Support Net Neutrality

Tell Chairman Wheeler: Don't help Verizon kill Net Neutrality. 

Net Neutrality is a principle that says that Internet users, not Internet service providers (ISPs), should be in control. It ensures that Internet service providers can’t speed up, slow down, or block web content based on its source, ownership, or destination.

Net Neutrality is dead for the time being – but the FCC could stand up to Verizon and AT&T and pass strong rules.

Instead, Wheeler's proposed rules would divide the Internet into fast lanes for wealthy corporations and slow lanes for the rest of us. Internet service providers (ISPs) would be allowed to relegate content to the slow lane unless the content provider paid up.

That means that the speed you could stream a video, for example, would not just depend on the kind of Internet plan you purchase from your ISP. It would also heavily depend upon whether the entity hosting the video paid for the express lane so that it didn’t take forever to download. Not only is this anti-consumer, allowing corporations to decide what kind of content you can access on the Internet is fundamentally anti-democratic.

Sign The Petition

One Frightening Chart Shows What You Might Pay For Internet Once Net Neutrality Is Gone

Amid protests, U.S. FCC proposes new 'net neutrality' rules

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/15/us-usa-internet-neutrality-idUSBREA4C0SF20140515

Write directly to the FCC and let them know the importance of net neutrality

http://www.fcc.gov/page/fcc-establishes-new-inbox-open-internet-comments

My fellow bloggers and I depend on net neutrality to keep our content going. You need it if you use social networking like Facebook, Twitter, Google, Pinterest, Instagram or others. Or enjoy streaming audio/video from Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, Pandora or other sources.

WE ALL make the content that makes the internet. Not the corporations or the wealthy few. If we lose net neutrality, only a handful of voices by comparison will be able to be heard and seen online. This is dangerous for both democracy and the medium by limiting the amount of information people can obtain by how much the content provider can pay to provide it. And inevitably even you to access it.

Save the internet!  

"Me And The IRS" Johnny Paycheck (1978)

 

Happy Tax Day!

Frankenstations

They're technical anomalies, transcending medium, legality and current technical standards to become something they were never meant to be.

 

 

They're called "Frankenstations". Or "Franken-FMs". Because while most FM radios can tune down to 87.5 FM, the FM radio dial in North America legally begins at 88.1 MHz and ends at 107.9 MHz.

However, 87.7 MHz (or 87.75 MHz to be exact), is/was the analog audio carrier frequency for VHF TV channel 6. Since the end of World War II until the DTV switchover in 2009, people who live in areas with a local TV station on Channel 6 could hear that TV station's audio signal on 87.7 on their FM radios, a fact not lost on the Channel 6 TV broadcasters (KHQ-TV in Spokane, WA promoted this for years.) And it was offered as a way to hear the audio portion of the Channel 6 TV station when you were in your car or away from a TV.

Bear in mind this wasn't a deliberate service the station offered. Just an anomaly of how the radio/TV spectrum was carved up. And unique only to analog VHF TV Channel 6 because the Channel 6 audio carrier frequency was coincidently in a tunable portion of the FM radio dial at 87.75 MHz.

However, in the early 2000s, several low power analog VHF TV stations began popping up on Channel 6. They weren't purposed as traditional TV stations, but as FM radio stations. This is why they are called "Frankenstations" An FM radio station using an audio frequency for TV.

The first Frankenstation was KZND-LP in Anchorage, Alaska. "87.7 The End" went on the air in 1999 and immediately outraged competing broadcasters who thought KZND was cheating and complained to the FCC. As it turned out, the station was using an overlooked loophole that allowed the audio portion of a TV channel to not be synchronized with a video image.

However, being an FM station on the TV band isn't as easy as one would think. First, you're technically a TV station. This means you must at least run some image on the video carrier. Which KZND was not transmitting, so the FCC forced them to start doing so. It wasn't enough the station had the ability to transmit a video image, but it had to actually do it to be within the law, as it was technically a TV station first. A simple graphic card to be broadcast over their video carrier was all the station needed to become legitimate.

Today, KZND now broadcasts on a real FM frequency (94.7.) 87.7 in Anchorage is now a jazz station called KNIK

WLFM-LP in Cleveland, Ohio actually used a Western Digital screensaver as their video carrier image!

Second, you have to be a lot more quieter than standard FM stations because you still must broadcast according to television technical standards. This meant a lot of the problems of a quiet uncompressed FM radio signal, such as "picket fencing", that "fwip-fwip-fwip" sound you hear on FM radio as you drive farther out of the station's primary service area is far more apparent well within the primary service area on an 87.7 Frankenstation. You can't broadcast in stereo either. While Zenith invented both FM Stereo and MTS Stereo TV transmission, the two systems are incompatible. All Frankenstations are mono.

And Nielsen Audio (formerly Arbitron), which measures radio ratings regards the Frankenstations as actual TV stations and doesn't count them amongst actual FM radio stations.   

However all low power analog TV stations, which had been exempt from the 2009 American digital TV switchover must change over to digital themselves by September 1, 2015.

Which will mean the end of the Frankenstations because the digital signals can no longer be received over standard FM radios.

However since the analog to digital TV switchover there's been talk of expanding the FM radio band down to 76 MHz (similar to how the AM radio band was expanded from 540-1600 kHz to 540-1700 kHz in the late 1980s.) Which would incorporate the Japanese allocated FM radio band (which runs from 76-90 MHz) into the American FM radio band and allow American FM stations to broadcast on those frequencies. But that's only going to happen when the current FM spectrum gets so crunched, there is no alternative.

And we're already pretty much there in some parts of the country.

The Kids In The Mail

In 1913 it was legal to mail children. With stamps attached to their clothing, children rode trains to their destinations, accompanied by letter carriers. One newspaper reported it cost fifty-three cents for parents to mail their daughter to her grandparents for a family visit. 

As news stories and photos popped up around the country, it didn't take long to get a law on the books making it illegal to send children through the mail.

The United States That Could Have Been

Click on map to enlarge

Take 10 Minutes To Learn The Metric Way!

Ahhh......the metric system. To this day the US, Burma (Myanmar) and Liberia are the only nations in the world who have not formally adopted the metric system.

While the US has authorized the use of the metric system since 1866, outside of science and a few other places, it was largely ignored. In 1975, Congress authorized a ten year plan for national conversion. Which seemed like a good idea.  Canada and Mexico already adopted it

And PSAs like this began appearing. (I remember watching this - my elementary school teachers were (quite reluctantly) trying to teach it and I tried to explain it to my mom and how nearly every country in the world uses it and now the US was changing over. She rolled her eyes and said with deadpan sarcasm "Wow. And all this time, I thought we won the war.....")

Today you find some uses of the metric system. Namely this:

 

And along the borders for our Canadian and Mexican friends

Speed limit sign in Blaine, WA.....just a few meters over the border.......

 

 And virtually all retail food/drink and household products in America have both standard (or imperial) and metric measurements listed on their containers. Wine and spirit bottles are also metrically portioned. And it's ubiquitous in the illegal drug trade. Foreign imported bikes also use metric nuts and bolts (I found this out with my old Peugeot 10 speed.)

So what happened?

Simple, for the most part, we Americans resisted. In fact, the government gave up around 1982 and closed the metric conversion office when then President Reagan made the first sweeping wave of government cutbacks, ending all funding for a national conversion.

However there are still a few hopeful holdouts. But it's doubtful Americans will ever convert.   

BREAKING NEWS: Pepsi Trademarks 'Jazz'

PepsiCo, the world's second largest soft drink company, has claimed trademark protection on the word "Jazz" and has issued cease and desist orders to anyone currently using the word other than in reference to their diet cola product of that name.

Pepsi Jazz has been on the market since 2006, while the word "j---" goes back to around 1915, but PepsiCo was able to exploit a loophole in the burgeoning field of ridiculous intellectual property claims. "No one had trademarked the word," said Pepsi spokesbastard Phil Clabbard, "so we took the opportunity to secure our brand property. We feel this will eliminate confusion that may be usurping our brand integrity and product recognition. From now on, when anyone says 'Jazz,' everyone will know they mean 'Pepsi Jazz.'"


More below.....

























































APRIL FOOL!!!!

(http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=28849#.UT_eeqrIkiw)

Happy Easter!

Part 15 Radio

If you ever wanted to run a radio station (and who hasn't?), there is a way you can do it without a lot of money, that has small, but fair enough range (about a mile, more or less - enough for a local neighbourhood) and without a license - legally.

There's a little known sub-section in the Code of Federal Regulations under Title 47 called Part 15. Under this section, you can legally operate a small radio transmitter running no more than 100mW (milliwatts) and a maximum antenna height of three meters (about 10 feet) on AM. (FM is much more limited in signal strength and smaller in antenna height.)

You can operate on either AM of FM. But the range you get with FM is much more limited (about 250 feet) than with AM. AM is by far the best method of transmitting under Part 15 rules.

Most Part 15 operators transmit in the upper portion of the AM dial, in that "expanded band" area that appeared on AM radios made past 1988 between 1600-1700 on the AM dial where there are fewer stations. Range is actually farther on these frequencies than those on the lower end of the AM dial. Which was something I never understood because technically, the lower end of the dial always seemed to have the farthest broadcast range of most AM stations. But I think that's factoring in grounding and other high-end engineering methods (that's one downside with AM, you have to really study radio transmission methods and theory.)

Here are some web sites that can get you started on this incredible little hobby:

http://www.hobbybroadcaster.net

http://www.part15.us

http://www.lpam.net

Van Morrison's Last Album For Bang Records

You know Van Morrison by some classic albums he made in the late '60s/early '70s, Tupelo Honey, Moondance, Into The Mystic, Astral Weeks. It was these four albums that had some of his biggest hits and no self respecting Adult Album Alternative format radio station would take to the airwaves without them.

But prior to these classic albums, he was under contract to a tiny US indie label called Bang Records, originally a kind of stepchild label of Atlantic Records that had no direct tie to Atlantic. He still owed Bang another album and Van, to say the least, was tired of Bang Records, whom he felt was stifling him creatively. Like Bang's other big artist back then, Neil Diamond, Van Morrison also left Bang because of the label's interference in his career direction, Bang wanted more cash-cow, pop radio friendly hits from Van Morrison like "Brown Eyed Girl", Van wanted something more.

In one of the best examples of How To Do A Contractual Obligation Album To A Crappy Record Label 101, Van got the last laugh by recording some 30 tracks with titles like "Blow In Your Nose", "Nose In Your Blow", "Ring Worm", "Freaky If You Got This Far" "You Say France And I'll Whistle" and "I Want A Danish". It was clearly intended to be a middle finger to Bang Records.

It worked. Bang let him out of his contract. Warner Brothers snapped him up and the rest is history.....

http://blogfiles.wfmu.org/DP/2003/03/365-Days-Project-03-05-morrison-van-ring-worm-you-say-france-and-ill-whistle-1968.mp3

There Oughta Be A Law.......

Some actual laws (some are STILL on the books!)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In seventeenth-century Massachusetts, smoking was legal only at a
distance of five miles from any town.

In Vermont, USA, it is illegal for women to wear false teeth
without the written permission of their husbands. 

A monkey was once tried and convicted for smoking a cigarette in
South Bend, Indiana. 

Acting was once considered to be evil, and the actors in the first
English play to be performed in America were arrested. 

It's illegal to buy ice cream after 6 pm in Newark, NJ. unless you
have a written note from your doctor. 

In Texas, it is illegal to curse in front of or indecently expose
a corpse. 

In Michigan, USA, a man legally owns his wife's hair. 

As late as 1932, jail-breaking in Texas was not a crime if the
prisoner escaped without using a gun. 

It's against the law to catch fish with your bare hands in Kansas. 

In Kentucky, it is illegal to carry ice cream in your back pocket. 

In Boston, it is illegal to take a bath unless one has been ordered to by a physician. 

An old law in Bellingham, Wash., made it illegal for a woman to take more than steps backwards while dancing. 

In Idaho, USA, the law states that all boxes of candy given as romantic gifts must weigh more than 50 pounds. 

Mailing an entire building has been illegal in the US since 1916 when a man mailed a 40,000-ton brick house across Utah to avoid high freight rates. 

In Texas it's legal for a chicken to have sex with you, but it's illegal to reciprocate. 

In Tennessee, USA, a man must walk in front of any car driven by a women, while waving a red flag as a warning. 

In Louisiana, USA, a man may legally beat his wife with a leather strap, as long as it is less than 2 inches wide. 

In Texas, it's illegal to put graffiti on someone else's cow. 

In Vermont, USA, it is illegal for women to wear false teeth without the written permission of their husbands. 

French Lick Springs, Indiana once passed a law requiring all black cats to wear bells on Friday the 13th.