China is a recurring subject in the Republican debates. National debt is given a sinister character by the suggestion that the Chinese own much of it (they own some of it, but by far not most). Here’s Romney from one of the debates:

China is playing by different rules. One, they are stealing intellectual property. Number two, they’re hacking into our computer systems, both government and corporate they are manipulating their currency, and by doing so, holding down the price of Chinese goods, and making sure their products are artificially low-priced. It’s predatory pricing, it’s killing jobs in America I would do something this president should have done a long time ago, which is to label China a currency manipulator. And then I would bring in action at the WTO level, charging them with being a currency manipulator.

Romney’s China rhetoric is relatively more sophisticated and fact-based than many other Republicans’ and yet here we have bad economics. They’re stealing our intellectual property? You mean they refuse to strangle their progress with our monopolies and artificial scarcity? What predators. And here we have the false notion of zero-sum trade, coming from the party that is ostensibly for free trade.

Obama isn’t much better. In his last SOTU, Obama mentioned China 5 times and counted blocking Chinese tires from entering our market as a victory for American workers. Sure, it’s a victory for some workers but on the whole, it’s not a benefit for the American people. Obama knows better and his economic advisers certainly do. But appealing to peoples’ [false] intuitions and paleolithic fear of outsiders is always a politically winning strategy.

The growing consensus, as far as I can tell, among those on the mainstream Left who understand economics is that we shouldn’t stop free trade but rather ensure an ample safety net for the minority who does suffer from the workings of the global market.

China sacrifices her citizens’ subjects’ wealth to make products cheaper for us. This isn’t to the benefit of the Chinese people over the American people. It’s to the benefit of certain Chinese manufacturers over the Chinese people. Countering that with tighter trade restrictions won’t restore the balance in favor of the American people, but rather benefit domestic producers at the expense of everyone else. Tariffs should be seen for what they are – a regressive tax.

Pete Hoekstra may be stupid and he may be blatantly playing off of xenophobia and discredited folk economic beliefs, but he is far from alone.

Swerving around and traffic like a hummingbird through a flowered thicket brings your driving time from 50 minutes down to 45 minutes – congratulations. Or, you could spend just 10 minutes weeding out unnecessary parts of your power point outline, saving you an hour of preparation! (“whew, I don’t have to track down a picture of an Uzbek wedding celebration!”)

If you wanna hand these out, download the full-rez tiff here, print it out, cut it and spread the word ’till all the kingdom’s on earth accept the gospel of Thomas is awesome.

Band-collab.net Online Music Collaboration Released with WebDAW™

Wrightwood, CA – - 12/8/2007 – - Osaka Red, LLC officially makes band-collab.net, a web-based platform for collaboration between musicians, available to the public. Band-collab.net promises to revolutionize the way musicians work on music, delivering on great as-yet undelivered promises of the internet.

Band-collab.net began as a simple web-based app created by Thomas Webb for his band to work on and comment on each other’s lyrics in a private part of his band’s website. He then expanded on this simple idea to create something much more comprehensive – web-based digital audio workstation, web-based virtual filesystem, ascii-tab generator, private forum and file sharing – everything needed for musicians to work on music remotely. To this, band-collab.net also adds other useful features for bands, such as band pages with streaming music as well as musician’s classifieds.

“I had something that let my band continue to be creative, even during the work week, even if a member or two moves away”, says Thomas, “I wanted to share this neat tool with the world. If there’s one thing the internet hasn’t revolutionized as much as it should have, it’s creativity – and this is the missing piece”. Indeed, the web has done many great things for left-brain creativity – a quick web search for “online project management” shows a wide array of useful and ingenious pieces of software – but musicians are given very few simple tools to enhance the creative process itself. That is, until now.

Band-collab.net now also includes a web-based digital audio workstation, WebDAW™™™™™, for working on song ideas over long distance. This simple flash-based applet allows users to upload recordings of their part to a virtual project. Each track can be moved forward or backward in time, attenuated or panned to achieve the right mix. This is a much quicker and more compatible alternative to heaving hefty multi-track files from different software programs. However, where the advanced features of a desktop DAW are needed, band-collab.net does gladly facilitate the needed file transfers, and uploaded files are conveniently kept in the musicians’ workspace.

Band-collab.net also allows quick creation of the web’s most popular way of exchanging guitar tablature, so-called “ASCII tabs”, using a built-in ascii-tab generator. This is in line with band-collab.net’s philosophy of enhancing the way musicians already work rather than adding new barriers. This generator is built right in to the forums and can also be used to create and save tabs in the band’s space.

Asked what makes band-collab.net different from other sites out there designed for open musical innovation, Thomas replied, “Band-collab.net is based on the way real bands create music. Sites designed for open collaboration have their niche, but one of the great lessons of the internet is that social norms don’t suddenly change when technology is applied. We give tools that can enhance the creative flow the musicians already perfected on their own.”

About Us

Osaka Red, LLC is making a name for themselves in the pro audio and scientific/medical markets. Bringing user-friendliness and open standards to places where such is the least expected and surprising the industry with innovations that are useful and user-friendly, yet astonishingly simple. Osaka Red both creates software to sell or offer as a free web service and creates custom software for very happy clients.

On the web front, Osaka Red, LLC hopes to make the internet a more useful and friendly place than they found it by creating web-based technologies of value, rather than on monetizing capacity alone. The internet has great potential to realize our wildest dreams and Osaka Red, LLC is committed to do what they can to bring it to its potential.

Media Contact:
Thomas J. Webb
760-912-1856
tjwebb@osakared.com

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