Thursday, December 29, 2011

Electronic life after death–a matter of sheer will

The article Ghosts in the machine at the Australian website Fairfax Digital contains much food for thought.

“What happens when you die? In cyberspace not much” it starts off with, “unless you make the appropriate arrangements.”

Many people don’t make out a will and so die intestate, with lots of negative ramifications. But even if you have a will, it’s fairly likely that it doesn’t take account of your digital assets.

When you depart from this earthly vale of tears, what can and should be done with all your passwords, files, web domains, and other things that exist on your computers and other electronic devices as well as all over the place in the World WIDE Web.

I encourage you to read the article and think hard about what you should do about these assets of yours, if they have any significant meaning and value to you and your dear ones.

I’ll do it in a minute (or two, or three)

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Professor David Suzuki has some wise words for us all, watch and listen to his Test Tube story as he shares a common scientific observation.

TIP: enter just a single word when prompted in the opening screen.

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Mad and Gay Music?

By pure coincidence, the other day two websites came to my attention. Both are concerned with music but in markedly different and, to me -- by their very juxtaposition in my stream of awareness – rather amusing ways.

www.madmusic.comFirstly, there’s Captain Wayne’s MadMusic.com (originally called The Doctor Demento Show) which is a huge archive of tunes going back to the first show in 1972. It’s rather zany yet rewarding, you’ve really got to visit the site to comprehend and appreciate it.

In stark contrast, there’s Love God’s Way Ministries who say they “specialize in Christian topics other so-called Churches do not want to deal with. Recently, we’ve started work on the Homosexual problem.  We believe they can be fixed and we have created a means of fixing them.”Love Gods Way Ministries (home page)

Being an old square I happen to listen almost exclusively to orchestral (“classical”) music, jazz, the Big Bands, and other mainly instrumental music.

So I have only the slightest experience of most of today's “popular” music, the supposedly-dangerous Gay Bands that they list:

“One of the most dangerous ways Homosexuality invades family life is through popular music.  Parents, please keep careful watch over your children’s listening habits. … We Strongly recommend that you burn the CDs” they say.

Nor do I have more than the slightest experience listening to the Safe Bands that they  have cataloged.

Perhaps you’d be interested in reviewing their two lists, the devilish versus heavenly bands, giving your opinions and explaining it all to an out-of-touch old timer?