RadioFreePirate

Sea Shepherd ship now running as a Pirate : Melbourne Indymedia: “‘It was not the British Navy that ended piracy in the Caribbean, it was Captain Henry Morgan who did that and he was a pirate’, Said Captain Watson, ‘I am proud to add my name to the long list of honourable and noble pirates like Sir Francis Drake, John Paul Jones and Jean LaFitte. To that end we have our own version of the Pretty Red or Joli Rouge and it is the crossed shepherd’s staff and Neptune’s trident under a human skull engraved with the yin and yang of a dolphin and a whale. If they want us to be pirates than we will be damn pirates but we will not abandon the whales to the agony and misery of the harpoons without a fight. We are pirates of compassion in pursuit of pirates of profit.’ “

ZineMachine: A vending machine for zines, books, and minicomics.

Tragedy of the anticommons - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: “WKRP in Cincinnati was one of the most popular syndicated sitcoms of all time, and many television shows from that era have been successfully released on DVD. However, it is unlikely that a DVD release of WKRP will be available in the near future. When it was a television program, an agreement was in place between television producers and music licensing organizations such as ASCAP and BMI wherein a standard licensing fee was paid for each song that was played on a television show. As such, the producers could determine how much money would be paid for their use of music clips and budget accordingly. However, there is no similar standard agreement for use of music on DVD’s (which ASCAP and BMI do not control), and the producers are now faced with the prospect of negotiating individually with several dozen composers.”

This was the saddest thing that I’ve heard in a long time.

RyBorg writes from the rainy NorthWest: “I had a new experience tonight. I’m usually not one for web-browing,of the variety where I start in one place and through following a
series of interesting links find myself elsewhere. It started with youtube, with provides an easy way to jump from random topic to random topic. It ended up leading me here:

http://www.votergasm.com/Pledge.php

Funny, sexy and political, although perhapse catching my interest only b/c a friend convinced me to go encourage voters before this last election.”

“Although Leach knows it’s a tough year for Republicans, he has refused to go negative. When state GOP officials sent out that attack mailer, Leach asked them to stay out of the race. When they did it again, he warned Republican National Chairman Ken Mehlman that he would refuse to caucus with his party when the new Congress convened in January if the negative tactics recurred. Mehlman promised to put a stop to it.

Then Leach called Loebsack and apologized.”

 If only more Democrats could be like Jim.

: “British rock legend David Bowie’s career will take a dive next year — as he joins the cast of the popular underwater cartoon SpongeBob SquarePants for a guest appearance. Bowie said on his Web site blog that he would be the voice of a character called Lord Royal Highness on the Nickelodeon network’s hit children’s cartoon series next year.”

Please, read this. Then ask your friends to read it.

The Elephant in the Polling Booth | BaltimoreChronicle.com: “This is why they’ve gerrymandered Texas and (less visibly) Virginia– and also why they’ve packed the Supreme Court with comrades disinclined to outlaw gerrymandering (unless it’s Democrats who try it). This is why they are dead-set against repealing state laws disenfranchising ex-felons– and also why they’ve used the ‘war on drugs’ to jail as many likely Democrats as possible. (This would also help explain the post-Katrina diaspora, and especially the out-of-state internment of over 70,000 Louisianans.) And this is why the Bush Republicans push e-voting machines in every state, and program them to flip votes cast by Democrats into votes ‘cast’ for Republicans, and systematically provide too few machines to Democratic precincts, and keep on arbitrarily removing Democrats from voter rolls, and ‘challenge’ would-be voters at the polls, and simply throw out countless ballots of all kinds, and spread disinformation on Election Day. These are just some of the devices that were used not only in Ohio to ensure Bush/Cheney’s ‘re-election,’ but in every state where they could pull it off– on both coasts, in the Midwest, and throughout the South.”

Ha. Be sure to click “Next Picture” to see all the ads.

Tomorrow is Talk Like a Pirate Day, so naturally we’re all a-twitter here. We only get two Pirate themed holidays a year, so we gotta make the best of ‘em.

In that spirit, here’s Browse Like a Pirate.

And then someone pointed out to me this weekend that there’s an evolutionary connection to pirates: “You may be interested to know that global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of Pirates since the 1800s. For your interest, I have included a graph of the approximate number of pirates versus the average global temperature over the last 200 years. As you can see, there is a statistically significant inverse relationship between pirates and global temperature.”

The Raconteurs: “I’ve never heard of this band before, but our correspondent in Hoosierland sent me a link to their site, marveling at the old school design. It’s a wonderful throwback that takes me back to the good ol’ days of 8-bit computing, where the screens were 40 columns and you could have any color you wanted, as long as it was green. Neon, fluorescent, alien death ray green. Ah, good times, good times.”