TASTE ?

Oh this age! How tasteless and ill-bred it is!
Catullus (Latin poet, circa 84–54 BC).

I see there's some controversy about K-mart's Joe Boxer Christmas Commercial, as to its erm...doubtful taste. It might not be in the best possible taste but I didn't find it in any way disgusting. I did find it annoying though. We haven't yet celebrated Thanksgiving and they're already pushing Christmas! Shouldn't be allowed!

Next year Joe Boxer might consider diversifying their output to include tighty-whities and g-strings - and a sequel ad featuring the new products.

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
~ H L Mencken

Also fun, while managing to give the best possible taste a wide berth:

What is exhilarating in bad taste is the aristocratic pleasure of giving offense.
~ Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) French poet

"In The best possible taste" was a catchphrase of British DJ/comedian Kenny Everett who delighted in quite the opposite, to the delight of viewers. Sadly, he died in 1995, long before his time. Here he is talking about Uranus......yep!

And....

As it's Music Monday, a song whose lyrics begin with: Please allow me to introduce myself, I am a man of wealth and taste.......
Rolling Stones with Sympathy for the Devil.

In 1968, Mick Jagger came out to his friends, parents and adoring public as an antichrist. He did it with style, declaring his Beelzebub a demon “of wealth and taste” before recounting his famous misdeeds throughout history – leading the Nazi blitzkrieg, sparking the Russian revolution, shooting JFK and getting Jesus crucified – before a backing choir of “woo-woo”ers who seemed to think all this was a right old lark. More HERE.

Copyright Purges (Saturn in Virgo again!)

The following is yet another reflection of Saturn in Virgo : Saturn = restriction, laws, regulations. Virgo = precision, order, attention to detail, striving for perfection.

There's a purge going on at YouTube to take down any videos which infringe copyright laws. This may have been proceeding for some time, but I wasn't aware of it. It apparently is a consequence of a $1billion lawsuit by Viacom Inc. accusing Google Inc's YouTube of enabling copyright infringement. There could well be some dead links or blank spaces in my archived posts where I used YouTube videos which have since been purged. Photobucket, too, now has copyright detection on their upload tool.

In past months I've used videos, some of my own, some from YouTube, to illustrate something astrological, or to show how the work of a particular artist fitted their astrological makeup. I do believe I used them under what's called "Fair Use" or transformative use - to illustrate a point, or as educational tools, but terms of Fair Use are not crystal clear. I make no money from my blog, display no advertisement of any kind, offer no services and seek no donations. My blog, to me, is a kind of scrapbook, from which I derive much pleasure, and hope that a passing visitor might occasionally find something of interest too.

Anyway, in view of the current climate, the only video compilations I shall make in future, if any, will contain photographs by my husband or myself and music which is in the public domain.

I can't help but feel a little sad about such tight restrictions. I appreciate, of course, the need for copyright laws (Saturn). The banning of use of very short clips, though, typically 3 or 4 minutes, which do little but help the flow of creativity around the internet, and out into the real world, seems to me to be nitpicking in the extreme (Virgo). Short clips containing a music track or a few minutes from a movie or show would seem to me to be acting as an advertisement of the creator's skill, rather than doing them any harm, as long as the creator/artist is credited, of course, that goes without saying.

But what do I know?

There's a clear explanation, "Copyright Explained" at Smashing Magazine, some of the comments bring up additional points, for instance pointing out that copyright laws vary from medium to medium and country to country.

My blog from now on is likely to be a desert of text then, with no eye candy unless the product of camera or paintbrush belonging to himself(with permission!)or me. And/or I'll buy a CD Rom containing royalty free clipart.

A side issue from all of this, but worth mentioning, is that a Federal Court judge ordered YouTube to disclose its viewership logs, so any privacy protection of YouTube viewers has disappeared.

Big Brother is drawing ever closer.

YouTube and Astrology

I try to avoid YouTube, I find it irritating, I'm not sure why. However, led there yesterday via an astrologer's website, I watched several videos on the topic of astrology. Oh dear! So now there's another arena in which skeptics and astrologers will clash.

One of my favourite men, Carl Sagan, is shown denouncing my favourite subject, astrology. This wasn't new to me, I got the "Cosmos" DVD set for Christmas. Carl can do no wrong in my estimation - well, maybe just a little bit of wrong! We must not forget that this film was made many years ago. Perhaps, had Carl Sagan and some of the more enlightened astrologers of today (no names, no pack drill) ever had an opportunity to get together and discuss matters in depth, Carl might have had something slightly different to say on the subject. When feeling depressed about his views I return to his famous quote "We are star stuff contemplating the stars". For me that says it all. Carl just needed to reach the next chapter, but tragically he was not allowed to do so.

The other astrologers and skeptics on YouTube, so far, only serve to muddy the water even further in my opinion. It has all been said and written before, and the fact that we can look at the face of the presenter adds little to the proceedings.

As usual, Sun sign astrology bears the brunt of the criticism. Up to a point, this is warranted. The "astrology" column in our local newspaper, for instance, is a synicated and synthetic offering, completely meaningless, possibly written by a group of monkeys, after experimenting with the old idea that if you have enough monkeys banging randomly on typewriters, they will eventually type the works of William Shakespeare. This kind of thing obviously gives astrology a bad name. But a good Sun sign astrologer can be the catalyst who sends a proportion of his/her readers off to find out more, and perhaps even take up the profession themselves, eventually.

Imagine a world with no Sun sign columns, daily, weekly, monthly. No books of the "What's Your Sign?" variety. A world where only "real" astrologers lived, cloistered in their ivory towers, keeping mysterious secrets from the "great unwashed". Wouldn't that be a dreadful step backwards?

Astrology would have sunk without trace decades ago had it not been for the Sun sign astrologers. I look on them as flag-bearers, ensuring that astrology is kept in plain sight of all - whether they like it or not!