's cold war torture camp
  (tags: UK Germany torture history )
• How should secular people approach sacred art?
  (tags: art religion history )
• Sicentists! Finally! Understand! Turtles!
  (tags: paleontology genetics )
• Google are working on automatically describing photos
  (tags: photos Google ai thefuture technology language viaAlexTFish )
• Pomplamoose 2014 Tour Profits (or lack thereof) - a breakdown of the financials for an indie band
  (tags: music business indie tour )

I rather liked "The Wicked + The Divine"

I think the first Kieron Gillen comic I read was his work on Thor, which was great*. I then picked up his indie book "Phonogram", which I enjoyed, even if it felt a bit basic - reminding me of early works by comics writers I liked in the 90s. I was intrigued to pick up the first trade of his new book, which had been getting quite a lot of buzz.

The Wicked + The Divine is clearly the work of a more experienced writer. It's structured better, it's got better dialogue, and the whole thing moves along very smoothly. It's had several moments I didn't anticipate at all, some nice characterisation, and some frankly gorgeous art to go along with it.

The basic setup is _very_ Vertigo - every ninety years a group of twelve Gods reincarnate into mortal forms. Within two years, all of them will be dead. We start with the cryptic ending of the 1920 cycle, and then move to the modern day, where we set up rivalries, intrigue, and possibly even a little bit of murder.


(click to embiggen)

I'm not entirely hooked yet - the writing isn't as good as, say, Grant Morrison at his best, although it's in the same vein (albeit on less drugs). Similarly, the art feels half-way between Steve Dillon and Phil Jiminez - solid, engaging, with some nice flourishes. I'm actually finding it hard to tell if it's not quite as good as the things I loved then, or if it's just much harder to have that kind of emotional effect on a 42-year-old...

It's certainly good enough that I'll be picking up more of it. And if you miss the early days of Vertigo then you'll almost certainly enjoy it.

7.5/10

*Even if it slotted into a rather frustrating situation where JMS had taken Thor from being largely unread to being very popular, causing the publisher to decide to create a corporate cross-over around it, causing JMS to walk away without finishing his arc.