Pardon me while we take a short break from our regularly scheduled blogging…

I had a brilliant idea for the holidays. I thought it would be great to take some of my favorite Christmas music — like the Barenaked Ladies and Sarah McLachlan doing a God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen/We Three Kings combo — and make a little compilation to give away to 15 or 20 people.

Of course, being the upright, law-abiding citizen that I am, I immediately sought permission to proceed. I started with APRA, the Australasian Performing Right Association, in the hopes that they could just send me a bill for $100 or whatever and I’d be legit.

My hopes were in vain. APRA told me they only handle the writing of the songs. In a way, this was good news: most of the songs I wanted to include — like Metallica and the Trans-Siberian Orchestra doing Carol of the Bells — were “traditional”, and therefore out of copyright. For those few songs that were in copyright, the fee was $0.05 per song, per copy, for a total of around $4.00.

I can handle $4.00.

Unfortunately, the buck didn’t stop with APRA. In addition to compensating whoever wrote the song, I’d also have to compensate whoever performed the song — like Patty Loveless doing O Come All Ye Faithful. To address that, I had to get in touch with RIANZ: the Recording Industry Association of New Zealand. RIANZ, in turn, said that I had to contact each label independently, and intimated that I may not be successful.

Refusing to be defeated, I contacted the New Zealand office of Universal Music, recording label for many of the songs I had chosen to include — like Sting doing I Saw Three Ships. I emailed them the full list of songs and the exact usage I intended. I made it clear that these were giveaways and advised them of the quantities.

I received the following message back:

Thanks for your email. Unfortunately, we are unable to approve any Universal tracks for this kind of use. Sorry I cannot be of any further assistance

SLAM!

And they wonder why people download music illegally? Do they think that, by refusing me permission to pay them money to distribute these compilations, the intended recipients will now go out and buy the original CDs instead?

Meanwhile, Joel Tenenbaum is facing fines of over $1 million for sharing seven songs on Kazaa when he was a teenager, and the MPAA is trying to force ISPs to disconnect anyone it suspects of piracy. So they won’t let us pay for music, but they’ll punish the heck out of us for “stealing” it…

Come on, music industry. Get it together.

Just imagine the risks of Gmail’s new Mail Goggles feature!

High Math Incapacitation Tolerance with a low Stupid-Email Tolerance:

Or a low Math Incapacitation Tolerance with a high Stupid-Email Tolerance:

We hope you enjoyed this brief comedic interruption… and thanks to Sharon Blance and BitStrips for assistance with the artwork!

It may read like a spoof, but Gmail’s latest offering is actually legit: Mail Goggles, a feature that fearlessly stands between you and your late-night, drunken, certain-to-be-regretted email messages to bosses, ex-spouses, and politicians. From Jon Perlow at the Official Gmail Blog:

Gmail can’t always prevent you from sending messages you might later regret, but today we’re launching a new Labs feature I wrote called Mail Goggles which may help.

When you enable Mail Goggles, it will check that you’re really sure you want to send that late night Friday email. And what better way to check than by making you solve a few simple math problems after you click send to verify you’re in the right state of mind?

This is a great idea. What I love is how it allows you to speculate on the type of person likely to enable the Goggles. I mean, surely you’d have to have been burned more than once to think this is a problem in need of a solution. You’d have to have a reasonable expectation that it’s going to happen again.

You’d also have to rely on a direct correlation between the level of drunkenness at which you are likely to send a stupid email and the level of drunkenness at which you’re unable to solve simple math problems. What if you have a low Stupid-Email Tolerance but a high Math Incapacitation Tolerance? You’ll be busy crafting an ill-advised missive to your ex while solving quadratic equations in your head. The Mail Goggles will be no match for you.

And imagine the reverse: a low Math Incapacitation Tolerance with a high Stupid-Email Tolerance. You’ll be trying to send really important emails — letters to your bank manager or confirmation to the baby sitter that you need her there by 7am — and you’ll be stymied by 4 times 8.

Meanwhile, email isn’t the only activity that could be benefit from the protection of a sobriety test. This feature has nearly unlimited expansion possibilities. Consider the following:

• Adult Relations Goggles: Before inviting your date upstairs for an after-dinner drink, stop and ask, “What’s the cube root of 264?”
• Marriage Goggles: Every chapel in Vegas could be equipped with an SAT terminal. Potential brides and grooms have to complete the math section before proceeding.
• Voting Goggles: This one is easy — like Gmail, you’re already at a terminal at point of purchase. All they have to do is write a line or two of code that demands, “Are you sure? Multiply 14 by 27 to confirm.”

I’m sure there are heaps more places where this concept could be applied — can you think of any?

I have to confess an addiction to the presidential campaign. I follow it obsessively, every twist, every turn, every gaffe, every SNL skit. I am in awe of the sums of money being raised and spent.

But despite all the campaign spin and rhetoric, and even with the bailout story reaching fever pitch, we all know that the true balance of power lies elsewhere: in the halls of little company based out of Mountain View, California.

Think about it. 144.7 million Americans used Google last month — more than the number of people who voted in the 2004 Presidential election. The company has just under 20,000 people on the payroll, more than triple the number employed by the White House. Thousands upon thousands thrive in the Google economic ecosystem. 300 million shares? 300 million Americans? coincidence? I think not.

They’ve got an environmental policy. They’ve got a Chief Economist. They’ve got a market cap roughly equal to the entire GDP of New Zealand.

What they do, matters.

The only bummer about this situation is that, even though the Big G has as much or more of an impact on our daily lives as the guy in Washington, we still can’t vote for its President. Well, we can, but let us face the matter squarely: thanks to Google’s dual-class share structure, our votes won’t make any difference.

Then again, we probably shouldn’t vote. Our democratic process has led us to meltdowns on Wall Street; Google’s benevolent dictatorship has produced the fastest growing company in history. In the past year alone, they’ve added thousands of new jobs and stepped up their sustainability efforts. No, it’s probably best that we surrender to the wiser governance of Schmidt, Page and Brin.

Sure, every now and then they’ll get it wrong. United Airlines will lose 76% of its market cap because Google News mixed up its dates. Some poor guy who hits the lottery with an all-Google business model will learn that he shouldn’t sink a foundation in shifting sands. Sergey Brin will be forced to admit that censorship ain’t cool.

For the most part, however, Google treats its citizens (that is to say, all of us) well. It’s certainly had a greater impact on our efficiency than anyone in the White House ever did, except maybe that guy who invented the Internet itself. On the other hand, a lot of that efficiency is wiped out by the productivity drains from YouTube, so maybe the company’s contribution is a net wash.

In closing, when you’re thinking about your choices this election year and feeling the pressure to choose the perfect candidate, be grateful. The decisions that matter most have already been made. The triumvirate in charge isn’t going anywhere. And if our nation were run as well as that little company based out of Mountain View, we’d probably be in a lot better shape right now.

A few hilarious videos from The Vacationeers to brighten your day… (hat tip: Hongkiat.com)

“The Googling I: Google Maps”

“The Googling II: Google Moon”

“The Googling III: Google My Maps”

“The Googling IV: Google SMS”

Enjoy…

I don’t normally touch politics on this blog, but this excerpt from Matt Ruff’s novel Sewer, Gas & Electric?written in 1997, set in 2023?was too good to pass up:

…Lexa asked her computer to run a program called SumpPumpGraphics. “Working,” the computer replied, and on its main monitor drew comic strip images of the seven Democratic presidential candidates, seated as if for a debate of their own. When Lexa fed copies of their stump speeches into an optical scanner, dialogue balloons appeared above the seated figures, sized in proportion to the wordiness of the speeches. The largest balloon belonged to President Hackett, a dark horse opportunist who on separate occasions had claimed to be a native of eighteen different states, including Belgium, which had apparently been admitted to the Union when no one else was looking.

“Ready cull feature,” Lexa said.

“Cull feature ready. Average speech length at start is three thousand, six hundred, and seventeen words.”

“Cull salutations, jokes, and needless historical anecdotes. Ditto quotations and statistics that don’t directly support a platform point. Cull platitudes and non-sequiturs. Cull reiterations of obvious facts. Cull redundancies. Cull misleading statements and outright lies, but flag them for later.”

“Working,” the computer said, and the dialogue balloons shrank drastically. “Culling completed. Average speech length is now two hundred and seven words.”

“Cull and flag impossible promises. Also cull promises that fail a vagueness test.”

“What is my threshold of acceptable vagueness?”

“Let’s not be too stringent. Cull anything that rates below a four on the Thatcher Hem-Haw Scale.”

“Loading THS parameters. Working.” The dialogue balloons became tiny dots. “Culling completed. Average speech length is now twenty-two words.”

Lexa took a laser pen and pointed it at the cartoon figure that represented candidate Harmon Fox. Fox recited the bare bones version of his stump speech: “If elected, I will raise taxes against the rich, cut military spending in favor of social welfare programs, and plant one million trees.”

Lexa shifted the light beam to candidate Nan Sheffield. “If elected,” Sheffield promised, “I will raise taxes against the rich, cut military spending in favor of social welfare programs, and plant two million trees.”

A bidding war. Lexa tapped Preston Hackett next and was surprised to hear the shortest speech thus far: “If elected, I will raise taxes against the rich and cut military spending in favor of social welfare programs.”

“Nothing about trees?” Lexa asked.

“Candidate Hackett’s sole reference to trees,” the computer replied, “was that he had a plan to reforest the Great Plains. That statement did not survive culling.”