Bewarethewumpus

A reader of Free Range Kids is in danger of having his six-year-old daughter taken into protective services custody because he let her walk a few blocks to the post office in their Ohio town. The kid, Emily, asked for a little independence, and was given permission to take some unsupervised, short walks. Neighbors and cops freaked out, detained her, detained her parents, sent CPS after them, and has made their life into a nightmare -- one that's just getting worse and worse.

Day 41: We are served with a complaint alleging neglect and dependency. The County wants to take Emily into “protective supervision” or “temporary custody.” The complaint contains many factual errors and inaccuracies.

There is also a motion for “pre-dispositional interim orders.” As I understand it, this is a mechanism by which CPS can intervene even before the merits of the case against us for neglect are even heard, but less decided. It is scheduled to take place more than a month before the hearing on the neglect charge. It asks the court to force my wife and I to “allow ______ County Children Services to complete an assessment with the family. This is including allowing the agency access in the home, allowing the agency to interview the children, and participate openly in the assessment process.” In other words, they want to search our house, interrogate the children, and force us to testify.

We are trying our best to raise Emily to be responsible, curious, and capable. We have chosen to include teaching her about using the library, navigating the neighborhood, and mailing letters as elements of her homeschooling. Needless to say, this entire ordeal has been quite distressing for the entire family, and we view it as a threat to our homeschooling her, our parental rights, and both my and Emily’s civil liberties. Since our family is being threatened by legal action, I have tried to confine my comments to a dispassionate statement of known facts.

As Lenore Skenazy notes, this shouldn't deter you from letting your own kids move independently about their towns: "I am posting this story NOT because it is common and we should all worry about being hounded by CPS if we let our kids go outside. I am posting it in utter outrage at the idea that a child on her own could be considered neglected or in danger when she is so obviously, clearly, and indisputably neither."

They're looking for pro bono legal assistance.

6-y.o. Who Walked Alone to Post Office May be Removed from Her Home

Ron Dauphin

The Pennsylvania Game Commission would like you to know that it is not legal to hunt deer in the Burrell Township Walmart parking lot, and, by extension, any other Walmart parking lot.

After a four month investigation, the authorities have concluded that, even if you see what they determine to be “the nicest buck [they've] seen taken in Indiana County in a couple of years,” it is not appropriate or lawful behavior to leap from your car and chase it around the side of the building while firing multiple shots from your handgun.

The incident in question took place last November and was caught on store surveillance video. The “hunter” faces a misdemeanor charge of reckless endangerment and several hunting violations, including hunting without a license, shooting on or across highways and unlawful killing or taking of big game.

 

Hunter Shoots Deer In Wal-Mart Parking Lot [IBTimes]
Man Charged For Hunting In A Walmart Parking Lot [CBSLocal]

A television company in Holland is seeking volunteers for a one-way trip to Mars. The good news is that the sort of people who would volunteer to be on a reality TV show will be on a one-way trip to Mars.

Mars One was founded in 2010 by 36-year-old engineer Bas Lansdorp, who told ABC News he has a road map and financing plan for the project, and that "the mission is perfectly feasible."

In order to raise the estimated $6 billion required to fund such an ambitious project, Lansdorp says that it hopes to capitalize on vast public interest in a manned mission to Mars by selling global broadcasting rights to the mission.

Seems legit.

From the company website:

Mars One is a not-for-profit organization that will take humanity to Mars in 2023, to establish the foundation of a permanent settlement from which we will prosper, learn, and grow. Before the first crew lands, Mars One will have established a habitable, sustainable settlement designed to receive astronauts every two years. To accomplish this, Mars One has developed a precise, realistic plan based entirely upon existing technologies. It is both economically and logistically feasible, in motion through the integration of existing suppliers and experts in space exploration. We invite you to participate in this journey, by sharing our vision with your friends, by supporting our effort and, perhaps, by becoming the next Mars astronaut yourself.

More: Reuters TV, ABC News, and here's the company website for "Mars One."

I bought six of these two weeks ago just because the technology — a totally self-contained heating element that gives you a hot meal via steam heat in 10 minutes or less no matter where you are —- seemed so amazing.

Guess what?

I’m sitting here eating one of these meals right now, with no power since 14″ of snow descended on my podunk town overnight, and it is delicious.

Cheap at twice the price.

And the delight of preparing it: you simply open the included pouch of salt water, pour it on the heating element, place your sealed food container on top, put the whole shebang back into the insulated box, and wait and watch in wonder and delight as:

1. The box starts to puff up

2. Steam starts pouring out

3. Sounds — amazing sounds — emanate from the box

4. The smell of cooking food pervades the immediate vicinity

5. You open the box and peel back the plastic lid and darned if your chicken cacciatore isn’t all piping hot and smelling scrumdiddlyumptious — tastes great too!

Fantastic stuff. -- Joe Stirt

Chef 5-Minute Meals: 6 meals for $32

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

Dawn jumps up from behind the mountains and splashes over the city, making a high tide of light that reaches with bright yellow fingers up to my bedroom window.

The glow filters through the dust motes and the blinds. It paints stripes onto my floor. My dry body twitches, climbing the ladder up from dreams to a state of awareness. The images let go of me as my brain re-orders into something more limited. My conscious mind asserts itself, pushing the dreams away, eradicating the memory of them.

I remember. Last year that the road outside would have been filled with cars, honking horns, the hum of radials on warming pavement as the first world went to work.

That’s missing now. I can hear the scuffling of footsteps and people talking to each other. This is the new world. There are still banks and borders but cars, those dinosaur-blooded monsters come to reclaim the earth, they’re almost all gone.

I hear the ratcheting of changing gears on bicycles. I remember that rent will be due in two days.

Those of us that can afford it carry firearms now.

A frontier mentality is taking over, a mindset that always happen to humanity when faced with tough challenges. There’s an bluntness to it that I find refreshing in its brutality. Like the human race is going through a chapter of being honest with itself.

Gold is still gold but a majority of the businesses in the world have gone bankrupt. The upper floors of most high-rise downtown buildings are deserted. Offices have become hovels for nomads and squatters. We haunt this city.

The desert is reclaiming the world. I’ve heard the term ‘dustbowl’ from old books about the depression of the 1930s but I never understood it until now.

We all wear handkerchiefs or cheap air filters on our faces.

We feel lost. No leader has risen yet to take over. The whole notion of government has become informal. Local leaders are making the rules. The republicans were well-prepared. The liberals think the end times are here.

Myself, I know that I have to find some food out there and a day’s work. I wipe the sleep from my eyes and swing my legs over the edge of the mattress. I’ll check the condensation tanks and see what the day’s water levels are.

I’m awake.

 

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The US-Korean Free Trade Agreement came with a raft of draconian enforcement rules that Korea -- then known as a world leader in network use and literacy -- would have to adopt. Korea has since become a living lab of the impact of letting US entertainment giants design your Internet policy -- and the example that industry lobbyists point to when they discuss their goals.

One of the laws that Korea adopted early was the infamous "three strikes" rule, where repeated, unsubstantiated accusations of copyright infringement leads to whole families being punished through restriction of, or disconnection from their Internet connections. Now the Korean National Human Rights Commission has examined the fallout from the country's three strikes rules, and called for its repeal due to high costs to wider Korean society.

Here's the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Danny O'Brien with more:

The entertainment industry has repeatedly pointed to South Korea as a model for a controlled Internet that should be adopted everywhere else. In the wake of South Korea's implementation, graduated response laws have been passed in France and the United Kingdom, and ISPs in the United States have voluntarily accepted a similar scheme.

But back in Korea, the entertainment industry's experiment in Internet enforcement has been a failure. Instead of tackling a few "heavy uploaders" involved in large scale infringement, the law has spiraled out of control. It has now distributed nearly half a million takedown notices, and led to the closing down of 408 Korean Internet users' web accounts, most of which were online storage services. An investigation led by the Korean politician Choi Jae-Cheon showed that half of those suspended were involved in infringement of material that would cost less than 90 U.S. cents. And while the bill's backers claimed it would reduce piracy, detected infringement has only increased as more and more users are subject to suspensions, deletion, and blocked content.

This Wednesday, Korea's National Human Rights Commission recommended that the three strikes law be re-examined, given its unclear benefits, and its potential violation of the human rights to receive and impart information and to participate in the cultural life of the community.

Korea's three strikes rules are similar to the "Six Strikes" rules that America's leading ISPs have voluntarily adopted and just put into effect. If you want to see the future of American Internet policy, and its fallout, look at Korea.

Korean Lawmakers and Human Rights Experts Challenge Three Strikes Law

Author : John Arcadian

The lag has made us patient. Not humanity, just Marie and I, and maybe a few others. You see, I’m on the lunar launch station on the farthest part of the moon that is viably habitable. It’s a spider-webbed grid of interconnected, but autonomous, pods that contain living space, communal areas, bureaucratic offices, and all those other little fiddly bits that make launching deep space rockets feasible. I took a 1 year contract up here for the paycheck. While I walk through the tunnels to visit other workers and friends, my real contact comes when I talk to Marie by satellite relay. It’s cheap, reliable, and almost everyone up here uses the relays to video chat with their left-behinds on that big blue-green marble that we all want to get back to.

We’re just far enough for there to be a bit of continuous lag, maybe 20 or 30 seconds, even if you are just sending bytes of text. So we’re used to periods of silence and stillness while waiting for a response. You get very zen about it because there’s no other option.

When the explosion knocked me off my chair, the emergency lights flooded my pod with their yellow glare and the alarm klaxons started blaring. Marie was still telling me about the movers transferring her desk out of her office. I was busy locking down the airlocks and ensuring my seals were tight, so I didn’t get a good look at her reaction as my pod started to float away, but I could tell she was freaked out.

My living pod, including the relay dish, is powered by high-efficiency solar panels. The algae tanks are intact and will pump out enough oxygen and protein mass for me to “live” indefinitely. Command sent a message explaining about the exploding rocket and the pod eject procedures that saved most of us. Rescue ships are on their way. Most of the other pods are in stable, so the risk of death before rescue is minimal. It’s a very smartly designed system. Just have to sit back and wait for rescue. At least I’ve still got contact with Marie.

The first days were the worst. You could watch the lag getting worse the farther out you drifted. I’ve got a notepad with the calculated lag times for the first 4 days. After a few hours of drifting it took roughly 4 or 5 minutes between replies. By the second day it was at 13 minutes. The third day had it out to 49 minutes. We’re on week 3 now. It takes about 65 hours or so for a reply. Most of the pods are floating in a steady pattern, emergency beacons and maneuvering jets keeping us bunched together.

The rescue ships are still a week or so out. The trajectories from the earth launch pads take a lot longer to line up. I think we’re all talking to loved ones back home. I can see patient faces illuminated by the screens of monitors when I have my external camera zoomed out and pointed at one of those thick pressure restraining windows. Yeah, we’ll get rescued eventually. We’re not worried. The lag has made us patient. Marie has moved back in front of her screen and is telling me about her day, or a day she had a week or so ago. Apparently, the movers broke her desk when they switched her office again, but she’s not angry. The lag has made us patient.

 

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Shovel Knight is one of the many indie games that caught my eye at last weekend's PAX East. It's the only one that had me thinking Zelda II, though the retro-loving developers at Yacht Club Games also cite DuckTales and Mega Man as influences.

Before I could even find Kotaku editor Chris Person, I had to shoot some video of this. I wanted you all to see it. What follows is a video preview, with Yacht Club's Sean Velasco playing and explaining.... sorry for the rough audio.

Haven't heard of Yacht Club? They're a new indie studio that includes former developers from Way Forward. At that studio they worked on games such as A Boy and his Blob, Contra 4, and BloodRayne Betrayal.

Shovel Knight is coming to PC as well as Wii U, and 3DS eShop. Velasco would, of course, love if you helped Kickstart it.

To get you (and me) even more excited, he shared some nice art.

And here's something really cool, a poster by the artist Crowsmack whose lovely Dark Souls posters we featured here on Kotaku, earlier this month:

Author : Bronwyn Seward

“I-, I-, want….you to die my boy.”

“Famous last words, eh Grandpa?”

My father’s father fidgeted under the covers, twisting his toes with creaking bones. A shaky hand reached for mine, as I jutted away from it.

“Come here, don’t be afraid now.”

Pawing closer, the shriveled, weather-beaten hand with mangled nails grabbed a hold of my freshly polished mitt. An almost-pleasant warmth from his tenderness hit me first, and then chills tickled my spine as I noticed that his sweat smudged the luminosity from my extremity.

“This world’s made you eh….hard Jimmy.” Knocking on my chrome encased bicep, he cackled until it turned into a dry cough. “You ain’t the same as you used to be.”

“Ha ha, you bet I’m not. And thank God I’m not, otherwise I’d be where you are in fifty years. I’ll never understand why you didn’t do it Grandpa. You are probably the last man to die. You’ll go in the record books as a fool, I tell ya.”

“Of course you don’t understand….and won’t, my boy. You can’t think straight anymores. The little Jimmy that used to make me taste all his food before he bit into them, thinking they might be poisonous is gone. You ain’t him. You just have his thoughts, but he’s gone.”

He frustrated me when he brought up old stories of my weakness and inadequacy. Times had changed, sure I wasn’t that little kid anymore, heck I didn’t even look like him. I didn’t even have his body anymore, but what am I to do with a decaying and decrepit body, waste away? I still was me, there was nothing artificial about me, my soul was intact but my body was gone. Did that make me any less of a person?

“We can throw these old stories and jokes back n’ forth for centuries on end. There’s really nothing to lose, it’s not even painful. Just upload your mind onto the Genex software-”

“That’s a death in itself. Life ain’t the same when kept in a metal cage . Look at you, talking all smart, you’re the fool, ain’t yourself anymore. You’re all metal, cold to the touch, cold to others, plain cold, cold, cold. I don’t think you feel anything other than coldness anymore.”

“Gramps I only feel the good stuff, the pleasant sensations, and the best memories. I can picture grandma as if she were here right now.”

“You’re grandma’s dead, son, her and her body. Why would I just want the memory? You’re a computer, a programmed computer, that’s all you are.”

“No I’m not! Look I’ll show you your Jimmy–” I flashed open my chest cavity to reveal my inner core, a labyrinth of wires, cords, and a piercing light, my life force, never threatening to fade, pulsing through me, an evolved specimen. Inside the machine, my soul on display within a robotic frame.

He curled away from the electricity, with a gasping voice he wheezed “Eh, you creepy robot, keep your clothes on. There ain’t nothing normal or glorious about that. You’ve stripped yourself of anything that sets us apart from those old televisions and computer things. Only thing that makes you my grandson is your name.”

I raised my hand at him. Still out of breath he whispered “You’re half dead. I want you to die my boy….” His hand went limp and then fell off my polished fingers, now empty. Both thoughts and emotions evaded me, all I could feel was cold.

 

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At the New York Times, Mark Mazzetti reports on the promotion of a C.I.A. officer "directly involved in the 2005 decision to destroy interrogation videotapes and who once ran one of the agency’s secret prisons."

Reddit user ipoopinthesink, an employee at Best Buy, says he was handed a rather strange item to recycle as part of the retailer's "Renew Blue" program, where people's old electronic gear can be brought in and disposed of properly.

It's not a broken old TV set or outdated mobile phone. It's a very fancy, very desirable NES Deluxe Set, a vintage limited edition package which included not just just a Nintendo Entertainment System, but two controllers, a Zapper and ROB.

Under company policy the item is to be destroyed, so ipoop's going to extreme measures to save it, hiding the item out back and, after his store manager told him he couldn't rescue it, contacting corporate HQ.

Best of luck, ipoop.

UPDATE - Common sense prevails, and the NES is saved.

"We are in the process of retrieving the robot and gaming system from the store so that we may put it on display here at our corporate headquarters in Richfield," Best Buy spokesman Jon Sandler told Yahoo. "A bit of nostalgia that our employees and visitors alike, are sure to enjoy!"

"We recycle virtually any consumer electronic device out there, but as you can imagine an item like this is fairly unusual and we can see why it captivated our employee’s imagination."

I work at best buy. Somebody brought this into best buy for recycling. My boss told me I would be fired if I took it home (corporate policy). I almost cried. [Reddit, via Go Nintendo]

Currently doing the internet rounds in Japan, this video shows a karate bout in Russia that ends with one swift finish. Have a look.

Epic karate knockout of the 2013 Shinkyokushinkai karate [klasavec@YouTube]

Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.

Kaze Tachinu (The Wind Rises), the latest Studio Ghibli film, will be out July 20 in Japan, it was announced today. [IT Media]

The idea of forcing Congresscritters to wear NASCAR-style coveralls with the logos of their financial backers has been bandied about before, but here it is in official White House petition form.

Since most politicians' campaigns are largely funded by wealthy companies and individuals, it would give voters a better sense of who the candidate they are voting for is actually representing if the company's logo, or individual's name, was prominently displayed upon the candidate's clothing at all public appearances and campaign events. Once elected, the candidate would be required to continue to wear those "sponsor's" names during all official duties and visits to constituents. The size of a logo or name would vary with the size of a donation. For example, a $1 million dollar contribution would warrant a patch of about 4" by 8" on the chest, while a free meal from a lobbyist would be represented by a quarter-sized button. Individual donations under $1000 are exempt.

As funny as this is, it would be easy-ish to turn this into a browser plugin that looked for politicians' names in the pages you looked at, and automatically surrounded them with a semi-opaque halo of corporate logos that you could click on to see more.

Require Congressmen & Senators to wear logos of their financial backers on their clothing, much like NASCAR drivers do. (via Beyond the Beyond)

(Image: Bobby Labonte, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from mulsanne's photostream)

This is a well-known Buddhist story that has appeared in many different versions over the past century. There are even Catholic and Jewish retellings. After some digging (with help from reader, Wayne P) the original author of the fable seems to be a famous Japanese Zen master named Tanzan, who was the professor of philosophy during the Meiji period. This particular version of the story is taken from the great book Zen in the Martial Arts, by Joe Hyams, who was a student of Bruce Lee.

I think the lesson of the story is pretty simple. The younger monk has become so trapped by dogma and rules that he has forgotten the most important rule, which is to help those in need. How did you interpret it?

RELATED COMICS: Absorb what is useful. The Master. The Two Wolves.
- FREE SHIPPING on Zen Pencils prints until Sunday!

BUY THE PRINT

Author : Bob Newbell

“You scared, son?” the old man asked the large robot walking down the long, gray corridor beside him.

“I am incapable of emotion, doctor,” the automaton replied.

The old man nodded in response as he shuffled along. The robot walked slowly so as to remain at the side of the decrepit scientist. At the age of 100, Doctor Segrest was one of the youngest people alive.

Segrest chuckled. “Pretty clever of ‘em when ya think about it,” he muttered.

“Doctor?” the machine asked as it moved along with a gait more fluid and graceful than that of its human companion.

“Oh. Them,” Segrest said glancing up at the ceiling of the long hallway. “Just thinkin’ ’bout how the aliens did us in a hundred years back. All those probes fallin’ all over the world releasin’ that virus that made everybody sterile. They coulda invaded like in some science fiction story firin’ lasers or missiles or whatever. Or they coulda sent a virus to just wipe us out. But then they’d have all those unburied corpses, machines runnin’ unsupervised until they broke down or caught fire. World without people would go to hell in a hand basket pretty quick.”

The machine listened politely but said nothing. Being a command robot with an advanced metaprocessor, it was well aware of the theory that the Infertility Virus that had been released into Earth’s food and water chain was the first step of an extraterrestrial invasion to take place much later. By allowing the human race to become extinct through attrition rather than by a massive military assault or abrupt genocide via biological warfare, the theory went, meant that mankind would attend to such tasks as burying or cremating the dead and shutting down hazardous facilities like nuclear reactors as the shrinking population made their continued operation redundant. Thus, the invaders would inherit an intact world for colonization and study, neither shattered by war nor devastated by sudden depopulation.

“Yep,” Segrest continued, “those alien sons of bitches think they’re gonna walk right in and take over.” He chuckled again and then looked up at the towering machine. “They didn’t count on you fellas.”

As the two walked toward the door at the end of the corridor, the robot silently downloaded reports from its mechanical brethren all over the world as well as from those in orbit around both the Earth and the Moon. The large alien fleet was now inside the orbit of Saturn. It was still a few weeks from Earth. As far as could be determined, the fleet appeared completely unarmed. The command robot processed the data. It determined that the 23,000 nuclear warheads at its disposal were far more that sufficient.

“It’s been about 50 years since we gave up on trying to reverse the Infertility Virus,” Segrest told the robot as they stopped in front of the door. “Fifty years since mankind gave up on survival and found a new purpose. Vengeance.”

“Doctor Segrest, I must get to the command station in orbit,” the robot said flatly.

The old man nodded. “You go right on, son. There are only about 50,000 people left. Soon Earth will have a population of zero. Except for the machines. This will all be yours. You folks are what’s next. Complete your mission, son. Avenge us.”

“Goodbye, Doctor,” the robot said as it walked through the hatch which automatically closed behind it.

Ten minutes later, a spaceplane took off and arced upward toward the stars. Segrest watched it ascend.

“Avenge us!” he said to the fading point of light.

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Here's TammieRD's compilation of all the alternate endings to the Animaniacs theme song, each better than the last. As I mentioned before the complete seasons 1-3 DVDs are a huge hit around our house. Really some of the best kids' (and grownups') TV of the last century.

Animaniacs alternate theme song lyrical endings (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

On March 20th MOTHER 2 gets released on the Japanese Wii U Virtual Console. An official “MOTHER 2 Revival Festival” event is also planned, the highlight of which will involve Shigesato Itoi posting his memories about the game’s development on the game’s Miiverse.

A couple things interest me:

• What stuff Itoi has planned to talk about
• What changes (if any) this version of MOTHER 2 have
• Thoughts and reactions from Japanese fans on Miiverse

I know very little about Wii Us though, so I have a few questions for people who have one already.

• From an American Wii U, would I be able to follow this stuff that Itoi posts on Miiverse?
• Would it be possible to see what Japanese fans are saying from an American Wii U?

I’m almost 100% sure there’s no way to switch an American Wii U’s region to Japan, so if I wanted to get the Japanese MOTHER 2 release I’d have to get a Japanese Wii U for sure though. They’re already expensive enough, but having to import one will tack on an extra hundred or two hundred dollars, I imagine. So another question is: does anyone know where I could import a Japanese Wii U for the least amount of money?

I’d like to be able to cover this stuff on EB Central in a few weeks, so if anyone has any tips, please let me know! And if the cost gets really crazy, I was hoping people might help chip in a little bit of money, but then I realized another problem will befall me – after the MOTHER 2 stuff, I don’t think I’d ever really play my Japanese Wii U. It’d just sit there and collect dust. I dunno what I’d do with it at that point, heh.

I guess if it turns out to cost too much I’ll just hope Japanese fans post enough stuff for me to share. It does seem kind silly to spend a ton of money on something that I’ll use for only a few weeks.

Anyway, if you guys have any thoughts or ideas or whatever, please let me know in the comments!

Related posts:

1. MOTHER 2 on Japanese Virtual Console March 20th
2. MOTHER Series Pricing Rant
3. Hirokazu Tanaka Talks EarthBound

"A new report documents the astonishing number of hours the New York Police Department has spent arresting and processing hundreds of thousands of people for low-level misdemeanor marijuana possession arrests during Mayor Bloomberg’s tenure. The report finds that NYPD used approximately 1,000,000 hours of police officer time to make 440,000 marijuana possession arrests over 11 years. -- Drug Policy Alliance

The National Sheriffs’ Association (NSA) awarded LA County Sheriff Lee Baca "Sheriff of the Year."

What does it take to win Sheriff of the Year?

1,480 wrongful incarcerations? The LA Times reported that "hundreds of people have been wrongly imprisoned inside the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department jails in recent years, with some spending weeks behind bars before authorities realized those arrested were mistaken for wanted criminals."

Widespread prison rape? Just Detention International reported that "Two years ago, it came to light that gangs of deputies were brutalizing jail inmates, using sexual assault and excessive force to instill a climate of terror. Sheriff Baca has repeatedly sought to duck responsibility for the crisis. Yet the Citizens’ Commission on Jail Violence placed the blame squarely on his shoulders, citing a 'failure of leadership.'"

Pervasive abuse of jail inmates? An ACLU report quotes Thomas Parker, a former FBI agent as saying "Of all the jails I have had the occasion to visit, tour, or conduct investigations within, domestically and internationally, I have never experienced any facility exhibiting the volume and repetitive patterns of violence, misfeasance, and malfeasance impacting the Los Angeles County Jail system..."

Why did he win? Your guess is as good as mine!

Coincidentally, Baca is a member of the NSA Board of Directors and serves on its Executive Committee.

"finally," a creative studio based in Mainz, Germany, produced this beautiful animated video exploring what music is:

Music is a good thing. But what we did not know until we started with the research for this piece: Music is also a pretty damn complex thing. This experimental animation is about the attempt to understand all the parts and bits of it. Have a look. You might agree with our conclusion!

(thanks, Joe Sabia!)