Oklahoma City's "other" KD.
from http://miklesfamilyfarm.com/
Okay, not aliens, but rather Mikles Family Farm in Shawnee, Oklahoma has created a pretty cool tribute to the Oklahoma City Thunder.
The maze is big! Five acres and over two miles of trails. The maize maze stalks are thick and way over your head. Yes, even if you are as tall as a Thunder player.
That’s taking your fandom to the next level.
(h/t Daily Thunder)
Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips appeared on The Colbert Report Wednesday night to talk not only about the new Lips album, but also “Do You Realize?,” Oklahoma’s recently dubbed “state rock song.”
Oklahoma: “The Life is Short” State
Imagine that: Someone in the record industry wants more money. Shocking, I know. According to cnet news, music publishers are the latest victims of the digital age. Apparently, they make pennies on the dollar for tracks sold on iTunes and in other digital music stores.
To be fair, I don’t know the complete business model for digital music well enough to say whether music publishers are or are not getting screwed. I do know if these folks are going to get paid more, it’s coming out of our pockets, and as the article points out, the outcry is just now starting to settle from Apple’s move a few months ago to implement the first iTunes Music Store price increase.
The kicker to me is that they want to come after other music “sources” in iTunes as well. These include music in movies and TV shows, streaming radio, and even the 30-second previews for songs in the the store. This just seems a bit greedy to me.
“In the U.S. while we do get paid a mechanical (licensing fee) from ITunes [sic], we are not getting any performance income from Apple yet,” David Renzer, chairman and CEO of Universal Music Publishing Group, said in interview late last month with entertainment-industry publication, Encore. “(On iTunes) you can stream radio, and you can preview (tracks), things that we should be getting paid performance income for.
“Also, if you download a film or TV show,” Renzer continued, “there’s no performance (payment) and typically there’s no mechanical (payment) either.” (from cnet)
It might be true that they don’t get paid for these things, but I really don’t think they should come digging around the digital consumer for money. Talk to the studios about the movie and TV show issue. Talk to the radio stations about streaming radio. As for the 30-second previews, just give it up. We are already paying up to $1.29 per track. Keep pushing this agenda and a lot of people will fall back on much cheaper ways to acquire music, TV shows, and movies, which result in zero royalties.
Oh, and they are so upset that they are going to ask congress to intercede. Good thing congress doesn’t have anything on its plate right now.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has posted a side by side comparison of the new English translation of the Novus Ordo1 Mass. The hope for this translation is that it will be truer to the original Latin. This is a very good thing as it brings the English words closer to those being said in the many other local languages of the Church. There will, however, be a great deal of kicking and screaming over this. Some will scream that this doesn’t go far enough. Some will see this as going backward, and some will simply oppose change from anything to which they have grown accustomed. Like seemingly everything in the Church today, there will no doubt be a loud debate once these changes start getting implemented, but in the long run I hope people will cool down after they get used to it. (h/t American Papist)
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1Fancy Latin phrase for “New Order” referring to the liturgical changes to the Mass introduced by Pope Paul VI in 1969 after the Second Vatican Council.
USA Today is reporting (via MacRumors) that comments are being filed with the FCC regarding Apple’s rejection of the Google Voice app in the iPhone App Store. Apparently, Apple is not the only company facing questions. Google may have some questions to answer on the related subject of the crippled version of Skype on their Android operating system.
Why: Consumers who use Android, the Google-developed operating system for wireless devices, can’t use Skype, a leading Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service. A pioneer in free Internet calling, Skype allows you to talk as long as you want without draining cellphone minutes.
Android users get Skype Lite, a watered-down version of the original that routes calls over traditional phone networks — not the Internet. As a result, long-distance calls are still cheap or free, but cellphone minutes are gobbled up every time a Skype Lite call is made…
…Google’s explanation would seem to suggest that T-Mobile requested the block on Skype, but the carrier says that’s not the case. “T-Mobile has not asked Google to block that service,” says spokesman Joe Farren, referring to original Skype [sic]. – USA Today
In both of these cases, it is clear that neither the carriers nor OS providers want to take the blame. Maybe the FCC can break this problem open and make progress, but as stated before, “consider me skeptical.”
UPDATE: Apple says it acted alone in rejecting the app. Something still smells fishy here, but if this is the case, bad Apple!
