| Religulous |
[Oct. 6th, 2008|02:39 pm] |
Some impressions:
1. Bill Maher needs to figure out how groom his hair so it doesn't look like greasy seaweed. Seriously, on the big screen it's really an uncomfortable distraction.
2. All of the interviews were very dishonestly edited. Several times I saw cuts after something Maher said to a reaction shot of the interviewee, where the interviewee wasn't reacting to what Maher said. Any time there's an edit like that, it's just to make the interviewee look like an idiot.
3. You can always have the last word if you're editing the interview. You can also cut out any part where the interviewee makes a reasonable rebuttal to Maher's premise.
4. His whole thesis in this movie -- that religion is bad -- can be refuted thusly:
Everyone from Paul of Tarsus to Gödel has shown that all knowledge is incomplete, that all models of the universe are provisional. Religious people have their imperfect models of the universe, and atheists have theirs. You can make an effective argument (as Maher does, up to a point) that a scientific empericism is closer to describing the 'real world' than religious faith.
But you can't make an effective argument that an atheistic or agnostic world view is 'better' -- for two reasons: 1) Assuming that you can objectively judge the outcomes of decisions, in both the religous and secular can you argue that one is 'better'? 2) Can you even judge anything objectively?
This is a functional argument for religious faith -- even if some of the things you believe are silly, you may in fact be a better person for your faith. The same thing goes for atheists -- you can argue atheism meaning there is no a priori morality. Atheists can choose to be go wild on the world, since nothing has any particular meaning. Or you can work from human tradition, common sense, and come to a human idea of moralty.
But what you can't say, scientifically, is "those people over there are nuts." Which more or less is what Maher's movie is all about. You don't know enough about the universe to make that judgement! |
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| Bitone Troupe covers Bjork |
[Oct. 4th, 2008|12:25 pm] |
Bitone Troupe is a project of Grant Buhr and the children of a residence school for displaced children in Kampala, Uganda.
Their cover of Bjork's "All Is Full Of Love" is heartbreakingly beautiful. |
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| If there was a pool in the Sistine Chapel |
[Oct. 3rd, 2008|09:39 am] |
Sis-in-law Jordana and nephew Barnaby
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| Politics of the ridiculous |
[Oct. 3rd, 2008|07:52 am] |
Last night I walked by the TV about midnight, and Chris Matthews was chattering about the debates. They pulled back to show the crowd around him holding campaign signs and one caught my eye: NIXON'S HEAD 2008!
I wonder how many Chris Matthews groupies are also Futurama fans? |
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| *Spiral Eyes* |
[Oct. 2nd, 2008|08:12 pm] |
http://www.cornwarning.com/chaircrusher/Chaircrusher-SpiralEyes.mp3
Native Instruments came out with this experimental sequencer that Lazyfish did, which does this circular thing with blocks. So to try it out I lashed it to a sine wave synth I built. Since I was feeling fancy, I hooked it up so the even voices went to one channel and odd to the other.
Apparently you have to be careful when you do that because summing 8 voices is huge. I kept having to lower the volume absurdly when I turned on sustain when all 16 voices were going at once or it would overdrive pretty hard.
I do like the results too. Kinda random, kinda not. Feel free to sample it if it strikes your fancy. |
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| Sometimes it pays to poke around on the web a bit... |
[Oct. 2nd, 2008|11:37 am] |
Here's the logo they came up a year or two ago for an automated testing suite for software projects that we use here in our department:
Here is the Google Chrome Logo
One, some guy at Kitware came up with, probably in an hour or two. The other is the logo for a flagship project of the biggest web companies in the world. Shouldn't they have made sure that their logo was unique? |
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| Neal Stephenson "Anathem" |
[Oct. 2nd, 2008|11:00 am] |
Well, I went out and bought the hardcover (at a discount, thank you Prairie Lights!) and finished reading it a couple of nights ago.
Overall impression? I enjoyed reading it, and I'm glad I read it, but...
The real meat on the bone here is a classic Sci Fi McGuffin, which is to say it departs from what we regard as 'real' as a central plot point. This is contrary to what Stephenson did Cryptomicon and Baroque Cycle novels, whose punch for me came from their grounding (mostly) in reality. In particular, the Baroque Cycle novels are a pretty painless introduction to the upheaval on several fronts that happened in Europe in the 17th Century. There's plenty of yarn-spinning, but it does a good job of accurately portraying the intellectual revolution in which the yarns are imbedded.
'Anathem' has a certain amount of interesting intellectual gymnastics centered on mathematics, quantum mechanics which I enjoyed as far as they went. But for a novel that is -- to perhaps oversimplify -- a cri du coeur for rationality, it is least convincing and weakest where he jumps off from what is possible in ground reality.
And the ending is so murky about What Actually Happened that I feel like I have to re-read the last 200 pages to see if it hangs together.
Now maybe this novel seems unreservedly brilliant to someone who can explain away my reservations. Or maybe I'm Missing The Point in a big way. But I don't think it measures up to the Baroque Cycle. That doesn't mean it's bad, just that there are things about it that just don't hang together for me.
If you've read it I'm interested in what you thought, and if you haven't, I recommend it. As a substantial, pleasurable read, there isn't anything else current I could recommend over it. |
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| Pop quiz -- whose lips? |
[Sep. 30th, 2008|01:07 pm] |
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This should be easy -- whose lips are these? |
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| eddikashun in pittsburg. go stillrz! |
[Sep. 23rd, 2008|11:13 pm] |
From KDiddy blog
Genuine Pittsburgh Public Schools homework worksheet:
As it's labeled in her flickr feed 'EDUCATION FAIL' |
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| Another sign of the imminent apocalypse |
[Sep. 22nd, 2008|11:28 am] |
Reggae Producer Leftside appropriates Boots Randolph's "Yakkity Sax"
Here's the bare riddim
Elephant Man does his thing.
Lady Saw makes it even more annoying.
I read about this on Idolator, the link above is to blog post Idolator was commenting on.
My opinion of "Yakkity Sax" is that the least annoying application for it is Benny Hill, and Benny Hill is pretty fucking annoying. It only goes down hill from there. And now it comes to this -- the country that produced the Wailers, Burning Spear, The Congoes, and the Wailing Souls produces this crap.
To add insult to injury -- the whole 'riddim' game in Jamaica works this way -- a producer comes up with a riddim, and if it's hot, every vocalist on the island wants to put their own vocal on it. If a riddim is a hit a CD comes out with 10 or 12 different versions by different DJs (i.e. the guy rapping, in Jamaica-speak) or singers.
I think a lot of people would choose waterboarding over being forced to listen to this riddim for an hour. |
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| EEEcccchh |
[Sep. 22nd, 2008|07:16 am] |
Every so often, a track comes along that reminds you just how icky big room house music can be. It's kind of sad too -- Ron Carroll and Bob Sinclar have done some nice house music in the past that didn't go over the edge into cheese the way this does.
And this video is like a Coke commercial from the 70s. It makes me want to kill myself.
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| The root of all evil |
[Sep. 21st, 2008|06:32 pm] |
Here's what I think about the whole financial crisis:
1. Phil Gramm and John McCain (and my congressman Jim Leach) need to be strapped into a ball kicking machine and have their balls kicked from now untl sometime next year. Anyone with any sense knew that their dogmatic adherence to the one true religion of deregulation was going to end up badly.
2. Foreclosing on people for not being able to pay their mortgages, instead of trying to find solutions to keep them in their homes has been a disaster. Banks would have come out ahead if they would renegotiate loans, or even just let people continue to live in their homes, and pay what they can afford. Once you foreclose, if you can't turn over the property immediately, it ends up vacant, and in some parts of the country, people come in late and night and strip the houses of their wiring and anything else saleable as salvage. Pretty soon the house is worth nothing.
Of course, your local bank sells your mortgage as soon as you close on it, so the person who owns your debt is thousands of miles away and couldn't care less what happens to you. So even if they could avoid an even greater loss, they wouldn't because they figure you're the sucker for getting a loan you can't afford.
3. While it's probably correct that bailing out the financial institutions to avoid a systemic collapse of the economy, it pisses me off that the people who run those institutions will just walk away with millions of dollars. In a just world, they'd be marched down the street in their underwear while a crowd jeered, like Nelson on the Simpsons.
As usual the rich people who cause the problems in our country are the last to pay for their crimes. Punch a cop and you may never get out of jail. Commit a trillion dollar mistake, and retire to your own private island. |
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| the fuck? |
[Sep. 19th, 2008|07:25 am] |
I appreciate these guys trying to come up with an appropriate Obama bumper sticker for all 50 states, but this is not it! For one thing, they make them both look kind of pissed off. For another, deconstructing the iconography intended by Wood with the Obamas mixed in gets pretty weird.
Or maybe it's just me. I read everything I could find on the Internet about Grant Wood a couple years ago, and believe me he was not the cheerful rustic people imagine. |
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| Yow... thank you ITunes for the Statistics |
[Sep. 18th, 2008|08:37 pm] |
According to ITunes I've added 22.2 hours of tracks to ITunes since September 1. Some of these adds were review CDs, but the bulk was bought on Boomkat, Juno, and Beatport.
( If anyone's interested in recent purchases )
Phew! I'm going to have fun piecing together a DJ mix out of it all -- Dubby techno, Dubby house, left field house, interesting minimal techno, straight up banging (but tasteful) techno, dreamy Detroit style house .... |
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| I never do memes, but... |
[Sep. 18th, 2008|02:09 pm] |
This morning. Color corrected with The Gimp, but no edits. Sanyo Katana picture phone. Motion blur seems to have done something strange to the shape of my head. Like my ridiculously large Everglide Headphones?. Seriously, you can use these headphones to store your other headphones or carry your lunch to work.
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| Occasionally The Superficial Is Funny As Hell To Me |
[Sep. 17th, 2008|07:23 am] |
From this post about Chevy Chase hating Sarah Palin:
'Jesus, I guess every "celebrity" is going to get a chance to sound off about Sarah Palin. If that's the case, I look forward to Wilford Brimley's insightful commentary: "Say, is that a dame arguing with a colored boy? No wonder my oatmeal's not ready yet. I'm taking a nap. Don't touch my mustache!"'
Which proves to me that if you throw enough smarm at the wall, eventually something sticks and you have Pure Comedy Gold. |
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| In Honor of David Foster Wallace... |
[Sep. 17th, 2008|06:49 am] |
Woman with brain implant engages in erotic self-stimulation to the point of neglecting everything else
I've not written about David Foster Wallace' suicide last week. He seems to have gotten a lot of ink because of it, more mainstream press for topping himself than he ever got for his writing. I couldn't help but think that 90% the people reading about his death said "huh?"
It is a vast loss. I have a habit learned in pre-internet days -- whenever I'm in a book store or record store, I check, hope against hope, to see if an author or musician I enjoy has something new out. David Foster Wallace was at the top of my author's list.
That is how I read the complete Philip K Dick oeuvre. One book at a time as I discovered them, sometimes in the most ridiculous places. I found one on a rack in the Pueblo, Colorado bus station when I was stranded there for an afternoon. As I remember every other book on the rack was either a trashy mystery novel or a stroke book.
It was frustrating but amazing to live in a world like that, like panning for gold in a muddy stream. Now I can go on line and not just find out about every book an author has written, but have it show up in my mailbox in a few days. I prefer that, but I feel nostalgic about the hunt.
Of course I have the same thing going on with music gear now -- no pawn shop or music store is too crapulent for me to visit, thinking that if I keep at it I'll find a brilliant piece of gear for nearly nothing. |
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