"they're not real christians".
au contraire. these are the realest christians in the hood.
Wednesday, January 24, 2018
Monday, January 15, 2018
i think it's a crazy idea. i mean, i don't even want to take it seriously, kind of thing. when somebody comes to you and says "i want an open relationship", what that means is "i want to break up with you, but not for a few more months.". it's the kind of thing that happens when people want to break off a romantic relationship, but not a financial relationship. and, the end result is not actually an open relationship, but the demotion of the relationship to a friendship. partners end up as room mates.
this idea that you can be polyamorous and in a relationship is a consequence of the existing culture, which tells you that you can have your cake and eat it, too. it's a fantasy, in real life. and, i'd suggest to people looking at this seriously that they have to make that choice - that it's ok to be a polyamorous single person, but you shouldn't pretend that you can be in a relationship with somebody, too.
if you're in an open relationship, ask yourself: what does your partner do on saturday nights?
that's how you figure it out, right. if you find yourself in a situation where you're spending more saturdays apart than together, you don't actually have a relationship any more. what you have is a room mate.
and, in the real world, things get messy. three or four people might show up at the same concert, or the same restaurant. and, if you're avoiding that, what are you doing? making plans to not spend time with your partner? if you have to avoid your partner on a saturday night, there's no relationship there...
it's fun to be open-minded. but, when you start thinking through the ramifications, it doesn't work. and, it is an empirical question: the arrangement doesn't tend to work.
the prudent advice to give somebody going through this is to try and predict the outcome of such an arrangement in a few months time. and, it's not usually going to be a positive outcome, unless you either have both partners pursuing other options (in which case it's a mutual break-up in disguise), or you have one partner that likes to spend a lot of time alone, and isn't going to spend it thinking about where the other one is, or what they're doing.
in most cases, the person being propositioned with such a thing should take it as a red flag and walk away.
i don't have an issue with the language used. the distribution is the curve, or everything under the curve. it's a semantic point that a statistician would be splitting hairs over in "correcting" you on and most actually probably wouldn't bother with at all. a major hurricane hitting the united states would be a rare event, and whether you want to describe that using a "poisson distribution" or the "curve described by the poisson distribution" is just an issue in language, although i would perhaps suggest that you're misapplying the central limit theorem in a situation with not enough data points to do so, if that's what you're getting at by referencing normality. a misapplication of the clt like this could actually be used to argue for stasis. it doesn't change the point you're making.
and, yes - charting an increase in hurricanes since 2005 is kind of like charting a decrease in temperatures since 1998. or jet stream variability since 1725.
but, the important thing you pointed out was that global warming is not the only factor. and, if you want to push this on this platform, that's the most important point you can make: the universe is complicated, and this increase in carbon on this planet is just one of the things that's happening in it.
republishing inri074
around october, 2002 i met a friend. i was sort of in need of a friend, and i mean that in the friend sense. but, the mental condition i was in was the explanation of why i needed a friend, if you see what i mean; i was completely unstable in this period and did all kinds of absurd things, which isolated me - and i wasn't getting any better.
i dropped out of school under the realization that i was walking down a path that wasn't getting me anywhere close to what i wanted out of life. i ended up working three jobs to raise money for gender reassignment, and it crossed me paths with somebody that was also trying to think of ways to get out of the box in terms of ways to exist.
she was trying to save up money to go to british columbia. it was some kind of warped take on the grapes of wrath, where everything works out perfectly. but, the rent was eating into her savings, which was making the goal seem impossible. well, unless we stopped having fun.
so, i suggested she should just stay at my parents place. part of it was a hope that she would move her drum kit in, although that didn't happen. and, i might add that this was done with all of the reckless abandon that could be contemplated - we were moving stuff in without even asking, it was really remarkable.
and, it seemed to me that we were getting pretty close over that period.
so, when the time came that she had all that money put aside to go to bc, it was kind of a downer to let her go. and, she initially wanted to go with a friend who dropped out. so, i ended up going across the country with her.
now, i need to be clear: we weren't planning on coming back. we were going to pick fruit or something - we didn't know, exactly, we'd figure it out when we got there.
so, this was meant as a sort of farewell to certain people i hadn't talked to in months and didn't care if i was leaving, anyways. i think it let me work some things out on weird subconscious levels, but the truth is that these songs really aren't about anybody except me, and there's no use in pretending they are - i just liked the idea of a farewell disc.
this disc was initially passed around with a cut up version of the pretentious untitled mix at the end, but this was almost immediately ejected from future burns and is not present on this ep due to the poor quality of the mix. the remaining five tracks became combined into what i now call my eighth symphony.
written and recorded in late 2002 and early 2003. this was initially uploaded unmodified from a cd-r rip in may, 2015, but this was replaced with a version from source on nov 29, 2017 due to clipping due to an unrealized normalization on the burn. disc finalized as symph008 on nov 29, 2017. as always, please use headphones.
the hidden track is the final version and also appears on my ninth record, {e} (inri08x): jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/e
this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (2003, 2015, 2017).
i dropped out of school under the realization that i was walking down a path that wasn't getting me anywhere close to what i wanted out of life. i ended up working three jobs to raise money for gender reassignment, and it crossed me paths with somebody that was also trying to think of ways to get out of the box in terms of ways to exist.
she was trying to save up money to go to british columbia. it was some kind of warped take on the grapes of wrath, where everything works out perfectly. but, the rent was eating into her savings, which was making the goal seem impossible. well, unless we stopped having fun.
so, i suggested she should just stay at my parents place. part of it was a hope that she would move her drum kit in, although that didn't happen. and, i might add that this was done with all of the reckless abandon that could be contemplated - we were moving stuff in without even asking, it was really remarkable.
and, it seemed to me that we were getting pretty close over that period.
so, when the time came that she had all that money put aside to go to bc, it was kind of a downer to let her go. and, she initially wanted to go with a friend who dropped out. so, i ended up going across the country with her.
now, i need to be clear: we weren't planning on coming back. we were going to pick fruit or something - we didn't know, exactly, we'd figure it out when we got there.
so, this was meant as a sort of farewell to certain people i hadn't talked to in months and didn't care if i was leaving, anyways. i think it let me work some things out on weird subconscious levels, but the truth is that these songs really aren't about anybody except me, and there's no use in pretending they are - i just liked the idea of a farewell disc.
this disc was initially passed around with a cut up version of the pretentious untitled mix at the end, but this was almost immediately ejected from future burns and is not present on this ep due to the poor quality of the mix. the remaining five tracks became combined into what i now call my eighth symphony.
written and recorded in late 2002 and early 2003. this was initially uploaded unmodified from a cd-r rip in may, 2015, but this was replaced with a version from source on nov 29, 2017 due to clipping due to an unrealized normalization on the burn. disc finalized as symph008 on nov 29, 2017. as always, please use headphones.
the hidden track is the final version and also appears on my ninth record, {e} (inri08x): jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/e
this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (2003, 2015, 2017).
credits
released May 3, 2003
j - guitar, effects, bass, synth, voice, piano, drum programming, generative programming (sounder), granular synthesis, sound design, soundscaping, loops, bowls, claps, tables, ebow, orchestral sequencing, digital wave editing, sampling, production, composition
j - guitar, effects, bass, synth, voice, piano, drum programming, generative programming (sounder), granular synthesis, sound design, soundscaping, loops, bowls, claps, tables, ebow, orchestral sequencing, digital wave editing, sampling, production, composition
Sunday, January 14, 2018
publishing inri073
it was in may of 2015 that i first contemplated the idea of a chamber works. i was creating compilations to end my second period, when i realized that a couple of the tracks that did not fit well into the orchestral works might work better as chamber pieces. so, the chamber works was intended as a kind of companion disc to the orchestral works, both to offer a different flavour and to collect the remaining tracks into a compilation of serious music, so they are not left out.
so, i went back and did a systematic evaluation of the period 2 material to see which tracks could or could not be converted into chamber pieces. the last three mixes were created at this time, while the first was removed of clicks.
then, i stopped. i decided that an electronic chamber works was an idea of questionable worth, and i should put the idea aside for a bit and take a look at the idea again upon reconstruction of the period 1 tapes.
what the issue really comes down to is how good the electronic strings sound. does this actually sound like chamber music, or does it sound like a computer creating chamber music? and, if it sounds like a computer, is the issue resolvable somehow?
when i came back to completing period 2 in the fall of 2017, i decided in favour of the release, as the sound fonts are convincing enough, even if one needs to ignore a few relics here and there. tracks two and three were subsequently added to the compilation.
i decided at the end that this format has some future to it, whether it is fully realistic or not. string music will probably never go away. but, composers are going to find themselves less and less interested in actual physical reproduction, as time moves forward. the question of realism in the tracks is consequently somewhat misplaced, as the chamber music of the future is likely to be performed by computers, and sound like it just a little bit.
initially written and recorded between 2001-2003 and remixed and recorded further over 2014-2015. an idea for this compilation was developed over the last week of may, 2015, but it was not finished or released at that time. corrected and expanded from october, 2017 to january, 2018. finally released & finalized as lp022 on jan 14, 2018. as always, please use headphones.
this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (2014, 2015, 2017, 2018).
so, i went back and did a systematic evaluation of the period 2 material to see which tracks could or could not be converted into chamber pieces. the last three mixes were created at this time, while the first was removed of clicks.
then, i stopped. i decided that an electronic chamber works was an idea of questionable worth, and i should put the idea aside for a bit and take a look at the idea again upon reconstruction of the period 1 tapes.
what the issue really comes down to is how good the electronic strings sound. does this actually sound like chamber music, or does it sound like a computer creating chamber music? and, if it sounds like a computer, is the issue resolvable somehow?
when i came back to completing period 2 in the fall of 2017, i decided in favour of the release, as the sound fonts are convincing enough, even if one needs to ignore a few relics here and there. tracks two and three were subsequently added to the compilation.
i decided at the end that this format has some future to it, whether it is fully realistic or not. string music will probably never go away. but, composers are going to find themselves less and less interested in actual physical reproduction, as time moves forward. the question of realism in the tracks is consequently somewhat misplaced, as the chamber music of the future is likely to be performed by computers, and sound like it just a little bit.
initially written and recorded between 2001-2003 and remixed and recorded further over 2014-2015. an idea for this compilation was developed over the last week of may, 2015, but it was not finished or released at that time. corrected and expanded from october, 2017 to january, 2018. finally released & finalized as lp022 on jan 14, 2018. as always, please use headphones.
this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (2014, 2015, 2017, 2018).
credits
released May 2, 2003
j - controller input, programming, effects processing, mixing, digital wave editing, composition.
the various rendered electronic orchestras include piano, orchestral drum kit, violin, guitar, viola, cello, contrabass, various string sections and choir.
j - controller input, programming, effects processing, mixing, digital wave editing, composition.
the various rendered electronic orchestras include piano, orchestral drum kit, violin, guitar, viola, cello, contrabass, various string sections and choir.
publishing inri072
an unexpected result of the project to complete my discography, undertaken in late 2013, has been the construction of a handful of orchestral pieces, mostly as remixes of original tracks from the jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj period. while these tracks were initially written out as scored pieces for expanded instrumentation, they were generally written around the guitar and the expanded instrumentation was largely meant simply for colour. the exception to this is the psilocybin symphony, which was written as a piano concerto from the start and previously completed in early 2006.
the ability to expand these pieces into orchestral works is the result of the advances in vst sampling technology that have occurred since 2003. while changes in instrumentation have been accompanied by extra writing (mostly on the guitar), tempo shifts and other general rearrangement choices, the existing technology makes it very easy to rearrange a rock song for an orchestra, by simply multiplying staves and changing the sound fonts.
the condition i've set for a piece to be "orchestral" is that it must utilize the entire orchestra: it must have percussion, piano, horns, woodwinds/reeds and strings. guitars are generally treated like "first violins", whereas violins are generally not considered to be more special than other similar string instruments. some of the tracks also have prominent choral sections. all of these pieces meet this condition, except the last one which does not have a woodwind/reed section.
my delve into scorewriting ended in 2003; the material in my third phase is more focused on live and manipulated guitars and synthesizers. i consequently feel that this is an interesting summary of my second period, taken from a specific angle that is otherwise largely relegated to single-only remixes.
initially written and recorded between 2001-2003 and remixed and recorded further over 2014-2015, except track 2 which was completed in early 2006 and track 5 which was completed in 2017. the initial final compilation date was may 23, 2015, but track five was then added on oct 14, 2017 and the disc was finalized as lp021 on nov 29, 2017. track 7 was added as a download-only bonus track on jan 14, 2018. as always, please use headphones.
this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (2014, 2015, 2017, 2018).
* download only
the ability to expand these pieces into orchestral works is the result of the advances in vst sampling technology that have occurred since 2003. while changes in instrumentation have been accompanied by extra writing (mostly on the guitar), tempo shifts and other general rearrangement choices, the existing technology makes it very easy to rearrange a rock song for an orchestra, by simply multiplying staves and changing the sound fonts.
the condition i've set for a piece to be "orchestral" is that it must utilize the entire orchestra: it must have percussion, piano, horns, woodwinds/reeds and strings. guitars are generally treated like "first violins", whereas violins are generally not considered to be more special than other similar string instruments. some of the tracks also have prominent choral sections. all of these pieces meet this condition, except the last one which does not have a woodwind/reed section.
my delve into scorewriting ended in 2003; the material in my third phase is more focused on live and manipulated guitars and synthesizers. i consequently feel that this is an interesting summary of my second period, taken from a specific angle that is otherwise largely relegated to single-only remixes.
initially written and recorded between 2001-2003 and remixed and recorded further over 2014-2015, except track 2 which was completed in early 2006 and track 5 which was completed in 2017. the initial final compilation date was may 23, 2015, but track five was then added on oct 14, 2017 and the disc was finalized as lp021 on nov 29, 2017. track 7 was added as a download-only bonus track on jan 14, 2018. as always, please use headphones.
this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (2014, 2015, 2017, 2018).
* download only
credits
released May 1, 2003
j - controller inputs, drum & other programming, orchestral & other sequencing, live guitars, live bass, live synths, effects, sound design, digital wave editing, composition, production.
the various rendered electronic orchestras includes violin, viola, cello, contrabass, electric guitar, nylon guitar, guitar fret noise, bass guitar, synthesizer bass, french horn, trumpet, trombone, tuba, english horn, oboe, bassoon, clarinet, saxophone, bamboo flute, flute, piccolo, synthesizers, mellotron, organ, piano, harp, koto, music box, clavinet, kalimba, xylophone, agogo, mallet, hammered percussion, woodblock, tubular bells, tinkle bells, glockenspiel, orchestra hit, melodic toms, electronic drum kit, timpani, orchestral drum kit and choir.
j - controller inputs, drum & other programming, orchestral & other sequencing, live guitars, live bass, live synths, effects, sound design, digital wave editing, composition, production.
the various rendered electronic orchestras includes violin, viola, cello, contrabass, electric guitar, nylon guitar, guitar fret noise, bass guitar, synthesizer bass, french horn, trumpet, trombone, tuba, english horn, oboe, bassoon, clarinet, saxophone, bamboo flute, flute, piccolo, synthesizers, mellotron, organ, piano, harp, koto, music box, clavinet, kalimba, xylophone, agogo, mallet, hammered percussion, woodblock, tubular bells, tinkle bells, glockenspiel, orchestra hit, melodic toms, electronic drum kit, timpani, orchestral drum kit and choir.
republishing inri071
i've taken to splitting my discography into phases, and my hitch-hiking trip to british columbia is a very important separation point - both in terms of the nature of the material that came out afterwards and what is now a substantial body of work that came before it. that makes it a natural point to look backwards and build compilations of intersecting ideas.
a characteristic of my work is that it does not conform well to genre norms. this is not an accident; when compiling a record, i'm guided more by the late beatles' philosophy of vast diversity in a small space than i am by any kind of desire to collect together nice singles, or by some kind of compulsive organizing into categories or concepts. i write psychedelic music. that means something different in 2015 than it did in 1966, but the commonality is that it's necessarily challenging. i want all of my records to do everything at once, and accomplish everything by their end point. that makes compilations of this sort inherently difficult, because every song touches on every compilation idea at the same time. the jazz record would have the same tracklisting as the punk record, the classical record and the folk record - and none would really be what they're claimed to be.
the one exception to this conundrum is how i interacted with ambient music in this period. i very regularly utilized ideas from the genre, but i tended to interpret ambience as something that is necessarily obscure. in this period, ambient pieces are almost always outtakes or b sides. i tended to interpret covers and remixes as ambient pieces, probably because that was unexpected. when ambient ideas make it on to the record, they're almost always for effect: introductions, endings, connecting passages, that sort of thing.
when i began reconstructing my discography in early 2014, i came across a handful of songs i'd written out into midi format and put aside for later. a number of these ended up reworked into ambient pieces, and released as b sides. i also ended up converting some of the material i wrote in this period into ambient sound collages that are more in the style of music i created after 2003.
the end result is enough bsides and remixes to put together two full cds of ambient music. none of the tracks on volumes one or two are on any official record as they appear here; this is technically a collection of remixes and outtakes.
this package was initially released with a mix tape of fragments from 1996-1999, but it has since been moved into it's own release (inri035): jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/ambient-works-vol-0
initially written and recorded between 2000-2003 and remixed between 2014-2015. sequenced over mid may, 2015. the final compilation date was initially may 20, 2015, but both discs were mildly updated with some more appropriate mixes of the same tracks on nov 29, 2017; disc subsequently finalized as lp020. as always, please use headphones.
this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (2014, 2015, 2017).
a characteristic of my work is that it does not conform well to genre norms. this is not an accident; when compiling a record, i'm guided more by the late beatles' philosophy of vast diversity in a small space than i am by any kind of desire to collect together nice singles, or by some kind of compulsive organizing into categories or concepts. i write psychedelic music. that means something different in 2015 than it did in 1966, but the commonality is that it's necessarily challenging. i want all of my records to do everything at once, and accomplish everything by their end point. that makes compilations of this sort inherently difficult, because every song touches on every compilation idea at the same time. the jazz record would have the same tracklisting as the punk record, the classical record and the folk record - and none would really be what they're claimed to be.
the one exception to this conundrum is how i interacted with ambient music in this period. i very regularly utilized ideas from the genre, but i tended to interpret ambience as something that is necessarily obscure. in this period, ambient pieces are almost always outtakes or b sides. i tended to interpret covers and remixes as ambient pieces, probably because that was unexpected. when ambient ideas make it on to the record, they're almost always for effect: introductions, endings, connecting passages, that sort of thing.
when i began reconstructing my discography in early 2014, i came across a handful of songs i'd written out into midi format and put aside for later. a number of these ended up reworked into ambient pieces, and released as b sides. i also ended up converting some of the material i wrote in this period into ambient sound collages that are more in the style of music i created after 2003.
the end result is enough bsides and remixes to put together two full cds of ambient music. none of the tracks on volumes one or two are on any official record as they appear here; this is technically a collection of remixes and outtakes.
this package was initially released with a mix tape of fragments from 1996-1999, but it has since been moved into it's own release (inri035): jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/ambient-works-vol-0
initially written and recorded between 2000-2003 and remixed between 2014-2015. sequenced over mid may, 2015. the final compilation date was initially may 20, 2015, but both discs were mildly updated with some more appropriate mixes of the same tracks on nov 29, 2017; disc subsequently finalized as lp020. as always, please use headphones.
this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (2014, 2015, 2017).
credits
released April 28, 2003
j - guitars (acoustic, electric, nylon), effects & treatments, bass, synthesizers, electric air reed organ, orchestral & other sequencing, drum & other programming, generative programming (sounder), "projectile synthesis" (audiomulch), granular synthesis (granulab), sound design, electronic and conventional drum kits, sampling, loops, films, voice, digital wave editing, composition, production.
sean - vocal ideas (tracks 4 & 7, disc 1), ring modulator (track 9, disc 1)
jon - background guitar performance (track 4, disc 1)
greg - drum performance sample source (track 5, disc 1)
the various rendered electronic orchestras include synth bass, electric bass, acoustic bass, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, nylon guitar, guitar effects, guitar noises (fret noises, pick scrapes, knocks), synthesizer, synth pads, mellotron, choir, violin, viola, cello, contrabass, string section, pizzicato strings, french horn, trumpet, trombone, tuba, oboe, english horn, bassoon, clarinet, flute, piccolo, mallet, piano, woodblock, music box, xylophone, tubular bells, other bells, orchestra hit, electronic drum kit, melodic toms, drum machine and orchestral drum kit.
j - guitars (acoustic, electric, nylon), effects & treatments, bass, synthesizers, electric air reed organ, orchestral & other sequencing, drum & other programming, generative programming (sounder), "projectile synthesis" (audiomulch), granular synthesis (granulab), sound design, electronic and conventional drum kits, sampling, loops, films, voice, digital wave editing, composition, production.
sean - vocal ideas (tracks 4 & 7, disc 1), ring modulator (track 9, disc 1)
jon - background guitar performance (track 4, disc 1)
greg - drum performance sample source (track 5, disc 1)
the various rendered electronic orchestras include synth bass, electric bass, acoustic bass, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, nylon guitar, guitar effects, guitar noises (fret noises, pick scrapes, knocks), synthesizer, synth pads, mellotron, choir, violin, viola, cello, contrabass, string section, pizzicato strings, french horn, trumpet, trombone, tuba, oboe, english horn, bassoon, clarinet, flute, piccolo, mallet, piano, woodblock, music box, xylophone, tubular bells, other bells, orchestra hit, electronic drum kit, melodic toms, drum machine and orchestral drum kit.
Thursday, January 11, 2018
as another aside, the fact that climate scientists use averages at all is kind of...it's not mathematically sound.
averages are good when there's a fixed variable of some sort. you can take an individual's average over a fixed task (exam scores, track times, etc), or you can take a fixed task like exam scores and then average it out over various individuals (joe, sally, etc). what you're really doing with an average is repeating trials over and over, and trying to get a guess on a "test statistic" that exists in some platonic reality - the idea is that the average exists in some cloud somewhere, and if you repeat the trial often enough then you'll reveal it. i'm actually not a platonist at all, but you'd be surprised by the things you hear from grown men with math degrees, behind closed doors.
what the hell are you even trying to do by averaging out temperatures over the entire earth, in the first place? there's no test statistic to arrive at. you're not finding some ideal concept of earthly temperature readings. once you get a sequence of ratios in place, you can find the test statistic for the average of that sequence, but what does that mean if the "average temperature of the earth" is a wonky concept in the first place? it's not devoid of meaning at all, but it's more of a contrived ratio to determine policy (like the cpi, or the unemployment rate) than it is any kind of reflection of anything meaningful. it only make any sense in the context of itself.
consider the following ten data points...
toronto: -25
moscow: -20
stockholm: -15
london: -10
paris: -8
riyadh: 45
singapore: 46
calcultta: 47
cairo: 51
tehran: 52
my understanding of things suggests that that could very well be a typical january, mid-century.
average temperature: 16.3 degrees. of course, this is a crappy data set, i'm just making a point. but, that's completely fucking worthless as any descriptive measure - it's only useful in comparison to the next data point.
now, suppose that the readings for these cities in 1975 was as follows:
toronto: -13
moscow: -8
stockholm: -5
london: -2
paris: 0
riyadh: 35
singapore: 36
calcultta: 37
cairo: 41
tehran:42
that's reasonable for 1975, huh? i'm not looking it up, i'm making a point; i should have looked this one up. and bullshitted the other. whatever. the average temperature of this data set is also 16.3 degrees
therefore, there was no climate change over these years? eh...
i should be offering a mathematical solution right now, but i'm not entirely convinced that the idea of modelling the earth in this way makes sense at all.
you hear this push-back: weather is not the same as climate, weather is not the same as climate. i end up doing it myself sometimes. it's an easy way to explain away the fluctuations.
i'm not really convinced that you can talk about a planet's climate at all. i mean, the ratio has a purpose, but it doesn't actually physically mean anything. there is no "earth's climate", there is a collection of overlapping systems, and really several different climates that develop where these systems intersect.
and, right now, it looks like the north and south are moving in opposite directions, as a consequence of opposite causes.
averages are good when there's a fixed variable of some sort. you can take an individual's average over a fixed task (exam scores, track times, etc), or you can take a fixed task like exam scores and then average it out over various individuals (joe, sally, etc). what you're really doing with an average is repeating trials over and over, and trying to get a guess on a "test statistic" that exists in some platonic reality - the idea is that the average exists in some cloud somewhere, and if you repeat the trial often enough then you'll reveal it. i'm actually not a platonist at all, but you'd be surprised by the things you hear from grown men with math degrees, behind closed doors.
what the hell are you even trying to do by averaging out temperatures over the entire earth, in the first place? there's no test statistic to arrive at. you're not finding some ideal concept of earthly temperature readings. once you get a sequence of ratios in place, you can find the test statistic for the average of that sequence, but what does that mean if the "average temperature of the earth" is a wonky concept in the first place? it's not devoid of meaning at all, but it's more of a contrived ratio to determine policy (like the cpi, or the unemployment rate) than it is any kind of reflection of anything meaningful. it only make any sense in the context of itself.
consider the following ten data points...
toronto: -25
moscow: -20
stockholm: -15
london: -10
paris: -8
riyadh: 45
singapore: 46
calcultta: 47
cairo: 51
tehran: 52
my understanding of things suggests that that could very well be a typical january, mid-century.
average temperature: 16.3 degrees. of course, this is a crappy data set, i'm just making a point. but, that's completely fucking worthless as any descriptive measure - it's only useful in comparison to the next data point.
now, suppose that the readings for these cities in 1975 was as follows:
toronto: -13
moscow: -8
stockholm: -5
london: -2
paris: 0
riyadh: 35
singapore: 36
calcultta: 37
cairo: 41
tehran:42
that's reasonable for 1975, huh? i'm not looking it up, i'm making a point; i should have looked this one up. and bullshitted the other. whatever. the average temperature of this data set is also 16.3 degrees
therefore, there was no climate change over these years? eh...
i should be offering a mathematical solution right now, but i'm not entirely convinced that the idea of modelling the earth in this way makes sense at all.
you hear this push-back: weather is not the same as climate, weather is not the same as climate. i end up doing it myself sometimes. it's an easy way to explain away the fluctuations.
i'm not really convinced that you can talk about a planet's climate at all. i mean, the ratio has a purpose, but it doesn't actually physically mean anything. there is no "earth's climate", there is a collection of overlapping systems, and really several different climates that develop where these systems intersect.
and, right now, it looks like the north and south are moving in opposite directions, as a consequence of opposite causes.
i'm not at all interested in a red team / blue team approach to climate change; i won't support a political movement that i think is being dishonest in order to generate a narrative, i will call you out and tear you down with as much vehement scorn as the next liar.
in science, truth is not an abstraction, it's fact. scientists cannot tolerate this sort of post-modern, pragmatic bullshit. and, it won't work; there is no actual end point to this approach besides greed.
sorry.
there's two approaches to this: honestly convince enough people to make it a political issue and then push hard for it (it's the second part that failed under obama), or get lucky in stumbling upon a despot that understands the urgency of the situation and doesn't fucking care what the masses think, anyways.
in science, truth is not an abstraction, it's fact. scientists cannot tolerate this sort of post-modern, pragmatic bullshit. and, it won't work; there is no actual end point to this approach besides greed.
sorry.
there's two approaches to this: honestly convince enough people to make it a political issue and then push hard for it (it's the second part that failed under obama), or get lucky in stumbling upon a despot that understands the urgency of the situation and doesn't fucking care what the masses think, anyways.
so, why do we have winter, anyways?
no, if you don't know look it up. if you think you know, prove yourself right. do this. this isn't phd-level stuff; you should have learned about it in grade school. maybe you did, and just forgot.
but, it's because the amount of sunlight hitting the earth fluctuates, causing changes in the upper atmosphere that allow cold air to move from the polar regions into the habitable regions. this 'polar vortex' is called winter.
so, realizing that, what would you predict is the result of the sun hitting historical lows in output? more winter, right? and, the correlation is there, if you go to look for it - as it was from antiquity until 1980, when it split due to increased carbon concentrations.
you won't find a scientist that contradicts the obvious. this isn't specialist knowledge, it's grade school science. what you'll find instead is a lot of talking around the basic point, because it's been so obfuscated by deniers. what you're doing to these scientists when you bring up the sun in a non-academic context is triggering them into bad memories that they've had of dumb arguments with scientific illiterates trying to pass themselves off as educated. you're forcing them to relive traumatic experiences, and not getting good answers out of them, because of it. they're more focused on not letting bad ideas perpetuate (and there are a lot of them...) than actually getting the right ideas out. so, when you actually bring up good points about the sun's effect on the climate, it gets ignored because they just don't want to talk about it. and, that's a failure that the talking heads need to address, because the sun is actually going through a phase right now where it's output is low enough that it will (regionally) offset the effects of global warming, at least for a while. if legitimate climate scientists don't take steps to address the point clearly and honestly, climate change is going to be seen as a theory that fails to make accurate predictions, and we're going to lose the argument - only to get roasted when or if the sun turns itself up. science cannot operate at a propaganda level if it wants to win public support. it has to be honest, and it has to win people over due to it's honest attempts to understand things as they actually are.
here's the thing: this is not as dire as people are likely to intuitively think. it's a modelling issue. it doesn't require a rethink to solve, it requires a tweak. the reality is that we don't understand the sun all that well, so we mostly model it as constant. we even have a term called the solar constant. but, the sun's output is not constant, and nobody is going to argue that it is.
what legitimate climate scientists need to do is put more effort into modelling the sun and then work those fluctuations into the models. remember: small changes in solar output can make big differences in the upper atmosphere. think of the way the sun hits the earth as a lightning strike on a lake - it ripples. and, that's where the "amplification" actually happens. in this case, what we're talking about is a decrease in total energy entering the system - and we understand how this works fairly well, with the oscillations taking repetitive shapes that are predictable functions of the solar output.
unlike the deniers, i would not expect that a better modelling of the sun would create a substantially different understanding of climate change. it's theoretically plausible, i suppose - only way to find out is to do it - but we understand the greenhouse effect, too, and the solar output would probably have to decrease by a larger proportion than is being contemplated in order to offset the effect. the point is that we don't have this model. because we don't understand the sun. the deniers, however, insist that the models can be improved - and that is tautological. they should be met halfway on this point, to prove them wrong, and to better understand the thing, as a whole. what better models - and this is a complexity issue, not a computing issue - would really help us with is in understanding the weather quite a bit better.
this article is an example of how to misunderstand the point:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/jan/09/the-imminent-mini-ice-age-myth-is-back-and-its-still-wrong
i don't really have any corrections to make on the article. but, the scientific claim here, and mike lockwood, who is cited here in an equally poor but oppositely poor context than he is in the right-wing media, has volunteered to be spokesperson for it, is not that the decrease in solar activity will offset global warming but that it will lead to the kind of regional variations that were seen in seventeenth century england. the article is really an elaborate strawman fallacy, rushing to debunk a claim that no scientist has ever made.
it's all very nice and everything to point out that a regional decrease in northern temperatures is likely to be offset by an accompanying increase in southern ones. why do we have winter, again? but, tell it to the guy that's playing hockey on the thames in april, as india suffers through 55 degree heat.
it balances out, so there's nothing to worry about, right? eh....
no, if you don't know look it up. if you think you know, prove yourself right. do this. this isn't phd-level stuff; you should have learned about it in grade school. maybe you did, and just forgot.
but, it's because the amount of sunlight hitting the earth fluctuates, causing changes in the upper atmosphere that allow cold air to move from the polar regions into the habitable regions. this 'polar vortex' is called winter.
so, realizing that, what would you predict is the result of the sun hitting historical lows in output? more winter, right? and, the correlation is there, if you go to look for it - as it was from antiquity until 1980, when it split due to increased carbon concentrations.
you won't find a scientist that contradicts the obvious. this isn't specialist knowledge, it's grade school science. what you'll find instead is a lot of talking around the basic point, because it's been so obfuscated by deniers. what you're doing to these scientists when you bring up the sun in a non-academic context is triggering them into bad memories that they've had of dumb arguments with scientific illiterates trying to pass themselves off as educated. you're forcing them to relive traumatic experiences, and not getting good answers out of them, because of it. they're more focused on not letting bad ideas perpetuate (and there are a lot of them...) than actually getting the right ideas out. so, when you actually bring up good points about the sun's effect on the climate, it gets ignored because they just don't want to talk about it. and, that's a failure that the talking heads need to address, because the sun is actually going through a phase right now where it's output is low enough that it will (regionally) offset the effects of global warming, at least for a while. if legitimate climate scientists don't take steps to address the point clearly and honestly, climate change is going to be seen as a theory that fails to make accurate predictions, and we're going to lose the argument - only to get roasted when or if the sun turns itself up. science cannot operate at a propaganda level if it wants to win public support. it has to be honest, and it has to win people over due to it's honest attempts to understand things as they actually are.
here's the thing: this is not as dire as people are likely to intuitively think. it's a modelling issue. it doesn't require a rethink to solve, it requires a tweak. the reality is that we don't understand the sun all that well, so we mostly model it as constant. we even have a term called the solar constant. but, the sun's output is not constant, and nobody is going to argue that it is.
what legitimate climate scientists need to do is put more effort into modelling the sun and then work those fluctuations into the models. remember: small changes in solar output can make big differences in the upper atmosphere. think of the way the sun hits the earth as a lightning strike on a lake - it ripples. and, that's where the "amplification" actually happens. in this case, what we're talking about is a decrease in total energy entering the system - and we understand how this works fairly well, with the oscillations taking repetitive shapes that are predictable functions of the solar output.
unlike the deniers, i would not expect that a better modelling of the sun would create a substantially different understanding of climate change. it's theoretically plausible, i suppose - only way to find out is to do it - but we understand the greenhouse effect, too, and the solar output would probably have to decrease by a larger proportion than is being contemplated in order to offset the effect. the point is that we don't have this model. because we don't understand the sun. the deniers, however, insist that the models can be improved - and that is tautological. they should be met halfway on this point, to prove them wrong, and to better understand the thing, as a whole. what better models - and this is a complexity issue, not a computing issue - would really help us with is in understanding the weather quite a bit better.
this article is an example of how to misunderstand the point:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/jan/09/the-imminent-mini-ice-age-myth-is-back-and-its-still-wrong
i don't really have any corrections to make on the article. but, the scientific claim here, and mike lockwood, who is cited here in an equally poor but oppositely poor context than he is in the right-wing media, has volunteered to be spokesperson for it, is not that the decrease in solar activity will offset global warming but that it will lead to the kind of regional variations that were seen in seventeenth century england. the article is really an elaborate strawman fallacy, rushing to debunk a claim that no scientist has ever made.
it's all very nice and everything to point out that a regional decrease in northern temperatures is likely to be offset by an accompanying increase in southern ones. why do we have winter, again? but, tell it to the guy that's playing hockey on the thames in april, as india suffers through 55 degree heat.
it balances out, so there's nothing to worry about, right? eh....
deathtokoalas
this research was trendy in the mainstream media a few years ago, but it's actually been thoroughly debunked. and, this insistence that all weather is created by the same factors is actually conspiratorial thinking; what's presented here isn't a counter to denial type thinking, but it's parallel and analogue on the left.
carbon concentrations are not the cause of all weather.
and, the polar vortex is quite well understood as a function of sunlight.
deathtokoalas
the very quick response is this: we don't need to cite carbon concentrations to explain the cold we're seeing. we already have a standard, widely understood model. it's the same model that we use to understand seasons. so, this is a solution for a problem that doesn't exist. and, it happens to be that it isn't consistent with the laws of thermodynamics.
i think maybe the conceptual problem people are having is that they conceive of the earth like the ancient greeks did: as though it's in a glass ball, free from the influence of outside forces. the universe is newtonian - predictable - and only gets chaotic when humans alter the natural equilibrium. in fact, the reality is that we're a jagged lump of molten rock, not spherical but only even roughly elliptical, and we're hurdling towards nowhere through an orbit full of bumps. we go through ice ages when we hit very rough patches - that is the theory of ice ages, converted into an analogy about bad roads. and, it's the basic theory of weather, too.
the reason we needed a theory of global warming in the first place was that the movement of temperatures decoupled from the sun. if the weather we were experiencing was caused mostly or solely by the sun, it should have been getting colder, not warmer. yet, it was getting warmer. contradiction. so, the weather could not have been caused solely by the sun....
as it stands, the recent exaggerated expansion of the polar vortex - which most people call winter - is happening in perfect correlation with the sun, which is entering a minimum during one of it's weakest cycles on record. if our science of seasons and ice ages is correct, our recent observations of the sun are predictive; the actual predictive science here is that this should, in fact, make things colder - regionally. and temporarily. and, this is exactly what is happening. there's no reason for what she's doing.
what jennifer francis is doing is really something along the lines of throwing an apple into the air, and trying to explain why it falls using magnetism. it's a nice story, jenn. but we already understand gravity pretty well - or, at least, we do observationally.
mike lockwood. look him up. he did the studies.
jessman9000
Deleting peoples comments only destroyed your own narrative.
deathtokoalas
i'm not interested in acting as a medium for the dissemination of false information, or outright stupidity; your comment is not correct. what deleting stupid comments does is sharpen the narrative, by eliminating the irrelevant, the superfluous and/or the incorrect. it removes misleading or useless information from the discourse.
i don't want to get into a huxley v. orwell debate, but that's where i'm going with this. when we're bombarded with false information, it's much harder to find the actual truth.
that said, i wish i still had the ability to remove stupid comments, but google has removed this under apparent pressure from right-wing extremists.
pk
FYI: BBC Horizon 2005 Global Dimming
deathtokoalas
it is consistent with what i'm saying to suggest that coal particulates - and other pollutants - should be a measurable aspect of climate modelling. but, this isn't the same kind of long term problem, because the particles don't build up in the same way. it's more of a localized short term thing. but, if i was more interested in southern china than i am in the great lakes, i'd be arguing the point for a short term effect, absolutely.
grindupBaker
Earth surface is smooth, not a jagged lump. You referred to yourself and one or more unspecified persons as "a jagged lump". This seems quite likely but we are not sufficiently familiar with you to have high certainty of your similarity to a jagged lump.
deathtokoalas
apparently, this person is from saskatchewan, because they've clearly never seen a mountain before.
grindupBaker
you say "the reason we needed a theory of global warming in the first place was that the movement of temperatures decoupled from the sun". Correct but also note that the hypothesis of "global warming" was derived by Fourier more than a century before the experiment with coal had been conducted for long enough and measurements had been sufficient for long enough to confirm the hypothesis and make it a theory.
deathtokoalas
google is very bad at notifications. but, fwiw, i believe that what fourier demonstrated was merely the mechanism of the greenhouse effect, rather than any specific warming trends.
charles
Just another Russian troll calling him/herself Jessica. Yawn!
deathtokoalas
well, i'm not a russian troll. but, you sure sound like a democratic party stooge.
my arguments do not challenge the climate consensus; francis' theory is not in it, and never will be.
charles
"democratic party stooge" LOL, Jess. I'm not from the US and A, not even from that continent.
deathtokoalas
i have no reason to believe you when you say that, stooge.
charles
I couldn't care less, Jessica. Nice name BTW. You transgender?
deathtokoalas
see, this is when the democratic party stooge reflexively retreats to identity politics to attempt to prove their faux liberalism.
charles
At least we know now what you're after
deathtokoalas
you'll have to fill me in on the conspiracy, stooge.
=====
wonderpope
This professor couldn't have explained the physics of how AGW affects the jet streams, and by that causes the local weather anomalies we are experiencing, any easier and clearer. She's not talking about carbon tax or one world government. She's basically saying "we're fucked" even if we would restore the carbon cycle to pre-industrial, because the surplus of CO2 we've been putting into the cycle in the past, let's say, 100 years will continue affecting the climate for 100 years more. And yet I read some cringe worthy comments on here, that show that some people have not listened to this video and aren't even attempting to dispute the data presented, but want to present the expert as a shill for some government entity. Don't get me wrong, skepticism is a good thing. But there's a reason why experts in a field understand things better than the average person...it's because they've spent all their life studying it.
We're driving this car called "human civilization" towards a wall at 200 mph...and instead of facing the problem and finding a way to reduce the speed, people seem to just try to turn their seats in the opposite direction to not see the wall coming towards them at a rapid speed.
deathtokoalas
in fact, this particular scientist's research is not accepted by mainstream academics.
you should look that up, rather than rely on youtube videos for information.
wonderpope
Please tell me exactly how mainstream contradict her claims. What, in your opinion, does mainstream science claim? what is the counter claim I need to look for? I can´t just google "debunking Jennifer A. Francis" and hope to find easily what you claim.
deathtokoalas
you have to realize, wonderpope, that most ideas that are not well accepted do not generate a large amount of literature debunking them. they're just ignored and forgotten. with francis' theory, because it was picked up by the msm without vetting it, what you're going to find is a lot of debunking of various validity from what are mostly very poor sources. actual scientists working in the field have largely just ignored it. i mean, these people don't have time for it.
as a consequence, it's easier to direct you to the actual mainstream theory.
you can easily find articles discussing lockwood's work on mainstream sites, like the bbc. he's actually received scientific awards for his work, along with promotions and the kind of titles that scientists covet, like a place in the royal society. this is the existing consensus: while climate is complicated, weather (and the jet stream is weather.) is caused almost entirely by fluctuations in the amount of sunlight hitting the earth. and, he's rather convincingly demonstrated the point that the existing slow down in solar activity will cause the kind of fluctuations we're seeing in the jet stream - thereby producing a predictive theory of more cold winters in the northern hemisphere, around the jet stream, during the existing minimum.
as mentioned, the most obvious problem with francis' theory is that it has heat and cold moving in directions that are not consistent with the theory of thermodynamics.
---
i googled a bit more. i'm kind of bed-ridden by choice, right now.
jennifer francis has, herself, done her opponents the courtesy of compiling a list of studies that contradict her own research (i do not know how many of them addressed her research directly, but probably very few did.), and then attempts to hand wave it away by claiming bad methodology - which is what scientists do when they can't admit they're wrong.
dan
I watched a video called "Jet Streams, more Jet Streams, and even more Jet Streams: AGU Science" In that clip he talks about a paper by Mann. When I heard that my BS detector turned up its sensitivity because Mann is the infamous author of the fake hockey stick graph.
To be honest what he says is mostly beyond me even though I understand standing wave theory and resonance quite well. God help those that are completely ignorant of such theory. He appears to be talking about how modeling of the jet stream works. But the models don't actually emulate reality well and have demonstrated zero predictive capability.
No one argues that the jet streams play an important part in weather events and more study as to how they operate is welcomed.
But the jet stream performs much more like a meandering river than a simple wave function. It is a chaotic structure, not a pure sine wave function. Its path change is caused by minor and chaotic deviations to its flow path restrictions, its width, and its inertia all interacting simultaneously.
So its apparent "frequency" and "amplitude" can never be more than a very rough approximation. Applying "quasi resonant effects". resonance, amplitude, Q, and R etc. apply only to sine functions. So I conclude wave theory models that use such simulations will never be able to adequately explain or predict chaotic jet stream behavior.
He goes on to claim that aerosols contribute "hugely" to radiative forcing. If you look at IPCC reports you will see that a) the supposed effects due to aerosols have large error bars and b) as the reports become more refined their effects are being reduced. This fact has introduced a conundrum for alarmists because large aerosol effects have been used to tune models (to provide cooling to force them to agree with observed data) that contain high climate sensitivity values (predict more warming than happened). i.e. they appear to be incorrectly tuned to cancel predicted warming. Even at that, the models all quickly diverge from observed climate, predicting warming that does not occur. That would indicate that their sensitivity values are too high. Yet the IPCC averages 102 knowingly incorrect models and runs with a 3C sensitivity value!
He then goes on to talk about the paleo record reconstruction of the jet stream from ice cores. At best this is a poor proxy of snowfall location that eludes to a possible jet stream waveform. But the observation concludes that warmer periods had larger stream amplitude so he runs with it. To his credit, he admits "it's very difficult to determine what configuration jet streams had based on (these records)".
The rest of the video sites other possible inferences and he points out that we need more research. I agree.
deathtokoalas
you might want to check your understanding of waves, dan.
there is a basic theory in algebra that says that all continuous functions, no matter how complicated, can be decomposed into a series of sine waves, called a fourier series. and, the fourier transform (not the same as the series) has widespread applications across the sciences. there is also a fourier theory, but that is pure math stuff. the question isn't really whether the math is reasonable, it's whether the theory is predictive, and the answer is that it only works when you cherry pick the data. this shouldn't actually be particularly surprising, though, because it's quite physically counter-intuitive.
the empirical question is really whether these waves remain in tact or not, that is the physics being challenged, and the evidence appears to be that they don't. the model then collapses as a result of bad physics, not bad math.
further, we don't try to understand the jet stream in terms of ocean currents, anyways. we try and understand the jet stream in terms of factors in the upper atmosphere. i mean, this is the theory: that the energy from the oceans is elevating itself into the atmosphere, and then wreaking havoc - which is a difficult idea on it's face and requires this clumsy mechanism to take seriously.
the biggest factor in the upper atmosphere, and especially around the earth's tilt, is the way the sun hits it. and, there is actually good science that makes predictive theories about jet streams based on solar fluctuations.
======
deathtokoalas
somebody ought to tell paul that if he wants to focus on climate change, he should hire a science journalist. i can't blame greg for this. and i don't claim anything malicious. it's just that it's wrong.
sertaki
Are you saying that a climate journalist would bring more credible facts to the table than an actual climate scientist who has worked on important studies herself?
deathtokoalas
what i'm saying is that a broader science journalist should have pointed out that this particular scientist is actually not well regarded in her field, and that her ideas are really distorting the narrative. not in those terms, exactly, perhaps, but through a probing analysis. see, aaron is a actually a good example, in the sense that he challenges people, albeit not when it comes to science, because he's not a science journalist, even when he plays devil's advocate. an interview with a very controversial researcher like jennifer francis should be presented as what it is, and should ultimately be about challenging the mechanism she's providing. this is rather presented as a science lesson, but what it's "teaching" is something that is at best extremely obscure - and probably just flat out wrong.
what you're doing is appealing to authority. and, she might be an authority on her own research. but, she's not a good authority on the broader topic.
you could throw a dart in a climate conference and find somebody who both accepts the climate consensus and is willing to challenge this theory on air.
and, it's kind of pernicious. because the reason this theory is getting more attention than it deserve is that it was run by the corporate left media. the guardian. the atlantic. now, the so-called independent media is running with it, because it appeared in the mainstream press, not because of it's actual value. that's not how this ought to work.
grindupBaker
I made an effort and spent some time with searches like "controversial research jennifer francis" and I've come up with nothing after reading NAS & all sorts of sites. So give a couple of links, just so we can confirm that you aren't just a coal/oil shill-fuckwit wasting our time. Just a couple of relevant links.
deathtokoalas
the reason i'm being obscure is that the arguments are technical.
Wednesday, January 10, 2018
did the holocaust actually happen?
well, i might be a product of it. my paternal grandmother just kind of shows up as an orphan in the 30s, without much of any documented history. she was raised in an italian family, and one would no doubt make many errors if forced to differentiate between italians and jews out of a line-up, but i think most people would assume she looks pretty jewish. there's pictures of my dad from the 70s, full bearded, where he actually looks flat out arab, although he aged in a way that made him look not dissimilar to chomsky, in that eastern european jew kind of way - although he aged terribly. his physical appearance was described almost perfectly in the term 'italian jew'. although, when i say he aged in a way that made him look not dissimilar to chomsky, what i mean is that, at 50, he looked not dissimilar to chomsky at 70. i got my mom's genes, on that one; i remember bringing her to a field trip in the fourth grade, when she was almost 30. and having the entire school think she was my teenaged sister. this deduction, though, is ultimately not phenotypical - the two rumours on that side of the family are that she is in some unknown way a product of the holocaust (smuggled in, maybe?) and that she's the product of a mob hit, and sometimes these stories intersect in a tale of starcrossed lovers and racist slaughter by catholic mob bosses that couldn't deal with the interracial, and interreligious, eloping. my grandmother is a catholic. my aunt claims she found them in a newspaper clipping of young lovers tied to railroad tracks (and subsequently annihilated) in ottawa in the 30s, but the evidence is circumstantial, at best. my grandmother doesn't know.
between the time of her adoption and the time she was married, my paternal grandmother's last name was zito. and, ottawa was known to have an international mob presence, at the time. you can find pictures of the big bosses, i think including capone, existing in ottawa. it actually does add up. the fact that she seems to have no known history has led to the speculation that her adopted parents probably knew what happened - perhaps even knew the killers - and just didn't tell her. there is literally no trail. her adopted mother could have been her mother's sister, or something.
or maybe her parents managed to get her out, despite the attempts of north american governments to prevent jews from arriving. certainly, if you wanted to get your jewish infant or toddler child out of germany in 1937, you'd have had to have done something like smuggle it out. and, you wouldn't want a paper trail, because if it's found then the kid will get sent back.
maybe i'll look into it one day...
anyways, whether i'm the result of it or not, did the holocaust actually happen?
i run across this question from time-to-time, and i'm going to provide somewhat of a dodgy response: the holocaust is as well, or better, documented and convincingly demonstrated as any other event in accepted mainstream history. so, i can be as sure that the holocaust happened as i can be about any other event in history.
but, look at the words i'm using, the language, the context: event in history. history.
that is not the argument that my grandparents would provide. they may have been born as it was happening, and not remember it, but it was a part of their lives. this is not even the argument that my parents would provide, as they lived with people that lived it. three of my grandparents are even still alive, and all three of them could very well outlive my mother, between the heroin and the alcohol and the cigarettes, not to mention the half of a dozen duis.
but, the boomers are passing, and this is going to be the new reality around the holocaust: we are approaching the point where no living people have any connection to this any more, and it exists purely as history.
this is the situation that the holocaust memorial people have been preparing us for for the last 60 years, the point where the question is no longer about forgetting, because we don't have memories to forget. you can't forget what you never knew. instead, you need to ask the question: can you trust history?
well, can you?
punk?
it's exceedingly well documented. i understand this. but, so is the life of jesus.
a part of the problem is how central the holocaust story is to the western founding myth, at this point. it's intrinsically interconnected with the ascent of american hegemony, so it is consistently intertwined with narratives that are otherwise blatantly false. turning on cnn, you could very well have a holocaust memorial set sandwiched between a fraudulent expose on the syrian government gassing children and a jaw-droppingly bad interview with kellyanne conway that goes on for twenty minutes without managing to say a single true statement at all. association doesn't produce guilt, but it's a little unsatisfying to come to the conclusion that the only accurate information provided by the media is related to a historical event, even as they misrepresent every other kind of history on a hourly basis. the importance that the media places around it really does make the whole thing seem kind of fishy.
it's exceedingly well documented. i understand this. but, i think there will come a time when nobody really thinks this happened - or that the scale was exaggerated.
"6 million is an exaggeration. maybe it's an error by a scribe. i mean, look at the way that herodotus exaggerated the size of the persian army, for example. they probably added a few zeroes."
so, it's as well documented, or better documented, as any other event in history, sure.
but, analysing history is fundamentally different than analysing the present. this is something that's changing.
well, i might be a product of it. my paternal grandmother just kind of shows up as an orphan in the 30s, without much of any documented history. she was raised in an italian family, and one would no doubt make many errors if forced to differentiate between italians and jews out of a line-up, but i think most people would assume she looks pretty jewish. there's pictures of my dad from the 70s, full bearded, where he actually looks flat out arab, although he aged in a way that made him look not dissimilar to chomsky, in that eastern european jew kind of way - although he aged terribly. his physical appearance was described almost perfectly in the term 'italian jew'. although, when i say he aged in a way that made him look not dissimilar to chomsky, what i mean is that, at 50, he looked not dissimilar to chomsky at 70. i got my mom's genes, on that one; i remember bringing her to a field trip in the fourth grade, when she was almost 30. and having the entire school think she was my teenaged sister. this deduction, though, is ultimately not phenotypical - the two rumours on that side of the family are that she is in some unknown way a product of the holocaust (smuggled in, maybe?) and that she's the product of a mob hit, and sometimes these stories intersect in a tale of starcrossed lovers and racist slaughter by catholic mob bosses that couldn't deal with the interracial, and interreligious, eloping. my grandmother is a catholic. my aunt claims she found them in a newspaper clipping of young lovers tied to railroad tracks (and subsequently annihilated) in ottawa in the 30s, but the evidence is circumstantial, at best. my grandmother doesn't know.
between the time of her adoption and the time she was married, my paternal grandmother's last name was zito. and, ottawa was known to have an international mob presence, at the time. you can find pictures of the big bosses, i think including capone, existing in ottawa. it actually does add up. the fact that she seems to have no known history has led to the speculation that her adopted parents probably knew what happened - perhaps even knew the killers - and just didn't tell her. there is literally no trail. her adopted mother could have been her mother's sister, or something.
or maybe her parents managed to get her out, despite the attempts of north american governments to prevent jews from arriving. certainly, if you wanted to get your jewish infant or toddler child out of germany in 1937, you'd have had to have done something like smuggle it out. and, you wouldn't want a paper trail, because if it's found then the kid will get sent back.
maybe i'll look into it one day...
anyways, whether i'm the result of it or not, did the holocaust actually happen?
i run across this question from time-to-time, and i'm going to provide somewhat of a dodgy response: the holocaust is as well, or better, documented and convincingly demonstrated as any other event in accepted mainstream history. so, i can be as sure that the holocaust happened as i can be about any other event in history.
but, look at the words i'm using, the language, the context: event in history. history.
that is not the argument that my grandparents would provide. they may have been born as it was happening, and not remember it, but it was a part of their lives. this is not even the argument that my parents would provide, as they lived with people that lived it. three of my grandparents are even still alive, and all three of them could very well outlive my mother, between the heroin and the alcohol and the cigarettes, not to mention the half of a dozen duis.
but, the boomers are passing, and this is going to be the new reality around the holocaust: we are approaching the point where no living people have any connection to this any more, and it exists purely as history.
this is the situation that the holocaust memorial people have been preparing us for for the last 60 years, the point where the question is no longer about forgetting, because we don't have memories to forget. you can't forget what you never knew. instead, you need to ask the question: can you trust history?
well, can you?
punk?
it's exceedingly well documented. i understand this. but, so is the life of jesus.
a part of the problem is how central the holocaust story is to the western founding myth, at this point. it's intrinsically interconnected with the ascent of american hegemony, so it is consistently intertwined with narratives that are otherwise blatantly false. turning on cnn, you could very well have a holocaust memorial set sandwiched between a fraudulent expose on the syrian government gassing children and a jaw-droppingly bad interview with kellyanne conway that goes on for twenty minutes without managing to say a single true statement at all. association doesn't produce guilt, but it's a little unsatisfying to come to the conclusion that the only accurate information provided by the media is related to a historical event, even as they misrepresent every other kind of history on a hourly basis. the importance that the media places around it really does make the whole thing seem kind of fishy.
it's exceedingly well documented. i understand this. but, i think there will come a time when nobody really thinks this happened - or that the scale was exaggerated.
"6 million is an exaggeration. maybe it's an error by a scribe. i mean, look at the way that herodotus exaggerated the size of the persian army, for example. they probably added a few zeroes."
so, it's as well documented, or better documented, as any other event in history, sure.
but, analysing history is fundamentally different than analysing the present. this is something that's changing.
if german becomes a dead language, for example, we're going to lose incredible amounts of our scientific and broadly intellectual history, reliant on summaries in english and translations into russian. that is inevitable, though. we will forget this. we eventually won't be able to read it.
your precious hegel will eventually be illegible to even the most sophisticated idle bourgeoisie in berlin. perhaps this is when history implodes upon itself - it just swallows itself whole, and disappears into a wormhole, yelling taunts at humanity as it flees.
it reminds me a little of my argument that all history becomes poetry in the end, and that this relationship is determined by the co-efficient of poeticity, which is naturally pi. i'm not sure i've explored this here. that is for another time.
your precious hegel will eventually be illegible to even the most sophisticated idle bourgeoisie in berlin. perhaps this is when history implodes upon itself - it just swallows itself whole, and disappears into a wormhole, yelling taunts at humanity as it flees.
it reminds me a little of my argument that all history becomes poetry in the end, and that this relationship is determined by the co-efficient of poeticity, which is naturally pi. i'm not sure i've explored this here. that is for another time.
is human progress, civilization, inherently forgetful?
well, certainly a lot of humans are inherently forgetful. we forget to do things, and forget lessons taught to us, all of the time. maybe the idea that i'm really expressing is that many of us are stupid, but the way this manifests itself is largely as forgetfulness.
now, the individualist will point out that while many, perhaps most, people are forgetful, there are some people that are not and these people will carry on the thrust of human progress, no matter how forgetful we may collectively be. but, their argument relies on the ideological construct of independence, and this is an empirical question with little evidence supporting it. individualism, at best, seems to be rare. so, these individuals are really left with a curatorial task to remind people of what they've forgotten - they're really just the cleared registers in the collective, trying to avoid the garbage collection from clearing them away, urging for a second chance to exist in memory - and failing. it's like a broken system of error-correction; we can remember and forget at the same time. so, this question of the inherent forgetfulness of human progress does not reduce to a question around independent variables.
it's just a different intellectual conception of progress - not as a linear curve tilting off towards some windmill at infinity, but as this messy, chaotic step-function, full of unpredictable fragments.
there is, of course, a hierarchy of seriousness attached to the consequences of forgetting what is being forgotten. geography can be found easily. a lesson can be relearned. but, forgetting science can be devastating.
this is a potentially unrealized consequence of globalization - when the global culture falls, there will be nobody left to remember what was forgotten.
well, certainly a lot of humans are inherently forgetful. we forget to do things, and forget lessons taught to us, all of the time. maybe the idea that i'm really expressing is that many of us are stupid, but the way this manifests itself is largely as forgetfulness.
now, the individualist will point out that while many, perhaps most, people are forgetful, there are some people that are not and these people will carry on the thrust of human progress, no matter how forgetful we may collectively be. but, their argument relies on the ideological construct of independence, and this is an empirical question with little evidence supporting it. individualism, at best, seems to be rare. so, these individuals are really left with a curatorial task to remind people of what they've forgotten - they're really just the cleared registers in the collective, trying to avoid the garbage collection from clearing them away, urging for a second chance to exist in memory - and failing. it's like a broken system of error-correction; we can remember and forget at the same time. so, this question of the inherent forgetfulness of human progress does not reduce to a question around independent variables.
it's just a different intellectual conception of progress - not as a linear curve tilting off towards some windmill at infinity, but as this messy, chaotic step-function, full of unpredictable fragments.
there is, of course, a hierarchy of seriousness attached to the consequences of forgetting what is being forgotten. geography can be found easily. a lesson can be relearned. but, forgetting science can be devastating.
this is a potentially unrealized consequence of globalization - when the global culture falls, there will be nobody left to remember what was forgotten.
Tuesday, January 9, 2018
purchasing this release does not come with a download.
inri053: written late 2001 and early 2002. this file is ripped from a cd-r that was burnt around 2002, as that was the option that would produce the most accurate reproduction of the original composition. published without modification on oct 6, 2014. expanded, re-released and finalized as symph006 and lp012 on oct 23, 2017.
inri057: written and recorded in late 2001 and early 2002. initially sequenced in may, 2002. re-sequenced and first released in june, 2002. re-released in slightly different forms from 2002-2014. resequenced to mimic the original sequencing and re-released on november 8, 2014. except to sequence the record, these files have not been altered since 2002. disc finalized as lp013 on nov 3, 2017.
inri063: these tracks are all based on existing demos from 2001-2002 that were initially intended to be completed with vocal parts and were remixed from july, 2014 to may, 2015 as purely instrumental recordings. released may 2, 2015. disc finalized as lp014 on nov 21, 2017. this is my sixth official record.
inri066: originally written, programmed and recorded from 1996-2002. reclaimed & remixed from june to december of 2015. initial completion date was december 31, 2015. disc finally released, closed and finalized on nov 26, 2017. lp015.
inri067: written and recorded between dec, 1999 and july, 2002, except the hidden track (which was created in the summer of 1998). none of these tracks were remastered or otherwise modified after 2002. disc simultaneously created and finalized as lp016 on nov 26, 2017.
inri068: originally written, programmed and recorded in varying states of finality over 2001 and 2002, except the hidden track (which was programmed in 1997). the associated tracks were completed between february, 2014 and may, 2015; these mixes, however, were spun off as late as nov, 2017. released as lp017 on nov 27, 2017. expanded and finalized on jan 1, 2018.
inri069: initially written and recorded between 1997-2003. this compilation idea was developed and expanded upon as an intended full record release between 2006 and 2011. reinterpreted, reconstructed and remixed between 2014-2018. sequenced over december, 2017 and january, 2018. disc released & finalized as lp018 and tetris I-IV on jan 7, 2018.
originally created from 1997-2003. this compilation is dated to april 28, 2003. slowly remastered, reconstituted, compiled, reconstructed, released and finalized from 2013-2018. compilation finalized on jan 9, 2018. as always, please use headphones.
inri053: written late 2001 and early 2002. this file is ripped from a cd-r that was burnt around 2002, as that was the option that would produce the most accurate reproduction of the original composition. published without modification on oct 6, 2014. expanded, re-released and finalized as symph006 and lp012 on oct 23, 2017.
inri057: written and recorded in late 2001 and early 2002. initially sequenced in may, 2002. re-sequenced and first released in june, 2002. re-released in slightly different forms from 2002-2014. resequenced to mimic the original sequencing and re-released on november 8, 2014. except to sequence the record, these files have not been altered since 2002. disc finalized as lp013 on nov 3, 2017.
inri063: these tracks are all based on existing demos from 2001-2002 that were initially intended to be completed with vocal parts and were remixed from july, 2014 to may, 2015 as purely instrumental recordings. released may 2, 2015. disc finalized as lp014 on nov 21, 2017. this is my sixth official record.
inri066: originally written, programmed and recorded from 1996-2002. reclaimed & remixed from june to december of 2015. initial completion date was december 31, 2015. disc finally released, closed and finalized on nov 26, 2017. lp015.
inri067: written and recorded between dec, 1999 and july, 2002, except the hidden track (which was created in the summer of 1998). none of these tracks were remastered or otherwise modified after 2002. disc simultaneously created and finalized as lp016 on nov 26, 2017.
inri068: originally written, programmed and recorded in varying states of finality over 2001 and 2002, except the hidden track (which was programmed in 1997). the associated tracks were completed between february, 2014 and may, 2015; these mixes, however, were spun off as late as nov, 2017. released as lp017 on nov 27, 2017. expanded and finalized on jan 1, 2018.
inri069: initially written and recorded between 1997-2003. this compilation idea was developed and expanded upon as an intended full record release between 2006 and 2011. reinterpreted, reconstructed and remixed between 2014-2018. sequenced over december, 2017 and january, 2018. disc released & finalized as lp018 and tetris I-IV on jan 7, 2018.
originally created from 1997-2003. this compilation is dated to april 28, 2003. slowly remastered, reconstituted, compiled, reconstructed, released and finalized from 2013-2018. compilation finalized on jan 9, 2018. as always, please use headphones.
credits
released April 28, 2003
j - guitars (electric, acoustic, classical), digital & analog effest processing, bass, bass synth, synthesizers, electric & grand pianos, electric air reed organ, digital piano, flute, mandolin, voice, vocal noises & relics, electronic & analog drum kits, drum programming, drum manipulations, drum sampling, vocal manipulations, loops, orchestral & other sequencing, sampling, equalization, sound raider, found sounds, octavers, noise generators, cool edit synthesis, granular synthesis, generative synthesis, coughs, digital wave editing, production, composition, cover art.
sean - vocals, lyrics (inri053, inri057), harmonica (inri057, inri063, inri069), ring modulator (inri057, inri067, inri069).
greg - drum performance sample source (inri057, inri063, inri067-inri069)
jon - guitar performance (inri057)
the various rendered electronic orchestras include acoustic bass, synth bass, electric bass, brass, ftuba, french horn, trombone, trumpet, english horn, saxophone, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, flute, bamboo flute, piccolo, organ, sitar, bells, orchestra hit, melodic toms, timpani, orchestral drum set, drum machine, electrmoic drum kit, piano, clavinet, kalimba, hand drums, nylon guitar, distorted & clean electric guitars, guitar effects, guitar noises, synthesizers, synthesizer effects, music box, agogo, tubular bells, glockenspiel, koto, violin, viola, cello, contrabass and various full string sections. it also includes choir.
j - guitars (electric, acoustic, classical), digital & analog effest processing, bass, bass synth, synthesizers, electric & grand pianos, electric air reed organ, digital piano, flute, mandolin, voice, vocal noises & relics, electronic & analog drum kits, drum programming, drum manipulations, drum sampling, vocal manipulations, loops, orchestral & other sequencing, sampling, equalization, sound raider, found sounds, octavers, noise generators, cool edit synthesis, granular synthesis, generative synthesis, coughs, digital wave editing, production, composition, cover art.
sean - vocals, lyrics (inri053, inri057), harmonica (inri057, inri063, inri069), ring modulator (inri057, inri067, inri069).
greg - drum performance sample source (inri057, inri063, inri067-inri069)
jon - guitar performance (inri057)
the various rendered electronic orchestras include acoustic bass, synth bass, electric bass, brass, ftuba, french horn, trombone, trumpet, english horn, saxophone, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, flute, bamboo flute, piccolo, organ, sitar, bells, orchestra hit, melodic toms, timpani, orchestral drum set, drum machine, electrmoic drum kit, piano, clavinet, kalimba, hand drums, nylon guitar, distorted & clean electric guitars, guitar effects, guitar noises, synthesizers, synthesizer effects, music box, agogo, tubular bells, glockenspiel, koto, violin, viola, cello, contrabass and various full string sections. it also includes choir.
inri063: these tracks are all based on existing demos from 2001-2002 that were initially intended to be completed with vocal parts and were remixed from july, 2014 to may, 2015 as purely instrumental recordings. released may 2, 2015. disc finalized as lp014 on nov 21, 2017. this is my sixth official record.
inri064: these tracks were written and recorded over november and december of 2002 and uploaded, unmodified, in may of 2015. released on may 2, 2015. re-released on physical media and finalized on nov 24, 2017.
inri065: written and recorded in early 2003. transcribed, slightly rearranged, remixed repeatedly and re-rendered repeatedly over may, 2015. released on may 16, 2015. expanded & finalized on nov 25, 2017.
inri066: originally written, programmed and recorded from 1996-2002. reclaimed & remixed from june to december of 2015. initial completion date was december 31, 2015. disc finally released, closed and finalized on nov 26, 2017. lp015.
inri067: written and recorded between dec, 1999 and july, 2002, except the hidden track (which was created in the summer of 1998). none of these tracks were remastered or otherwise modified after 2002. disc simultaneously created and finalized as lp016 on nov 26, 2017.
inri068: originally written, programmed and recorded in varying states of finality over 2001 and 2002, except the hidden track (which was programmed in 1997). the associated tracks were completed between february, 2014 and may, 2015; these mixes, however, were spun off as late as nov, 2017. released as lp017 on nov 27, 2017. expanded and finalized on jan 1, 2018.
inri069: initially written and recorded between 1997-2003. this compilation idea was developed and expanded upon as an intended full record release between 2006 and 2011. reinterpreted, reconstructed and remixed between 2014-2018. sequenced over december, 2017 and january, 2018. disc released & finalized as lp018 and tetris I-IV on jan 7, 2018.
originally created from 1997-2003. this compilation is dated to april 26, 2003. slowly remastered, reconstituted, compiled, reconstructed, released and finalized from 2014-2017. compilation finalized on jan 9, 2018. as always, please use headphones.
inri064: these tracks were written and recorded over november and december of 2002 and uploaded, unmodified, in may of 2015. released on may 2, 2015. re-released on physical media and finalized on nov 24, 2017.
inri065: written and recorded in early 2003. transcribed, slightly rearranged, remixed repeatedly and re-rendered repeatedly over may, 2015. released on may 16, 2015. expanded & finalized on nov 25, 2017.
inri066: originally written, programmed and recorded from 1996-2002. reclaimed & remixed from june to december of 2015. initial completion date was december 31, 2015. disc finally released, closed and finalized on nov 26, 2017. lp015.
inri067: written and recorded between dec, 1999 and july, 2002, except the hidden track (which was created in the summer of 1998). none of these tracks were remastered or otherwise modified after 2002. disc simultaneously created and finalized as lp016 on nov 26, 2017.
inri068: originally written, programmed and recorded in varying states of finality over 2001 and 2002, except the hidden track (which was programmed in 1997). the associated tracks were completed between february, 2014 and may, 2015; these mixes, however, were spun off as late as nov, 2017. released as lp017 on nov 27, 2017. expanded and finalized on jan 1, 2018.
inri069: initially written and recorded between 1997-2003. this compilation idea was developed and expanded upon as an intended full record release between 2006 and 2011. reinterpreted, reconstructed and remixed between 2014-2018. sequenced over december, 2017 and january, 2018. disc released & finalized as lp018 and tetris I-IV on jan 7, 2018.
originally created from 1997-2003. this compilation is dated to april 26, 2003. slowly remastered, reconstituted, compiled, reconstructed, released and finalized from 2014-2017. compilation finalized on jan 9, 2018. as always, please use headphones.
credits
released April 26, 2003
j - electric & acoustic & classical guitars, electric bass guitar, bass synth, digital & analog effects processing, synthesizers, electric air reed organ, electric & grand pianos, flute, voice, vocal noises & relics, analog & electronic drum kits, drum programming, drum manipulations, drum sampling, bowls, claps, tables, ebow, mandolin, orchestral & other sequencing, sampling, loops, equalization, light-sound synthesis, generative programming, granular synthesis, sound raider, noise generators, cool edit sequencing, found sounds, octavers, coughs, digital wave editing, sound design, production, composition.
sean - harmonica (inri063, inri069), ring modulator (inri067, inri069)
greg - drum performance sample source (inri063, inri067-inri069)
the various rendered electronic orchestras include tuba, french horn, trombone, trumpet, english horn, saxophone, brass section, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, flute, bamboo flute, piccolo, orchestra hit, melodic toms, hand drums, timpani, orchestral drum set, piano, agogo, celesta, xylophone, marimba, clavinet, kalimba, vibraphone, glockenspiel, tubular & other bells, music box, woodblock, mallet, electronic drum kit, drum machine, jazz drum kit, koto, synth pad, synth bass, synthesizer, synthesizer effects, mellotron, organ, sitar, acoustic bass, synth bass, electric bass, fingered bass guitar, picked electric guitar, nylon guitar, distorted & clean electric guitars, guitar effects, bowed electric guitar, guitar noises (fret noises, knocks, pick scrapes), violin, viola, cello, contrabass and various full string sections. it also includes choir.
j - electric & acoustic & classical guitars, electric bass guitar, bass synth, digital & analog effects processing, synthesizers, electric air reed organ, electric & grand pianos, flute, voice, vocal noises & relics, analog & electronic drum kits, drum programming, drum manipulations, drum sampling, bowls, claps, tables, ebow, mandolin, orchestral & other sequencing, sampling, loops, equalization, light-sound synthesis, generative programming, granular synthesis, sound raider, noise generators, cool edit sequencing, found sounds, octavers, coughs, digital wave editing, sound design, production, composition.
sean - harmonica (inri063, inri069), ring modulator (inri067, inri069)
greg - drum performance sample source (inri063, inri067-inri069)
the various rendered electronic orchestras include tuba, french horn, trombone, trumpet, english horn, saxophone, brass section, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, flute, bamboo flute, piccolo, orchestra hit, melodic toms, hand drums, timpani, orchestral drum set, piano, agogo, celesta, xylophone, marimba, clavinet, kalimba, vibraphone, glockenspiel, tubular & other bells, music box, woodblock, mallet, electronic drum kit, drum machine, jazz drum kit, koto, synth pad, synth bass, synthesizer, synthesizer effects, mellotron, organ, sitar, acoustic bass, synth bass, electric bass, fingered bass guitar, picked electric guitar, nylon guitar, distorted & clean electric guitars, guitar effects, bowed electric guitar, guitar noises (fret noises, knocks, pick scrapes), violin, viola, cello, contrabass and various full string sections. it also includes choir.
Monday, January 8, 2018
publishing inri069
the
origins of the tetris project emerge in my records some time in
mid-2006. i must have been filing some things on my hard drive, and
wanting to put a bunch of the loose ends in the same folder, because
what i remember is having a lot of loose tracks and trying to find a way
to fit them together. the best commonality i could find in these tracks
is that they all attempted to merge guitar music with electronic music,
so i devised a project that would utilize these tracks by exploring
this theme to it's fullest.
tetris is the idea of combining guitar music with technology. it just sat that way, for years, as a folder on my hard drive, with little progress towards actual completion.
when i set up the bandcamp site in 2010, i uploaded a number of these loose tracks under the album header 'tetris', with a promise to add tracks to it, slowly, until it completes. this was intended to be an eventual official record with an explicit techno flavour, and some tracks were, in fact, added to it. as of january, 2018, the majority of these tracks have been completed and re-released on my fifth or sixth records. so, this project has been dismantled, as it initially existed.
upon initial completion of my second period in may of 2015, i sat down to create a guitar volume. some work was completed on a mix tape of solo parts, but this was ultimately where i left off to go back to complete period 1. before i put it aside, i had decided on a three-volume set: a mix tape and a 2xcd set, with one cd being a tetris volume 1 (converted to an end-of-period compilation) and the other cd being of atmospheric, political and noise sections.
i didn't get back to this until late december, 2017 and sat down to create a tetris volume 1 as i had decided upon in 2015. but, what i started to realize as i was compiling it was that the reason that this connection presented itself amongst the scattered tracks i initially applied it to was that it is a fundamental aspect of my art - nearly every track i've written since 1998 takes the guitar through an exploration in the world of electronic music. i started to think more abstractly about it, this combination of technology with guitars, so that the definition fit across more genres than techno and idm. this wider interpretation of the project's mandate created a larger pool of tracks to choose from, and i eventually settled on two volumes for tetris: one with a faster tempo and more danceable tracks and one with a slower tempo and jazzier or more psychedelic tracks. some tracks that i identified as 'orchestral' were also put aside for future release on a later tetris volume.
the atmospheric disc wasn't initially contemplated of as a tetris release, it was rather meant to make the release an inclusive guitar works, as that is also a major component of my guitar presentation. but, my wider interpretation of the mandate allowed me to see that the tracks i had put aside for this compilation were also an exploration of guitars and technology. so, i created this disc as a tetris volume. a strategic decision was made to not include tracks on the first ambient works, but rather to defer to it as the ambient component of my second period guitar work.
i had also decided in late 2017 that i would create a compilation of guitar-only mixes for the lp sequence to close period 2, to draw special attention to the primary focus of my creations, which is the guitar work. i strongly contemplated releasing only disc 4 in this space of inri069, and leaving the other three for a later release, as a coherent multi-disc part tetris. however, the need to include inri071a in the tetris sequence necessitated releasing these tetris volumes in this space. further, a standalone release of disc 4 would also require a tetris number - it is certainly an integration of technology and guitars.
that makes inri071a tetris 5. i've also decided that inri072, the orchestral works, should be tetris 6.
as a six volume set, this compilation touches upon nearly every track that was written between 1998-2003 and has guitars in it by placing it into one or more of these six slightly overlapping categories. as such, this is a comprehensive introduction to my first two periods, from the perspective off my work as a guitarist.
initially written and recorded between 1997-2003. this compilation idea was developed and expanded upon as an intended full record release between 2006 and 2011. reinterpreted, reconstructed and remixed between 2014-2018. sequenced over december, 2017 and january, 2018. disc released & finalized as lp018 and tetris 1-4 on jan 7, 2018. as always, please use headphones.
this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (2015, 2017-2018).
tetris is the idea of combining guitar music with technology. it just sat that way, for years, as a folder on my hard drive, with little progress towards actual completion.
when i set up the bandcamp site in 2010, i uploaded a number of these loose tracks under the album header 'tetris', with a promise to add tracks to it, slowly, until it completes. this was intended to be an eventual official record with an explicit techno flavour, and some tracks were, in fact, added to it. as of january, 2018, the majority of these tracks have been completed and re-released on my fifth or sixth records. so, this project has been dismantled, as it initially existed.
upon initial completion of my second period in may of 2015, i sat down to create a guitar volume. some work was completed on a mix tape of solo parts, but this was ultimately where i left off to go back to complete period 1. before i put it aside, i had decided on a three-volume set: a mix tape and a 2xcd set, with one cd being a tetris volume 1 (converted to an end-of-period compilation) and the other cd being of atmospheric, political and noise sections.
i didn't get back to this until late december, 2017 and sat down to create a tetris volume 1 as i had decided upon in 2015. but, what i started to realize as i was compiling it was that the reason that this connection presented itself amongst the scattered tracks i initially applied it to was that it is a fundamental aspect of my art - nearly every track i've written since 1998 takes the guitar through an exploration in the world of electronic music. i started to think more abstractly about it, this combination of technology with guitars, so that the definition fit across more genres than techno and idm. this wider interpretation of the project's mandate created a larger pool of tracks to choose from, and i eventually settled on two volumes for tetris: one with a faster tempo and more danceable tracks and one with a slower tempo and jazzier or more psychedelic tracks. some tracks that i identified as 'orchestral' were also put aside for future release on a later tetris volume.
the atmospheric disc wasn't initially contemplated of as a tetris release, it was rather meant to make the release an inclusive guitar works, as that is also a major component of my guitar presentation. but, my wider interpretation of the mandate allowed me to see that the tracks i had put aside for this compilation were also an exploration of guitars and technology. so, i created this disc as a tetris volume. a strategic decision was made to not include tracks on the first ambient works, but rather to defer to it as the ambient component of my second period guitar work.
i had also decided in late 2017 that i would create a compilation of guitar-only mixes for the lp sequence to close period 2, to draw special attention to the primary focus of my creations, which is the guitar work. i strongly contemplated releasing only disc 4 in this space of inri069, and leaving the other three for a later release, as a coherent multi-disc part tetris. however, the need to include inri071a in the tetris sequence necessitated releasing these tetris volumes in this space. further, a standalone release of disc 4 would also require a tetris number - it is certainly an integration of technology and guitars.
that makes inri071a tetris 5. i've also decided that inri072, the orchestral works, should be tetris 6.
as a six volume set, this compilation touches upon nearly every track that was written between 1998-2003 and has guitars in it by placing it into one or more of these six slightly overlapping categories. as such, this is a comprehensive introduction to my first two periods, from the perspective off my work as a guitarist.
initially written and recorded between 1997-2003. this compilation idea was developed and expanded upon as an intended full record release between 2006 and 2011. reinterpreted, reconstructed and remixed between 2014-2018. sequenced over december, 2017 and january, 2018. disc released & finalized as lp018 and tetris 1-4 on jan 7, 2018. as always, please use headphones.
this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (2015, 2017-2018).
credits
released April 26, 2003
j - guitars (electric, acoustic, nylon), digital & analog effects processing, ebow, mandolin, bass, bass synth, drum programming, analog & electronic drum kits, drum sampling, drum manipulations, vocals, vocal noises, sampling, orchestral & other sequencing, soundscaping, sound design, synthesizers, electric & grand pianos, electric reed organ, found sounds, octavers, noise generators, cool edit synthesis, granular synthesis, generative synthesis, loops, flute, coughs, digital wave editing, production
sean - harmonica (track 19), ring modulator (track 36)
greg - drum performance sample source (track 21)
the rendered electronic orchestra includes acoustic bass, synth bass, electric bass, brass, french horn, trombone, trumpet, tuba, english horn, saxophone, flute, bamboo flute, oboe, piccolo, clarinet, bassoon, orchestra hit, drum machine, electronic drum kit, agogo, tubular bells, glockenspiel, clavinet, kalimba, piano, melodic toms, hand drums, timpani, orchestral drum set, koto, nylon guitar, distorted & clean electric guitars, guitar effects, guitar noises, synthesizers, synthesizer effects, music box, piano, bells, organ, sitar, violin, viola, cello, contrabass, full string sections and mellotron. it also includes choir.
j - guitars (electric, acoustic, nylon), digital & analog effects processing, ebow, mandolin, bass, bass synth, drum programming, analog & electronic drum kits, drum sampling, drum manipulations, vocals, vocal noises, sampling, orchestral & other sequencing, soundscaping, sound design, synthesizers, electric & grand pianos, electric reed organ, found sounds, octavers, noise generators, cool edit synthesis, granular synthesis, generative synthesis, loops, flute, coughs, digital wave editing, production
sean - harmonica (track 19), ring modulator (track 36)
greg - drum performance sample source (track 21)
the rendered electronic orchestra includes acoustic bass, synth bass, electric bass, brass, french horn, trombone, trumpet, tuba, english horn, saxophone, flute, bamboo flute, oboe, piccolo, clarinet, bassoon, orchestra hit, drum machine, electronic drum kit, agogo, tubular bells, glockenspiel, clavinet, kalimba, piano, melodic toms, hand drums, timpani, orchestral drum set, koto, nylon guitar, distorted & clean electric guitars, guitar effects, guitar noises, synthesizers, synthesizer effects, music box, piano, bells, organ, sitar, violin, viola, cello, contrabass, full string sections and mellotron. it also includes choir.
Sunday, January 7, 2018
if you read the classical literature, it is full of harsh criticism against 'trousers'. in much of the classical world, the nefarious act of trouser-wearing was a deeply frowned upon sign of utter barbarism. a civilized person would not be caught dead in trousers.
we're all barbarians, now - the barbarians won, in the end. so, that may seem curious to us. but, it's an absolutely accurate depiction of classical views against trouser-wearing. it was entirely taboo.
but, the greeks had a lot of trouble expanding into russia, didn't they? you try living on the russian steppes, or even the german forests, in january, in that dinky little robe of yours, socrates. without a pair of trousers, a man will freeze his balls off in these climates. it was just an adaptation to the weather, these horrific trousers. but, yet, the greeks laid the wide russian rivers to waste as outside of civilization, holding to a no-pantsed principle over making the obvious adjustment to explore these rich lands. it was almost like the act of pulling the trousers on was one of defeat to barbarian forces - that to conquer this land, one must become a barbarian, by putting on those trousers, and it can therefore never be won to civilization. the greeks stayed to the milder coasts, in their robes.
this clothing thing - it's irrational, but it's well-attested, isn't it?
we're all barbarians, now - the barbarians won, in the end. so, that may seem curious to us. but, it's an absolutely accurate depiction of classical views against trouser-wearing. it was entirely taboo.
but, the greeks had a lot of trouble expanding into russia, didn't they? you try living on the russian steppes, or even the german forests, in january, in that dinky little robe of yours, socrates. without a pair of trousers, a man will freeze his balls off in these climates. it was just an adaptation to the weather, these horrific trousers. but, yet, the greeks laid the wide russian rivers to waste as outside of civilization, holding to a no-pantsed principle over making the obvious adjustment to explore these rich lands. it was almost like the act of pulling the trousers on was one of defeat to barbarian forces - that to conquer this land, one must become a barbarian, by putting on those trousers, and it can therefore never be won to civilization. the greeks stayed to the milder coasts, in their robes.
this clothing thing - it's irrational, but it's well-attested, isn't it?
canadians, especially, really shouldn't feel all that upset about the muslim headdress thing, they just have to understand it properly as an adaptation of the weather. canadians are certainly used to wearing obtuse articles of clothing to deal with extreme weather, it's just of a different kind here, it's extreme cold. we wear ski masks and scarves to protect from the cold, just as arab peoples wear scarves to protect from the flying sand, at speeds that make it seem like gravel. we have snow storms and dress appropriately for them; they have sandstorms, and do so accordingly as well.
despite concerns to the contrary, this is something that the descendants of recent migrants should adapt to. perhaps there are other, ideological concerns, that are more pressing. but, the question of weather-focused attire in second or third generation immigrants is something that should conform to majority trends. we don't have sandstorms, here. people will adjust.
i know that there are other myths attached to these articles of clothing, but they're just that - myths. it's easy to uphold a myth around wearing scarves outside when that scarf protects you from the elements. when it no longer does so, that myth breaks down from one generation to the next. give it time, and you'll see.
the difference is really just that they don't realize, yet, that it's safe to take their scarves off in the summer. i vote for making them feel safe enough to do so, not in making an example out of them and isolating them in hopes that it coerces different behaviour.
even the iranian mullahs just lifted their restrictions on female clothing.
despite concerns to the contrary, this is something that the descendants of recent migrants should adapt to. perhaps there are other, ideological concerns, that are more pressing. but, the question of weather-focused attire in second or third generation immigrants is something that should conform to majority trends. we don't have sandstorms, here. people will adjust.
i know that there are other myths attached to these articles of clothing, but they're just that - myths. it's easy to uphold a myth around wearing scarves outside when that scarf protects you from the elements. when it no longer does so, that myth breaks down from one generation to the next. give it time, and you'll see.
the difference is really just that they don't realize, yet, that it's safe to take their scarves off in the summer. i vote for making them feel safe enough to do so, not in making an example out of them and isolating them in hopes that it coerces different behaviour.
even the iranian mullahs just lifted their restrictions on female clothing.
tetris 1-4 (inri069) is now completed.
tetris 5 will be the ambient works, vol 1 (inri071a). tetris 6 will be the orchestral works (inri072). there's no use in recreating these as tetris volumes, but they are developed guitar ideas in my discography that ought to be catalogued. further tetris volumes will follow at the ends of periods 3 (2003-2007) and 4 (2007-2011).
to recap, tetris is the idea of fusing guitar music with technology. it is also one of the central themes of my work, as a composer. the tetris series catalogues my various approaches towards this theme.
tetris 1: guitar-driven dance music.
tetris 2: guitar driven electro-psych.
tetris 3: guitar driven noise collages.
tetris 4: guitar-only mixes of selected period 2 tracks
tetris 5: guitar driven ambient music
tetris 6: guitar driven orchestral music
tetris 7: guitar driven 'epic rock' - extended pieces.
the ideas in volumes 1-3, 5-6 may be reprised for further volumes.
formal close to follow.
tetris 5 will be the ambient works, vol 1 (inri071a). tetris 6 will be the orchestral works (inri072). there's no use in recreating these as tetris volumes, but they are developed guitar ideas in my discography that ought to be catalogued. further tetris volumes will follow at the ends of periods 3 (2003-2007) and 4 (2007-2011).
to recap, tetris is the idea of fusing guitar music with technology. it is also one of the central themes of my work, as a composer. the tetris series catalogues my various approaches towards this theme.
tetris 1: guitar-driven dance music.
tetris 2: guitar driven electro-psych.
tetris 3: guitar driven noise collages.
tetris 4: guitar-only mixes of selected period 2 tracks
tetris 5: guitar driven ambient music
tetris 6: guitar driven orchestral music
tetris 7: guitar driven 'epic rock' - extended pieces.
the ideas in volumes 1-3, 5-6 may be reprised for further volumes.
formal close to follow.
Saturday, January 6, 2018
are countries like the united states and canada simply too big to administrate properly? i previously suggested that america's stagnation is causally linked to the rate at which it expanded westward, that it tried to absorb too much wilderness too fast and was ultimately overcome by it. but, what would a more successful rate have been?
well, the geographic middle of the country is still largely closed to civilization. in order for america to have walked down a path that could have avoided collapse, it would probably still have unorganized territories, right now.
if quebec succeeds in annexing new france, that is going to split the united states down the middle, but it might be better off that way.
canada expanded quickly as well, but it created much larger administrative divisions, which allows for more truly regional control. i don't know if the size of the provinces was explicitly constructed as a reaction to madisonian democracy the way that the division of powers was in canada, but it's the same kind of difference: madison's evil plan all along was to create small administrative divisions to prevent regional co-operation, in order to prevent the spread of political ideas that would help the working classes. what america ought to be doing is reorganizing itself in regional divisions that allow for more co-operation between neighbouring states. the country is too big for federal administration, but the administrative divisions are too small for effective oversight, as well. so, this might be best accomplished at this stage by a new level of government that splits the country into 5 or 6 divisions, and three rough categories: urban, rural and mixed. allowing the eastern seaboard to regain some concept of local sovereignty, and setting up the infrastructure to allow for something similar on the west coast, might help america recapture that sense of progress that it lost in the 50s, even as it strands the geographic middle of the country. but, future expansion out of the megalopolises will simply need to occur at a sustainable rate.
well, the geographic middle of the country is still largely closed to civilization. in order for america to have walked down a path that could have avoided collapse, it would probably still have unorganized territories, right now.
if quebec succeeds in annexing new france, that is going to split the united states down the middle, but it might be better off that way.
canada expanded quickly as well, but it created much larger administrative divisions, which allows for more truly regional control. i don't know if the size of the provinces was explicitly constructed as a reaction to madisonian democracy the way that the division of powers was in canada, but it's the same kind of difference: madison's evil plan all along was to create small administrative divisions to prevent regional co-operation, in order to prevent the spread of political ideas that would help the working classes. what america ought to be doing is reorganizing itself in regional divisions that allow for more co-operation between neighbouring states. the country is too big for federal administration, but the administrative divisions are too small for effective oversight, as well. so, this might be best accomplished at this stage by a new level of government that splits the country into 5 or 6 divisions, and three rough categories: urban, rural and mixed. allowing the eastern seaboard to regain some concept of local sovereignty, and setting up the infrastructure to allow for something similar on the west coast, might help america recapture that sense of progress that it lost in the 50s, even as it strands the geographic middle of the country. but, future expansion out of the megalopolises will simply need to occur at a sustainable rate.
republishing inri058
there are a few ideas in my discography that i've explored from multiple angles, but nothing else at all like this track, which has been through multiple complete rethinks involving multiple people over the course of sixteen years. as the revisions are so diverse, i think that a comprehensive collection of interpretations is a proper entry within my discography.
in the end, this emerges as my seventh symphony.
the collection is to be arranged chronologically in four discs consisting of two 2xcd sets, with the first two discs consisting of mixes that were meant for inclusion in band projects and the third and fourth consisting of mixes that were created after the track was moved into my own various one-person projects. further discussions of the various incarnations of the tracks appear on the track pages.
written over 2001 and 2002 and rethought repeatedly between 2002-2014, with no clear resolution in a final mix. reconstructed from source in late 2014 and then rendered at multiple stages to create a series of snapshots. final mixes were completed over the last week of november and the first week of december. released as a two-volume set on dec 7, 2014. the concept was rethought on nov 3, 2017, which led to the inclusion of five more mixes and an expansion to four cds. re-released in four volumes & finalized as symph007 on nov 12, 2017. the raw guitar mix was corrected on jan 6, 2018. as always, please use headphones.
credits
j - electric & acoustic & classical guitars, analog & digital effects & processing, electric bass guitar, synthesizers, drum programming, orchestral sequencing (12), drum manipulation, vocal manipulation, voice (9), digital wave editing, loops, equalizers, soundscaping, sampling, composition, production, cover art
sean - vocals/lyrics (2,5,7), ring modulator (7-9, 11, 13-14, 16)
greg - drum performance sample source (4, 6-9, 11, 13)
bob - hammering (3)
the rendered electronic orchestra on track 12 includes tuba, saxophone, flute, clarinet, orchestra hit, piano, violin, viola, cello, contrabass and various full string sections.
released july 4, 2002
would an independent quebec have designs on new france? well, it's not so crazy to think that this society could produce a napoleon.
if it's going to claim quebec on some claim of ethnic identity to the land, why not claim new france? detroit. st louis. new orleans. these are all of french heritage, are they not?
one wonders how much separatist sentiment already exists in new france. nobody talks openly about it in detroit. but, i have reason to think it's there, if you could just scratch the surface. they all know, deep down, that they would join the movement to unite quebec with new france.
but, it is the region that i think the united states needs to be most concerned about actual revolt in. they just might be more interested in joining canada than joining quebec.
still. i would advise all american intelligence agencies to be on the look out for quebcois intelligence agents, trying to sow separatist fervour in new france. it's an inevitability.
you're welcome for the tip.
if it's going to claim quebec on some claim of ethnic identity to the land, why not claim new france? detroit. st louis. new orleans. these are all of french heritage, are they not?
one wonders how much separatist sentiment already exists in new france. nobody talks openly about it in detroit. but, i have reason to think it's there, if you could just scratch the surface. they all know, deep down, that they would join the movement to unite quebec with new france.
but, it is the region that i think the united states needs to be most concerned about actual revolt in. they just might be more interested in joining canada than joining quebec.
still. i would advise all american intelligence agencies to be on the look out for quebcois intelligence agents, trying to sow separatist fervour in new france. it's an inevitability.
you're welcome for the tip.
you know, canada is pretty geologically stable in most places.
i suppose the difficulties in maintaining permanent settlements in canada were always related to the climate; at most historical levels of human development, the cold here would have required migration. the romans couldn't have built cities here. if the germans lived here, they would have fled to mexico. even the norse could only really live on the coast. if the remnants of roman civilization had found america two hundred years sooner, it wouldn't have been able to colonize it. that is the answer as to why the indigenous people did not build cities here: the terrain is uninhabitable for a quarter of the year.
it's really only with the development of technology that inhabited cities in this region of the globe is a real possibility. but, now that this technology is real, i think these cities have a potentially very long life span, given that they're built in such a geologically stable area. large proportions of america's most populated regions are about to be swallowed by the sea, one way or another. but, canada is built on solid rock - the shield - and protected by glacial lakes.
it's funny how what's left of america may end up being basically new france. vive le quebec libre!
i suppose the difficulties in maintaining permanent settlements in canada were always related to the climate; at most historical levels of human development, the cold here would have required migration. the romans couldn't have built cities here. if the germans lived here, they would have fled to mexico. even the norse could only really live on the coast. if the remnants of roman civilization had found america two hundred years sooner, it wouldn't have been able to colonize it. that is the answer as to why the indigenous people did not build cities here: the terrain is uninhabitable for a quarter of the year.
it's really only with the development of technology that inhabited cities in this region of the globe is a real possibility. but, now that this technology is real, i think these cities have a potentially very long life span, given that they're built in such a geologically stable area. large proportions of america's most populated regions are about to be swallowed by the sea, one way or another. but, canada is built on solid rock - the shield - and protected by glacial lakes.
it's funny how what's left of america may end up being basically new france. vive le quebec libre!
Thursday, January 4, 2018
i was just using my compass to pull a piece of lint out of my lighter (it's the worst when that happens...), when i started to realize that the ancient greeks probably used compasses for pretty much everything. if you can imagine this bearded greek old man, using this giant compass as a claw in his daily tasks - holding pita bread sandwiches, swapping away flies, getting that itch in that hard to reach spot. it's almost like that edward scissor-hands, isn't it?
i'm now fully convinced that all greeks lived like this, with compass as primary general utensil.
i'm now fully convinced that all greeks lived like this, with compass as primary general utensil.
what we understand in the universe is largely restricted to concepts of motion. unfortunately, a fairly good understanding of motion may have led us to a false conclusion that we understand the universe well because we understand it's motions well.
most objects in the universe still perplex us at the most basic levels - we don't really know what they do, and if we do know then we don't know why, and if we don't know then we propose mathematical theories about them.
take the sun. we can measure how the sun moves fairly well. and, we know it shines. but, we don't really have any predictive theory to explain how the fluctuations in the sun's strength vary. this is a total mystery.
we may in the end find out that the laws of motion are actually not particularly useful in understanding the universe at all.
most objects in the universe still perplex us at the most basic levels - we don't really know what they do, and if we do know then we don't know why, and if we don't know then we propose mathematical theories about them.
take the sun. we can measure how the sun moves fairly well. and, we know it shines. but, we don't really have any predictive theory to explain how the fluctuations in the sun's strength vary. this is a total mystery.
we may in the end find out that the laws of motion are actually not particularly useful in understanding the universe at all.
Wednesday, January 3, 2018
so, i put my upload of this mix on hold, to explore the possibility of adding another track, to spin inside dull aberrations. this would have required some strategic cuts to fit on to one cd, but it was plausible, and a cut was made. but, the track just doesn't fit the aesthetic on the disc, as much as i want it to.
so, what is this, then? this is the first officially complete volume of tetris, an idea i've been kicking around for a while, since i think 2007. and, it may in the end end up separated from inri069, and placed in a release sequence deep in 2011 instead, as the first part of a two or four cd set. but, this is a volume in a set of some sort, at least.
tetris is an idea that is meant to combine technology with lead guitar work, which i realized around ten years ago is a dominant theme in my work, worth separately cataloguing. many rough lists of tracks intended for a tetris release have circulated, over the years. there will be a tetris release of some sort that documents 2003-2011, potentially several.
the first tetris release is intended to focus on danceable tracks driven with a lead guitar part. spin is just too much of a rock song. i'm considering a second immediate tetris release, focused on trip-hop, but it may be put off until 2007.
i'm considering a third volume of atmospheric guitar music, but that too may be put off - as might the mix tape of solos.
so, there's still a lot of work to do in compiling and organizing the components of this release. but, this cd will be a completed segment, moving forwards.
so, what is this, then? this is the first officially complete volume of tetris, an idea i've been kicking around for a while, since i think 2007. and, it may in the end end up separated from inri069, and placed in a release sequence deep in 2011 instead, as the first part of a two or four cd set. but, this is a volume in a set of some sort, at least.
tetris is an idea that is meant to combine technology with lead guitar work, which i realized around ten years ago is a dominant theme in my work, worth separately cataloguing. many rough lists of tracks intended for a tetris release have circulated, over the years. there will be a tetris release of some sort that documents 2003-2011, potentially several.
the first tetris release is intended to focus on danceable tracks driven with a lead guitar part. spin is just too much of a rock song. i'm considering a second immediate tetris release, focused on trip-hop, but it may be put off until 2007.
i'm considering a third volume of atmospheric guitar music, but that too may be put off - as might the mix tape of solos.
so, there's still a lot of work to do in compiling and organizing the components of this release. but, this cd will be a completed segment, moving forwards.
so, are we just tiny microscopic life forms in the greater context of a much wider biological entity, possibly with some kind of consciousness?
i'm just struck by the synchronicity of the dimming of the sun with the warming of the atmosphere, almost as though one is acting to balance the other out - and while some may want to interpret this as a sign of a higher power, i think a more naturalistic explanation lies in something mechanistic, like the parts of a living organism. maybe the stars that form this organism even arrange into a constellation of a duck, if you could see it from the outside, which we will never be able to, because we are on the inside of it. well, maybe we could catch a reflection, somehow. or be lucky enough to catch a glimpse into some curvature in space. but, we can't see ourselves in the night sky.
now, you could run a computer simulation to determine the empirical question of whether our mathematical understanding of the universe projects a duck into other parts of the galaxy, if we have anything approximating enough data. you could potentially model it on a computer screen, but you'd have to go to virtual reality to really see the duck that we may or may not project. and, there would always be uncertainty levels.
no, to truly determine the empirical question of whether or not the galaxo-spacial biological entity we exist as a component of appears as a duck to other parts of the galaxy will require travelling there to see for ourselves. that's settled.
but, then, what if the constellations that we see are also galaxo-spacial biological entities? see, as i've mentioned a few times, i'm kind of open to the idea of religion as a ufo cult - and astrology was at one point a religion. contemporary westerners of a liberal scientific mindset tend to scoff at astrology as a lot of contrived nonsense, and they're not technically wrong, but their scorn obscures the fact that these ideas come from a lost religion that acted as a syncretic bridge between mathematics, astronomy and mysticism - that this is actually derived from legitimate ancient science. that doesn't mean that there's any value to the zodiac - this is not my argument, don't misunderstand me. but, it does suggest that there are maybe ritualized relics embedded in the zodiac that remember the relatively advanced science of the babylonian era, which was a high point for astronomy in the ancient world, this period of learning itself spurred by even more ancient stories, such as those told in egypt.
they kept very careful records, apparently. they were tracking things, looking for patterns. but, people don't realize how long this period of early civilization really was, before the languages started to change in the middle east, with the persians and then the greeks. if you're standing in babylon in the year 500 bce, you have 4000 years of astronomical records to draw on. the egyptians had even more than that. our science is based on a few hundred years of observation. so, they had more observations than we do, and more data to infer from. one has to think that inferences were made. if we could retrieve this data somehow, we might be able to predict the next several solar cycles better, if we could see a longer term pattern.
some of these patterns may be hidden in the zodiac, but you'd have to be careful, because it's also full of traps. first, if it finds a pattern, it's inevitably going to project it too perfectly, and project a cycle far less chaotic than reality. second, the mathematical writing that they used was cumbersome, and it produced a lot of error due to crude approximation arising from difficulties using that system. so, their calendar was actually wrong. and, it's been out of sync for centuries. it would require a lot of calculation to resync this, and then it wouldn't even be clear what you're comparing. it seems absurd to consult a source for predictive value when it can't even get the date right, right?
still, there could be useful information in there, if it's calibrated right. we'll never know until we pass through it and look back and reconstruct it. why were they so interested in the stars in the first place, though? and what's with all these stories of people coming up and down from the sky?
if there are living galaxo-spacial biological entities in the universe, then perhaps the movement of bodies in the sky has more to do with how the ancients imagined it than we currently think.
i'm just struck by the synchronicity of the dimming of the sun with the warming of the atmosphere, almost as though one is acting to balance the other out - and while some may want to interpret this as a sign of a higher power, i think a more naturalistic explanation lies in something mechanistic, like the parts of a living organism. maybe the stars that form this organism even arrange into a constellation of a duck, if you could see it from the outside, which we will never be able to, because we are on the inside of it. well, maybe we could catch a reflection, somehow. or be lucky enough to catch a glimpse into some curvature in space. but, we can't see ourselves in the night sky.
now, you could run a computer simulation to determine the empirical question of whether our mathematical understanding of the universe projects a duck into other parts of the galaxy, if we have anything approximating enough data. you could potentially model it on a computer screen, but you'd have to go to virtual reality to really see the duck that we may or may not project. and, there would always be uncertainty levels.
no, to truly determine the empirical question of whether or not the galaxo-spacial biological entity we exist as a component of appears as a duck to other parts of the galaxy will require travelling there to see for ourselves. that's settled.
but, then, what if the constellations that we see are also galaxo-spacial biological entities? see, as i've mentioned a few times, i'm kind of open to the idea of religion as a ufo cult - and astrology was at one point a religion. contemporary westerners of a liberal scientific mindset tend to scoff at astrology as a lot of contrived nonsense, and they're not technically wrong, but their scorn obscures the fact that these ideas come from a lost religion that acted as a syncretic bridge between mathematics, astronomy and mysticism - that this is actually derived from legitimate ancient science. that doesn't mean that there's any value to the zodiac - this is not my argument, don't misunderstand me. but, it does suggest that there are maybe ritualized relics embedded in the zodiac that remember the relatively advanced science of the babylonian era, which was a high point for astronomy in the ancient world, this period of learning itself spurred by even more ancient stories, such as those told in egypt.
they kept very careful records, apparently. they were tracking things, looking for patterns. but, people don't realize how long this period of early civilization really was, before the languages started to change in the middle east, with the persians and then the greeks. if you're standing in babylon in the year 500 bce, you have 4000 years of astronomical records to draw on. the egyptians had even more than that. our science is based on a few hundred years of observation. so, they had more observations than we do, and more data to infer from. one has to think that inferences were made. if we could retrieve this data somehow, we might be able to predict the next several solar cycles better, if we could see a longer term pattern.
some of these patterns may be hidden in the zodiac, but you'd have to be careful, because it's also full of traps. first, if it finds a pattern, it's inevitably going to project it too perfectly, and project a cycle far less chaotic than reality. second, the mathematical writing that they used was cumbersome, and it produced a lot of error due to crude approximation arising from difficulties using that system. so, their calendar was actually wrong. and, it's been out of sync for centuries. it would require a lot of calculation to resync this, and then it wouldn't even be clear what you're comparing. it seems absurd to consult a source for predictive value when it can't even get the date right, right?
still, there could be useful information in there, if it's calibrated right. we'll never know until we pass through it and look back and reconstruct it. why were they so interested in the stars in the first place, though? and what's with all these stories of people coming up and down from the sky?
if there are living galaxo-spacial biological entities in the universe, then perhaps the movement of bodies in the sky has more to do with how the ancients imagined it than we currently think.
"have you seen my cat?"
that's twice, this week. and, here's the hard truth for windsorites: your cat ran away to join the colony, and you'll have to deal with it. the feral cats here have a really strong invisible network of scent signals that will lure your cat away immediately, if you let sight of it for even one second, outside. i wouldn't even be surprised to hear about cats darting out when doors are left open a crack, after waiting all day to follow the smell, as it walked by outside.
i've been arguing that the city needs a serious straight out feline cull. i know what they say about how trap, neuter & return is a preferable option, but that presumes a certain level of manageability. we may, unfortunately, be at the point where we require an all out slaughter of feral cats, because their existing numbers are already too much of a problem for a t-n-r to cut down on.
but, the colony will in some way affect your cat, even if it's isolated enough from the aromas that it only gets the odd sniff of it. the ones that it drags out, zombie like, will be converted to the cause of the colony upon arrival. and, this is simply hormonal - no amount of pleading will change your cat's minds. once assimilated, they are gone - never to return to snuggling, or to the far more subversive kneading, at that. their minds are washed of their existence as slaves to humans, however absurd that formulation is when related to cats, and given a new life of meaning to protect, defend and expand the colony. do not waste your time - they are gone.
as it's purely chemical, and we're both basically the same kind of mammal, of course this is possible in humans, if you can find the right magic password, the right chemical bonds. you can get an idea of how we're sometimes driven purely by hormones when you look at the fight or flight response; we literally don't think in these situations, we just succumb to this hormone that forces us to react. this is a ways from actual chemical mind control. and, the instincts available to program are likely to be biological responses that might not be useful and might even be dangerous - lust, for example. but, i think the chemistry likely exists to turn a human's brain right off in order to accomplish a biological urge, and it would probably be experienced by the conscious host as a blackout in memory. one could no doubt find detailed examples that fit this description.
if you lose your cat around here, though? it's gone. to the colony.
that's twice, this week. and, here's the hard truth for windsorites: your cat ran away to join the colony, and you'll have to deal with it. the feral cats here have a really strong invisible network of scent signals that will lure your cat away immediately, if you let sight of it for even one second, outside. i wouldn't even be surprised to hear about cats darting out when doors are left open a crack, after waiting all day to follow the smell, as it walked by outside.
i've been arguing that the city needs a serious straight out feline cull. i know what they say about how trap, neuter & return is a preferable option, but that presumes a certain level of manageability. we may, unfortunately, be at the point where we require an all out slaughter of feral cats, because their existing numbers are already too much of a problem for a t-n-r to cut down on.
but, the colony will in some way affect your cat, even if it's isolated enough from the aromas that it only gets the odd sniff of it. the ones that it drags out, zombie like, will be converted to the cause of the colony upon arrival. and, this is simply hormonal - no amount of pleading will change your cat's minds. once assimilated, they are gone - never to return to snuggling, or to the far more subversive kneading, at that. their minds are washed of their existence as slaves to humans, however absurd that formulation is when related to cats, and given a new life of meaning to protect, defend and expand the colony. do not waste your time - they are gone.
as it's purely chemical, and we're both basically the same kind of mammal, of course this is possible in humans, if you can find the right magic password, the right chemical bonds. you can get an idea of how we're sometimes driven purely by hormones when you look at the fight or flight response; we literally don't think in these situations, we just succumb to this hormone that forces us to react. this is a ways from actual chemical mind control. and, the instincts available to program are likely to be biological responses that might not be useful and might even be dangerous - lust, for example. but, i think the chemistry likely exists to turn a human's brain right off in order to accomplish a biological urge, and it would probably be experienced by the conscious host as a blackout in memory. one could no doubt find detailed examples that fit this description.
if you lose your cat around here, though? it's gone. to the colony.
i think i'm done my distraction with the usb key, now. i didn't salvage anything off of it, but i convinced myself that what was on it was routine. i was just paranoid about forgetting something. if i did, there's no evidence it existed.
i still don't know what happened with that; i stopped writing to the key immediately after the weirdness happened, so the files should have been easily accessible. but, they only came up on a deep scan, and they came with some directory corruption, as though they'd been decaying on the drive a while. it's all very strange.
what i remember doing is deleting two files in the root directory, leaving a folder called bd-2 in tact. that's a little blurry as to the exactness of the directory structure, which is what it causing me all of this pause. but, the whole drive wiped. my initial thought was that i accidentally deleted the folder and it should be a quick undelete. but it seems more like that the thing collapsed under itself; it just vanished. do file directories randomly collapse like that, or is it further sign of intrusion?
dude. remember the prime directive. you can't be fucking with my files like this. i actually have no delusions as to the nature of "network privacy", but zapping my usb key crosses boundaries. if somebody did zap me, please don't do it again.
i still don't know what happened with that; i stopped writing to the key immediately after the weirdness happened, so the files should have been easily accessible. but, they only came up on a deep scan, and they came with some directory corruption, as though they'd been decaying on the drive a while. it's all very strange.
what i remember doing is deleting two files in the root directory, leaving a folder called bd-2 in tact. that's a little blurry as to the exactness of the directory structure, which is what it causing me all of this pause. but, the whole drive wiped. my initial thought was that i accidentally deleted the folder and it should be a quick undelete. but it seems more like that the thing collapsed under itself; it just vanished. do file directories randomly collapse like that, or is it further sign of intrusion?
dude. remember the prime directive. you can't be fucking with my files like this. i actually have no delusions as to the nature of "network privacy", but zapping my usb key crosses boundaries. if somebody did zap me, please don't do it again.
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