Anthropic's Warped Mind

My Brightest Diamond/Rasputina at the Grog Shop - August 7th, 2007

2007-08-09T20:30:00.000-04:00

In the past, I haven't done concert reports and now I look back and wish I had.

I had totally forgotten that My Brightest Diamond was coming up, so Dan and I made a last minute decision to head down to the Grog Shop on Tuesday night to see the show.

While waiting outside, being serenaded with flaccid Christian rock from across the street, an SUV pulls up and this character wearing very light white pants and a white shirt gets out. He started frantically unpacking and bringing musical instruments thrift-store oddities (old TVs, odd cardboard creations, etc) and as he walks past us (there's no back loading door to the Grog Shop) we see that he's painted some sort of dark tears on the sides of his face. It turns out this was the opener, and seeing as it was less than an hour 'till the show was scheduled to start, he seemed to be late. Assisted by a young man who's shirt merely said "Shirt" and a girl we would learn was the drummer he sort of launched into a drama bomb, yelling at the girl that "you know, this isn't a race or anything, there's no need to run".

The Grog Shop is more of a club atmosphere than a larger venue such as the Agora or even the Beachland Ballroom. The stage for this event was a triangular setup in one corner and while visibility isn't very good behind the front rows, there probably isn't a bad sounding spot in the place.

Tight pants guy, whose name was Nicholas something or other played an opening set that was to say the least, fascinatingly entertaining for all of the wrong reasons. It was not bad...No, he is clearly a talented chap...It was just so immensely pretentious and overwrought that it could only be funny. His music was a sort of melding of goth, emo, some cabaret, and the vocal style of Coheed and Cambria. The saving grace was that his main instrument was the keyboard with some organ on the side, assisted by his cute drummer. Had he been the type to emo out with loud guitar shreding, it would have been horrid, but the way it came out, it was merely overwrought. At various points, he tore at his shirt and illuminated his face with a flashlight as if he was puring water over his head. Dude, I hope you're really not that twisted. Whatever else he lacked, he certainly played with emotion, banging at the keys as if he were in the party scene in Amadeus. At the end of the set, for some reason, he passed a cardboard cutout of the sun and an American flag around the crowd for some reason, which completed the pomposity. Nicholas/pants guy showed up with an immense amount of video equipment accompanied by over-serious looking video guys, all of which promptly disappeared after his set. I'm sure this will all show up on Myspace or something.

After that was over, Dan and I were treated to the excellent sounds of My Brightest Diamond, the reason we came. Shara Worden came out alone, explaining that sometimes she tours with a backing band and sometimes she works alone. I didn't have a problem with this because with fewer sounds going on, it was easier to hear her voice, which is an instrument of the utmost beauty. She had no guitar tech...She didn't even have someone running her merch table (more on that later), it was just her and some guitars.

Her set was a good mixture of material from her album last year, Bring Me The Workhorse, and other material from Edith Piaf, a song based on an opera by Maurice Ravel (this one, I think), and some other stuff in French that was enchanting. Songs from the album included Golden Star, Disappear (during which she had an entertaining episode with a hiccup) and the one I really wanted to hear, Something of an End. I had been waiting all day to hear those telephone trills.

Her on-stage presence was very interesting...Sort of a cute, exotic, very peculiar thing that was a nice balance to some of the melancholy present in some of her work. My only complaints about her set were that it could have been longer (of course, sets can always be longer :)) and it seemed like only about half the crowd was paying attention to her playing...There was a lot of noise in the back, which was annoying given the softness and detail in her singing.

Last was the main act, Rasputina...I have to admit, I did no research and basically had no clue who they were. I was fascinated to find out that they're a cello rock trio that seems to bridge freak folk and alternative rock. There are two women on cellos (that night wearing amazon warrior garb) which they can turn electric and one man on drums. They asked everyone to sit, which improved viability, but meant that I spent much of their set sitting in a puddle of some unidentified alcoholic substance.

Rasputina's music was immensely creative and highly humorous. I've long known that adding classical instruments to rock is a sure fire way to make you're music 200% cooler. I tend to appreciate bands that can rock out without guitars, and the moment I realized those shredding sounds are coming from an electric cello it blew me away. Later at home, when I listened to some of the music I had downloaded, I realized that on their records you can't tell how seriously they're taking this and it feels a little pretentious, but live, there's a certain level of silliness built into the whole spectacle that is immensely fun to watch. Frontwoman Melora Creager filled the spaces between songs with witty, dry humor (as a single mother and a self-employed musician, I obviously have a lot of free time on my hands) that completed the element of parody. The high point of their set for me, not being familiar with their work, was a cover of Pink Floyd's touching, yet seemingly omnipresent song, Wish You Were Here.

In the end, I was glad I knew nothing about Rasputina before seeing them live because I felt like I had discovered something. Sometime during their set, it hit me that this is how it was before the Internet...You would go to clubs, see bands you've never heard of and discover what's new.

After Rasputina was finished, Dan and I headed toward the merch table (always one of the highpoints of our indie-concert experiences) and discovered that Shara was acting as her own merch-person. The first thing we noticed is that she's actually rather short. As Dan bought a shirt, she noticed his Decemberists shirt and reminded us that she had toured with them. He told her that we had seen her on Austin City Limits with Sufjan Stevens (which was really the start of our MBD fandom) and then lacking something light enough for her to sign in black felt pen, had her sign his Frank Sinatra-style fedora. I also bought a shirt and asked if she would sign a copy of Bring Me The Workhorse if I bought it. She said yes, and proceeded to do some fancy moves to get the plastic wrapping off the CD...Coolness. She signed the picture inside where she's wearing the dragonfly wings (view the original in ultra hi-res goodness), which is one of my favorites. I told her I love the cover photo (because it's the sort of thing you could put on your wall and it would be good art as well as display your music hipness) and she said that unfortunately she sold out of the LP at the previous stop on the tour.

Later in the car, I would kick myself thinking about all the other things I could have quickly mention in iur short time talking to her...Her recent broken leg, the fact that we had come to see her (most the the people there seemed to be Rasputina fans), how much I had enjoyed the vidoes she did with La Blogotheque, etc.

All-in-all, we had a great, relatively cheap night. I love the fact that you can have these neat little experiences in the indie world with so little of the pomposity of most of modern rock. It all seems more humble, more down-to-earth, more real. This is what music should be about.

Also, I've got to say that the Coventry area of Cleveland Heights (my parents old stomping grounds) is amazing. It has all of the vibrance that downtown Cuyahoga Falls lacks and a scale that dwarfs Highland Square in Akron. If Robart and friends were really smart, they'd try to copy Coventry in downtown CF (hint: we need a real venue down there, not an open air stage, but something like the Grog Shop or the Beachland Ballroom).

Yeah This Is Awesome

2007-08-09T20:29:00.000-04:00

I'm not usually a fan of forum in-jokes, but this is awesome.

QotD

2007-03-24T15:32:00.000-04:00

"Lunch. The sweetest word in the world."

-Leo Laporte

2006 In Music - The Crane Wife

2007-01-01T23:26:00.000-05:00

The Decemberists – The Crane Wife

There will be much debate about whether The Crane Wife or Picaresque is the better album. In my opinion, Picaresque had a greater number of catchy, memorable songs. But The Crane Wife has something else, that X-Factor that just tells me this is the better album.

Every song on this album is good, but what makes this album great is the story of the poor farmer and his Crane Wife. Like the vignettes on Picaresque, here we enter the world of a character and we feel his pain. But, unlike Picaresque, we visit this man’s world three times, the first as he experiences his lost, and the second and third times in the events that lead up to the first. It’s the way we have to piece together this man’s story, and why we is in such pain that makes the three Crane Wife songs special.

It must be said that The Island is an immense achievement. This has got to be the best track they’ve ever produced (I’m not as enamored with The Tain as some people are), but then again I’m a sucker for long tracks that borrow from ELP and Jethro Tull.

Even if some of the songs on The Crane Wife sound a little more traditional then Picaresque, the lyrics certainly aren’t any more traditional. Even When the War Came, which sounds the least Decemberists-like of any of the tracks on the album, contains lyrics such as:

“And the war came with a curse and a caterwaul

And the war came with all the poise of a cannonball

And they're picking out our eyes by coal and candlelight

When the war came, the war came hard”

That is classic Meloy.

The Crane Wife also has the better ending in Sons & Daughters. There’s no coda here like Of Angles and Angels is on Picaresque, letting you down after the high that is the Mariner’s Revenge Song. The Crane Wife ends on a high, taking the high after Crane Wife 1 & 2 and wrapping you in Sons & Daughters. Ending with the chorus “Here all the bombs fade away”, we are left with a reaffirming statement in this age of uncertainly. In typical Decemberists fashion though, you’re left wondering what the characters in the song were running away from. What horrible thing has left them in these bunkers and demands that they leave their “tracks untraceable” as they leave?

I love the sound of this album. Picaresque had a sort of “wall of sound” style to it that made it difficult to hear the individual instruments. Everything seemed to blend together. On The Crane Wife, the production seems much clearer; the instruments have more room to breathe and you can make out individual details easily. It’s intoxicating, really.

2006 In Music: Fox Confessor Brings The Flood

2007-01-01T23:24:00.000-05:00

Neko Case – Fox Confessor Brings the Flood

This was the first album this year that completely blew me away. Rabbit Fur Coat was special, but Fox Confessor is on a level that can only be described as transcendentally awesome.

“The Voice” meets lush instrumentation meets thick, cryptic lyrics. This album wraps you in a warm blanket of sound, hands you a cup of cocoa, and shows you sad films.

After I fell in love with “Fox Confessor” I’ve been basically trying to buy everything else that Neko Case has done (I still need Canadian Amp, and I guess I’ll have to buy the Austin City Limits session when it comes out on CD). Her progression from basically singing straight country songs on The Virginian to becoming darker and more cryptic on Furnace Room Lullaby and Blacklisted, to the hauntingly beautiful wonder that is Fox Confessor Brings The Flood is astonishing.

Some may chide this album for being too short; that she took 4 years to follow up a 40 minute album with a 35 minute album, but I disagree. These songs may be short, but they’re not missing anything. It seems like she simply decided that there was no point to stringing out songs that were already complete for the purpose of adding a few more minutes to the album.

2006 In Music - Ys

2007-01-01T23:13:00.000-05:00

Joanna Newsom - Ys

Wow.

A good album has some catchy melodies or fun lyrics that get stuck in your head. A great album alters your reality so that for that ephemeral period you spending you listening to it, you become lost in another world, another place, and music becomes an experience.

Joanna Newsom’s Ys has that quality. In the first few seconds of “Emily” you become transfixed. Suddenly, as “Cosmia” ends, you snap out of your trance and realize fifty-five minutes have whizzed by. It’s hard to pick a “best song” on this album because they’re all incredible. “Only Skin” must be given special mention, but then so must “Emily” and “Sawdust & Diamonds”. These are all incredible songs filled with cryptic, beautiful images. They feel as if we are walking through Ms. Newsom’s memories. Joy, loss, love, pain. It’s all here.

That a woman singing poetry and playing harp can have this kind of transcendental effect is a testament to the brilliance of the songwriting on this record. These songs flow like streams. No, these are not just songs, but epic poems put to music.

People are calling this an “important” album. What does that mean? Somehow, I don’t think there will be too many bands adding harpists because of Ys. What this album is though, is a surprise. Milk-Eyed Mender is decent, but Ys is incredible. When an artist produces something like this, it shocks people. I think a lot of people felt that Joanna Newsom’s 2006 album would be good, but it was not expected to be incredible. People expected things from the other artists on this list (Decemberists, Flaming Lips, Neko Case, etc), but not Joanna Newsom. In a lot of ways, Ys is this year’s Illinois, another album who’s predecessor showed potential brilliance but that turned out beyond anyone’s expectations.

Ys is the album that, above all others this year, made me say “Wow”. I can’t call if the best album of the year, because any of these five albums could be that, but this is the one that had more of that “X-Factor” than the others did.

2006 In Music: Rabbit Fur Coat

2007-01-01T23:11:00.000-05:00

Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins – Rabbit Fur Coat

By 2005, Jenny Lewis had undeniably become an indie-pop "it girl". But, that status came with a price…One began to get the feeling that people appreciated her more for her style and beauty and than for the substance of her music. I mean, at the core of “A Better Son/Daughter” or “Does He Love You?” can be found great songwriting, but Rilo Kiley is at its heart a pop band containing two former child actors, one of which happens to be a cute woman. Attributes like that will unfailingly invite the scorn of the supercritical Radiohead-worshipping Indie Illuminati.

And so, Rabbit Fur Coat begins with an announcement: This is a woman who wants to be taken seriously. This is a woman who can wrestle with “The Big Guns”. Stand up and listen or be left behind. This is not a Rilo Kiley album. It’s something new and different…A “re-imagining”, if you will, of Jenny Lewis.

At the same time, this is an album that’s also playful and funny and relaxed, because that’s who Jenny Lewis is. This is not just more Rilo Kiley, this is something new and different. This is music that is folky without being anachronistic; thoughtful without being pretentious; fun but not bubble-gum. In many ways, this is an anti-gospel album; taking the gospel sound and creating songs of doubt.

The contribution of The Watson Twins to this album should not be forgotten. The harmonies are one of the things that really make this album special. Without their backing vocals, this album would seem lifeless and if they had chosen to simply double track Jenny, it would seem overproduced. Without them there would undoubtedly be a void. The choice to bring on these two sisters gives the album an air of genuineness that’s sorely missed on a lot of records.

This isn’t Jenny Lewis recording a solo album, this is Jenny Lewis creating her own work of art.

One thing I love about this album is the Traveling Wilburys cover Handle With Care featuring Jenny Lewis with M. Ward, Ben Gibbard, and Conor Oberst. It’s as if this generation of twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings is stepping forward to pick up the reigns rapidly being left by the aging generation of musicians (Harrison, Dylan, Orbison, etc) who laid the foundations of pop music in the 50s and 60s…Reigns which the mainstream has yet to hand to anyone of substance.

2006 In Music: At War With The Mystics

2007-01-01T23:07:00.000-05:00

The Flaming Lips – At War With the Mystics

At War With the Mystics was probably the most controversial album of the first half of the year. Clearly, people wanted another Yoshimi and they didn’t get it.

Is this album as good as The Soft Bulletin or Yoshimi? No. Those albums were masterpieces, and this one falls ever so short. But, is it one of the best albums of 2006? Yes, I think it is.

In fact, this is a brilliant record that hopefully, will someday be recalled for its own brilliance rather than what people wanted it to be.

There is a theme running through this album, and it can be found in the title. We are at war with the mystics. We know who the mystics are. They believe they know better then us. They are the first to defend the status quo and the last to evolve socially. The Renaissance and the Enlightenment were two blows to the mystics. The American Revolution was a more modern blow to the mystics. The Emancipation Proclamation was a blow to mystics. The New Deal was another. Brown v. Board of Education was another. We know who the mystics are.

We are at war with the mystics because we have to be. The future of civilization depends on it. It always has, always will. Socrates was at war with the mystics. Jesus was at war with the mystics. Galileo was at war with the mystics. Voltaire was at war with the mystics. Thomas Jefferson was at war with the mystics. Charles Darwin was at war with the mystics. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was at war with the mystics.

This is a political album. But, it’s not political in the sense of when you sit around a table with your friends at 3:00AM discussing how the world should be run, not in “The McLaughlin Group” sense of what some Senator said this week. Ten, twenty, fifty, one hundred years from now The W.A.N.D. will still be a song that means something to someone because it’s a song about the people rising up and taking control. It’s a protest song in the classic sense. It’s like something Pete Seeger would create if he were to be born on a starship in 3000AD. There has always been a need for songs like that, and there probably always will be, because we are always at war with the mystics.

Why are we at war with the mystics? Because greed and hubris and hate and ignorance are all part of the human condition. Each of us has their own battle to fight with the mystics:

It's a very dangerous thing to do exactly what you want

Because you cannot know yourself, or what you'd really do

People have criticized The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song for being annoying and overly silly, but you really have to listen closely. It’s really a short essay on ethics:

If you could blow up the world with the flick of a switch

Would you do it?

If you could make everybody poor just so you could be rich

Would you do it?

If you could watch everybody work while you just lay on your back

Would you do it?

If you could take all the love without giving any back

Would you do it?

Our quest for a more peaceful, more civilized form of existence as a species much happen within each of us before it can happen to the world as a whole. None of this is new of course, philosophers like Kant and others have been saying these things for centuries. But they didn’t say it in four minutes, fifty one seconds at the beginning of a psychedelic indie-rock/post-punk album.

So, we are not just at war with the mystics, we are at war with ourselves. Witness Vein of Stars:

Maybe there isn't a vein of stars callin' out my name

They'll glow from above our heads

Nothin' there to see you down on your knees

25, 26, 27

Back from the future maybe there ain't no heaven

There's just you and me

Maybe that's all whose left

And if there ain't no heaven

Maybe there ain't no hell

This is not a song about rejecting organized religion. It’s a song about accepting the possibility that your favorite version of the truth is not in fact the truth. In order to respect other human beings and coexist peacefully with them, we must always accept the possibility that we are wrong. Those who cannot accept this become fanatics:

You think you're radical

But you're not so radical

In fact, you're fanatical

Fanatical

My favorite track on At War With the Mystics is the driving guitar cataclysm Pompeii am Götterdämmerung. This is what it sounds like when the mystics win. We listen as a loving man and woman are obliterated by forces they cannot understand.

I say to the naysayers, how can you say that this album not live up to expectations when it has a track like Pompeii am Götterdämmerung? It may be the best track they’ve ever recorded.

This album is not Yoshimi and it’s not the Soft Bulletin, it’s something that was clearly intended to be different…And it’s something that needed to be done.

2006 In Music: Notable Mentions - Part 3

2007-01-01T22:46:00.000-05:00

This notable mention started off as a little quickie bit of text about the album and turned into a full blown essay...As a result, it deserves it's own post:

Emily Haines and the Soft Skeleton – Knives Don’t Have Your Back

I wanted to love this album…I really did…

Let me go back. My introduction to indie music came in the form of a free download of Metric’s Combat Baby on the iTunes Music Store in what to have been late ’03 or early ’04 (because iTunes for Windows was new). Before this time, I mostly listened to classic rock, and in some ways I was bored. My roommate (who listened to Linkin Park, Metallica, and some country shit I’m glad I don’t know the name of) jokingly challenged me to find something from the last 10 years. Before that free track, I had no idea that the kind of music I wanted to listen to existed. A doorway had opened.

The next year, my dorm was filled with iTunes users, and we all swapped music through the music sharing feature. There was a girl upstairs who was into tons of girl rock stuff and she had Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?, which I promptly fell in love with.

Metric led to Broken Social Scene and Stars…Investigation of other Canadian music led to the New Pornographers, Destroyer, and Arcade Fire…To make a long story short, Emily Haines was basically my introduction to indie music and thus the gateway to this awesome stuff I’m listening to today.

Which is why I really wanted to love Knives Don’t Have Your Back. But I didn’t.

This is not a bad album; not by a long shot. But, in a year of awesome and surprising solo albums from other female artists, it just doesn’t impress the way Jenny Lewis’s album did or sounding interesting in the way that Amy Milan’s album did, or sound as soulful as Chan Marshall’s. A solo album should be a showcase of an artist’s capabilities, and while there is clearly talent displayed on this album, we don’t see every facet of the artist. Where is the more wistful Emily of Calculation Theme or Anthems For A Seventeen Year Old Girl on this album? This is an album that sounds too much like a rainy day. I know that Emily Haines tends to gravitate toward the dark and foreboding, but we already know that she doesn’t have to! That’s what made Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?, where she sounded much more multi-faceted, so great.

This is not to say that there aren’t good songs on Knives Don’t Have Your Back. Mostly Waving sounds like a good Metric song that’s been slowed down. It’s full of classic Haines tongue twisters, and those horns are intoxicating. Reading In Bed approaches the kind of range I wanted to hear on this album. If you’re in the mood for downer music, it doesn’t get much better than The Last Page. Doctor Blind is clearly another high point, one that will get caught in your head for at least a week.

The real high point of the album, though, is the awesome packaging. It’s done like a hardcover book, with the booklet attached to the binding to become the pages. Interspersed in the lyrics are X-Rays, of all things. The back cover has an “author photo” of Ms. Haines and a reviewer’s quote. I love the way that Knives Don’t Have Your Back seems to tower over the other CDs in my collection.

This is a good album…The problem is that I was expecting a great album.

2006 In Music: Notable Mentions - Part 2

2007-01-01T22:42:00.000-05:00

Camera Obscura – Let’s Get Out of This Country

I’ll tell you a secret…Any time I’m angry or ticked off, I can just listen to some Camera Obscura and feel better. I’ve come to the conclusion that this Scottish twee-pop must contain natural mellowing agents or something…In any event, I haven’t yet decided if Let’s Get Out of This Country is better than Underachievers Let’s Try Harder, but that’s because the latter is a favorite of mine, not because of any fault in the album.

Amy Millan – Honey From the Tombs

Amy Milan = Electro Pop, right?

Apparently not. Honey From the Tombs is a folk album…Not only that, but this is a good folk album. Touché, Ms. Milan.

I’ve got to say though, the album cover sucks. On first glance, Amy looks like she’s dressed up like a Gestapo agent’s mistress. It gives you the impression this album is full of goth screaming or something.

2006 In Music: Notable Mentions - Part 1

2007-01-01T22:39:00.000-05:00

My Brightest Diamond – Bring Me the Workhorse

This is an infectious album that will hopefully be someday seen as the solid beginning to a great career. Shara Worden has a classic voice…It would be just as home in Mozart’s time as it is now.

Cat Power – The Greatest

This album is rather low-key compared You Are Free, Cat Power’s last album. But, it seems to be more musical, more subtle, more professional, and more complete sounding. Supposedly, this album was recorded in a series of days in between Chan’s drinking binges, which is amazing. This is a quality release, and while it didn’t blow me away, I can’t find fault with it.

Tilly and the Wall – Bottoms of Barrels

“Bad Education” was my favorite song about a transsexual from 2006. Team Love should be proud they have these guys.

2006 In Music

2007-01-01T22:34:00.000-05:00

The year 2006 rapidly recedes behind us, which means that it's time for anyone who considers themselves even slightly interesting in music to post their "List" of the best music of the year.

I'm not comfortable with lists though. How is one to judge that any one of five incredible albums are better than each other? What makes this one #4 and that one #5? I don't know, and frankly, I don't care. Simply put, 2006 was an astonishingly good year for music.

So, the way I'm going to handle this is that first, I'm going to post a series of honorable mentions...Albums that were in fact very good but didn't totally knock me off my feet. Then, I'll be posting my five favorite albums, in no particular order.

I was planning to post these mini-reviews slowly, over a period of days, but I'm sick of twiddling with them, so instead, I'll post them as separate posts but they'll get posted all at the same time.

QotD

2006-10-29T04:21:00.000-05:00

Via NeoGAF's Johan van Benderschlotten:

"It's ok that you people have bad taste in music. The world requires lots of you to go around and perpetuate the shitty dynamic that the RIAA covets. Feel good about yourselves and pat your collective back tonight."

Oh, So That's What He's Saying

2006-10-02T23:38:00.000-04:00

Part of the joy of buying the new Decemberists album after listening to the leak for a month is finding out what Mr. Meloy is actually saying. Like, finding out that your favorite song is actually about a rape.

Come and see!

Dear Amazon

2006-10-02T21:52:00.000-04:00

Dear Amazon,

Do you understand what the word "shipped" actually means? See, I don't think you do. Apparently, when you say "shipped", you actually meant "I told the mail carrier to pick up a package". That doesn't not mean shipped. Shipped is the past tense of ship, and to ship means the package has moved away from the warehouse. Shipped means the fracking package has made its fracking way out the door and is on it's merry way to my doorstep. By definition, a package cannot have shipped and at the same time still be sitting on a dock somewhere waiting for the mail truck. It's one or the other.

At the same time, don't tell me a package has shipped 30 seconds after I ordered if if I ordered it at 9:00PM on a Saturday night. Then I know you're lying immediately. At least allow me to enjoy the illusion that my package has actually shipped.

We Have To Touch People

2006-09-25T19:22:00.000-04:00

One of my all-time favorite quotes...Jacob Bronowski captures in just a few minutes what I could take a lifetime to explain.

From the Knowledge or Certainty episode of The Ascent of Man.

Updating the List

2006-09-20T00:37:00.000-04:00

You may recall that way back in February (my how time flies) I posted a list of 27 albums (I said 28 at the time, but miscounted) I had purchased because I had previously downloaded them from the Internet.

Here's 15 more albums I've purchased since then:

A.C Newman - The Slow Wonder
Camera Obscura - Let's Get Out of This Country
The Decemberists - The Tain
Dire Straits - Brothers in Arms
The Flaming Lips - At War With the Mystics
Mission of Burma - The Obliterati
Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings The Flood
Neko Case - Blacklisted
Neko Case - The Tigers Have Spoken
The New Pornographers - Mass Romantic
The New Pornographers - Electric Version
The New Pornographers - Twin Cinema
Rilo Kiley - The Execution of All Things
Sufjan Stevens - The Avalanche
TV On The Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain

That brings the grand total to 42 albums I've legitimately purchased (i.e. bought the disc from a real store; no AllofMP3 nonsense here) simply because I downloaded them first and liked what I heard. Oh the horrors of file sharing.

I have a suspicion that within a few weeks I'll be adding The Crane Wife, Knives Don't Have Your Back, one or more Laura Veirs albums (Carbon Glacier and Year of Meteors), and perhaps that old classic Tarkus to this list.

Studio 60

2006-09-18T23:41:00.000-04:00

Sorkin is back.

Television is saved.

That is all.

9/11/01 and 3/19/03

2006-09-12T00:20:00.000-04:00

Today, the fifth anniversary of 9/11, was for me, a very confusing, conflicted day of reflection. Part of that was watching Keith Olberman. He played clips of Cheney lying on Meet the Press and Russert catching him. He played Matt Lauer confronting the President this morning on the torture issue...In the Oval Office.

The press is beginning to wake up from the slumber it's been in for all of these years.

Then I watched the conclusion of The Path to 9/11 on ABC.

I will say this about the movie: There were undeniably parts of it that were pure bullshit. There was clearly an attempt to make the Clinton Administration look more at fault than the Bush Administration. But, with that said, it was riveting television and was very well filmed.

In the middle of the 2+ hour Part 2, ABC stopped the movie for the President's 9/11 anniversary speech. He spent 20 minutes turning a speech about 9/11 into a speech on his failed War in Iraq.

Then, the last section of movie played. I watched as our government's helplessness on that day was resurrected in vivid docudrama.

At the end, the movie quoted the 9/11 Commission Report's finding that we have done little to make this country less vulnerable to terrorist attack today than it was on 9/11/01.

By this time, I needed some nice, soft music.

9/11/01 is the date this country's path irrevocably changed. But we, as a nation and as a people did not change that day. When we woke up on Sept 12th, we were not different people. We were the same people trying to make sense of a horrific tragedy.

The date we changed was 3/9/03. The date we invaded Iraq. The date we lost our soul. We cheered our troops on as if we were watching a football game. We accepted our President's explanations as if they made sense. We did not ask questions. We did not require proof. We became the aggressors.

Now, we are not a nation wounded by a cowardly attack. We are a nation wounded by a foolish war we could have avoided. We have shown that we are no better than the ones we call our enemies.

The anniversary of 9/11/01 lays in the shadow of 3/9/03. These events have been forever intertwined. We cannot mourn the one without experiencing the frustration and pain of the other.

Best Year In Music?

2006-08-26T00:22:00.000-04:00

So I was thinking about 2006 in music...It's been a good year with Rabbit Fur Coat, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, At War With the Mystics, Return to Cookie Mountain, The Avalanche and sheer awesomeness like The Crane Wife and Emily Haines's solo album yet to come.

But compare that to some of the music years of the past. For example, here are the highlights of 1971:

All Things Must Pass
Aqualung
Blue
Electric Warrior
Hunky Dory
Imagine
L.A. Woman
Led Zeppelin IV
Meddle
Pearl
Sticky Fingers
Tarkus
What's Goin On
Who's Next (which, if you ask me, is the best rock album of all time)

WOW. It's hard to imagine a year that huge today, even with the current upswing in great music from the indie scene.

Windows Live Writer

2006-08-18T19:48:00.000-04:00

Blogger is one of the slicker things I've seen on the Internet, but lately I've been getting fed up with it's rich text editor. It seems like unless you write things in a certain order (like quoting and italics), it's too easy to have things screw up. I'm not sure if this is a problem with Blogger and Firefox or just Blogger in general, but it happens.

So, it's very cool that Microsoft has released the Windows Live Writer (which I'm using to write this now). Basically, it's a normal Windows desktop app with an Office-like look that lets you post (despite the name) to basically every popular type of blog.

Kudos to Microsoft for coming up with something this cool and making it broadly compatible.

And It's Not Even From Pitchfork

2006-07-07T01:03:00.000-04:00

I've stumbled upon what may be the most pretentious music review ever written. This is truly shocking in it's self-importance and pomposity...

PopMatters review of The New Ponorgraphers' 2005 album Twin Cinema (which is an excellent album, by the way):

Regardless of the fact that he works in an entirely different medium, Newman appears to be settling into the parameters set forth by Sarris's 1962 "auteur theory". Sarris's thesis (itself an extension of François Truffaut's politiques des auteurs, published in a 1954 edition of Cahiers du Cinéma) argues "over a group of films a director must exhibit certain recurrent characteristics of style, which serve as his signature". Later, in his book The American Cinema, Sarris would offer further clarification: "Ultimately, the auteur theory is not so much a theory as an attitude, a table of values that converts film history into directorial autobiography. The auteur critic is obsessed with the wholeness of art and the artist. The parts, however entertaining individually, must cohere meaningfully."

Like Alfred Hitchcock's storyboarded mise en scène or John Ford's pitting of solitary figures against the expansive backdrop of Monument Valley, Newman's giddy music, drunk on its own effervescence, is such a stylized idealization of pop's possibilities that it can't be anything but auteurism.

Keep in mind this is about an album. Apparently, because it's called Twin Cinema, that's a license to go wandering into French cinema.

Quote of the Day

2006-06-06T23:37:00.000-04:00

In keeping with today's theme of webcomics-related posts...Here's the QotD:

"Is chintzy one of those racist code words, like "gyp"? I await the terse communiques from Lower Chintzia."

-Penny Arcade's Tycho Brahe

By the way, the first Penny Arcade book, Attack of the Bacon Robots, is worth every penny (heh). It's a funny thing shelling out $13 for something that you can get for free, but the book is really the ideal way to read any comic. It feels more fluid to read; easier to consume some how. Now I'm thinking about buying the first Starslip Crisis book and the new Wigu book...Should Questionable Content ever be available in book form, I may swoon--or something.

Woah...

2006-06-06T23:36:00.000-04:00

They're not kidding when they call it infinite canvas...

Thanks For Sharing

2006-04-11T19:39:00.000-04:00

What's better than someone walking down a hallway having a speakerphone conversation on their cell?...Someone walking down the hallways having a speakerphone argument on their cell.

Nena was right, everyone is a Captain Kirk.

Fortune Cookie

2006-03-27T21:59:00.000-05:00

I just opened a fortune cookie from last night that says: "Stop searching forever. Happiness is just next to you."

On my left is a PC and a laser printer, on my right is a box of cookies. Happiness?

I hope not.

BGNews Thing #2: The Horrors of File Sharing

2006-02-21T00:05:00.000-05:00

Oh the horror, the horror of file sharing!

Today, the BGNews featured a front-page news story abount some national student group's quest to make sure we all "Download Legal", as well as a staff editorial defending their claims.

The news story was kind enough to allow campus music-guru-type Alex Merced to give the opposing side of the story; that the labels are actively screwing us, and that's why we download.

Allow me to go further...

Here is a list of albums I have purchased in the past year or two:

Fiona Apple - Extraordinary Machine
Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins - Rabbit Fur Coat
Metric - Live It Out
Metric - Old World Underground, Where Are You Know?
Sufjan Stevens - Illinois
Broken Social Scene - Broken Social Scene
Broken Social Scene - You Forgot It In People
The Arcade Fire - Funeral
Cat Power - The Greatest
Bright Eyes - I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning
Stars - Set Yourself On Fire
Feist - Let It Die
Green Day - American Idiot
Modest Mouse - Good News For People Who Love Bad News
Modest Mouse - The Moon and Antarctica
Spiritualized - Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space
The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots
The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots 5.1
The Flaming Lips - The Soft Bulletin
Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
The Postal Service - Give Up
The Decemberists - Picaresque
Rilo Kiley - More Adventurous
The Shins - Oh, Inverted World
Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand
Cake - Fashion Nugget
Cake - Comfort Eagle

That's 28 legitimate, legal CD purchases that would not have happened were it not for the fact that I had already heard (and loved) these albums through file sharing.

Were it not for file sharing, I probably would not have ever heard of half of those albums. I'm totally sure I would have never heard Feist, Stars, Cat Power, Broken Social Scene, Spiritualized, Jenny Lewis, and Sufjan Stevens (which is sad because that's some of the best music I've ever heard). I'm totally sure I would have dismissed American Idiot and Extraordinary Machine had I not heard the whole albums first.

And that's the point. File sharing is the best advertisement for music that's ever been invented. With file sharing you can listen to a greater variety of music than 99% of radio stations out there will ever provide you with. You can't explore music with traditional options. It simply isn't possible. Even with something like iTunes, you're limited to 30 second clips...I'm sorry, that's not good enough. How many people would have bought Dark Side of the Moon if they had just heard 30 second chunks of it? It's the brilliance of the whole package that matters.

The problem here is that I am not an idiot. I will not buy an album because I heard one good song on the radio or saw an artist on TV. I want brilliant albums with brilliant songs, and the only way to find things like that is to listen to whole albums (especially considering the assinine state of music reviews).

At the same time, consider the technical side of "Download Legal". They want you to buy DRMed garbage. I refuse to buy a whole album on a medium that has been purposely broken. Music is a shared social experience. If I can't send something I love to a friend, than there's no point in buying it. If I'm limited were I put it (such as what brand digital audio player I chose to buy), there's no point in buying it.

BGNews Thing #1: President's Day Hillarity

2006-02-20T23:44:00.000-05:00

Right-Wing BGNews columnist Alan Calcaterra writes some hillarious shit, I must say. Today, he wrote what starts out being a perfectly innocuous column about President's Day facts:

President's Day is today, and most people think this is a meaningless holiday.

It actually does have a lot of meaning because it was created for the celebration of all the presidents of the United States.

Originally, George Washington's birthday and Abraham Lincoln's birthday were two separate federal holidays in February until 1968, when Congress passed the Uniform Holidays Bill.

The bill, however, didn't become effective until 1971, combining Washington's and Lincoln's birthdays into one day called President's Day. It exists to honor all presidents and it is celebrated on the third Monday of February.

See?...Good wholesome President's Day fun. But, Alan is a right-wing blowhard, and that means that on President's Day, he has an irresistable temptation to start worshipping Ronald Reagan. It's like a moth drawn to a flame. So, lets go to the next page...

TBN, which is the most-watched religious network according to the Neilson ratings, is airing the award-winning documentary "In the Face of Evil: Reagan's War in Word and Deed," which is about Ronald Reagan and the 40-year campaign against the Soviet Union and communism.

Oh, there it goes...This is actually a triple word score for Alan, because he mentions TBN, Reagan, and communism in the same sentence. It's like a reactionary shish kabob.

The film has been getting great reviews and broke box office records in multiple cities when it was released in 2004.

It is considered one of the best documentaries on Reagan and the Cold War, and TBN is expecting high ratings for this President's Day feature.

The documentary is based on Peter Schweizer s best-selling novel "Reagan's War: The Epic Story of His Forty Year Struggle and Final Triumph Over Communism." This book is best known for saying that Reagan achieved the final victory over the Soviet Union through direct confrontation.

So, in honor of all of the presidents, go see a right-wing propaganda film today!...

I consider him to be the greatest president of the 20th century. His contribution to ending the Cold War and fighting communism was one of the biggest victories ever in U.S. history because it was the first time the U.S. fought against a superpower with nuclear weapons.

O RLY? FDR says hi.

Message Board Post of the Day

2006-02-13T22:11:00.000-05:00

Bless you, GAF:

In the last couple days my PC has shut off a few times out of nowhere. It is usually preceeding by a message that my video card isn't getting enough power and that the settings are being turned down.

I havent changed anything with my PC's setup in months. Is this just a problem of my PC not getting enough power?

On the back of the Power Supply there is a red switch. I have it on 110. Do you think turning it to 240 would help?

I'm really clueless here. Thanks GAF.

It Never Fails

2006-02-09T04:01:00.000-05:00

It's after 2AM, and I have found yet another cool thing...

uBrowser is an experimental Mozilla based browser that renders everything through OpenGL. Want to see cnn.com waving like a flag? Slashdot mapped on a sphere? Digg on a cube? Digg scrolling by like the intro to a Star Wars movie? This is the browser for you.

Quote of the Day

2006-02-03T02:38:00.000-05:00

Today's QotD comes from a poster named Axolotl on Fark:

I'm old enough to remember when we were the good guys.

The US did not invade without prior attack.

The US did not torture.

The US believed in the right to public trial.

The US did not spy on its own citizens.

The US had legitimate popular elections.

The US was a role model for other nations.

The Most Merciful Thing

2006-01-31T01:35:00.000-05:00

Once again, it's the wee hours of the morning and I stumbled upon something incredibly cool. Behold the 128k mp3 internet stream of MIT's campus radio station, and their 1-2AM program on Mondays called "The Most Merciful Thing". Basically, imagine three nerds with microphones talking about odd science and politics while Holst's "The Planets" plays softly in the background.

Still A Unique Problem

2006-01-22T06:09:00.000-05:00

I have noted in the past how I tend to find the coolest things on the Internet after 2:00AM. This explains why I was watching Abbott and Costello's "Who's On First" routine at 6:00AM.

What's In A Name?

2006-01-10T01:20:00.000-05:00

For those of us who can't afford real Nixie Clocks, there's now a Konfa...err...Yahoo Widget Engine widget that simulates the experience.

See, this is the problem with them calling it Yahoo Widget Engine...Saying something is a "Yahoo Widget Engine widget" uses four words, one of them twice, where saying Konfabulator widget is rather more concise. You can't just say "widget" for simplicity, since there are something like a half-dozen incompatible ways of putting widgets on one's desktop.

Really, calling it Yahoo Widget Engine screams "we're marketing droids with no creativity". It screams "we're bundling all kinds of useless shit with this neat thing". It screams "turn off the lights, the party's over".

The whole point of the word Konfabulator was that while it was literally nonsense, it sounded exactly like a word that described what the thing did would sound like. "Konfab" gives one a sense of infinite possibility and "-ulator" sounds like machine. It's a machine that does lots of stuff, which is exactly what it was. It's a platform for making little doohickies.

The whole point of the word Konfabulator is that it sounds exactly like "widget engine" without saying somehting as needlessly dry as "widget engine". It sounds like something that Willy Wonka would be selling. It was the perfect way to position the product. "We're the slightly silly guys," it says. "We're the one's with the imagination". These are the people who use something called Spidermonkey. These are the people who offer a Werewolf Monitor. Konfabulator is Willy Wonka rolling down a carpet.

Yahoo Widget Engine sounds like something you try to sell a CIO. Willy Wonka becomes a PR flack. If they had the slightest bit of talent over there, they would have called it "Yahoo Konfabulator" or even better, "Konfabulator, by Yahoo".

"But, but, but..." the no-talent marketing hacks go, "Konfabulator doesn't really tell people what the thing does. Yahoo Widget Engine makes more sense". Does it? Ever actually seen anything in real life called a widget?

The whole problem is that what hese little desktop programs are too hard to concisely describe. Apple's Dashboard name tries to make an analogy to all of the meters on one's car dashboard with their widgets. It's not a bad idea, to a point. They're both small instruments designed to tell people things they want to know. You're current speed is a lot like the outside temperature in that regard. These widgets work well for "at a glance" information.

But the angle that the name Dashboard misses that the name Konfabulator attempts to hint at is that the information your receive is infinitely customizable. You can have a widget telling you where the ISS is right now. You can have a widget tell you where earthquakes are occuring. The possibilites are endless. It's crucial that the name of the product express those possibilites. That's why you need a creative name like Konfabulator, because the name Yahoo Widget Engine sounds like "we take a dump on your desktop".

Kristofer Straub Is Fully Responsible. He Is Sorry.

2006-01-10T01:15:00.000-05:00

This Checkerboard Nightmare "Blamination" is hillarious. "I'm in prison" is the new "It's such the don't".

Quote of the Day

2005-12-23T20:56:00.000-05:00

This must be the week of webcomic QotDs...

From Starslip Crisis:

Enjoy it while you can. It may be your Final Soup.

Quote of the Day

2005-12-22T00:32:00.000-05:00

From Diesel Sweeties:

You'll always have fan fic.

At least until the F.B.I. seizes your laptop as evidence.

Quote of the Day

2005-12-15T01:43:00.000-05:00

Sigh.

Was your dog raped this morning?

-Eric Burns, in a rather sad and disgraceful (and low locked) comments thread at Websnark. Not surprisingly, William G. was involved, though atmittedly he has promised to stab himself in the eye with a fork (because he got involved in "drama" not because he was trashing Penny Arcade's charity, kind of sad...).

Thought #1: I don't think I'll ever understand how the mere mention of Penny Arcade seems to bring out the worst in people. I mean, you mention to someone how an online charity effort has raised hundreds of thousands for sick children and people generally have good thoughts...But mention that Gabe and Tycho were behind it, and the teeth come out. "They must have some hidden agenda", they spit. "Do they really mean it?", they wheeze. I cannot see where someone can object to Penny Arcade running a charity, on any grounds, unless they have an irrational hate of Penny Arcade. That goes way, way beyond any actual criticism of what Penny Arcade is and steps into catfight territory.

Thought #2: When it comes to the policing of online communities, I tend to like the places that allow the balls to the wall, dirty as hell kind of online flaming/cage match drama that you could see building in that thread. Eric Burns does not stand for that sort of thing. However, there is such an acidic side to the webcomics community (moreso than even videogame console wars, I think) that I can see why Mr. Burns does what he does. He wants Websnark to be a place full of well thought-out discussion and characterized by generally good feelings. He wants his place to be a candle in the darkness forcing back the kind of acidic idiocy and hate that (at least I think) William G. regularly dips into.

Let It Be Known...

2005-12-15T01:34:00.000-05:00

If I were rich, I most certainly would own a Nixie Clock. Sweet jesus that is cool. It's like the ultimate in Dr. Strangelove styling.

Quote of the Day

2005-12-08T16:45:00.000-05:00

Today's Quote of the Day goes to Kristofer Straub, creator of the Checkerboard Nightmare and Starslip Crisis webcomics. Over at Websnark, he posted a comment concerning Ctrl+Alt+Delete:

The way I described it in my forums (where we had a much more literate discussion about CAD than the bitter-sounding snipefest I posted at CxN) is that gaming humor, or any genre for that matter, is like Legos. There's only so many things you can build with the kinds of pieces given. You'll never escape the 2x4 brick (two friends playing games on a couch). You need the little rubber wheels for the car (funny violence). So it's understandable that gaming comics are going to have similar elements.

Penny Arcade took its pieces and built an M-Tron Magna-Rover. PVP took the same pieces and built a Buccaneers playset. CAD pulled the curtain back and showed us an M-Tron Magna-Rover sitting on top of a Buccaneers playset. The pieces are all there, as they have to be, but CAD doesn't do anything new with them.

Late 80s-Early 90s Lego lovers represent!

Imagine

2005-12-08T04:10:00.000-05:00

Occasionally, I have the crazy idea that perhaps, in a multiverse of parallel universes, we're the evil universe. December 8th is one of those days. Here was a mind with so much left to give, robbed from us three and a half years before I was born. I got robbed, you got robbed. We got robbed, and for what? Like I said, maybe this is the evil universe.

William G: Part 3

2005-12-07T02:58:00.000-05:00

Back in October, I wrote a nasty little post about webcomics pariah William G.

Today, I get a little "comment notification" email, and guess who's name I see...

William G.

It would seem that he found my little post. And he decided to leave a nice little post of his own.

So I just followed my referres back and I find some retard fanboy talking out his ass.

Oh well, I expect it from you clowns now. Keep up the mental masturbation, idiot.

I'm not at all sure if he realizes this, but knowing that the actual William G read my little post (which I never expected...hell, I was surprised when I got any comments about that post, nevermind one from the man himself) and actually felt the urge to leave a note is one of the coolest things that's ever happened to my Internet-self in the roughly 7 years of online-selfdom I've had. And in some small way, it does pleasure me to know that William G knows that I think he's a "scum-sucking pig", a "webcomic asshat", a "sewer rat", and most importantly, the "Richard Hogland of webcomics".

However, on another level, I think that when I posted that insult-laden entry I missed an opportunity to really say what I thought instead of going for the brief high one achieves by splatting a rant onto one's blog.

My problem with William G is precisely this: William G is not actually a "sewer-rat" or a "scum-sucking-pig" or any of that. William G is Indie Rock Pete*. This is a person who has become a pariah because he told several hundred thousand people they had bad taste. He hates anything that is remotely popular, that's why he "reviewed" PA and PvP and Megatokyo first on his late comic review blog. He named one of his subsequent blogs "doyourowndamnedcheerleading.blogspot.com" His Blogger profile actually says: Rest assured that my tastes are better than yours. Maybe that's a joke...Maybe not. Comics assembled from templates, no matter how brilliant they are, are simply not good enough for him. He compared Penny Arcade to pro-wrestling. He once listed a list of comics you should read simply because no one has heard about them.

William G, in his quest to destroy unoriginality and cliche has become a cliche. And his problem is, like Indie Rock Pete, he doesn't want to comes to terms with what he is.

*William G analogous to a sprite comic character? Muhahahaha.

Another Idiotic BGNews Columnist

2005-12-07T02:08:00.000-05:00

Danielle Winters. She makes D.J. Johnson (almost) look positively sane.

I have the feeling that D.J. Johnson is just one of these libertarians who wants to remake the world in some sort of Randian image. The world they want to live in might make a good subject for a dystopian sci-fi novel but since these guys are basically the Right's little sidekicks (always sucking up, but they'll never actually run the show), you have the satisfaction of knowing that the D.J. Johnson's of the world are mostly harmless.

The people who really scare me are the lockstep conservative types who have no real thoughts, just talking points. These people have "We report, you decide" burned into their retinas. The easiest way to identify one of these people these days are these tell-tale signs:

Won't shut up about Communists.
Says the ACLU is trying to destroy America.
Actually believes that there is a liberal "War On Christmas".

So, here's three paragraphs from Danielle Winters's Tuesday column in the BGNews:

But the sad thing is, this whole issue is not even about religion. It is about morality. The liberal culture has made a concerted effort destroy the most important fiber of our country’s makeup — our traditions. Chiefly involved in this destruction: the ACLU and the secular left.

Communists realized early on that the way to get to the population was to destroy their morality by taking away religion and tradition. People stripped of morality are easiest to brainwash.

My fear is that if I make that unconscionable slip, saying, “Christmas tree” instead of “holiday tree,” the mechanical hound from the novel Fahrenheit 451 (you all remember his savagery) will attack me for my politically incorrect slip.

*Ding*Ding*Ding*Ding* We have a winner!

Last semester, after the Horowitz thing, I wrote about the campus Communists who basically acted like clowns in and around the event. That column is same type of sordid, embarrassing display with a polarity flip. Have a look at that column and you'll find a case study concerning what happens when a Wingnut passes from annoying asshat to certified clown. It's like she's playing Ann Coulter dressup.

Quote of the Day

2005-12-02T02:43:00.000-05:00

Today's quote of the day comes from a reader comment left on Carl Zimmer's most excellent science blog The Loom:

FoxNews is singular among news organizations in that it has a 'junk science' section, but no science section.

Sadly, the quote is also untrue*...If you scroll down** far enough (a good 1500-2000 pixels or so on my new 1680x1050 display), you'll find Fox News's "Science" section...However, the Science section is marked "new", while Fox News has been posting Steven Milloy's "Junk Science" bat guano for years now.

*Sadly, a lot of great quotes are probably on the shady side of true. For example, can we really say that the only traditions of the Royal Navy are "rum, sodomy, and the lash"?

**As one of my CS professors likes to say "people don't scroll".

Quote of the Day

2005-11-28T02:30:00.000-05:00

On GAF, poster JackFrost2012 comments on the AIM Triton beta, and it's smileys:

I swear to God I am going to kill a man.

Even to people who can't see the graphical abortions, it's adding NOSES, for fuck's sake. I am not some 15-year-old tart. This is pissing me off.

Tonight's Pearl of Wisdom

2005-11-28T01:33:00.000-05:00

Christian Rock sucks. That is all.

This concludes tonight's pearl of wisdom.

Webcomics Blogging

2005-11-25T17:06:00.000-05:00

Time for some rapid-fire webcomics blogging...Please do not leave the ride until it has come to a complete stop. Anthropic is not responsible for lost or stollen items.

I can't wait to see what the folks at Websnark have to say about the latest developments at Something Positive. Wow.

In other news, Penny Arcade's "Tycho" is now a father and reminds us that he writes unlike any other living human being. It's like if William S. Burroughs was raised on videogames and stayed away from the drugs. Today's comic, by the way, includes the ever-enjoyable Fruit Fucker and cranberries. You know you want to click. Just do it. Do it.

Megatokyo is finally about something, which is something of a surprise. As you may remember Megatokyo has been criticized in the past for being something of an American Otaku fantasy...Here anti-social Piro is surround by a bevy of females in the society of his dreams. But now, we're being introduced to the darker side of fanboyism, and Piro (the character, not the writer) is now forced to see the fans as a threat to someone he cares for. Quite an interesting turnaround. In other news, today's "Dead Piro Day" comic marks the reappearence of "ph34r t3h cut3 on3s", which is always a treat.

Bounty hunters? We don't need their scum.

Ye gads, are these new comics I see up at Instant Classic? Shocking! I always hate it when Instant Classic just sits there for weeks/months on end with no updates. Brian Carrol obviously has a knack for creating webcomics, but he could go from making good comics to making great comics if he updated regularly.

If you haven't been reading Perry Bible Fellowship, you really should start. It's consistantly sick, twisted, and utterly hillarious. PBF is the sort of thing we should strap on outbound space probes so that a billion years from now aliens can find these strange creations and ponder what strange creatures could create such things.

Next Monday will mark the 500th Questionable Content comic. QC is probably the best exanple of why online comics will alwasy be better than newspaper comics. It's the ultimate long tail comic...Obscure indie rock references, X-rated mothers, mischevious robots, cute girls, Coffee of Doom...This soft of thing only works online where the author creates exactly the content he wants and the audience finds the comic on their own.

In case you didn't know, Ctrl-Alt-Delete is a pale imitation of Penny-Arcade.

I am consistantly amazed by the way David Wright can create the sacharine cute Todd and Penguin and the stark satire Taking Up Space at the same time.

Starslip Crisis is introducing us to Hardware Pirates... Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...

Gossamer Commons is shaping up nicely. Hehehehe...A Viceroy of Cul-De-Sacs. It's kinda sad to see Greg Holkan leaving, but I'm sure Eric Burns has done an excellent job picking the new artist.

That is all. You are dismissed.

I Couldn't Have Said It Any Better

2005-11-25T17:00:00.000-05:00

Penn Jillette created this week's "This I Believe" essay on NPR, and I couldn't have said it any better:

I believe that there is no God. I'm beyond Atheism. Atheism is not believing in God. Not believing in God is easy -- you can't prove a negative, so there's no work to do. You can't prove that there isn't an elephant inside the trunk of my car. You sure? How about now? Maybe he was just hiding before. Check again. Did I mention that my personal heartfelt definition of the word "elephant" includes mystery, order, goodness, love and a spare tire?

I'm Serious

2005-11-21T01:14:00.000-05:00

If I ever run into D.J. Johnson on campus, I'm telling him he's an idiot to his face.

Barack Obama is Made of Rainbows and Sunshine

2005-11-15T05:41:00.000-05:00

Barack Obama has balls of steel:

In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society. But in our past there has been another term for it - Social Darwinism, every man and woman for him or herself. It allows us to say to those whose health care or tuition may rise faster than they can afford - tough luck. It allows us to say to the women who lose their jobs when they have to care for a sick child - life isn't fair. It let's us say to the child born into poverty - pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

But there is a problem. It won't work. It ignores our history. Our economic dominance has depended on individual initiative and belief in the free market; but it has also depended on our sense of mutual regard for each other, the idea that everybody has a stake in the country, that we're all in it together and everybody's got a shot at opportunity.

First, he has the stones to use the phrase "Social Darwinism" to describe the "pull yourself up by the bootstrap" shit that has permiated conservative economic thought. Remember folks, pointless suffering is good for your moral fiber. Here is a man who is not afraid to call a spade a spade.

Second, I love this line: "Everyone's got a shot at opportunity". That is what needs to be the motto for the America of the 21st century. When you have no healthcare and you cannot afford college, the word opportunity is a joke and individual initative is a farce. The idea that if we tried to solve social problems the country would crumble is a cruel fantasy of the Right.

Quote of the Day

2005-11-14T10:36:00.000-05:00

As seen in the comments at Pandragon:

Ahh yes, but if you'll notice that feminism didn't exist before the 60's, or more accuratly, before the crash in roswell.

Intelligent Design

2005-11-12T02:20:00.000-05:00

Some things just make me smile:

So listen, Kansas. That sound you hear is the world laughing at you. Even if there is a God, he's sitting on his Lay-Z-Boy looking down and saying, "Man, I just threw that shit together, honestly. I had a spare week back in Zanga Blork Grobba Flugen (God's got his own wacky calendar - don't ask), and I told Steve - HEY STEVE, YOU REMEMBER THIS?! (Steve's in the bathroom, btw) - so I says to Steve, 'Dude, let's put together a universe', and Steve is like, 'Man, I'm beat. I was big-banging this chick last night...' anyway, you know how Steve is, and so I said, 'No, we'll just throw a quick one together" and so Steve is all like, 'Only if we can put rings on some of the planets (Steve was going through a whole ring phase back then) and also, let's hang some decoration in the back of the throats of some of the animals', and I was like, 'Sure dude, whatever' because Steve is my boy, you know."

Quote of the Day

2005-11-10T14:03:00.000-05:00

As seen in the comments section over at Kevin Drum's blog:

I am not a rational actor, but I play one on TV.

-NTodd

Thought of the Day

2005-11-10T02:38:00.000-05:00

I supposed the depressing thing about reading biographies of famous historical figures is that at the end of the book, the subject always dies.

Quote of the Day

2005-11-07T15:52:00.000-05:00

As seen in a Fark comments thread:

Glenn Beck was arguing in favor of US torture the other day on the radio. Not Abu Gharib torture, mind you, (he is against that), but professional torturers.

If you told me in 1985 that in twenty years, I'd hear "mainstream" media personalities arguing that the USA needs to perform torture on uncharged foreigners, and saying this is a good thing for the country, I would assume the Soviets had won.

-Farker "Just Ignorant"

Complaint of the Day

2005-11-03T21:57:00.000-05:00

You know that I hate? I hate it when you go to a site with some garish, rather dark background and read for long enough for your eyes to switch to the lower light level. Then, when you switch to normal looking page with a bright, white background, your eye goes nuts and you experience pain.

President Carter Is Kicking Ass and Taking Names

2005-11-03T03:00:00.000-05:00

Former President Jimmy Carter has been making the talk show rounds talking about his new book Our Endangered Values : America's Moral Crisis. Now, when a right winger uses the phrase "moral crisis", you know he's talking about the satanic lefty plot to take your bibles and impregnate your daughters. When Jimmy Carter says "moral crisis" he's talking about the United States Government torturing prisoners, suspending due process, invading countries, and letting fundamentalists make policy.

Here's the transcript of Larry King's interview with Carter this evening. I can not tell you how refreshing it is to have a prominent citizen who is also very religious say things such as this:

A fundamentalist though, as I define in this book, in extreme cases has come to the forefront in recent years both in Islam and in some areas of Christianity. A fundamentalist by, almost by definition as I describe is a very strong male religious leader, always a man, who believes that he is completely wedded to God, has a special privilege and relationship to God above others.

And, therefore, since he speaks basically in his opinion for God, anyone who disagrees with him at all is inherently and by definition wrong and therefore inferior. And one of the first things that a male fundamentalist wants to do is to subjugate women to make them subservient and to subjugate others that don't believe as he does.

The other thing they do, and this is the only other thing I'll add, is that they don't believe that it's right to negotiate or to compromise with people who disagree with them because any deviation from their absolute beliefs is a derogation of their own faith. So, those two things, exclusiveness, domination and being very highly biased are the elements of fundamentalism.

Wow. Carter gets it. He sees it.

I do not believe in God. However, I am mature enough to realize that in a free society anyone is free to believe anything they want. When it comes to matter of personal cosmological views, words like "right' and "wrong" have no meaning. You either believe something or you don't, and there exists no way to prove your view over mine or my view over yours with any real certainty. That's why it's critical to realize that if you want to keep your free society free, you have to keep an eye out for fundamentalists, because they are no mature enough to let people believe things other than what they believe.

Fundamentalism is about consolidating power and thought. That's why it so closely resembles fascism. Carter recognizes this too:

CARTER: Well, I think there's been always maybe for a century some elements of fundamentals. You know, I believe in the fundamentals of my faith. But in the book that I have written I describe in some detail the exact definition of what I consider to be a fundamentalist that I've just outlined just two principles of it.

In my own Baptist faith the right wing began to dominate and fundamentalism came to the forefront beginning in 1949 about 25 years ago and it came to fruition I would guess about five years ago when the leaders of my denomination issued a creed in effect, a state of principles that they themselves drafted and now you cannot be an employee in the Southern Baptist Convention.

You can't be a missionary overseas. You can't be a pastor. You can't be a chaplain in the armed services. You can't be an administrator or teacher in any of the seminaries or higher education institutions unless you accept that creed and that's something that is completely unprecedented and has never happened in my faith before.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with a group of people wanting to organize and worship together. But a line is crossed when it becomes about controlling thought.

But yet another, more concerning line is crossed when fundamentalists try to force their brand of religion on society. Carter understands this too:

But this is something that Thomas Jefferson espoused, as you know, when he said build a wall between church and state and I happen, as you know, I'm a Christian and I believe that Jesus Christ ordained this when he said "Render under Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's." So, this breaking down of the barriers between the two is just one of the elements in recent years that causes me concern.

There is a very clear and distinct difference between believing that Adam and Eve rode to work on dinosaurs and trying to force that idea into society by subverting our educational system. In a free society you have the ability to believe whatever you want to believe, but there also exists an obligation in a free society to keep that society free. When one groups decides that their beliefs trump all others, and seek to force those beliefs on society, then that is an active attempt to make society less free.

For example, when you have a situation where fundamentalists are trying to change how science is taught to fit their cosmological views, then society is becoming less free. Jimmy Carter understands that:

KING: By the way, as a Christian, do you believe in creationism?

CARTER: I believe there's a supreme being, God, who created the entire universe, yes. And I am a scientist, as a matter of fact, as you may know, I studied nuclear physics. I helped to develop nuclear submarines. So, I believe in science. I believe we ought to explore the far outreaches of space. We ought to make sure we understand everything we can about the particles that make up the atoms.

I think we ought to discover everything we can about science. It ought to be accepted as proved unless it's discounted. I believe still in a supreme being. But, I don't believe that we ought to teach religious matters in a science classroom, because I think that the two ought not to be related.

They ought to be completely separate. And I don't think anyone, Larry, interferes in full belief in the other. I believe completely in scientific proofs and values unless they're discounted. I believe in a supreme being. But, I don't believe you ought to teach creationism in the science classroom.

Obviously, I disagree with his cosmological stance, but he has every right to have that stance. However, and much more importantly, I totally agree with the principle he is putting forth here: "The two ought not be related". Religion has it's place in society, science has it's place. Religion has thousands of places of worship and hundreds (if not more) of it's own schools; it does not need the public school classroom.

But let us not forget that freedom is as much a matter free thought as it is a matter of honor. When your country is operating secret torture camps, then you disgrace and dishonor the ideals of freedom. Carter understand this too:

I don't think there's any doubt that lately, as John McCain has pointed out, and as 90 of the 100 Senators have approved that our government has illegally and improperly been torturing prisoners, so John McCain and others are trying to have in the law just now being considered we should not be permitted to torture prisoners. This has been a part of our nation's policy ever since I can possibly -- well for more than 100 years at least.

KING: But we didn't -- we didn't have a 9/11.

CARTER: Well but we had the Second World War, which was a lot more destructive for our people. In fact, my own uncle, Tom Gordy (ph), was captured by the Japanese about two weeks after Pearl Harbor and he was a prisoner for four years. He was tortured severely, only weighed 85 pounds when he came out of prison. He was almost dead.

And after that the Geneva Accords were written, which was approved by and even negotiated by the United States and we agreed that in order to protect our own reputation and in order to prevent our own service people from being tortured if they were captured that we would not torture prisoners who were held by us.

That in a radical way is now being rejected by many people in our government and it's not a unanimous thing even within the Bush administration. There's a big debate going on whether the CIA should be permitted or the Defense Department should be permitted to torture people.

I think it's completely wrong. It's completely damaging to our country and it's never been done before. That's just another one of the principles that bothers me.

KING: And the story today on the front page of "The Washington Post" reporting that the CIA set up covert prison systems nearly four years ago with facilities in Thailand, Afghanistan and Guantanamo, a secret prison system. What do you make of that?

CARTER: I was not surprised. In fact, I covered that in my book because there has been a program that was fairly well known that when we were condemned by members of the Congress for what was going on in Guantanamo, we began to move prisoners out of Guantanamo and those others that are captured in the Mideast and put them in countries where torture is alleged or permitted.

And so this was not a revelation. It was very surprising because it's been a policy. And, as you know, just a few days ago the vice president went to the Congress to try to get key Senators to agree not to put in the McCain Amendment but to let the CIA have permission to torture prisoners.

This has never been done in our country and it violates the reputation of our nation and it also I think makes it possible for our own prisoners to be in danger in the future.

The eloquence with which Carter spoke about these things was...uplifiting. We need more people like Jimmy Carter to speak out on the true "moral crisis" in America today.

Quote of the Day

2005-11-02T01:11:00.000-05:00

As seen on AIM:

"i'm no conformist. that's why i bathe only on postal holidays."

Literally

2005-11-02T00:01:00.000-05:00

Ever seen someone chided for using the word "literally"? I mean when someone says "My mouth was literally on fire after eating that pepper" and then some nitpicking language fundamentalist says "No, I saw your mouth and it was not on fire". David Cross had a bit like that, maybe he started the nonsense...

As it turns out, this elucidating Slate.com piece by an editor at the OED explains that not only is it perfectly ok to use "literally" that way, but in fact Louisa May Alcott, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Mark Twain, and James Joyce all used the word in that context. Nit-pickers - 0, Masters of the English Language - 1.

This is why a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Merry Fitzmas

2005-10-28T13:09:00.000-04:00

Deck the halls with balls of liars...Merry Fitzmas, Mr. Bush.

By Far The Coolest Thing I've Seen Today

2005-10-27T10:49:00.000-04:00

Music video produced entirely on an Apple II+ in Applesoft II.
Hat tip: Boing Boing.

Re: William G.

2005-10-23T21:12:00.000-04:00

Suprisingly, I got an actual comment on my William G. post:

Joe wrote:
Actually, Paul, William G. is a nice guy and a talented artist. I think you misread his critique of PvP and Penny Arcade. If he seems resentful now, it's because of the huge number of PvP and Penny Arcade fans who sent him hateful emails after the article.

Everybody has a right to express their opinion, and nobody should be subject to the kind of hazing Bill has gotten for doing so.

Thanks for writing in Joe.

William G. may well be a decent guy in real life, but his Internet persona is one of a hateful creep. I do recall seeing some of his art last spring, and it indeed was rather good.

However, as a critic he's a hack. His critique of PA and PvP was, to put it mildly, crap. If I recall correctly, he was saying that as an artist these comics were poor because they lacked good art. That was a rather weak point...Just because every frame isn't an infinite canvas fit for an HDTV that takes a week to draw doesn't mean the comic can't be a good comic, or a great comic.

For example: The reason Penny Arcade is a great comic is because of the writing and characterization. When you read a PA strip you have an instinctual feeling for who these people are. That's what great comedy is. Gabe and Tycho are like Abbot and Costello...They play established rolls and those rolls are central to what make the gags work. While PA and Garfield are both essentially gag comics, Garfield sucks because the characters are so bland that the gags become unfunny. The point is that the gags are the joke, the characters are the joke. While the art isn't mind blowing, it is crucial to the characterizations. Gabe and Tycho would not work as stick figures.

But none of that is why William G. got the hatemail. Most people can sluff off criticism of their favorite comics. He didn't get the hatemail because of what he said about the comics themselves. He became an asshole when he said this about PvP and Penny-Arcade:

If they came out today, they wouldn't be as popular as they are.

That's not a critique of those comics, it's a critique about their fans. It's one thing to criticize the comic itself, but he was insinuating that these thousands of readers are ignorant...That if they knew any better, they wouldn't be reading these comics. He personally insulted every reader of Penny Arcade and PvP Online.

That's why when he complains about the "fanboys", he's either an idiot or a liar. If he's an idiot, he can't see that there exist types of comics that don't merely exist on art alone. If he's a liar, than he's still insulting these audiences whenever he spews the word "fanboy", and he's insulting them because he loathes the type of person who reads webcomics for anything else than arthouse eliteism.

Personally, I think he's just an idiot. Remember, there is no such thing as bad publicity. He must have had a huge readership after the "PA/PvP Incident" and instead of doing anything useful with that, he closed the blog. Then he started showing up everywhere, leaving little bits of trolling wherever he went. The man simply has had nothing of any substance to say since the incident. He also hasn't produced any more art. Had he been smart, he would have made fun of PA and PvP in comic form, but I really think the man has no real sense of humor.

What William G. needs to do is apologize to the readers of PvP and Penny Arcade. Then he needs to drop the curmudgeon persona.

David Brin is the Man

2005-10-20T14:47:00.000-04:00

Sci-Fi author David Brin has a not-so-well-known blog where he posts basically what are huge essays broken up into blog-post sized posts. He started with a three-month-long series on Modernism and it's enemies that was breathtaking and recently followed it up with a series on gerrymandering.

Yesterday's post though, mirrors a lot of the thoughts that have been going through my own mind recently about wealth and liberalism. Sometimes, I feel like Brin spends too much time trying to be a "centrist", but this post is a spectacular takedown of the economics of the Right...

We have been told all our lives that socialism is the chief enemy of markets. Hm, well, that was true for a little while, I guess. Indeed, Ronald Reagan was right to call the Soviet Union an "evil empire." But for how long? From 1917 to 1989?

Big deal!

For most of the rest of human history -- 99% of urban cultures -- the great enemy of accountability and market systems consisted of conspiratorial aristocratism. The deliberate collusion of those with power, money and influence to take over the organs of the state and use the state's power to enforce their family privileges. Their right to cheat and own other people. And then to ensure those privileges would be inherited. This happened so consistently, across all cultures, that it must be one of the core human traits that modern civilization is challenged to overcome.

Seriously, conservative friends, look over the paragraph above and try your best to evade it.

That's it. Right there. Look at the current Republican party. Look at the current Administration. They are the new arristocrats. Rich, white, male, wealthy. They have spent the last several decades making America safe for serfdom. The rich lower taxes on themselves and ensure that the cost of living increases for everyone else. They make more money while we pay more for education, housing, food, healthcare, and transportation. They squeeze the middle class and squash the poor. They make debt easy to aquire and hard to pay off. These guys are neo-Randian followers of a sort of revived version of Social Darwinism. Now the poor don't deserve help because they don't deserve it...They don't have the "determination" and they don't do the "hard work".

The new Social Darwinists have done a very effective job of propagandizing their vision so that the middle class will accept it. Welfare and Affirmative Action become "socialism". They demonize the Europeans and they push nationalism.

Back to Brin:

Go ahead. Ask some of today's "insatiable-style" aristos and propertarian mystics how they can support tax cuts for the rich in good times and in hard times...

...tax cuts for the rich during peace and during war. Tax cuts during huge deficits and tax cuts during surplus...

...tax cuts to "supply side" us into prosperity through investment in research and factories...

... and then -- when the aristocracy demonstrably does not invest their tax gifts in capital -- they switch to "demand side" justifications, calling for yet more tax cuts, so that the aristocracy can spend it all on employment-generating toys.

(Hint, the last thirty years have shown that direct tax cuts to the rich are just about the LEAST effective economic stimulation of any kind. Proportionate to any other social class, they do not spend. (Hence their support of consumption taxes.) And they do not invest in risky factories or startups. (Venture capital languished even as the Bush cuts sent torrents into wealthy pockets.) They most certainly do no research! In fact, they mostly use any fresh infusion of money simply to be richer.)

When you probe through all the contradicting justifications for this universal rationalization of tax cuts for the rich - especially refusing to pay when your country is at war - the surface reasons all unravel and you'll easily get to the reductio answer.

"It's not the government's money. It's my money."

Try it and see. These old-fashioned aristocrats (and their apologist ideologues) are generally pretty honest about it, after a good push, readily admitting that "supply side" and all the other flummeries were just window dressing. To them, "it's our money" is a deeply-felt and indignantly moral position. A platonic essence, grounded on a purely self-referential axiom. And, like all axioms, it is not subject to question or doubt.

Also (like so many fellow hypocrites on the left) they refuse to ever consider how wonderfully convenient it all is. That their principled, moral stand just happens to support their own, personal self interest.

What a coincidence.

Heh...I've spoken to people like that. Thank You, David Brin, for telling it like it is.

A Troll Explodes

2005-10-20T00:41:00.000-04:00

The world of web comics is filled with tons of interesting and diverse personalities. In any diverse population, you'll find some scum-sucking pigs who are utterly full of themselves.

99% of the time, these people are an utter annoyance to society. That last 1% of the time, they throw a supernova-like hissy fit and for one brief moment outshine every other talentless hack in a giant explosion of diahrea-like whining.

Tonight, webcomic asshat William G. is shining in the night's sky.

You may remember William G. from the time, several months ago, he wrote an epic blog post that claimed that PvP and Penny Arcade were subpar for various spurious reasons...It seemed like the center-piece of his post was that he disliked PvP and Penny Arcade because they were popular, not because of anything in the strips. His measure for webcomic quality was, it seemed , his own work that no one has ever read. He was then burried under a pile of furious emails from PvP and PA readers (ha!). This was followed by a period of intense whining about "fanboys" and finally he simply depublished the post, thus commiting the ultimate act of online cowardice.

Since that time he has become the sewer rat of the webcomic world, showing up in various forums and blog post comments to make postings that have obvious troll-like and attention-whore tendancies which a high degree of whine-osity.

Which brings us to this week. In a recent Blank Label podcast, Scott Kurtz was asked about the Webcomics Examiner article series that did a review of his work, one that William G. was involved in and basically said nothing of substance.

First, Kurtz said a few negative things about Webcomics Examiner. Personlly, I disagree with him, and Eric "Websnark" Burns does a far better job of explaining that. But then, Kurtz tears William G apart. It's a beautiful and heartfult moment when a troll gets torn a new one. I encourage you to listen to the whole thing.

Inevitably, William G. heard about this, and had the oh-so-predictable reaction of undergoing silicon fusion and having his rotten iron troll core implode...

Here's William G. going supernova:

Okay, I put the reviewing behind me. The people had spoken, and they didnt want to know what I thought of certain webcomics, they just wanted me to cheer them along in their tastes. I heard it, got sick of the harassment from some corners, and tried to move on.

Then I got a transcript from a podcast where Straub and Kurtz go off on the Webcomics Examiner and myself in particular.

Well, fuck both you over-bloated, self-serving fanboys. You've just made me determined to get back into webcomic commentary. And if you (incorrectly) thought I was just being mean the last time, you aint seen me when I actually am angry

Eric Myers has the transcript here. One of the things that bugs me about it, not just that Kristopher Straub told a pretty blatant lie about Modern Humour Authority... he's been habitually lying about it for a few years now, I figure he can't help himself... it's that Scott Kurtz all but claims that he's not very smart.

This is an intensely beautiful moment. This scum-eater is a classic example of trollism/tin-foil syndrome.

Exhibit 1: Accusing people of harrasment, when in fact they;re just reacting to his own acidic personality.
Exhibit 2: Calling people fanboys. This is classic..You're not the problem, the "fanboys" are.
Exhibit 3: The "I'll be back" BS. You never "left", you just became a troll in other places than your own blog.
Exhibit 4: Accusing other, more successful and much funnier webcomic arists of lying.

William G. has just become the Richard Hogland of webcomics.

Jack Shafer is the Man

2005-10-14T00:37:00.000-04:00

Jack Shafer, editor-at-large and media critic at Slate captures one moment of perfect beauty:

I don't hate Apple. I don't even hate Apple-lovers. I do, however, possess deep odium for the legions of Apple polishers in the press corps who salute every shiny gadget the company parades through downtown Cupertino as if they were members of the Supreme Soviet viewing the latest ICBMs at the May Day parade.

YES. Oh how I covet this paragraph and wish I had wrote it. This is like that moment when you finally see the arrow in the FedEx logo; the moment of clarity and understanding. "Deep odium" perfectly describes what I feel. It's as if a haze has lifted and I can finally describe what I see. Thank you Mr. Shafer, for this moment of clarity.

Underwhelming

2005-10-13T00:10:00.000-04:00

What's my reaction to today's announcements by Apple concerning a video iPod and video in the iTunes Music Store?

Underwhelming.

Buying videos in the iTunes Music Store makes very little sense right now. $2 music videos...whoop-dee-do...Fairly low res TV episodes that are oh-so-easy to Tivo (and aquire by other means)...whoop-dee-do.

Video in iTunes kinda makes sense (as a video organizing app), but the execution sucks. Open a movie and it starts playing in the album art area which is located in a tiny box in the corner of the screen. If you set it to play video in its own window the video keeps playing audio in iTunes after you close the window...That makes no sense whatsoever. I think MS figured this stuff out in 1996 or so...iTunes should play videos the same way music videos work in the music store: Put them in the main pane.

Even more disturbing is the fact that iTunes does not recognize AVIs in any way. That's like not supporting MP3s. 99% of the content I'd like to organize is in the form of AVIs rather than Quicktime. I know Apple likes to imagine that QT is the last video format on Earth, but not at least providing transcoding fascilities for AVIs seriously limits the usefulness of iTunes as a video organizer...Of course, the probably reason the left transcoding out is that it's is deadly slow (compared to simply converting a song from one format to another) and AVI transcoding facilities would allow pirated content to be easily put on the video iPod.

The video iPod unit itself is also underwhelming. Next to the PSP's breathtaking 4.3 inch widescreen LCD, the iPod video's 4:3, 2.5 inch display is old hat. The aspect ratio tells me that Apple is not too serious about portable video right now...Rather, I think this is a panic move by Apple to get something into the portable video market before it's too late.

I can't accept the explanation that Apple is doing this simply because everyone expected a video-capable iPod...No, they have far more urgent reasons for getting into portable video.

First, the cellular providers are all ready to start streaming full-frame video content to phones. Portable, on demand video is a scary prospect for Apple because compared to streaming, the online music store model sucks. There's no need for people to be stuck with giant DRMed music files sucking up space on their hard drives when it gets streamed right to their phone.

The second reason is the Sony PSP and it's UMD video format. As a competitor to today's video iPod, the PSP is an above average hobbyist's toy...If you invest in a large memory card, you can fill it with videos you transcode on your PC and transfer over. But that's not what concerns Apple...The UMD movie format must scare them half to death.

Think about it...What was the last portable video format you saw? Unlike music, we've never had a real portable video medium until UMD. Not only do UMD movies look good, and work well, but the MPAA didn't flinch at approving it because it's the natural portable extention of DVD...No Hollywood content sitting on hard drives waiting to be cracked open.

Sure, carrying around discs does lack the slickness of the iTunes Music Store, but how slick would the store be when you're downloading 400MB+ video files? Consider that UMDs store the video at full DVD resolution, which undoubtely means that a future device will allow them to be played back at full res...How will Apple compete when Sony's format already has 1GB+ movies?

The other thing that bugs me is how we went from iTunes 5 to iTunes 6 in a handful of weeks. Something tells me that all the iTunes work was done for some time, but something (perhaps legal, perhaps iPod design related) delayed the release of the version of iTunes with the video support. It makes sense considering how barren iTunes 5 was in the new features department.

Mitch Albom May Be The Perfect Punchline

2005-10-11T02:30:00.000-04:00

Seen on Metafilter...The most interesting pieces of pop music trivia (that you know are 100% false.)

Starship's "We Built This City" was actually written by future sports columnist and "Tuesdays With Morrie" author Mitch Albom.

Hypothesis

2005-10-07T02:46:00.000-04:00

Hypothesis: The Flaming Lips can heal all wounds.

NOTE TO SELF: Do not seriously test this hypothesis.

PS: Parapa pa pap...Parapa pa pa pa pa pa...

Today's Odd Internet Find

2005-10-04T01:35:00.000-04:00

Behind The Typeface: Cooper Black.

Quote of the Day

2005-10-02T20:39:00.000-04:00

As seen on the Gaming-Age Forum...

Santo: "I don't understand girls. They make absolutely no sense and are impossible to read."

Fix: "That's because you're supposed to read them like they're written in braile."

Richard Dawkins is the Man

2005-09-26T23:03:00.000-04:00

Occasionally I read "The Shape of Days", a blog by a Battlestar Galactica fan who is also a right-wing/social darwinist asshat. Not suprisingly, he's from Texas. Today, he flings his warm poo of seething rage at this excellent satire piece by Richard Dawkins. I think Dawkins just moved from "awesome" to "hero" status in my book.

Quote of the Day

2005-05-05T15:53:00.000-04:00

From a commenter at The Old New Thing:

Meh, what are you on, man? Raymond is a lvl 900 ninja coder. He could cast a 1200 damage VC++ spell as an afterthought. Also, he knows Itanium assembly. Pour out your Haterade.

Quote of the Day

2005-05-04T14:29:00.000-04:00

Matthew Yglasias, guest blogging at Talking Points Memo:

Social Security now, Social Security tomorrow, Social Security forever!

Quote(s) of the Day

2005-05-03T19:16:00.000-04:00

QotD #1: Fark Headline:

Cream reunites in concert. For those of you under 40: Cream was Eric Clapton's old band. Under 30: Clapton was once a big rock star. And for you under 20: Rock was a kind of music they used to play on the radio

QotD #2: Sci-Fi author David Brin:

Remember the basic philosophy here, folks. Most of you would have been burned at the stake 400 years ago. I know I would have. Nowadays, that is a compliment. Let's KEEP this a civilization in which that's a compliment.

Stay burnable.

Jackass(es) of the Day

2005-05-03T19:03:00.000-04:00

Jackass #1: Sci-Fi writer Orson Scott Card

The original "Star Trek," created by Gene Roddenberry, was, with a few exceptions, bad in every way that a science fiction television show could be bad. Nimoy was the only charismatic actor in the cast and, ironically, he played the only character not allowed to register emotion.

Jackass #2: Webcomic artist/reviewer William G

I saw a link for the Web Cartoonists Choice Awards again. I know everyone always complains about it every year because all of the Megatokyo and Penny Arcade fanboys supposidly register and "stuff the ballot boxes". Where unsung heroes like Ghastly go un-noted.

But I think one of the best ways to prevent this possibility from happening is for everyone who actually likes webcomics as a medium, and not just the comics that pander to your pet obsessions, should register and try to influence the voting towards what you think is a good webcomic.

Well Isn't This Cool...

2005-05-02T00:47:00.000-04:00

I was going to make a post about how much the websites of most commercial AM stations suck, but then I stumbled upon this. It's a lengthy, detailed document on WLS's website about how to get the best reception, written by their chief engineer. Rather cool. Wow, they even have a coverage map. Every radio station website needs one of those. It just kinda makes sense.

The Weather Sucks

2005-04-25T00:24:00.000-04:00

So, remember back on March 30th when I was tingling with joy at the prospect of Spring arriving with 70+ degree weather? Well, that didn't last. Now, it's 35 outside and today I had to walk through tons of fluffy, cold slush falling from the sky to get lunch. Great big gobs of slush. In late April. That's a crime. Daylight Savings Time + Snow is like one those thought puzzles that makes your brain hurt.

In other news, I'm totally ready for Summer Break (which is 1/3rd in Spring, ever notice that?...Schools bend reality to fit their needs). I can't wait to get home and blast my tunes in my own room on my nice hifi stuff.

The Onion Brings the Bacon

2005-04-19T23:37:00.000-04:00

Pope Emerges From Chrysalis A Beautiful Butterfly

Alas, Megatokyo

2005-04-19T01:33:00.000-04:00

I love webcomics. They're practically the reason I get out of bed in the morning. I've never really gotten into comic books (aside from some Star Trek comics years ago) and newspaper "funnies" are not a big part of my existance, but web comics bring me such joy. Penny Arcade, PvP, Real Life, the hillariously awesome Questionable Content, Queen of Wands, Todd and Penguin, Mac Hall, Diesel Sweeties, Perry Bible Fellowship, Wigu/Overcompensating, and others make it clear to me that we have witnessed the birth of something special here.

A few years ago, Megatokyo would have been on that list. Megatokyo, after Penny Arcade, was one of the first webcomics I really got into. PA, demonstrated the potential of the medium. Megatokyo introduced the potential for plot. Back then, I loved it. It was constantly funny, basking in gamer and anime culture while simultaenously mocking both of them. The first two years were brilliant. And then, as they say, everything changed.

Honestly, the last time I enjoyed a Megatokyo strip was October 24th, 2004. I know because I blogged about it. That's kinda sad. Not only has it sucked since then, but the reason I blogged about it is because for one brief, shining moment, it stopped the streak of sucking that it had been on for such a long time. What a loss. A few years ago, I was a huge MT fan. I still have, and often sleep under, the MT Sad Kimiko blanket.

It's pretty clear that this descent from greatness started with the departure of Rodney "Largo" Caston (which, like all things is detailed at Wikipedia). In the beginning, MT was funny, it moved fast (they got drunk and mistakenly get stuck in Tokyo in the space of what, two, three strips?), and it had an energy and a vibrance to it. Then Caston left. Today, the strip is a shell of what it was in 2002. Basically, in the 2.5 to 3 years since that time, nothing has happened plot wise in the strip. It's become this long meandering narrative that goes nowhere. Whoop-de-do Kimiko's finally on the radio. Didn't Piro show a sketch of that somewhere like, years ago? Something (I'm not sure what) finally happened with Largo and Erika. This took years.

Let me put this into perspective: Babylon 5, which has an immensly complicated plot, took five years. Megatokyo has been around five years. If B5 moved at the speed that MT did, the pilot episode would still be going. How do you go five years with so little plot development!?!?!? Truly, this astounds me. How far has Piro and Kimiko's relationship come since she spilled coffee on him in October, 2000. Almost nothing. A date perhaps? Nah. Some sort of relationship? Nah. We finally found out that Miho had met Piro and Largo in a game online, and was cheating or something. Come to think of it, that's all we know about her. That, and she has some illness. We've basically learned nothing. The whole point of a mysterious character is to remove the mystery. Back when Yuki had Piro's sketchbook, that was cool...She was the only character in the strip, besides Seraphim, that could really see into Piro's head. Now, all we get of her is Piro constantly missing his drawing lesson with her. Seriously how much longer can that stupid plot go on for? Honestly, glaciers move faster than this.

This didn't happen overnight. After Caston left, there was still Great Teacher Largo. There were still the hillarious catoons with Makoto, the server, being kidnapped. The whole disaster squad thing was funny. Ed and Dom were funny. Ping and her various oddities was great. But slowly, all of that faded away. I think Piro, working on his own, lost the point of his own strip. He's caught between the all-consuming urge to have this relationship angle take over the strip, while at the same time he keeps the characters set in ice, never changing or evolving. That does not work in a plot. The author has to let go and let the characters evolve, else things become boring and tedious, as MT has.

Monday's Penny Arcade demonstrates what it would be like if Tycho banished Gabe and turned PA into his own creation. The results are pretty horrendous. What you see there is the author's personality, ever nuance of his subconcious amplified to Disaster Area proportions, and that's why it's funny. I don't know if this was supposed to be a commentary on Megatokyo, but it perfectly explains what Megatokyo has become: A Fred Gallagher ego trip. The heart and soul of that comic are gone. It's no longer remotely interesting. The dialog has become totally incomprhensable. The plot seems totally lost.

The magic is gone.

No Comment...

2005-04-10T17:39:00.000-04:00

Seen in an AIM profile:

- Support our troops
if u dont ill hurt u

Report on the Horowitz Visit

2005-04-01T01:25:00.000-05:00

As promised, my thoughts on the David Horowitz visit last night...

I went with a right-leaning friend of mine who was curious what Horowitz had to say. I mainly went just to say I was there, and because I had a hunch there would be a circus. As we walked into Olscamp, we came upon a clown brigade of communists chanting that Horowitz was a "Christian Fascist", handing out information about the writings of "Chairman" Bob Avakian. I brushed off their presence, since they ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow, but it was a taste of things to come.

Once inside Olscamp 101, I sat behind a group of people who seemed to be from the Ethnic Studies department. Daniel Boudreau, of all people was sitting in front of me amongst a group of what I assumed were activist types.

Strictly speaking, Horowitz's speech, taken by itself, was pretty poor. He clearly wasn't prepared, did not know the actual name an affiliation of the University (he thought we were a campus of Ohio State), and on one occasion totally lost his train of thought. In terms of the lecturn banging, fire and brimstone kind of material one expects from a firebrand like Horowitz, it was pretty dissapointing. Only on a few occasions (such as when he proclaimed that "100% of the problems of the inner city are the fault of the Democrats" and when he discussed Howard Zinn) did he really get fired up. Just going by the content of his speech, his case for his "Academic Bill of Rights" was pretty thin.

But what made it all worthwhile for the College Republicans was the stupid heckling from the liberal portion of the crowd, many of whom just showed up just to make noise. I sympathize with these people, really I do. Horowitz, as I have said is undoubtedly a douchebag. We all know this. It's been documented.

But think about it. Horowitz is claiming that there is a liberal bias on campuses and so to try to fight him you show up to his speech and heckle him? Doesn't that support his point? Here is a man that has made a career out of half-truths and apocryphal stories and make his myths come to life for him? Gee, just hand him a story, that'll make things better...Ugh.

The Q&A session at the end was especially bad. While some questioners attempted to keep a bit of respectability up, four or five people lined up to ask a question simply to scream at Horowitz. I think, and I may be wrong here, that the gentleman that got into a shouting match with Horowitz over Howard Zinn, was Denis Mueller, a filmmaker and doctoral student. He appeared to be shaking with anger and appeared to have some words with the campus police officer that was there. That row, and another involving an older woman near the end of the evening, I think was demonstrative of the level of anger, angst, and hate in that room. The vileness on both sides was pretty shocking.

And let's not absolve the College Republicans here. Their "Republican Week" occured during the same week as "Rainbow Dayz". That can't be a coincidence. That, in itself was pretty immature. Even more immature was the "People Eating Tasty Animals" table in the Union handing out jerky. That's beyond lame. it's not remotely funny and only adds to the level of bullshit that whole day saw laid upon it. And heck, maybe if they had more than a handful of their own people at Horowitz's speech it wouldn't have been quite the madhouse it became. Seriously, there were only three rows full of freeper-wannabees and over a dozen rows left for everyone else. If you're going to invite someone to speak, at least have an audience here for him to speak to.

Horowitz Update

2005-03-31T02:24:00.000-05:00

I shall do a full write up on the Horowitz talk soon (presumably tomorrow). Hopefully the BGNews has something too...Let me just say the whole thing was quite a circus and undoubtedly embarressing for all of the conservatives/liberals/communists/unicorns/etc in attendance.

Spring Has Arrived

2005-03-30T15:58:00.000-05:00

It's currently an absolutely beautiful 74 degress here in Bowling Green...I have Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring, Section 7 (aka, the part everyone knows) going at full blast...Life is good. Let's hope the weather holds out and we don't get a relapse of winter...The prospect of the upcoming "springing ahead" combining with great weather makes me tingle with joy. Imagine great weather and the sunlight to enjoy it.

Discover the Douchebaggery: Live!

2005-03-29T20:42:00.000-05:00

David Motherfucking Horowitz is coming to BGSU tomorrow night, where he will undoubtedly burst forth with vile hatered for liberals, professor s, Unicorns, and anything else that might still be right with our society. I am actually planning on attending, since Satan probably won't be touring for awhile and Stalin is all sold out...

In all actuality, this is the first time that I have a chance to see someone speak that is regularly discussed in the parts of the blogosophere that I read, and that's why I want to go. The blogosphere too often has an otherworldly quality to it and I'd like to see something physical of it, even if it is a douchebag.

Not surprisingly, this visit and that of the political diahreha spewer behind "Michael Moore Hates America" to BGSU coincide with "Rainbow Dayz", the week about highlighting the rights of homosexuals...Great to see the College Republicans are a respectful bunch.

Moving More Stuff Over

2005-03-26T02:06:00.000-05:00

I decided to mirror my posts from the Election 2004 blog I did with Andy aka Dekerd; Modern Politics and You. Now that Andy seems to have found his groove (and actually has, like, readers), and I have this blog, Modern Politics seems to have died. This place, on the other hand, I want to be a sort of journey through my mind (even if no one else ever really sees it) that I can go back and look at someday. So, it makes sense to make copies of that stuff (some of it I consider rather good, if I do say so myself) fo over here.

So, if you see:

"***Originally Posted to Modern Politics and You***"

...That's what that's about.

Pass Stupid Laws, Get Stupid Rulings

2005-03-24T13:46:00.000-05:00

As you may or may not know, last November Ohio's esteemed population of bigots passed a poorly written abomination of an ammendment to the state's constitution to ban gay marriage, or anything that looked remotely like it. People with more than one functioning neuron rightly said at the time that this ammendment was so poorly written and thought out that it would create a mess of unintended consequences.

Those consequences are now occuring. In this case, a judge was forced to rule a domestic violence law cannot be applied in instances where the two people involved in the relationship were unmarried. This is because the domestic violence law defined a "family" as two people living in the same place while the new ammendment says that "This state and its political subdivisions shall not create or recognize a legal status for relationships of unmarried individuals that intends to approximate the design, qualities, significance or effect of marriage." So, gentlemen, it's now only a misdemeanor if you beat your live-in girlfriend, as long as you're not married. That's 6 months in the joint as opposed to 18 months.

Thus, this bigoted anti-homosexuals ammendment not only banned gay marriage but also common sense in the State of Ohio. This is what happens when you let theocrats run your state.

I Sincerly Wish I Was Making This Up

2005-03-24T00:30:00.000-05:00

Today at lunch I, as I usually do, was scanning up and down the AM band when I happened upon Rush Limbaugh sounding, well I think it can only be described as Savage-esque. It's as if we was he was channeleling some great propagandist of the 20th Century (take your pick). In a nutshell, he was expounding on the Terri Schiavo tragedy and essentially accused "Liberals" of wanting Terri Schaivo to die. That's disgraceful, but not in itself surprising...After that though, it want totally out of control. I'll let the transcript speak for itself:

"...What did this woman ever do to us? What did she do to you? Are you so desirous of being able to kill your spouse one day that you want this to set a precedent? Help me out here. Could it be -- and I suspect this is the real answer -- could it be that you have been so pent up with rage and frustration over the Christians in this country? You just hated the success of The Passion of the Christ. You hated the outpouring of support for that movie, you just despise the red state, hayseed, holy roller crowd that you think is steamrollering the country.

Maybe this is just payback; you want this woman to die because Christian conservatives want her to live, and since you don't like Christian conservatives so much you want them to be disappointed. You want them to find out what it's like to be on the losing side. You want them to find out what it's like to not get away with everything they want just because they're Christians. Is that it? Does it really have nothing to do with Terri Schiavo, does it have solely to do with the fact that you want payback? You're so excited for the Christian conservatives to lose that even if it requires the death of this woman, you'll take it? If that's true, if that's the case, if I have nailed it, and as I say, my liberal friends, I'm on this, I'm on it like white on rice, cold on ice, dots on dice, drugs on Miami Vice."

That, my friends, is just insane. Not that I expect Rush Limbaugh to be sane, but that is just sad.

JWZ Is Undoubtedly The Man

2005-03-23T00:14:00.000-05:00

Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use regular expressions." Now they have two problems"

-Jamie Zawinski

Sigh

2005-03-20T23:34:00.000-05:00

Now reality is becoming a bad West Wing episode. Seperation of Powers? Nah. Federalism? Nah.

All Ahead Full Suck, Mr. Sulu

2005-03-19T18:48:00.000-05:00

Wednesday, I started writing a lengthy post that was going to end up about being how The West Wing has gone from "starting to suck" to "full suck" and how my new beau, Battlestar Galactica is shockingly good for a first year science fiction show. However, before I could finish that post, The West Wing took a total head dive and can now only be described using words usually reserved for excrement while BSG aired an episode that was better West Wing than West Wing. Somewhere, I hope Aaron Sorkin finds that funny.

Catching Up...

2005-03-16T13:26:00.000-05:00

Seeing as I haven't posted in two weeks, how about some catching up...

Last month, I totally missed when Eric (aka MaximusFarticus) quoted a forum post I made on the meaning of freedom and democracy. That was cool to see. Thanks, Eric.

In other news, I see that the techno media has finally caught on to the iTunes 4.7.1 sharing restrictions that were introduced in January. Better late than never, I guess. It's sad that companies can slip in bull like that and the media takes so long for them to notice. OTOH, if Microsoft pulled a stunt like that, the media's response time would be measured in minutes. I hope the Shiny Fruit Bastards catch hell for this.

Too Easy A Target

2005-03-03T00:10:00.000-05:00

As you may or may not be ware, I listen to a lot of radio. I listen to NPR whenever possible, but since the local public radio station here sucks, I often meander through the AM band during dinner. Usually, this means I spend much of my time avoiding Sean Hannity. Tonight though, the Han-man was playing up the Ward Churchill poo-fest and I wanted to hear that. I've been curious how the VRWC has been covering Churchill, since this is one of the few occasions when they don't actually have to bend/break/manufacture the facts to make a point, since Churchill, being a delusional asshole, has done all of their work by himself.

And so here is the Hanninator just playing audio clips of Ward Churchill. he did far less talking than he usually does, and when he did talk he mainly just repeated whatever stupid thing Ward Churchill said in a silly voice. Here is Ward Churchill doing everything he possibly can to sound exactly like the Red Menace the Right likes to make the Left out to be. Here' s a clue idiots like Churchill in prominent positions: DO NOT MAKE IT EASY FOR THE RIGHT TO FARK YOU UP THE ASS. Free speech is a great thing, but so is thinking about the trash eminating from your mouth before you say something stupid and make Fox News's day. Ward Churchill has made himself a great example for the doofuses who listen to right-wing talk to soothe what little conscience they have left so they can sleep at night. When you're making Sean Hannity's job easier, it may be time to reevaluate your position.

For Those Wondering...

2005-03-01T23:31:00.000-05:00

Ohio Weather

2005-03-01T21:33:00.000-05:00

There are some places on the planet where nature will actually try to kill you on a regular basis. Florida has hurricane season, Kansas has tornado alley. California has earthquakes and mudslides. Thankfully, Ohio is not one of those places. Rather, in Ohio, nature has decided to take a more subtle, far more devious approach. Here, the weather just tries to annoy you to death. I mean, I can take wet poo falling from the sky. I can take high winds. But wet poo falling from the sky and high winds? Now I'm seriously annoyed.

Discover the Douchebaggery: David Horowitz

2005-02-23T01:25:00.000-05:00

Our dear friend David Horowitz has a new site up: Discover the Network. The proported purpose of this site is to let the inquiering defender of freedom discover all the connected individuals and organizations that make up the dreaded Left. This is rather brilliant piece of horse feces, I've got to admit.

One can clearly see that the American Library Association is tied to Zacarias Moussaoui who is tied to Harvard University who is tied to Fidel Castro who is tied to Martin Sheen. It's like the Kevin Bacon game for fanatical conservative assholes.

I think that we can pretty clearly say that if Michael Moore is head propaganda douchbag of the radical left David Horowitz is head propaganda douchbag for the radical right.

A Unique Problem

2005-02-22T13:32:00.000-05:00

I have this problem where I seem to find all of the coolest websites after 2:00AM. The later (or..err...earlier) the hour, the more massively awesome the discovery. I mean, I don't look for these things, they find me in passing. So, as I was writing my post last night I did a search for "Teela Brown" because I wanted to be sure I had her last name right and I was curious if there was some sort of, I don't know, fan site or something about her to which I could link. In doing that, I stumbled upon something of immense awesomeness (and questionable legality, so I will not link to it), but suffice to say, my morning was shot.

Booty Dance

2005-02-21T23:32:00.000-05:00

If you have not already started reading Questionable Content, then it is your duty to start doing so now.

For some reason Ellen reminds me considerably of Teela Brown from Larry Niven's Ringworld novel. There are parallels...They're both about the same age, they both come off as naive, and they both can be rather intelligent when given a chance. They also seem to like to have sex with older men (though Ringworld's Louis Wu is...err...considerably older than QC's Steve). However, I doubt that Ellen possesses that most powerful of psychic powers, Author Control.

What is the Meaning of Human?

2005-02-21T02:38:00.000-05:00

I very much enjoyed this article in today's New York Times on the severe faults of Intelligent Design (via Boing Boing). Intelligent Design is something that only works in your head if you don't think about it too hard. It's one of those diseases where the more you believe it, the less the likelyhood that you'll see the vast flaws in it sitting right in fornt of your face. ID is really a form of egotism..."Look at me, I'm a Picaaso! I have such a wonderful designer!"

Daniel Dennett calls evolution "Darwin's Dangerous Idea", and for good reason...It forces you too change your dialectic about viewing the Universe, and youself. If forces you to question your beliefs about fate, about meaning, and about purpose. If the fact that you're here is an accident, that you are the result of a myriad of random conditions ariving down one of a myriad of paths, than how can we say that any one of us has any special purpose or fate attached to us? How can any of us, mere pieces of matter, be any more special than any other pieces of matter? Your brain might be pretty complex, but is it any more complex than a star? Consciousness is just another process, not unlike nuclear fusion. It is not a gift. There are no gifts; only accidents.

Some people call that view depressing. They've been tought to expect gifts, to prize fate, to ponder meanings as if no other question has value. But, that's to be expected of people who have had their worldview torn asunder. Depressing? Certainly not. The correct word is liberating. We create our meanings. I mean, that's the whole point of Intelligent Design. It's a craving for meaning where some people feel meaning needs to be assigned. But that is like using a supercomputer to balance your checkbook; there are far more interesting things to ponder. For example, if we create our own meanings, what is the meaning of War? What is the meaning of Freedom? What is the meaning of Morality? What is the meaning of Imagination? What is the meaning of Knowledge? If we, human beings, are what we decide to be, what is it that we want to be? What is the meaning of Human?

Senate Bill 24

2005-02-18T04:05:00.000-05:00

I saw this excellent editorial in the BGNews yesterday:
Senate Bill 24 doubts students, faculty By Megan Schmidt

If State Senator Mumper wasn't such an asshole, he'd make a great comedian. This is a man who told the Columbus Dispatch:

"80 percent or so of them (professors) are Democrats, liberals or socialists or card-carrying Communists."

Gee, Senator Mumper, are there 57 card-carrying Communists in the Defense Department, too? That quote just creeps me out...

In any event, this whole issue is nonexistant. Take a careful look at what Mumper (and dodos like Horowitz) are saying and you'll see what they're really after. What they claim is that professors are over politicising classrooms by presenting one-sided views, which leads to indoctrination of students.

There are really two issues at stake here. One is laughably minor and the other concerns the fate of our nation.

The indoctrination accusation is already a load of horse hockey. These are college students here, not 2nd graders. There's no indoctrination happening in college classrooms. If you're a student, you know the score...When a professor goes off about something controversial, there are two types of people in that room:

People who don't care.
People who already opposed the professors viewpoint and aren't changing their minds.

The issue is moot. The so-called complaints that dolts like Mumper gets are from people in option 2 there. Everyone else doesn't care, and no one got "indoctrinated". Unless a professor is running a cult, I'd have to say that claims of indoctrination are vastly exaggerated.

So, what's the real agenda here? Senate Bill 24 would require colleges to ensure that classes that cover controversial subjects present "balanced" viewpoints. This is designed to destroy departments like Women's Studies and American Culture Studies. If these departments were required to teach "balanced" courses, it would defeat the point of the exercise. These are departments that study history created by liberals of the past, read books written by liberals, and produce research on topics of interest to liberal causes. Most, if not all of the people who teach these courses and take these degrees are more liberal than the average person on the street. If you wanted to be blunt about it, you could say that these departments are taxpayer funded enclaves for people with unconventional political beliefs. That's what Horowitz and Mumper want to eliminate. It's also why they're deeply wrong.

By the same logic, you could call the Math department a taxpayer-funded enclave for people who love math. I mean, most of the population hates math and actively tries to avoid having to involve themselves in it. Should we try to target math departments for destruction? Astronomers seem to be more interested in the stars than most people, does that mean we should destroy that department too?

The fact is that colleges exist not only to educate students, but to act as incubators for research to be done in a myriad of relatively esoteric fields. The people who make up the Women Studies department, or the American Culture Studies are undoubtedly more liberal that most of the nation, but the fact is that researching the place of women in society and the effect of race on our society are just as worthy a project as supporting mathematics or psychology research. We're talking about universities here...Uni as in universal. The whole point of these institutions is to act as incubators for a diverse set of ideas in a diverse set of fields.

The society we have today is undoubtledly a knowledge based, post industrial society. We have a knowledge based economy and the Internet is a knowledge based communication system. Universities are to a knowledge based society what steel mills are to an industrial society. Without steel mills you don't have ships and trains and bridges and skyscrapers. Steel mills are the foundation that allows you to build everything else. In a knowledge based society, universities are the foundation, they allow you to build everything else. Whether or not Mumper and Horowitz like it, universities only work when they're allowed to work without restrictions, planting the seeds of the future in a diverse set of fields. In a society where change and growth come from unpredictable sources, the only way to ensure your future is to put your eggs into as many baskets as possible.

The Past Is Prologue...

2005-02-16T01:14:00.000-05:00

I moved over all the old posts from my old blog so that all of my relatively recent Internet writings are all in one place and have the cool Blogspot.com look. You can find them using the archive links on the right.

It's interesting how much I've changed politically in the past year or so. Looking at some of those older posts, I looked fairly conservative, though if you asked me I'd try to pull off a "centrist" sort of thing, because even back then I was beginning to distrust the Bush Administration.

Those who know me know today know that I'm a pretty liberal guy. Admittedly, I used to be more libertarian, and admittedly I did listen to way, way too much right wing trash talk radio in the 90s. Since I've been at college and become aquainted with liberal philosophy and shit like Abu Ghriab and Issue 1 keep happening, I've become rather solidly liberal. So, there was a shift there where at the beginning I could still trust right-wingers and today I can't stand them. These entries from 2003 and 2004 capture that transition, and that's one of the reasons I wanted to preserve them. That entry from February 2004 was basically the last gasp of whatever remaining trust I had in the right. When Abu Ghriab happen, those last gasps left rather quickly. I guess you could say that if nothing else, the Bush Administration has been an enlightening intellectual experience for me.

In terms of most policy matters, my views on individual issues haven't actually changed (I've been solidly for seperation of church and state for as long as I can remember, etc), but I did have to break through the "liberals will ruin our country" bullshit that I picked up from the claptraps on the radio. On a few things, like Affirmative Action and things like universal healthcare and education, I've become more open minded, but most of my views haven't changed. What changed was my confidence in which side I can trust to run the country.