Category: Scary Stuff

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Immortal Muse – Bite Me! (oh, you did already…)

I apologize for the vehemence displayed in this piece, and I apologize for interrupting the series “Catastrophe!”. I will finish it up hopefully within a day or two. I also apologize for the incredible (even for me) length of this article. I hope you’ll take the extra 60 seconds to read it…. I thought I fell for a scam… here is how it happened….

What The “Artist” Published

I can’t remember exactly how I found it, but I was over at LibraryThing doing a bit of research and I clicked on their blog. Reading through the top post, I noticed the following update:

“Update from Tim: We’ve removed one book. As a blog comment pointed out, there is said to be controversy over whether the publisher has the right to publish the book. The publisher puts this front-and-center on their website, claiming the consent is “expressed, albeit obliquely, in the book itself.” If the controversy is real, it’s clearly in violation of copyright. If false—as I suspect—it’s an irritating promotional stunt. Either way, we don’t want to have anything to do with it.”

So I decided to follow this little path for awhile.

A quick search on Google for the word “zireaux” gave me a few good hits. At zireaux.com I found this:

“November 28, 2007

It has recently come to my attention that one of my poetic works — which I had composed in personal notebooks and read at public recitals — has been copied and published in book form, under the title “Kamal,” without my permission.

My legal council has contacted the publisher and demanded that all distribution activities concerning the book be stopped immediately and that all copies of the book be destroyed.

I was also advised by legal council to publish this statement declaring my objection to the book. I request anyone who has purchased a copy of the book to destroy it, and anyone who is considering purchasing the book to desist.”

It’s signed: Sincerely, Zireaux.

There are no other links there. It’s a static page. This is all Zireaux wants to say here. This is all I could find that he has published. Time to move on.

Moving On, The “Thief” Emerges

And so I did. Clicking on the next Google link took me to a page on yahoo.net, where I found my first introduction to ImmortalMuse Publishers Ltd. Allow me to give you some of my first, and lasting, impressions.

The page at first appears to be a nice “About The Author” type of thing, but within literally a couple of seconds exposes itself for what it actually is. In the first paragraph we find this sentence:

“And even though a poet may be well-known in New Zealand, there’s still ample opportunity for an American scholar and editor to be the “first in the world” to discover him and publish his works.”

Basically, this guy is saying right there that he is stealing the work of the artist, simply because the artist is not well-known in the thief’s geographical area. Yeah, jerk, based on the information available… I’m calling you a thief. “Ample opportunity” does not give you the right to publish anything against the will of the artist. If you were in front of me right now, I would have “ample opportunity” to explain this to you in a more substantial and physical way. But that opportunity would not give me the right to hit you. So. I will take this “ample opportunity” to say I think you are a thief, and “Bite Me”.

Reading further, we find a section titled “About The Editor”, wherein it is claimed that this guy, Bernardo Winson, lives in the USA and holds a PhD in English Literature. It further states that he “discovered” Zireaux on a visit to New Zealand. I searched for about an hour, using every engine I could think of, and I couldn’t find any references to this guy that he didn’t write himself. Usually, the holder of a PhD in any discipline can be found by searching Google alone. Why, you say? Because to get that title, they have to actually publish something new. This guy appears to have published nothing.

“But Look How Hard I Had To Work To Steal This Stuff!”

Reading onward through the page, we find a section called “A Note about the Transcription of Zireaux’s Work”, wherein the thief tries to justify his crime by showing the amount of work it took to produce the book. By his own description, the work was never intended for publication.

“A Note about the Transcription of Zireaux’s Work:

The works published by Immortal Muse were recovered from a box of 198 small, red-covered, 100x160mm spiral notebooks, each with 50 leaves, or 100 pages which flip nicely over the top, the kind of notebook which once used to identify newspaper reporters (a stubby pencil behind an ear). These notebooks, at one time, were the property of Zireaux, whose writings they contain.

The leaves of these notebooks are neatly ruled in blue (21 rules per page) and Zireaux seems more or less frugal with space, only occasionally skipping lines. A typical Zireauxian stanza of just 12-14 lines, however, can end up scattered across 15 pages or so in a tangled wreckage of arrows and scribbled deletions. To further complicate one’s attempt to rescue these lines, whatever text survives – often circled or starred or just laying there quivering beyond the crash zone – is further crippled by Zireaux’s atrocious penmanship. And even then, even once a stanza is compiled and stretchered to safety, Zireaux rarely composed his verses chronologically, forcing one to decipher his unique numbering system in order to rehabilitate the stanza to its correct position within the larger context.”

Notice that we are never told how he came to be in possession of the notebooks. Notice how he insults the true author, how he exposes the author’s creative process and ridicules it. This is the work of a true loser. Not only is he insulting the author whose work he has stolen, we find him here trying to manipulate us into somehow justifying what he has done. Let’s look a bit deeper, shall we?

The Publishing Company? Where Are The Rest Of The Books?

On the homepage for Immortal Muse there is only one focus, and that is this book I am talking about here. I am reprinting the text here for you all to see:

“Dear Potential Reader,

Kamal, Book One, is a novel in verse of five cantos, in structured, mostly iambic tetrameter or pentameter rhyme, totaling 5,472 lines. For more information about the book, click here, or you can download a pdf copy of the first 27 pages.

Kamal was written by Zireaux, a fact I would never deny. He is the true creator, the official birth-parent so to speak. Nor would I deny him the legal copyright to this book, as you can see in the copyright notice on the title page.

To those readers and critics who may question my decision to publish Kamal without its author’s permission, I implore you to proceed with your reading and interpretation of Kamal as a work of art rather than to allow myself, or Zireaux, or anyone else to sully your experience with questions about the legitimacy of this book’s existence.

I think you’ll find that even if Zireaux claims I have no rights to publish his work, his consent, in fact, is expressed, albeit obliquely, in the book itself – through its narrator, its main character and themes. And whether or not the right is granted, it remains incumbent upon us, as compassionate beings, to preserve a specimen made vulnerable by its beauty (even if we aren’t its original creator!).

In this regard I believe my publication of this book and my accompanying footnotes – meant to make Kamal accessible to readers from even the remotest outposts of the English language – represent the least I could do to fulfill my most basic obligation as a literary scholar and human being.

— Bernardo Winson, Ph.D.
Editor-in-Chief
New York City”

His most basic obligation being, it would seem, to feed his bank account with ill-gotten earnings from another’s dedicated work.

This is just some guy. His top level website uses only one page, which links to a Yahoo page which he calls Immortal Muse Publishers Ltd, where he hawks ONE BOOK. The entire site is devoted to it. Where are the other books, Bernardo? And you received your PhD from which school? And the Ltd in your name means … what? Do you even know? And why can I not find ANY information on you ANYWHERE on the net under that name, or with those credentials? Are you even who you say you are? I, for one, doubt it. I welcome your response, which I will publish here for all to see.

The Wordout Response To Losers

I’d like to say a couple of things to this whaledung-on-the-bottom-of-the-ocean type of mentality.

I have a few boxes of notebooks full of things I never plan to publish, too. And yes, these notebooks have words crossed out, underlined, parenthesized, arrowed to and away. They are full of cryptic abbreviations and symbols that you will never decipher in a million years. These notebooks are practically unreadable to anyone else but me. Those who have seen or read the finished works that came from these notes have formed their opinions of the work. But they did so without having been exposed to the inner workings of my process, without being tainted by the chaotic and messy structure of me talking to myself within my notes.

Regardless of whether my name is known in New York or not, you do not have any right to publish these books without my consent. You do not have the right to ANYTHING belonging to another person, regardless of what it is, without their explicit consent.

You, jerk, are a thief. You say that the permission is implicit within the words of the narrator character in the book? Come on, who do you think you are fooling? A character in a story now has legal rights? You’re just trying to sell a copy of the book by baiting us on something that cannot possibly be there in the way you say. I call BULLICUS on you, Bernardo Winson! You are a thief. Everyone sees the huge “L” on your forehead. You must see it yourself, each morning in the mirror. And what the hell does that last sentence in that paragraph mean? The only thing that remains incumbent on us is that we respect the wishes of the author and follow the laws of our land. You have done neither.

If Zireaux wants his work published, on a page or on the web, he will have it done or do it himself. From what I can find, Zireaux is more of a “performance artist”, delivering his works to his audiences in person. He uses words, yes, but they are spoken by him in the way he wants them heard. He may feel that the words need his own voice, or the presence of his own body, his own facial expressions… whatever. For some reason, Zireaux has decided that this is his method. That is his decision to make, and ours to accept whether we understand it or not.

The Source

In case you want to do a little investigating for yourself, here is the contact info published on the Immortal Muse site:

info@immortalmuse.com
immortalmuse@yahoo.com
Phone/Fax (UA): +1-661-452-1599

Interesting way of writing the phone number, isn’t it? Almost like this guy has no idea how to annotate a phone number for the USA. UA is the international abbreviation for Ukraine, but the number appears to belong to a company called Ammas, an Indian search firm.

Many of you know that I believe in going directly to the source to find the real info, so feel free to send emails to Immortal Muse to get their opinions, reactions, and philosophy concerning publishing raw notebooks dubiously found in a box belonging to a successful, contemporary artist. If they give you anything interesting, come back here and share with the class! I’d recommend calling them, but it’s just a machine hosted by another company. Of course, if he has to pay them by volume….

Whatever you do, please, do not buy this book from anywhere.

I am Jon, and I’m no friend of Immortal Muse Publishers Ltd.

UPDATE:(edited)
It appears that, as Tim has noted in the comments, I have been had.
Check out these 2 whois reports:
http://whois.uberdose.com/zireaux.com
http://whois.uberdose.com/immortalmuse.com
LOOK FOR “IMMORTAL MUSE – REVISTED” FOR AN UPDATE TO THIS STORY!
Definitely do not buy this guy’s book.
And Tim, Thanks for the heads-up from all of us reading Wordout!

I am Jon, and THIS STORY AIN’T OVER, either…

We now return to our original programming…

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Psychedlic Cat! The “Tied Stick” Theory

Psychedelic Cat, That’s Where It’s At!

By now you’ve probably seen on TV or read in the news about the “glow in the dark” cats, cloned in South Korea. Beyond the aesthetics, this has real implications for treating some genetic maladies afflicting humans, in the future. From the Associate Press:

“Cats have similar genes to those of humans,” said veterinary professor Kong Il-keun of Gyeongsang National University. “We can make genetically modified cats that can be used to develop new cures for genetic diseases.”

Keitaro Kato, a geneticist at Kinki University in western Japan who has cloned fish, said the research could be significant if it eventually helps treat people with hereditary diseases.

“People with genetic disorders usually have to receive treatment throughout their lives that is very hard on them,” Kato said. “If these results can help to make their lives easier, then I think it’s a wonderful thing.”


psychedelic cats
“This picture taken through a special filter in a dark room shows, a cat, left, possessing a red fluorescent protein that makes the animal glow in the dark when exposed to ultraviolet rays, appearing next to a normal cloned cat, right, at Gyeongsang National University in Jinju, south of Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2007. South Korean scientists have cloned cats that glow red when exposed to ultraviolet rays, an achievement that could help develop cures for human genetic diseases, the Science and Technology Ministry said. (AP Photo/ Yonhap, Choi Byung-kil)”

Cat Lovers?

On the other hand, the New York Times reports that 60 million Americans are infected with the Toxoplasma gondii parasite, which, among other things, makes the host more susceptible to being eaten… by cats. From the NY Times article:

“The basic facts: Toxo can infect many species, but it undergoes sexual reproduction only in cat digestive tracts. Once the parasite reproduces, the cat passes it in its feces, where the next unwitting host picks it up by digesting it (intentionally or unintentionally). Then the cycle starts again. In the long run, Toxo must find its way back to a cat’s stomach to survive. So the parasite has evolved a complicated system for taking over its hosts’ brains to increase the likelihood that they’ll be eaten by cats.”

In case you’re thinking that this is just funny, check this out. According to the Times article, research has shown that “people infected with Toxo have slower reflexes and are 2.5 times as likely to get into car accidents.”

The Conundrum

Which brings me to this question. Are we using the cats, or are the cats using us? They have developed this parasite to control our minds. There is a possibility, however slim it may seem, that those South Korean cats were exposed to some very powerful hallucinogen in the past, liked it, and decided they wanted to be psychedelic. Truthfully, wouldn’t you like your partner to glow in the dark sometimes? Why not the same for a, kitty?

I am Jon, and I’m wondering how tight that stick was tied.

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Spinning Iran – Here We Go Again?

With apologies for waxing political, I offer this for your consideration.

The Reuters news service today published a story eerily reminiscent of the days leading up to the invasion of Iraq by the US. From an article with the plain title, “US Report Contradicts Bush on Iran Nuclear Program”:

“A new U.S. intelligence report says Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and it remains on hold, contradicting the Bush administration’s earlier assertion that Tehran was intent on developing a bomb.”

and

“Tensions have escalated in recent months as Washington has ratcheted up the rhetoric against Tehran, with U.S. President George W. Bush insisting in October that a nuclear-armed Iran could lead to World War Three. But in a finding likely to surprise U.S. friends and foes alike, the latest NIE concluded: “We do not know whether (Iran) currently intends to develop nuclear weapons.”

The Bush response was a typical spin to throw a terrorist light on this good news:

“Today’s National Intelligence Estimate offers some positive news,” Bush’s national security adviser Stephen Hadley said in a statement. “It confirms that we were right to be worried about Iran seeking to develop nuclear weapons. It tells us that we have made progress in trying to ensure that this does not happen,” he said.
“But the intelligence also tells us that the risk of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon remains a very serious problem.”

Quotes from the National Intelligence Estimate report:

“We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program. We also assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons.”

and

“Tehran’s decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005.”

and

“Iranian entities are continuing to develop a range of technical capabilities that could be applied to producing nuclear weapons, if a decision is made to do so.”

and

“We judge with high confidence that Iran will not be technically capable of producing and reprocessing enough plutonium for a weapon before about 2015.”

Personally, I have no idea what the Iranians are planning. If I were them, I would be a bit afraid of the US. We did, after all, invade a neighboring country under what turned out to be (similar)false pretenses. Coincidentally, according to the report, the Iranians stopped their nuclear weapons program the same year. I am thinking that the “international pressures” cited in the report is nothing more than our invasion of Iraq.
The Iranian subject is a hot one in the lead-up to next year’s US general election. For the American people to understand who is blowing smoke and who actually has the fire, we need to make it a habit to go to the source to get the facts. In this case, the source is the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Click the link above. It’s only 9 pages, easily readable, large type, in a downloadable pdf file. Go ahead. Then you can say you read it yourself.

I am Jon, and I think we should all read the report for ourselves.

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Piracy In France – The Smokescreen

Nothing For Us, Something For Nothing for Them

Last week, French President Nicolas Sarkozy endorsed a new law aimed at punishing those who share music and movies online. The new law creates an agency to sift through data that ISPs will be required to hand over about their highest-volume bandwidth users. Offenders will receive 2 warnings, and then be subject to disconnection.

This concept is the brainchild of Denis Olivennes, chairman of the retail chain Fnac. Fnac is one of the largest entertainmnet chains in France, and so has a definite interest in “physical-format” items such as CDs and DVDs. The theory is that, if downloads (non-physical) can be curtailed then sales of CDs and DVDs will go up. Seems like a conflict of interest to some.

How It Works:
ISPs monitor your bandwidth usage, identifying high-bandwidth users by name.
ISPs provide a list to the newly created agency.
The agency sends out “electronic warning messages” to individual users.
After 2 warnings, users are subject to disconnection.
Filmmakers agree to release physical DVDs faster.
Music firms support DRM-free tracks in music stores.

The WTF Factor
ISPs have always monitored bandwidth usage. That is, after all, what they are selling. They have an “inventory” of available bandwidth and, like any other business with an inventory, must know how much they have available.
P2P networks demand alot of bandwidth, so lowering the amount for a group of users will make more available across their system. This translates into increasing their supply, and probably their profits.

I’m not against more profits. But I am uncertain about any value this will add to anyone in the public. In the past, any customer of any ISP in the “free” world had some assurance that their personal info was kept confidential. This will not be true anymore. What will be true is that the ISPs are now providing that very personal information to an agency created by the government to help these two industries become more profitable.

Also to be considered is the reality that this strategy can only work in an area that’s pretty well saturated with cheap high-speed internet services. ISPs in other countries seem to be a bit reluctant to cooperate with efforts like these. File-sharing, questionable or not, is one of the biggest motivators for buying a high-speed connection.

Here’s a few quotes I’d like you to consider:

“In return for agreeing to monitor net use, film-makers agreed to speed up the transfer of movies to DVD and music firms pledged to support DRM-free tracks on music stores.”

Physical DVDs and CDs generally do not contain any DRM already, so the promise of no DRM on CDs is only smoke. And DVD releases are already fairly rapid. If they really thought this was cutting into their sales, they would just speed up DVD releases anyway. More smoke. The film-makers and music firms are not the ones doing the monitoring, the ISPs are, so this statement is all just smoke from its premise.

“The group who brokered the deal said the measures were intended to curb casual piracy rather than tackle large scale pirate groups.”

That quote, right there, tells the whole story. Large scale pirating, if pirating were the problem, would be the real threat to go after. But this is not about “pirating”. This is about increasing profits in 2 industries that are already increasing profits daily.The truth is that bandwidth is getting cheaper by the minute. By. The. Minute. ISPs can do nothing and their profits will go up. Record producers usually lose money on a per artist basis, but they have cut back on new artists and their profits are up. This is all what I can’t help but call, Bullicus.

From a well written critique of the RIAA(and others) assertions about online piracy. “If piracy is the problem, why is it that sales didn’t start declining until AFTER the RIAA had Napster shut down?”

Well, that’s a very good question. Could it be that the buying public now sees itself as an adversary to the recording industry? We’ve known all along that most of the artists got squat from their recording deals. Maybe we’ve changed the way we look at that, after several years of being treated like thieves.

So Who Benefits?

ISPs – less bandwidth used and therefore lower cost of operating services
FNAC – hoping for more physical item sales
IFPI etc – maintaining what little bit of control over where the money goes
Artists – can’t see any benefits here….

I am Jon, and I am calling Bullicus.

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State Forces Vaccinations Using Police and Attack Dogs

Search Google and you will find lots written about forced vaccinations in Prince George’s County, Maryland. This would be no big deal, really, except there is no law in Maryland requiring parents to vaccinate their children. Prince George’s county officials decided to team up with the department of health and force these kids to get their shots, threatening the parents with jail time if they did not comply. You can read about it at Newstarget.com.

In my mind, this story isn’t about the vaccinations. It looks like that is what everybody is focusing on, kicking up fluff all over the place about “Big Pharma”. To me, this is more about one more step we are gingerly taking into the wonderful political structure of losing our most basic rights. It makes me wonder about our future. Remember, there are no laws in Maryland requiring parents to submit their children to these vaccinations. Parents are free to choose what’s best for their families. That’s the law. And to me, that’s what this is about.

I guess that don’t matter much up there in Prince G’s county, just east of Washington, DC. What do you think about it?

I am Jon, and I am American.

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Beta Testing

This site is now released for Beta testing to a select group of invitees (you know who you are!) . As you’re poking around in here, don’t forget to add the RSS to your Firefox. You don’t want to miss a thing…

Notes:

The FAQ Frequently Asked Questions still is not finished. It displays, and accepts questions… but still it doesn’t work.
The Comment Preview button is currently broken. The Submit comment button works.

For the next several days comments will be open. This means that anyone can leave a comment without registering. Once the Beta testing is completed, users will be required to be registered and logged on to leave a comment.

I’m trying to get the F-Secure® World Map over there to the right in that blank area. Currently waiting on a response from F-Secure to see if they will let me do that. (Here is a short 40 second video at YouTube showing the World Map in action.)

The aim of Wordout is to provide relevant news, facts and commentary on any facet of technology, computing and science in general. Many of the topics I covered before will be included, but current topics will be limited to these general interests. The site is public, and is primarily used by members of the On Call On Site™ program, a group of select business and residential customers of Computergeek Services.

Again, thanks… just place your comments on this post so I will see them.

jon