link me up, scotty.

(Joshua Masayoshi Huff)

Here's an aggregation of links that caught my eye in the past week that you may have missed:
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It's a massively sad joke that even though the University of Hawaii won it's football game this weekend, it dropped one spot in both the USA Today and AP Polls. No other team would ever drop for winning a game--I'm sorry. Teams also get applauded when they win with their backup quarterbacks and have losses forgetting if they lose with a backup. UH won and got chastised for not winning by more--even though Colt Brennan played two snaps (he completed two passes for 21 yards).

The most ridiculous thing? The University of Southern California Trojans leapfrogged them in both polls--even though the Trojans did not play this week and even though the Trojans lost to Stanford. USC's first loss wasn't even a GOOD loss. Give me a break.

The fact of the matter is that the schedule is what it is--and the team has beaten all challengers up to this point. What more do you want the team to do? Michigan and Michigan State pulled out--how can UH play better teams when the better teams pay UH not to play them?

It's all up to this Friday's showdown with Boise State--and with Washington State beating Cal, UH's schedule should feel a little boost.

Sadly, even if the 'Bows find a way to go undefeated, they probably won't get into a BCS game, which is going to make me absolutely sick. As much as everyone wants to talk about scheduling, Oklahoma and Kansas only have the 115 and 116 best schedules respectively--3 spots better than Hawaii...and yet, even though Oklahoma has two losses, they're still most likely going to get into a BCS game without worry.

I'm going to be sick.

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Cops open a tattoo parlor in order to catch criminals. This seems like "To Catch A Predator" type entrapment to me.

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I found it amusing that Warren Buffett was the one who told A-Rod to circumvent Boras and talk to the Yankees on his own.

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Slate is convinced that e-mail is dying among teens. My opinion? The fact is that email never was that popular among the under-20 set--before Myspace and Facebook, IM was (and still is) all the rage. E-mail will come to these kids--once they hit college.

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The Democrats are coming down hard on filesharing, saying that if colleges don't start curbing illegal downloading by students, they will start pulling federal financial aid from schools. And, the RIAA is actively going after college students.

GW warned students about online privacy.

Then, the RIAA got a court order that forced GW to reveal the names of the downloaders (though the name of the court is not revealed...come on, Hatchet staff)

Finally, GW got a subpoena.

36 students at USC are being sued by the RIAA

And, according to another Daily Trojan article,13 schools are seeing lawsuits. It's interesting that I've spent time at both.

A close friend of the Collective was one of the 19 downloaders. Due to privacy issues, of course, we will not reveal his/her identity, but the RIAA is serious..as is Interpol (no, not the band). Fine, fine--downloading is illegal. I understand. But I find it laughable how downloading music is made to be as bad as terrorism and drugs in my globalization class. Let's get real. The problem is the business model that the recording industry has. I'm not going to go into it (we've written about it ad nauseum), but the fact is that music is so stale right now. I'm going through the albums that I'm currently listening to, and most of them are from before the year 2000. Record companies are signing boring, safe bands--put out a product we want and we'll buy it.

And, if you do get served, please settle: a woman refused settlement and is now being sued by the RIAA for $222,000. There's just no point in fighting the RIAA legally--especially when they're going to settle for $2,000. Lawyer fees are going to cost more than that.

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And, since I'm addicted to orange chicken, here's an article on it--supposedly it accounts for 38% of all of Panda's sales. I'm proud that the Ala Moana Panda Express is the world's number one grossing Panda Express, but I'm EXTREMELY enthralled that the Panda Express in my small hometown, Moanalua (a Honolulu suburb) is the number two grossing Panda Express. INSANITY! MOANALUA is number two worldwide for something!

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And this post's video(s) Stardust "Music Sounds Better With You"


What a great song. This band was the precursor to Daft Punk (Thomas Bangalter played in it), and though this was their only song, the band really proved instrumental (Alan Braxe does a lot of remix work, and Benjamin Diamond does a lot of vocal tracks) to the French House scene--essentially, all of today's big French/Pitchfork bands (Sebastien, Justice, etc) were all born from this song.

And see if you don't hear Nana Katase ripping it off to the T:



It sounds like her producer sped it up a bit, but even the drum breaks sound eerily familiar...and ripping off other musicians isn't something new for her--her song "Babe" is a direct rip-off of Kylie Minogue's "Love at First Sight" (and the video for "Babe" rips off Minogue's video for "Come Into My World", while Katase's video for "Telepathy" is the same as Minogue's video for "Can't Get You Out of My Head")

I'd give you all links, but:
a) the Katase videos have been taken down from youtube
b) I realize that you don't care.

And, finally, Alan Braxe's "Intro"




Check out Braxe's "Upper Cuts" if you get a chance--a really solid album. You'll find the Stardust track on it, and the entire thing is just a load of fun...slow house, I guess.

Right then. Cheers. Happy Monday, everyone.