When Woody Guthrie was singing hillbilly songs on a little Los Angeles radio station in the late 1930s, he used to mail out a small mimeographed songbook to listeners who wanted the words to his songs, On the bottom of one page appeared the following:

"This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do."

We use private rights to create public goods: creative works set free for certain uses. Like the free software and open-source movements, our ends are cooperative and community-minded, but our means are voluntary and libertarian. We work to offer creators a best-of-both-worlds way to protect their works while encouraging certain uses of them — to declare “some rights reserved.”

There are plenty of people playing music on YouTube -- there's excellent archival live footage of your favorite musicians; there are kids shredding through the theme to Super Mario Bros. on two guitars at once; there are people giving helpful tips to beginner clawhammer banjo players. But here's an excellent use of YouTube that I haven't seen before -- a note-for-note rendering, on paper, of John Coltrane's groundbreaking "Giant Steps" in real time. If that doesn't make sense, just watch this video -- and be prepared to be blown away all over again by Trane's towering mastery of his instrument. (And this was, arguably, still a few years before he reached his full potential as a soloist). You'll be exhausted by the end.



Now. Watch it again and pay special attention to pianist Tommy Flanagan's solo. No slouch himself, the dude can't even come close to keeping up with Coltrane's crazy chord changes. He gets completely lost in the weeds. Wow.

Supercollider hip hop! This is, like, nerdcore times a squillion.

"Antimatter is sort of like matter's evil twin,
because except for charge and handedness of spin,
they're the same for the particle and its anti-self.
But you can't store an anti-particle on any shelf,
'cuz when it meets its normal twin they both annihilate:
matter turns to energy and then it dissipates."

Thanks, CERN peoples, that explains everything. Literally.

Now. Must ... own ... MP3 ...

(props to BoingBoing -- and a million other people)

Speaking of David Byrne, there's news concerning his buddy Gilberto Gil today. Gil, one of the father's of Brazil's revolutionary Tropicalia movement, will be stepping down from his current post as the country's Minister of Culture to refocus his energies on his recording career. Gil, like Byrne, is a most vocal supporter of the Creative Commons movement to restructure the current copyright regime. (Here's some video of Gil talking about CC and the digital divide, among other things, on Democracy Now. Watch, learn and love.)

I'm a huge fan of his music, so this comes as welcome news--although it's not as if he ever stopped recording, so I wonder if there's something else going on there. Anyway. Watch him playing live with Os Mutantes back in the day in this incredible clip:

Hey! David Byrne just announced that he and Brian Eno have finished their first collaboration in 30 years. (That last collabo would be 1981's pioneering "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts," which was about 15 years ahead of its time for innovative use of sampling, electronics, indigenous Third World music and David Byrne).

Anyway, here's what Byrne had to say about the new rekkid, which will apparently be called "Everything That Happens Will Happen Today" on his site: "For the most part, Brian did the music and I wrote some tunes, words and sang. It's familiar but completely new as well. We're pretty excited. In August the music will be available via this Web site, free for streaming and available for purchase in a variety of options that allow you to download immediately and receive physical formats when they become available later in the Fall. One of the songs will be available free of charge."

Exciting! (Although we're guessing no "poo-poo jokes" for the kids.)

Well hello there.

I'm not sure how you found this, but welcome. You are reading this because I pitched a blog to my visionary editors and they, being visionaries, agreed to let me have one. Hopefully you will keep reading because it will grow into something thought-provoking, funny, curious and worthy of your pity. Or, think of it this way: I have two small daughters to support and if you don't come back here often--and click on all the ads--they will be sent to toil in the Peruvian mercury mines to support me. So please, think of my children.

Meanwhile, I'll be curating things on a daily basis around here, trying to put goodies in front of your eyeballs. What exactly that will entail remains to be seen. But here's a little guide to get started with: I am a general editor here at Newsweek, covering technology, popular culture and, my favorite, unpopular culture. Mostly, I freaking love the internets. Every single last one of them. So I spend a lot of time looking at said internets--and as such, I see mountains of mind-blowingly life-changing awesomeness every day. And, you know, funny videos of piano-playing cats. Either way, I come across so much good stuff that may not merit a full-blown Newsweek-style story, but is certainly worthy of a mention. I'm talking about stuff that can only happen online (or, to give myself some wiggle room, anywhere else on earth). Stuff that inhabits that middle ground between high-brow arts, low-brow trash and mono-brow geekery. Stuff I would love to share with you, gentle reader, like the selfless lover that I am. 

Here, for example, are a few things I'd link to RIGHT NOW if I were blogging. Which, uh, I guess I am. So. Let's get started: the webby (in more ways than one) Italian Spiderman, which wrapped its 10th episode this week and is quite possibly the funniest spoof of bad '60s Italian James Bond knockoffs you'll ever see. Or I'd hip you to new rumors of a forthcoming Mac book pro and then drool all over my keyboard so that the spacebarstopsworking. Or maybe you'd find this as interesting as I did: Wil Wheaton crumbling some Webcake at Comic Con this week. Or check out this current debate over the Los Angeles Times' policy regarding blogging about rumors surrounding a certain (probably erstwhile) potential Obama running mate--the comments raise a lot of interesting issues surrounding the role of blogs at a, ahem, mainstream media outlet.

Of course, for each of those, I'd take the time to cook up some deliciously brilliant thoughts and conclusions. Maybe take the initiative to do a little reporting. I'd dazzle you with my unique voice, my counterintuitive take. This will be a two-way street--I encourage your feedback, tips, debate, lunch money. But not right now, OK? It's Saturday. It's nice outside. And you and I will get to know each other as this experiment continues. It is a work in progress. It is an evolution, an exploration of the tubes.

And also there will be haiku.