Utenzil's Electronic Music Adventure

Actual Music Thoughts

2012-01-09T17:21:00.000-05:00

As you may recall, as I dimly recall, this blog is about the hapless exploits of a musician exploring what he might do with electronic music. So he started this notion of "Utenzil", put together and played a few places and put out some CDs which got distributed via digital distribution and it was all very exciting even if not particularly lucrative.

Meanwhile, the world has been moving at a frenetic pace, the hardware and software improved and more and more electronic music riffs and effects first trickling, then flooding, into mainstream popular music, and Utenzil continues to belabor the obvious.

So, a new course into uncharted (well at least less charted... Not as clearly charted, maybe) music endeavors is needed.

There is a track on my soundcloud page that somehow has gotten a couple of hundred listens. A quasi-goal of the Utenzil endeavor was to avoid resorting to crass, expensive, exhausting and elaborate marketing efforts, in order to see if/how an audience might occur without being "pushed".

So I mentioned my site and tracks posted in various places in a few internet spaces (this is before social media, also) and then as social media grew, then there as well, but just mentions, not long running ads or bit campaigns or any of that crap.

That this weird orchestral track might find more popularity than the others posted along with it is interesting.
So I'm going to do more of that, because it's more unique, just as fun, it lets me experiment with my electric guitar, and it is almost entirely improvisational.

Just a bit on prophecy, symbols and interpretation

2012-01-03T13:48:00.000-05:00

It is very easy to write expertly on matters of opinion, when we are expert on our opinions and the reasons that we have them. Some opinions are valued, others not, depending on the subject matter and the depth of understanding the holder of the opinion has in that subject matter. To be really valuable, a demonstration of the depth of understanding of the opinion holder is required, through some manner of a record of accomplishments in the subject in question.

Incidentally, if you have an opinion and are not expert on the reasons you have it, then it is (in my opinion) a matter of some self-inquiry as to the basis for it, but that is tangential to my reason for posting...

My reason for posting does relate to opinions, though, and in particular the opinion as to whether or not various prophecy is valid at all.

The Revelations of John in the Bible are a very oft quoted and much interpreted set of prophecies. There is one section, that talks about kingdoms and kings in a symbolic way, where the symbols have been expertly "mapped" onto certain kingdoms of the day, both prior to the time of the prophecy and after, making it interesting.

Now, it is always the case that this mapping of symbols from abstract things to real ones is a matter of opinion.

An example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augury in the time of the Romans, a significant amount of emphasis was placed on this practice, which was as important to large scale planning as data analysis would be today, and the opinion of a skilled practioner was an absolute requirement before any undertaking. So, an augerer would observe the mechanism of the prophecy (e.g. movement of a flight of birds) in a certain situation (e.g. within an especially contrived viewing area) and would report on the indications, on the "auspices", derived from the observation.

So there were characteristics to this mechanism of prophecy that had been cataloged by the practitioners thereof, and the presence or absence of certain of these characteristics helped shape the determination. These things were extremely important, in many early civilizations. In "The Art of War", among the components of the first step is to gauge the auspices.

That the institutions that enshrined these prophecies flourished and endured for as long as they did is kind of amazing. But these are more kind of "practical" prophecies: prophecies with a purpose, and very likely often tainted by some knowledge of what the requestor of the "forecast" really wanted, like the modern fictional premise of the fortune teller being retained as long as the right fortunes were dispensed.

Lately, it seems like the more "abstract" prophecies, like the Revelations, or like the Hopi Prophecy of the Blue Star Kachina, that are made for purely for prophecy's sake are all the rage because of the Mayan calendar thing. Really, a prophecy about the end of the world is not particularly useful, because if it's true, there is not a lot one can do about it other than change personally, which of course these prophecies exhort.

But the reason I'm writing this is to state an opinion about these things, and the opinion is that people who try to interpret them seriously need to be more considerate. They need to be considerate of the people who they are affecting with these interpretations, and also more considerate of the content they are interpreting.

For example: the Comet Lovejoy is clearly a prominently visible (in the Southern Hemisphere) blue "star". The Blue Star Kachina "dances in the plaza and removes his mask" is readily extrapolated from "flies through the center of the Solar System and loses it's outer mantle". Wow, ok. So if this Comet is the Blue Star, then what should happen next? Well, next two brothers appear, the nephews of the Blue Star.

And here is the other aspect of consideration: how soon is next?

When you read Revelations, things happen rapidly, one after the other: angels pouring vials and trumpets sounding. But there is no specific indication of how quickly, only that there is a sequence.

So even if one absolutely nails any of the indicators in any of these prophecies to a certain thing in a certain time, Even if the Comet Lovejoy is the Blue Star Kachina, these two brothers, who appear in the Northwest, may not come for some time. Or, they may come very soon. Then, after these, the Red Star, which is really the horrible part, analogous to the star that falls to Earth in Revelations.

Again, when each "next" is in relation to the before, there is no indication.

But here is the final thing, the thing that is sure: both the prophecy of the Revelations and the Blue Star Kachina indicate that the primary reason for these awful tribulations is a spiritual transformation. This transformation, one can undertake at any time.

So, logically: rather than worrying about when the end happens, cut to the chase and (if you have not already) begin your transformation, and you'll be ok. Or, as ok as one can be given these things.

And there is maybe some irony that the ones most likely to be destroyed by the foretold calamaties are the ones least likely to pay attention to prophecies.

Great video and the end of the world riff

2012-01-02T14:35:00.007-05:00

Here are some quick thoughts about the whole EOTW notion, celestial mechanics and a really cool video.
When the night sky was free of urban light pollution, the Milky Way was clearly visible. A time lapse video of the night sky taken in Chile, in a place outside of Santiago where the Milky Way is still clear, as the Earth rotates, the orientation of the Milky Way changes: where at an early nighttime point in time it is diagonally across the sky, pointing at maybe 10 o'clock, by the time the sun comes up, it is nearly perpendicular to the horizon, at twelve o'clock.
Here is the video- it is really great, intended to capture comet Lovejoy, which is spectacular, but you can see the Milky Way clearly as well:
http://vimeo.com/m/34204309
The orientation of the Milky Way is strongly noted by the "dark road" down the middle. This is actually dust that obscures the stars towards the center of the galaxy, which make the "river" of the distant galactic glow of stars seem like it has two lanes.
At any rate, throughout most of human history before city lights, this view of the sky was everyone's view, including the Mayans.
And, just like the moving orientation of the galaxy through the sky can be expressed in terms of a clock's hand, so can longer periods of time be told by changes that occur in that orientation.
The galaxy is a large wheel, with a thickness, and it seems to spin mightily. That dark band, The Great Rift, lies between us and the wheel's hub, where we are about a third of the way in from the edge of the galaxy. Now, the solar system rides around that hub, in a peculiar way. There is the revolution around the galactic center, but also an up and down, in and out movement. It's like the solar system is on the back of a merry go round horse that spins on an axis from its nose to its tail. Relatively, the distances are very large, so our star and its planets are tiny grains on the horse's saddle, moving in tight little orbits around the big grain that is the sun.
Our planet travels in an ellipse on a plane around the sun, which travels along that slinky-shaped path around the galactic center, in a way where our solar orbit's planar orientation to the plane of the galaxy is not coincident or parallel with the predominant plane of the galaxy. Our planet rotates on a slightly tilted axis relative to our orbit, but not so tilted as to account for the side view of the galaxy to go like a windshield wiper halfway across the sky.
But the sum of the earth's tilt plus the skew of the plane of the solar system relative to the galactic plane AND angle from our position along the "slinky path" is why we see the Sun coming up basically straight up "inside" the Dark Rift, as the comet tail fades in the dawn.
Now, look carefully at that part of the video. What did the ancients see?
The sun rising into the blackest part of the sky, into the "jaws" of the giant dragon/beast, about to be devoured at the very moment the sun's own brilliance obliterates the awful scene!
What can we imagine what they'd be see now, given some idea of how they imagined?
The sun, armed with the spear-like comet, slaying the dragon? Or climbing up into the rift, where it appears like a large high-backed chair, a throne (!) almost climbing up like a small child, and taking his place? Wielding a sword, or sceptre (the comet) to it's right, with which to banish the darkness!
And we see the comet, it's tail is nearly parallel with the galactic plane, so this gives us some information locally about the orientation of the entire galaxy, all without advanced optics.
Amazing sight, I can't help feeling thankful.

[edit, added links]
A description of the solar system's path around the galaxy from a physics blog:
http://tetrahedral.blogspot.com/2011/01/earth-extinctions-and-sols-bobbing-up.html

Additional information, noting the spiral "slinkk" path:
http://www.biocab.org/Coplanarity_Solar_System_and_Galaxy.html#anchor_22

"Local" motion of solar system, and nature of the heliosphere
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/ibex/allsky_visuals.html

Twitter is down!!

2011-12-31T13:26:00.001-05:00

It has become increasingly clear that the failwhale is becoming increasingly less cute. But, as usual, it likely has less to do with people using the system, and more to do with people abusing it.

Twitter is new territory for spammers, like the earlier days of mail, and it is particularly well suited to automation of accounts. With a fairly small amount of money, you can buy follower traffic, and even engage a source of innocuous content to tweet out to them on an automated basis: like quotes from famous philosophers. Voila! You have a semi-credible bot account.

Then, there are techniques for interconnecting bots, so that "listener" points can be set up (also a paid service, for a small fee) that scan feeds for keywords of one's choosing. When those keywords occur in a feed, then your bot account can say things having to do with that subject: magically butting-in to whatever conversation. Or, you can schedule tweets, be so that in amongst your philosophy quotes. you toss in a scheduled promo for your aluminum siding company, your naked lady site, or your new album.

So, you now have a content feed with scheduled ads that semi appropriately acts like "it couldn't help overhearing..."

Now, imagine someone spending more than a small amount to create armies of these bots, with pictures of pretty girls as the avatars and all manner of automated or aggregated content. The scheduled ads in these are usually for naked lady sites, and the "bio page" usually has a link to such a site., but not necessarily.

Then imagine multiples of these armies, butting in to conversations, or even starting conversations with innocuous questions "Has anyone ever had a cat with hair balls, what did you do?" And there are "manual overrides", where the account operators can pop in with actual responses, tweeting as several accounts at once.

But the difference between twitter and email is that a great many things were made available for this sort of automation. And certainly, this sport of thing can be used for very good purposes, not all autoquote accounts are bad and some naked lady accounts actually have real naked ladies associated with them. However, at the end of the day, if bot army "A" is butting into the conversations of bot army "B", each with a series of automated actions set up to occur when engaged, then it is a little much.

Music day today.

2011-12-30T14:53:00.001-05:00

I have off from work, and the family is visiting relatives, so I have the house to myself. Therefore, today I will make electronic noises and hopefully cause some of them to align into music.

I forgot to tell you, the unusual thing

2011-12-29T23:47:00.001-05:00

You have to read the previous post, but it was getting long anyway: I said something unusual happened angst it did.

I was thinking about the things in my previous post, and I thought "Jesus Christ is..." as kind of a mental exercise, to see if I could be Truthful, accurate and succinct, like that ideal religious idea I describe, you see-- but also to see what might pop into my head, as a way to better understand...

And at that precise moment there was a bright flash, like a flash of lightning, but bright enough to fill the sky: not just one bolt. It was really like all my surroundings vanished in a blink, and I was inside a bright sphere of light for that instant.

I was startled, it was a little scary. It seemed like lightning, so it must've been, but there was no thunder, and no subsequent flashes. There was like a kind of "popping" sensation, also, like an electrical discharge.

I was feeling proud of myself prior to that instant, musing to myself about these things and working that thought process. But, there was that flash and then I felt very small, unsure of what happened: a lowly, disconnected creature once again.

It seems meaningful: but, this is where the nuisance thing happens, I cannot tell you I had a "spiritual or religious experience", only that I experienced something while deep in thought about spiritual things.

I hope it wasn't something with my brain or nervous system. Really, it was more like lightning briefly erasing everything.

So happy blogging from my phone.

2011-12-29T23:24:00.001-05:00

I like to write shorter blog blurbish things, so I installed the blogger app on my android phone and now I can blog much more easily. When I got around to it previously it was after setting up my notebook, usually for a different purpose. Now it can be more when the thought strikes me, which is better.

I have tomorrow off and it will be a music day, all day. I've put some new ideas down and it's great.

The other night something unusual happened. I was thinking about religion, like this: a good religion is actually designed to make you think. Religion and God are two different things, this should be clear. The backlash against religion comes from the practitioners of the religion being nuisances and seeming like they are dumb. I recalled all of the bothersome people who irritated me about their religion, and also other people who were plainly hypocritical to me but did not seem to recognize that. "Theosophy" was a response to the "lemming-ness" of religion, in their assertion that there is no religion greater than Truth, that if a god is God then Truth must be a subset of that god and wholly consistent with that Truth.

The best religious thoughts are like Kilgore Trout sci fi stories. The way Vonnegut inserted them in his larger books, summarizing them succinctly and getting to the point of what was meant, even though the stories themselves were supposedly novellas-.you never needed to actually read a Kilgore Trout novella to "get it".

Now, however, once someone starts fleshing out these more succinct thoughts, they get tedious and tangled in details and contradictions can arise and sects sprout out of different interpretations and so on. The Theosophy movement got just as complicated and sect-ridden as any mainstream religion. But, it is a perfectly great statement to say if God is God, Truth can't be greater than God: God has to be at least as great as Truth.

I used to think that one followed a religion either because one was intellectually weak, so one needed a sort of mythology to explain things, or because one benefitted from belonging to a religious "club", so they paid lip service to whatever was required. This is maybe true in some cases, but if you get into it more you see that it can be a very rich intellectual exercise. The main thing is to avoid explaining things away, it all has at least some meaning.

Well, what a depressing blog post that last one was, huh?

2011-12-05T15:07:00.000-05:00

ha ha. I say "ha ha" because I am laughing at myself in the mocking manner of Bart Simpson, and also because I am kind of amused/bemused about my situation.

I tried out one of the pieces of gear I thought might be ruined. It is not! It does not seem to be ruined! It might even sound better, I don't know.

Ok, the next thing: the cancer thing. It is pretty funny when you go to take a medical test and then you read about debates concerning the validity and usefulness of that test. And then you have another medical test whose validity sort of depends on the medical test that is being debated. So, there is a writeup from a doctor that says I have it, but I've asked for another opinion, and there is the debated test which indicates that I have a *chance* of having it. And, what I have may not kill me ever. Or it may kill me sooner.

In other words, prior to having these tests, I lived in a world where I might die sooner, or later, of any number of causes; let me emphasize ANY NUMBER of causes.

Now, I live in a world where I might die sooner, or later, with some knowledge of the amount of chance that I have to die of a PARTICULAR ONE of those causes.

This means that, henceforth, I will be undergoing a series of tests that will determine, indisputably, which thing I will die of, because I will die of it. In other words, I will continue to experience that which I have found to be "incorporeal life" up until such time as I experience something else.

Glad that's settled. Now, here is a set of thoughts with more entertainment value.

People sign things. In one case, they sign things to certify they agree with something, in other cases they sign things to certify that they understand something. In either of those cases, they are usually signing something with the intent to get things done. And in any other cases with whatever reasons, they are usually signing something to get something done.

There are other times they sign things, also with the intent to get something done, but also they feel confident in their ability to weasel out of anything. That's the funny thing, the classically funny thing, actually: all of the various deals with various nefarious deities, wizards, and so on which give rise to all of those classic tales of clever weasels outwitting death/devil/landlord/loanshark whatever even after sealing/signing/sgreeing/swearing etc.

But in any of those cases the signature works just as well to keep things moving forward until said weaseling begins. It is kind of funny, and kind of scary.

In general, it is a matter of how much bullshit one can tolerate: not just on the receiving end, but in how much one can stand to participate in.

Material things are a great incentive for getting people to agree to things, and then they do whatever they are supposed to keep up with agreement to keep those things. Taken as a sum total, it is that intertwined set of agreements that really keeps the economy of the entire world moving.

Then maybe someone stands outside of that mesh of agreements, to watch it evolve, and s "hey, when these agreements and those happen, this other thing happens" and they create an "investment product" which involves as set of interactions between those agreements. It is all very interesting.

But, (here is the most entertaning/amusing part) when the people signing the agreements in the mesh depend on the investment products derived from the interactions observed from outside the promise mesh to meet the agreements inside the promise mesh, and weasels start to break promises, what happens then?

A short circuit, or a warping, I would think; wouldn't it?

So how much of that can the system withstand?

The answer to that is what we are experiencing.

Some things good and bad

2011-09-26T18:57:00.000-04:00

We had water come into the house and some of my music gear may have been ruined. This is bad. I have been diagnosed with a type of cancer, this is bad. But I have some new musical ideas, the gear can be replaced, and the cancer can be treated. So these are mostly good also. But, my wife its a really mean and difficult person. So basically mean it astounds me at times. This is incurable, so that's bad. But it can always be worse, so that's less bad. Most good is some inspiration I have found recently. Nothing takes that away, so this is

good.

wow, big "super-" sort of thoughts are catalyzed...

2011-09-21T13:49:00.001-04:00

For the last many months, since about April, I have found myself on something of a "thought progression", it is an unusual progression and it now seems to have a more determinate direction, so I will recount it, hopefully briefly, because it was significant to me.

For lack of a better term, I had an experience that consisted of "racing thoughts about things that could be called intellectual religious concepts", if you are not a person of faith, and a "spiritual experience" if you are a person of faith.

There are components of each of these things in this experience, so I refer to both: neither is somehow 'inferior' to the other in my reckoning, but having had an extremely skeptical way of thinking in my early life, I recognize that many people don't believe in spiritual things. On the other hand, people who readily believe in spiritual things are often very quickly duped by people who know how to push those thematic buttons without including the "telelogical aspect" (yeh big word) and making it clear. At any rate...

In my case these things were intertwined, so that some "rational sense" could be made, but also some notion of it awakening a "heightened sense" of understanding.

I attribute this awakening pretty much wholly to a) the point of life I am in, as a father and adult, and general aspects of myself, particularly my intuition, which have gratefully formed over the years; b) the passing of my mother, which I experienced in the first hand, and a general growing sense of mortality; c) my interest and study in an open-minded way of the Bible and other religious texts, and d) my willingness to accept religious teaching as truth, that is, as being just as true as facts that I can sense or which can be proven logically.

All of the above are at least equal in their contribution to this "awakening" (and I know I use air quotes a lot but the intent is to show that I am not attempting to be grandiose and also that the word doesn't quite fit) which actually involved what might be referred to as a delusion along with an underlying unfolding narrative about my life as it was leading up to my future.

More specifically, I was having some realizations at a level that I cannot access about what was going to happen to me, and these realizations coupled with some kind of directive that permitted me to glimpse some very esoteric and complex super-cosmic "processes" which are not only complex but extremely pervasively powerful and multidimensionally concurrent. The result was a set of internal "switches" that closed that in turn potentiated one another and resulted in this awakening, spirtual experience, gestalt grokking of the universe, or higher understanding.

It is not "enlightment", if anything it is a "re-directed heaviment" which compels me to areas of inquiry which are intellectual in nature of execution but spiritual in nature of result. In fact, one thing I need to avoid in this pursuit is the jumping to "ah ha" type intellectual conclusions based on evidence as I reveal it, that end up sounding like complicated conspiracy-like theories.

To summarize the awakening, it would be along the lines of "life is like a game, but not like a game, and part of the 'game' is to correctly divine the rules and the object at the same time you are playing the game".

So it is like a game in that it has rules or guidelines and an object, but it is not like a game in that it is serious: it potentially has serious physical consequences. However, it is like a game in that serious physical consequences are not as serious in regards to the achieving object of the game as you might think, which in an intellectual sense is much more frightening because it means that "material failure" can be of negligible detriment to the game while at the same time you are required to participate in the game, and so that success in the game may well require that you experience material failure.

But to be very clear, to call life a game is to trivialize it, and also the summary is to trivialize my awakening as to the nature of life. But a summary gives the casual reader an idea so it is ok.

Oddly enough, the catalyst for this was what I can really only describe as an insane confluence of things: 0) a reaction to some medicine coupled with a physical illness, 1) the NFL lockout, and the uncertainty and media excitement generated thereby; 2) Charlie Sheen's whole "I'm winning" episode, with attendant media repetition of bits and pieces of his ranting; 3) something I either misheard or misunderstood regarding the nature of a certain church-related event; 4) Easter and bible study, and, finally, 5) what I believe to an inner knowledge of something about my health that was noted subconsciously but did not register consciously.

What I mostly think is that my mind generated what I think could be referred to as a "delusion" in order to shield me and also steel me in a way that would reinforce me to withstand some future events. But, on the other hand, this delusion was perfectly operable: with some weirdness that was only noted by my family, I could function in my job and overall in the corporeal world. So it was like I was immersed in the practice of a very strange religion that required I participate in a couple of odd rituals and behaviors here and there but on the whole did not render me entirely, visibly whacko.

The delusion could be referred to as "The super-duper secret doorprize Church Pancake Supper revelation of Me aka Utenzil" and it was really very interesting: in parts amusing, saddening, painful, joyful, normal, abnormal, unusual, annoying, entertaining, terrifying and astounding.

But, importantly, parts of this delusion included some real truth about things. About BIG things. About a realm that I have come to understand as "absonite".

The long and short is that a) I was cured of the illness for which I was taking the medicine I had a reaction to b) I found out I have a more physically serious, but less physically affecting illness that it seems like I will need to get treated (but still need more info) and c) I'm much more OK with just about everything, much more ready for just about anything, and generally much more in awe with everything in life, everyone in life, and Everything Else.

So... we're not gonna git it??

2011-09-15T12:45:00.001-04:00

This is just a brief update on the whole Comet Elenin thing.

The interesting thing is that WHAT I PREDICTED CAME TRUE:

1) Comet Elenin *was* hit by a solar flare!
2) Comet Elenin *was* transformed!!
3) [only part of what i predicted came true of course, but you see you have to have this]

SO, WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR HUMANKIND?!!?!??!!!??

We won't get to see a comet in the night sky with the unaided eye.

I was actually kind of looking forward to seeing another comet, but it looks like that will be hard to near impossible with this one: it is faintly visible at best. I've gotten to see two comets in my lifetime very clearly with the naked eye, and Elenin had promise of being a similar spectacle.

But... just because it doesn't have energy in the visible spectrum doesn't mean it still doesn't have some kind of energy. WAIT... it could still have transformed into some superheated plasma type stuff!! YEH, not only is it still a threat (no matter what anyone who knows anything says), it's *invisible*.

So there is still time for my terrifying faux-prediction to come true. I suggest you mentally prepare by buying some of my music in the form of inexpensive downloadable mp3s!! While there's still an internet!!!!

Anyway, there you go.

A Few of my Favorite Things...

2011-09-04T00:49:00.001-04:00

There are people on twitter doing the "I Hate it When" thing. So, I will do the "I Like it When" thing here.

I really like pleasant weather. There are people who probably don't care about the weather hardly at all, it doesn't matter, they either are hardly affected or they workaround it when it is an obstacle, but I like pleasant weather and I am always grateful for it.

Another thing that I like, I like a lot, is when you go to the doctor and they help you get better. Sometimes you go to the dr. and it's like "well, it's a virus, it's going around" you can't blame the dr. but at least they know what it is. But other times you describe a problem and they prescribe a medicine or a treatment and it really works well and you actually get better.

I like it when I can spend money on my family and they enjoy what we get, like going out to eat, or something fun that is not too expensive.

When traffic moves smoothly, that is great. Like that a whole bunch.

A good conspiracy theory that I can use as an ego milksop, I really like those. For example, all of the people who are famous or powerful are so because they've cut some deal with Illuminati/Annunaki/Dark Side forces who will allow them to live large for a while until they are of no use, and then they will wither horribly into obscurity and death. So, even though I may be more talented and smarter than people who have much more notoriety and success, I am glad I have never made any such deals! (of course we all finally wither into obscurity and death, but anyway...)

I like it very much when technology works in a satisfying manner. It is just great.

When people read the same things you do, and you find that you can converse with them and it is interesting, that is really great. I enjoy that. I almost said something I don't like to contrast that to, but I won't do that. Suffice to say that discovering that someone is more like you than you realized and you have a good exchange of ideas is just great.

OK! that's enough of that. Have a good evening.

Ok, Comet Elenin worldend scenario, for the grinz

2011-08-18T17:52:00.003-04:00

So there are all manner of pages and sites that are mentioning Comet Elenin with varying degress of sanity and woo-woo-ness.

Now, because all the "official experts" who have spent years "studying" things like "astronomy" cannot be trusted, real people, honest people, people with thinking minds and earnest hunches are bringing to light all manner of revelations about how we're all gonna git it.

So, because I really enjoy the apocryphal sci-fi type stuff, I will take a look at this from a "supposed disaster that has no scientific backing whatsoever as to how it will happen but because so many people are babbling about it there must be something to it" perspective and then try to propose a theory as to how it could happen, backed with only that minimal scientific knowledge that can be snared with a google search because, of course, there's no time!

So there is a comet that is coming into the solar system from faaaaaar away, Oort cloud far away it seems, and it will cross the orbital paths of several interior planets. Its projected trajectory will take it below the plane of the Earth's orbit, and then above the plane of Earth's orbit, but missing the Earth by many millions of miles.

OR WILL IT??? (have to have this, you see).

See, because it is going to show up *right around* the time that people are saying is time for the end of the world, they've concluded that this is the reason for said End: it will hit the earth. It is a big object, 2-3 miles across, extinction level impactor if so.

But how can it hit the earth if it in fact misses the earth by millions of miles???

Well, something must cause it to move!!

What?

hmmm.... how about s Solar flare, a coronal mass ejections (CME) of tremendous power aimed just so, that causes it to undergo some kind of transformation and deviation from it's course.

This is because the Sun is very active right about now! Yes, it is! These solar flares eject billions of tons of solar material at millions of miles an hour! Even NASA AGREES! (see, you have to have this, too: the thing that NASA really does agree with because, well, they're saying it).

OK, so a solar flare just knocks it silly. Then it becomes all kinds of unpredictable.

Oh NO! It swings past an interior planet. Which one? I don't know, how about Mercury. Or Venus? Or both? Anyway, swinging past that planet causes a "slingshot" type of effect that will put it on a boom boom course with Earth.

Also, this comet isn't leaving much of a tail. It is "wimpy" says NASA. What does that mean? It means it isn't giving off a lot of wispy tail. So that can only mean it is a big mean solid chunk of something, right. And now the solar flare plus the planets messing with it has aimed it right towards us.

Well, then what?

It will spiral in towards earth and then, like a tetherball around it's tetherpost, it's going to circle us a few times and scare everybody a whole bunch and all kinds of awful things will happen, and then WE'RE ALL GONNA GIT IT!!! Or, a significant number of us, anyway, because that's what most of the end of the world stories indicate.

So, there you go. How's that?

Science and mysteries and in between, plus electronic music.

2011-08-13T17:26:00.000-04:00

I haven't written a lot about the music I do per se because of a couple of things. One thing wss that I lost a hard disk with a lot of work on it. That isn't as bad as it sounds, because mostof that work was experimental such that the methods applied, and not the output, was what I was working on. So, the methods I recall, having practiced with them, the hard disk was a nice place to have the "experiments" already set up, but it is nothing I can't re-create.

Having said that, there was some work that I would like to have preserved, and now is lost. But even so the music i make up and the way i do it changes a lot and it isn't anything that most people like, so in the larger scheme of things not a huge loss.

Then, there *was* some work I had done for someone else, some video editing with sound overlay, that was lost. I did it for free, and they said they were happy with it. Then, I lost my hard disk (it dropped on the ground, bingpizzblech) and *then* some time later they asked "oh by the way could you change the music on the video" to which I said, "uhm, I'll see what I can do, but I lost that hard disk" and really, there is nothing "good" I can do, because the final edited high-quality rendered video was on my disk. I could download the final copy, and re-do the audio bed, but because the uploaded video was rendered to a format more suitable from online, it would lose quality.

So I feel bad about that, even though I did the work for free, and of course the moral of the story is to completely separate work you do for someone else from your "experimental area" and archive it separately because even after someone says it is all well and done they might want it done again slightly differently.

Anyway, the rest of this is about science and "mysterious theories" because it seems like so many people want to use science to explain/support mysterious theories.

Now I am not a credentialed scientist, but it interests me so I read about it. Nor am I a credentialed theologian but it interests me so I read about that.

Maybe the most recent big collision of these two ways of thinking was with the recent "end of world" predictions, where the fella said a super massive giant tremendous earthquake would start in the Pacific, travel around the world and everything would be undone.

He had done some numerological transformations on the numbers in the Bible, claiming that while the words were translated from different languages and so might have lost some of the more exact meanings, the numbers were absolute and so more reliable, plus the numbers had knowledge encoded into them that could be derived from other mentions in Biblical scripture.

It was really a very elaborate interpretation and it was based on a lot of tbe same exact "let this mean this, therefore this other thing means that and from this we derive [whatever]" that you find in mathematical theorems. Only, the "proof" of this particular theorem was that the world would end when the theorem said it would, it didn't and so it was disproved. Then, he went back and checked his work and said "oh, ok: the end *started* but it won't *finish* until [a date in October which coincides with the date of an Old Testamant feast day]."

AND of course this is why people think people who try to interpret the Bible are wacko. BUT, people also want some notion that religious writing does indeed give a "heads up" about big time cataclysms to people who believe in it, because otherwise (somehow) it's not fair.

Which is not really such a wild expectation, I think, because there are several places where it is clearly intended as a warning (i.e. "when you see these things know that such and such is coming"). On the other hand, it is impenetrably cryptic: in the case of the Revelations, you are interpreting someone's dream vision that happened centuries ago. The impression that it is somehow de-cryptable comes from the fact that he was instructed in the dream to write things down so that people would know.

Anyway, what my thought is about is that everytime someone comes up with some science, usually astronomy or physics, that seems to coincide with some aspect of the mysterious or prophetic, they latch on to that as if it "supports" the metaphysical theory.

This is an entertaining exercise, one which (if done correctly) can cause goosebumps to form as some "realization" forms in the mind. However, here are somethings, regardless of if you are non-religious or highly religious, that you *must* accede to if you are going to function:

1) There is no belief system that is greater than truth. That is, if what you would like to believe (like a giant earthquake at a certain date and time) does not occur, it does not mean "the world is out of whack", it means what you believe is not true. The crowning triumph of religion, even the most bitter and snarky "God is going to get you for that" kind of religion, is when it bears out to be true. It is the same with science, if it cannot be proven, it is really only a belief.

2) Faith is important, but faith is not everything. A good example of faith are the good scientists who have faith that they will be able to pursue their work to an extent that helps advance their field of science. But they still have to pursue the work. It is the same with metaphysics or religion, I think: the work is required, although it is of a less demonstrable or documentable type and occurs largely internally.

This second thing, this is where science and metaphysics seem to have a "falling out". Scientists have the advantage of providing the proofs of their work in the "dimensions" of space, time and matter to a *wide audience*. The wide audience has access to that "stage" upon which discoveries in space, time and matter are presented, through sensory appreciation and intellectual understanding. And this introduces a fallacy among the wide audience: that fallacy is that they believe that religious or metaphysical "theories" need to be proven in the same manner. The fallacy continues: if they cannot be proven in this way, then the metaphysical theories are clearly of lesser value, less true, and the science is of greater value or more true.

Which can lead to the assertions that "religion/metaphysics is a lie", old ways and murky beliefs can be discarded because "god is dead", etc..

But of course the two things are "proven" in different realms. Just like my missing hard disk contained electronic music experiments that were of worth to me but not currently "provable", I have the methods and can invoke them again: my methods currently exist in a metaphysical realm. In a similar way one proves metaphysics and religion in the "lab" that is oneself and if anything some of the guidelines that we see as "behavior control" that are part of religion are "good internal laboratory practices" that avoid us injuring ourselves or blowing up the metaphysical laboratory.

Now, because I believe that music and especially computer-based electronic music of the sort I do relies both on science and "metaphysics" or less tangible aspects of existence, I value both of these things for a kind of "higher" fulfillment and exploration. A lot of people don't see metaphysics or religion as that, however. They see it as a way to a)get what they want and b)to get other people to act they way they think other people should act.

Which is where the whole "end of the world" thing comes in.

If there is a metaphysical event or sequence or process that results in "the end of the world", you can bet on two things as a complete lock:

1) No human will have any say in its unfolding, either in regards to process or timing. The lack of control will be extreme, and the forces involved will be immense.

2) In the event of such a thing, the *only* thing that religious/metaphysical/spiritual preparation actually prepares you for is to have some faith and perserverance that will get your soul/spiritual essence/internal metaphysical being through that thing.

3) Your actions are a manifestation of your metaphysical/spirtual preparation. Some people act selflessly, some selfishly.

4) The more people that act with some degree of selflessness, the "better place" the world is. That is because a) they have some faith that sacrifices they make will be restored to them and b) they instill an atmosphere of continuity and permanence that other people respond to positively.

A long time ago, a friend of mine once said to me "it doesn't matter why you do something, just so you do the thing that is right". I had a lot of trouble with this, because it meant "if you do something to get what you want that's ok, as long as people see that as 'being good'". I still have trouble with that, it is clearly a "legal" behavior, but it is a kind of "metaphysically dishonest" behavior. One notion of the "end of the world" is that all of the intentions are judged, what is in one's heart.

We often can't control what's in our hearts, but we can at least practice the inner understanding that let's us know what is in our hearts, and how we truly approve or disapprove of that. Religion/metaphysics gives us a sort of "ruler" by which we can compare our approval or disapproval. The extent to which the ruler measures accurately given our true selves is what validates, or proves, any metaphysical theories.

The looming quiet desperation and thoughts about space exploration

2011-08-05T11:27:00.003-04:00

We like to think we are technologically advanced. We like to think we are in control. Then, things like tsunamis and hurricanes and volcanoes occur, and we see we are not so much in control at all.

Then, even if we are "in control", what that means is that we are relatively safe and self-sustaining. What that means, in turn, is that we are able to procreate successfully. That leads to overpopulation.

So, when things are going poorly, we are in danger of losing population. When things are going well, we are in danger of overpopulation.

Parts of the world are already overpopulated. This is a fact. Most countries as individual units are not self-sustaining, most families as individual units are not self-sustaining. It is a paradox, maybe, that the more "in control" you are, the less self-sustaining you are. If you live on a farm, say in the manner of the Amish, you are still at the mercy of the weather to ensure you can bring in crops.

SO, successful self-sustenance depends entirely on advantageous geographic placement. This is common sense when you look at history, from early to current, but less common sense when you look at current, because technology allows us to overcome geographic disadvantages.

The reason I mention these pieces of common sense is because of thoughts about space colonization. Because, if things go well, we are headed towards overpopulation. What that means is that we'll have to go somewhere else.

It does mean that, it is unavoidable. It is not just fanciful. If things go well, population will either need to go somewhere else "corporeally" in the flesh, or somewhere else "spirtually" in death. So we have the science fiction Star Wars/Star Trek/quasi-Asimovian model, or we have the science fiction ethical suicide/soylent green/quasi-Orwellian model.

Both of these require significant hardship and even "dehumanization". The ideal scenario would require tolerable hardship and minimal dehumanization.
People are willing to endure both for some type of payoff. Explorers and settlers of the past have sought a payoff by seeking the geographic advantage that would optimize self-sufficiency. In addition, an important concept maybe, they leveraged geographic features to enable their exploration.

North America was not explored via "wagon trains", of course. It was not even settled via wagon trains. North America's coasts and bays were explored first via sea and then internally explored largely via river. Rivers were the highways that would handle significant cargo and provisions for a longer expedition. You could be reliably borne on river currents towards a destination with less effort and greater speed. Once reliable river routes to geographically advantageous locations were secured, settlement followed readily.

Is there an analog to river currents in space exploration? Is it possible to "hitch rides" on near earth approaching asteroids, hop from asteroid to asteroid, where their orbits are used to move further and farther than would normally be possible? It would take a long time, but that discussion comes later.

There is another aspect of exploration that we shouldn't forget, and that was that at a certain point, the explorer was more willing to risk not returning. That is, if the explorer was primarily seeking self-sufficiency, they would establish themselves in the frontier.

This is why private space exploration is important. The notion of some big payoff being out there for the intrepid risk-taker is inherently a private venture. How the payoff is conveyed back at first is not via physical transfer of significant cargo, but of establishing the route. It may well be a one-way route. The terrestrial component of the venture owns the route. The extra-terrestrial component of the venture owns the geographic location. They people off-planet take the risk of living off-planet for the rest of their lives. (Why? more about that later also).

Then, there is development of the location. The location must be developed before cargo (the payoff) can be conveyed back. The location might initially be developed robotically, this seems very likely. Then once a human habitable confine was produced, then humans could colonize.

The extent to which humans could colonize would depend on the advantages of the geography. There needs to be a payoff, it can't all be "for science" or "for glory". In the colonization game, there is a dual payoff: alleviation of load on the colonizing geographical location, and abundance of otherwise more scarce resources in the colonized geographical location.

There is also a "tiered" set of payoffs. The initial tier is the technology that permits robotic off-planet construction, including atmospheric generation, because this technology is multi-purpose. The second tier is the establishment of the reliable route. The third tier is the establishment of the human colony that can convey back resources. The fourth tier is a self-sustaining off-planet colony. The fifth tier is improved efficiencies in replication of the model, where colonies become more readily established even further out.

For an example of the fifth tier, if giant, long passage interstellar-travel space ships could be built off-planet, given more abundant metals, fewer gravitational constraints and vast chemical fuel sources available among the planets and asteroids, then this would provide a payoff.

Variations of all of this have been described in hundreds or thousands of science fiction stories. They tend to jump to the "fifth tier" of accomplishment pretty quickly, because that is where a lot of the more imaginiative stuff can happen, but it will take a very long time. A Very Long Time.

So this is where all the things that I said would be discussed later are discussed. There is very definitely a "fork in the road" between the quasi-Orwellian and quasi-Asimovian future. Going down the q-O path is not conducive to switching back to the q-A path. The q-A path choice requires a resolute refusal of the q-O path.

Even so, it seems clear some manner of population control will need to be applied on Earth, especially in problem areas. However, no population control would be needed on Mars: more population means more colonization activities could occur. This in itself may be incentive to give it a try.

Living conditions will be different, primitive in some ways and advanced in others. It may be that Martians will live largely below the surface, but even now, on Earth, there are significant city center malls in colder climates that are entirely underground. Martians would acclimate to that mode of living, optimize it and even discover new modes of expansion below planet surfaces which can be leveraged on even less hospitable worlds and in less hospitable climates on Earth.

Because even our current knowledge of what is on the nearest bodies to us shows, with below-ground development, that there are places on Mars and the Moon that could be made much more comfortable than some places on the surface of Earth.

In terms of extrapolating from current technology to the technology that would be needed for extra-terrestrial and then interstellar colonization, it is clear to see that robotic off-world construction could be realized. What is less clear are the propulsion mechanisms that could power effective space travel over long distances, especially extra-solar distances.

Also, as mentioned, there may be "river currents" within our solar system to leverage. Maybe they exist even beyond the heliopause in a way that faciliates interstellar travel.

But, it took months for goods to get from continent to continent in the time of ocean sailing ships. It will take weeks to get things back and forth from the Moon, and months to get things back and forth from Mars. It will even take especially long periods of time for speed-of-light signals to reach from place to place, as space explorers have already seen in the remote control of off-planet systems. But these things are not insurmountable. Humanity has written hugely important messages with quill pens and delivered them by sailing ship and caravan, to lasting effect. We just have to recognize that it will be that way again with regards to space: there is no 'transporter', and may never be, to help facilitate and speed up the storyline.

All of this sounds like a stretch and it is a stretch, we'll have to stretch. But I believe that, on the whole, it is a more admirable, human and viable endeavour than some manner of worldwide death cult based on either controlled culling or managed perpetual warfare. It is not our "manifest destiny" either, but it is our character.

twitter and people and interactions and stuff

2011-07-20T11:54:00.000-04:00

So I am liking twitter a lot now. A while ago, I did not. But now, I say anything there I want, about whatever I want, and people ignore or interact, and it is all fine.

There are famous people whom I admire on twitter. Ruth Buzzi (@Ruth_A_Buzzi) is one. She created some iconic female comedic characters, you should look her up when you get a chance. Albert Brooks (@AlbertBrooks) is another.

But it is the kind of non-confrontive, not threatening, optionally-committal interaction that an introvert like me can value and participate in.

My close encounter long ago

2011-07-15T04:18:00.001-04:00

I will write this in a strange sort of mood, because I don't know if it is even worth repeating. It is a story that nobody other than I knows about. It is the kind of story that gets one labeled as a nut, but it happened to me. I cannot I prove it, though, other than to tell you it is my best recollection. It will sound like other, more disturbing stories of the same sort, but will have some details those do not.

I worked for a restaurant that delivered. This was in Texas, north of Dallas. It was a low paying job, a second job, and I did it for only some months because I made hardly any money at it, but I could eat inexpensively. This was during a very depressing time in my life, also, stop it helped to have something to stay busy at. It was an evening job.

One night, a warm night, I was making a delivery well out to the edge of te delivery area, to some apartments. As I drive away from the apartments, I noticed a very localized, strong storm to the north. I decided top take a detour towards it, out of curiosity. The weather in Texas was a source of some fascination to me - having no real understanding of how violent it could be, or dangerous: I liked the big thunder storms that could well up.

I will switch to telling the story in present tense, it will be easier to recount.

As I drive towards the storm, I see how unusual it is. It seems not to move. The lightning is very bright, but there is not loud thunder. I actually do not recall any thunder. I drive down a road that leads into a wooded area. The area that I had been driving through was a development, the outskirts of a development.this was in the mid 1980s, prior to cellphones. My thought is that I might see some wild lightning, and then turn around.

Now, there is something curious about this road. It is very dark. It is unusually dark, but this lightning is providing some flashes.

And now I have to stop the car. I put it in park, but do not shut it off. There is something in the road. It seems to be a house? A metallic house, sort of temporary looking. There was some kind of road work going on during the day, apparently, and this is some kind of shelter.

Only it is very unusual. And this is when I start to become very curious. It seems to be on legs, it is... conical? Maybe. There appear to be some figures moving near it, but it is almost like I cannot focus on these or this structure.

And now I become very very afraid. So afraid, in fact, that I cannot move. This is not a natural fear, it seems like it is so strong and so unreasonable as to have been "generated". What I try to do is to move my arm to grab the gearshift, to go into reverse, but I cannot. In fact, the harder I try to move, the more I become afraid. My chest and shoulders felt like they were being squeezed with fear.

I cannot make any noises, and then someone approaches the car. As I view this person, I think two things: this is a very ugly person, and this person is totally in control of the situtation.

The person is short, with dark skin, but not a 'natural' dark skin tone, more of a dusty brown. The complexion of the face is best described as "stewed prune", sort of mis-shapen, and the eyes are the most prominent feature.

The eyes have yellow irises but round pupils. They remind me of a Weimaraner's. The irises, and the eyes, are large in comparison to the person's head. The other features are unremarkable, but overall rather "grumpy" looking, again this "prunish" aspect. There are these dolls that are made out of dried small apples or crabapples, and the face looked very similar to one of these, but the eyes were intelligent and highly observant.

The person communicated with me, without using a voice, telling me that I was to roll down my car window. The fear changes character briefly, and I am able to move in order to do this, but once the window was rolled down, I was immobilized by the fear again. I realized that this was not all my fear, but an artifically amplified fear. In fact, the person tells me this is so, that I am correct in my thought, and there was even some technical explanation regarding the nature of the "fear field" that is being used, but it was beyond the scope of my understanding.

In this way, the person almost amiably demonstrates the extent to which it can read my thoughts, and to which it can convey information to me. This person seems to be trained in dealing with people like myself.

A couple of things start to compel me. I need to communicate more with the person and to also prove myself more, to assert my own identity. The person needs to do something, and is coaxing me into behaving in a manner that will allow it to perform it's (his? her?) function, communicating in a soft manner. I understand that if I cooperate that the fear will be "turned down". The mode of communication becomes very natural, very "in the moment" and comfortable. It also became clear that the "fear field" had a kind of feedback effect, it was stimulating, amplifying and "looping" the fear, and there was also more "natural" fear that I was feeling on my own.

The person seems to be between 4 and 5 feet tall. The reason the window was rolled down was so the person could take hold of my arm and examine it. The person is friendly, I am asking questions, but all of the answers are unclear, because I do not have sufficient cultural referents with which to effectively map the concepts in the explanations. In fact, the person is communicating with me in a way that demonstrates when it is communicating directly with me, it is using a sort of "babytalk voice", like one would use with a dog. When it wants to answer but not necessarily engage me in this more sing-song way of communicating (which seems to be taxing for him/her) it answers matter of factly, fluently and more technically.

One thing I find is that when I engage the person regarding religious concepts, that he/she has no real correlation. My thought is that the person will somehow exchange some common 'sunday school level' concepts with me, like The Golden Rule, which I convey a summary of, but he/she does not register any resonance with this. This person is trained in a technical capacity, and operating as such, and does not have any need or thoughts to share on these sorts of things.

The person has relaxed the "fear field" to the extent that I am feeling more in control. And so I make a move to throw the car into reverse.

The fear field comes on full force, stunningly paralyzing, and the person is clearly irritated with me. I am a bit ashamed of the betrayal, but I just had to assert some kind of control. The person has no such compunctions, however: the conversation was more of a pacifier for me, and less a kind of exchange of personal ideas between people with a mutual interest, even though that exchange is happening mind-to-mind in the most intimate and honest way imaginable. I sense the person is somewhat irritated with themselves, because after all I am a wild specimen which can behave unpredictably and it was maybe a mistake for the "handler" to become sloppy. However, this makes me now more ashamed and more determined to be regarded as not a wild animal but as a sentient being of equal stature. I convey an apology, and get in return the sense that there is some shared blame. I also get a sense, perhaps wishful thinking on my part, that there was some appreciation for the level of indirection needed to attempt the move while carrying on the exchange.

This wordless communication is very honest. When the answers come using terms and concepts that I cannot understand, it is not as an effort to deceive or conceal, it is just the most direct way to provide that answer.

My sense is that this mission is not intended to encounter humans, it is for some other purpose. But there is some manner of procedure that should occur when humans are encountered, and they are following this procedure.

There is one question and answer that I remember very clearly. I asked if I could go with the person, to travel in their ship. The reply was clearly a shocked "you don't know what you are asking, no you may not".

My sense was that I was asking for something that, even if within granting, would be horribly unpleasant and bad for me.

The person is done with the examination. It was limited to performing some kind of test on my left arm.

Now, I have to switch out of the present tense and into recollection. the entire exchange was much, much shorter than it takes to read this, I believe. However, while engaged in communication with this person, I had no sense of how much time was passing, so I cannot say for sure.

Another thing I cannot say for sure, but seem to recall dimly, was how I was allowed, and how I managed, to turn around on what was essentially a one lane gravel road and go back out the way I came. One thing that was made very clear was that I would be allowed to operate the car in order to leave, and if I attempted to return to go back towards the ship/structure, it would go badly for me. One reason for the stern rebuke was that I did have brief thoughts about driving my car into one of the struts of the structure/ship, an outlandish thought that I briefly considered would provide evidence of the whole thing. But I was warned sternly about any such attempt: the fear generator could be turned up abruptly and dangerously high.

What I recall then was driving out of the wooded area and back to the intersection with the paved, suburban development road. A very curious effect took hold, where I had some strong sense of immediacy to return to work because I would be missed, and at the same time I had a "something happened, but it wasn't important enough to worry about" attitude towards the whole exchange with the person who could communicate wordlessly. I believe these feelings/thoughts/compulsions was planted somehow as I drove away. I am thinking that driving the car also preoccupied my mind enough so that as I was leaving some suggestive thoughts were planted in a way I was completely unaware of, to ensure that I behaved appropriately.

This is as much as I can recount. There are details, technical details, that would normally interest me and which I don't have an explanation for being unable to recall. For example, the structure of the ship, the clothes and tools the person had, whether there were more of these people. I believe that the memory of these details where "fogged" at the same time and in much the same way as some thoughts seem to have been planted as I left. In other words, the sorts of details and information that would make the story more interesting to remember and tell were "smudged" or redacted, and also have the effect of rendering the story much less believable.

Now, to be completely above board about this: I have always been a science fiction fan. I had seen the "Close Encounters" movie with Richard Dreyfuss. I have since read and heard of "abductions" where the beings were smaller and had the more popularized alien face, willowy limbs and dark "sunglass lenses" type eyes. This being did not have that appearance. This being looked much more human, more like a differently formed human than a completely different species. Also, that something happened was absolutely the case. I got back to the restaurant and people were not happy with me, I had taken much too long, much longer than the delivery, a sidetrip, a brief stop and return trip would take. I don't recall the excuse I gave.

I also had a cut on my arm, the arm that had been examined. It was perfectly straight, about 2.5 inches long and 1/8" of an inch deep. It did not hurt, but it was bleeding.

So this is my recollection. I cannot prove it, am not particularly interested in reviewing it with other people who have had similar experiences, or being hypnotized to remember more, or any of that other stuff. I recount it because if I write it down I'm more "done" with it.

But, when the fear field was not operating strongly, I very much enjoyed communicating with that person and would very much like to do it again.

Spam to make you LOL...

2011-06-30T19:41:00.000-04:00

This is very funny. On the other hand, I think it's great that the US gov't is leveraging gmail for it's communications.

-------- Original Message --------

Subject: U.S Treasury Department's Office

Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 22:17:52 +0300

From: "Mr.Timothy F. Geithner"

To:

U.S Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control

(OFAC)U.S Treasury Department's

1500 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20220

Dear Beneficiary ,

I am Mr.Timothy F. Geithner, the Executive Secretary United States

Treasury Department

Main Treasury.

This is to bring to your notice that my office has taking over all the

money transaction originated from any part of Africa and Europe and

Asia countries as contract payment, Fund Inheritance or Lottery

Winning due to Unauthorized/incapability of financial

Institutions/security companies in releasing such huge sum of money

due to Fraud, terrorist and money Laundry activities going on world

wide.

The World Bank Group has Mandated the U.S Treasury Department's Office

via my Office to release funds to beneficiaries Hence Your Name

appears as one of The fund beneficiaries whom their fund was

successfully cleared for payment. Your money will be released to you

through an Online Banking System Payment by (HSBC) United States to

avoid paying excess charges.

You are therefore advised to re-confirm your contact address and

direct telephone numbers, to us for immediate release of your money,

Most importantly be aware that (one Million United States Dollars Only

(US$1, 000, 000.00) was allocated to you as the approved amount due to

you, as we have so many scam victims to compensate.

With the help of the (OFAC) U.S Treasury Department's and with the FBI

we have noticed that people have being asked to pay outrageous amount

of money by these impostors for the transfer of their funds to them.

We want you to stop all communication that has to do with these

fraudsters who have been requesting unreasonable sums of money from

you to release your funds which they do not have access to.

Yours faithfully

Mr.Timothy F. Geithner

Geronimo and Alan Watts and Syncretism

2011-06-15T00:50:00.001-04:00

I make a half- to three-quarters-hearted effort to keep this blog eclectic. Again, it doesn't have a lot of pictures and embedded stuff, but for what it lacks in that I hope it makes up for in... well, easiness to load I guess. Anyway, this thought is about seemingly random multiple notions that intersect and converge in a way that allows more integrated ideas to come out of the interaction.

Twitter has gotten a lot of attention, for various reasons. One reason is that it harkens to the "wild west days" of the early internet, only in a microcosm, where disparate people appear to rub elbows and freely exchange ideas with one another on equal ground-- at times you can in fact carry on a perfectly reasonable conversation with someone who famous or recognized as talented that would not be accessible otherwise.

Another more insidious reason (because it wouldn't be a 21st century blogpost without some hint at dark conspiracy) is that it is fertile ground for diabolically-flavoured "marketing synergies". A marketing synergy is when the suckers are basically enticed to knock on the door where they can then be gladly invited to be part of the game whose goal is further fleece them, of course.

And, another less apparent reason is that when a large number of people converse in writing in a way that everyone else can "hear" them, you get exposed to a lot of different information, including more indrect information on the uses of language and cultural style, and you maybe get some context (if you are paying attention) that you would otherwise not pick up and as a result might be more willing to see things from a different point of view.

It is generally accepted and often said that people find it easier to say things over the internet in writing that they would not say face to face, with all of the advantages and pitfalls that brings: people are nastier because they can get away with it, hence all the trolling and flame wars.

But one thing that is not often said, I think, is that it is also easier to change your mind about something when someone isn't watching or listening. Because we don't like to let people have the victory of convincing us about something that we were orginally disposed against.

I'm not talking about "wrong" and "right", something being proven one way or the other, but in terms of being able to shift our opinions in a way that lends more consideration to the other's point of view.

And the reason for this sort of hair-splitting lead up is this notion of American Indians being offended by various things that non-Indians deem to be inconsequential, the most recent case in point being the use of the code name "Geronimo" to designate a terrorist leader that was the target of a US military operation.

This is something that should be considered more fully, it is more important than it seems. It is not a "victory" if I can convince you of this, it is more a victory that you read the remaing paragraphs because just getting people to pay attention to this sort of thing is what all manner of American Indian/Native American/First Nations artists, writers, distinguished lecturers and activists have been doing for decades if not centuries.

Now, is it because Geronimo's descendants are offended, the existing members of his nation and related nations that this is important? In part that is a consideration. Is it because Native Americans 'labels' have long been applied in a narrow and stereotypical manner to things in a way that has become degrading to people of American Indian descent? That is part of it, also. It is an extension of the disdain for the use of Native Americans as mascots, as if they were charicatures, to the point where the "commercial label" over-writes the label of the people as a culture and of the person as human.

But the whole discourse about this, which has come primarily from the Indian side with a great many distinguished writers commenting on this, is much deeper, as it illuminates with laser-brightness and accuracy how the "code" that is objectionable because of how indians are symbolized in that code.

I recall reading a book called "Strong Hearts, Wounded Souls" which includes interviews with Native American veterans, where they recall some of the particular contradictions they face in the US Military. For example, one veteran recalled his anger when an officer referred to a contested area in Viet Nam as "indian country" to a group of soliders he was among.

Now, to a non-Indian who grew up watching all manner of war movies, the phrase is maybe an unimaginative bit of attempted drama on the part of the officer. But more acutely, it is a cultural trigger: here there be monstrous savages.

Because "indian country" does not mean the wide open spaces of the west and midewest or the forested woodlands of the east or the placid waterways and bayous of the south. It doesn't mean small mostly rural communities who have festivals characterized by fry bread and traditional dancing. It means the "valley of death" inhabited by inhumans.

And it is the pervasiveness of this code, the mainstream culture's thorough subliminal indoctrination in this code and the ease with which it is continually refreshed in the non-Indian psyche that is the current against which the native community swims, the headwind against which they fly.

The story behind the "code" of course goes like this: once upon a time there were good people who were escaping badness, and they came upon a place where they could flourish and along with them their goodness would flourish. However, there were some obstacles in this new place that had to be cleared, and among these obstacles were awful, strange and cruel people who could only be dealt with through violence. Some of them were particularly awful, and their individual names are exemplary of the badness. But, due to the goodness of the good people, these were overcome.

I would guess that there would be few non-Indian people among the ones who would grow up to be of age to serve in the military during Viet Nam that would disagree with the general outline of this story. To affirm that some areas of Viet Nam were "indian country" is to affirm the story that the overpowering goodness would extend to and wash away the obstacles on the distant Asian continent as it had in North America and I would also guess that there are many people, young and old, who still see this outline as essentially valid and respond to the conditioning of decades of Western and World War I and II movies that incorporate these themes. This is a part of the Grand Comforting and Motivational Narrative.

My thoughts about these things are very integrated with reading about the actual history of pre-Columbian times as well as pre-Revolutionary and early American history as well as my inculcation in the Grand Comforting and Motivational Narrative. Given the understanding of Geronimo as an historical character, if we were to map "Geronimo" the symbol in the Narrative to a more accurate representation in modern popular culture it would be the character played by Charles Bronson in any number of the "Death Wish" movies, where the hardworking faithful guy's family is victimized by marauding violent criminals. Yes! Charles Bronson, the one who also played a gunfighter in westerns! Wait, that would make the Americans that Geronimo fought against criminals, wouldn't it? Yes! yes, in the blunt broad sense of the Narrative it would. But that can't be because they were the good guys!!

Well, of course it can and it can't be, because the blunt broad sense of the Narrative is stripped of most of the actual details. None of the "guys" were all "good" or "bad". But any broadly held historio-cultural narrative has to be stripped of the details otherwise a) it would be too difficult for everyone to grasp effectively and b) it wouldn't work at being comforting or motivating or give any kind of general outline, it would tend to be vexing and a little disturbing. Too much like Shakespeare and not enough like an Aesop's Fable. Too long a movie, too big a cast, too complex.

So, the actual nature of Geronimo as a person, as well as the actual natures of his descendants, closely and culturally related peoples throughout history, "since time immemorial", end up on the cutting room floor.

And that's why it is important. Because unless our Grand Comforting and Motivating Narrative is an all-inclusive story of an ever evolving and diverse humanity, it-- and we-- are broken.

(p.s: you may be asking, "where is Alan Watts in this post?" and my hope would be, all through it).

some interesting experiences of late

2011-06-13T00:24:00.000-04:00

For the last little while, I've been experiencing a series of kind of 'realizations'. Kind of like messages, or syncretistic moments, where I get a deeper view into things. Then, the other night, I was overcome with a sort of dizzy 'rushing' feeling in my head, a bout of coughing and wretching/nausea.

Had to go to the hospital, I felt like I was just going to collapse and my entire body ached. My left knee, my neck my back were all aching ferociously. Long story short, it turns out I have a sinus infection: sinusitis.

Didn't have any idea, ever, how bad that sort of thing could be. As I think about it, I've been going to the doctor off and on for a while, complaining about fatigue and aches. For a while had strep throat, and was on amoxicillin, and that seemed to make me feel a whole lot better. Now I'm thinking I had strep and sinusitis at the same time.

So although I finished all the antibiotic (I'm pretty good about doing that) and it dealt with the strep, it didn't knock out whatever was in my sinuses completely, just 'stunned it', I guess.

Back to the doctor tomorrow, but with a whole new sense that this will finally be resolved, now that I know what it is. I haven't been able to do anything 100%, especially music, because of this crud in my innermost nozzles.

Totally vapid stuff, clever blogging people...

2011-06-10T14:41:00.000-04:00

I haven't blogged in a while so I'll bring you up to date: been feeling very tired lately, am decidedly sick today but have been sick off and on for the last little while, had some issues with my car that were expensive, but now thankfully resolved, but still more to resolve that are less critically functional. There is a huge pile of dishes in the sink that i need to do.... what else... haven't been able to do too much music lately what with the fatigue and the illness.

I've been on twitter a lot. There is a new DC gossip blog that is often funny and informative http://glittarazzi.com

Some more receint Utenzil tracks at http://soundcloud.com/utenzil

I have to make another video w/music soon, still thinking about the nature of it.

The Rapture that wasn't

2011-05-23T10:41:00.000-04:00

It is sad that people emptied out their bank accounts to help the "false rapture prophet" advertise his findings. On the other hand, what they did was to try their best to tell everybody about what they believed was important to know.

Harold Camping is maybe delusional, possibly onto something with the numerological interpretation, seemingly a "false prophet" in the Revelations sense, but he's certainly, absolutely made a huge blunder.

I think at least some of his problem is his vehemence against other denominations. One of the biggest things that is supposed to happen prior to the Second Coming is the unification of all the churches, which in his writing he indicates are wholly subverted by the forces of evil. They are clearly not perfect, the recent abundant lawsuits relating to child abuse/molestation illustrating that, but at the very least he is using the documentation and teaching they've preserved for centuries to make his predictions and this should count for something.

He certainly seemed to apply some whiz-bang numerology, it is interesting. But there are things that make this year auspicious other than numerology. For one, the Orthodox and Western church calendars are in sync regarding key dates (a "unification" of sorts).

My thought is that if there is to be some divine event around this time, it would happen on or after 6/2, which is the day of Ascension, or 6/12. which is the first day of Pentecost. Because it makes a wonderful poetic sense for a return on these days vis a vis the church calendar.

But as to the exact hour, as it's written: an unkown.

More about neutrinos, some independent research that intersects with my intuition

2011-05-17T00:03:00.000-04:00

This intrigues me: a presentation regarding neutrinos and time and also the notions of "extra dimensions" and sterile neutrinos, which are even more weakly interacting than other neutrinos.

Now, I do not understand all of this, but the assertion is that string theory supports the concept of sterile neutrinos being able to travel extra-dimensionally. The presentation is a bit tongue in cheek, and mostly centered around the possibility of time travel, but it is interesting. It also makes me wonder if "sterile neutrinos" could account for the solar neutrinos that appear to be "missing" (the solar neutrino problem) but there are other theories about that.

But my wonder about neutrinos was not so much about the nature of them vis a vis the spacetime continuum, but more about whether or not brains were affected by them. It is a notion that I cannot prove, but the thought is that because we are basically swimming in a neutrino shower, that the stream of neutrinos might be useful for something with respect to life.

I'm wondering if neutrinos passing through our electrical brains might assist brain function in a useful way. The weak force has a very limited reach so it's effects are contained to very small particles within a very small range, and our brains are intricate bio-electric organs having many structures whose exact purpose has not yet been deterimined. Anyway, I am learning more and more about neutrinos by wondering about this, it might be completely silly and weirdly speculative, but the afore-linked presentation indicates that other far more educated actual physicists are not above being at least a little bit silly and weirdly speculative.

They of course propose an experiment to determine their hypothesis, I really can't propose an experiment to determine if naturally abundant neutrinos have an effect on the electricity brain just yet. I'm wondering if they have any affect on electricity at all, if there is some way to prove that. It might be something to consider if there is a sort of material or mechanism that somehow is both a conductor and a "neutrino sponge", whereby one could run an electrical current through that special type of conductor and a control conductor, to see if there are differences.

A prophetic calculation based on biblical scripture and MIDI to DMX

2011-05-15T01:28:00.000-04:00

This http://www.ebiblefellowship.com/outreach/tracts/may21/ online pamphlet is interesting in both its premise and brevity.

This is actually pulls together some very good research regarding the nature of the dates and the mapping to our modern calendar in a concise manner. If true, it is not particulary happy news for those on the material plane, but we'll know in a week.

I was contacted by someone who I haven't heard from in a long while, who needed some information about controlling lights via MIDI, in order to synch them with music. This requires a way to send MIDI out from the thing creating the music (in this caseAbleton Live http:///www.ableton.com ) and then to convert that into DMX control messages which you you can do with this. There is a trick in knowing what MIDI messages will do which things, but this is all very interesting.

oddly reminded of something funny...

2011-05-11T17:07:00.001-04:00

Somebody tweeted something about a fax, and it reminded me of something that happened a long time ago...

A young man was hired by a company I worked for as an intern. He was in college, he was from a wealthy family in another country (somewhere in Central or South America).

He was handsome and had that kind of "I'm destined to be your boss" sort of air, and he may well have been. I recall some general guidance that was dispensed by someone in the know, to the effect of him being easily insulted or slighted, and to work with him patiently. He would only be working there for a short while.

At some point I found myself helping him in a task that involved driving him to a bank. He had some questions about some of the equipment at the office, in particular the fax machine.

"How does it work?" he asked.

Having taken some courses in digital technology, I was semi-confident in my explanation, which went something like this, "Well, I'm not an expert, but in general it scans the image it is going to send, detects where the dark and light areas are, and then a scan-line at a time, makes 1s or 0s to indicate light or dark. Then it sends that string of encoded information through the phone line to a receiving machine, that reproduces the scanned lines using that same infomation to drive something that marks the paper accordingly."

I thought that was a pretty fair explanation, and explaining it also kind of clarified my own understanding of some things about encoding and decoding.

"Ah, ok... But how does it send the paper?"

Some thoughts about God ("Sci-Fi Primary Deity")

2011-05-09T15:17:00.002-04:00

Artists and people interested in art talk about expression and expressing things, and I think ideally that "expression" means that they are exuding some thing from (hopefully) some deep inner place common to all humans, and that is what makes "ideal art" of "great art" timeless and/or more than the sum of its parts (more than the medium and methods/techniques and material form of its execution). They also talk about "creativity" and "creation" thereby raising the notion that the activity associated with producing art brings something out of nothing, or at least something new of of something existing but as yet "un-expressed:", which (again) in the best sense is something timeless and over-archingly universal to human experience before, now or henceforth.

I preface this by saying I was once an avid science fiction reader. I still like science fiction a great deal, and think it is a great way to illustrate a lot of concepts and pass a lot of allegorical information, but don't have as much time to read it, unfortunately. So I use some science fiction here.

So here is where it gets a little convoluted but... there are theosophists who have talked about "information" being "encoded" into art, and things like the "DaVinci Code", where it is suggested that some conscious, semi-conscious or "channeled" conscious effort or agency inserts messages in to art.

Gurdjieff talks about "objective art", that art which "creates itself": Gurdjieff talks about "objective art" which contains a message that is 'encoded' into the work: "The difference between objective art and subjective art is that in objective art the artist really does 'create,' that is he makes what he intended, he puts into his work whatever ideas and feelings he wants to put into it. And the action of this work upon men is absolutely definite; they will, of course each according to his own level, receive the same ideas and the same feelings that the artist wanted to transmit to them. There can be nothing accidental either in the creation or in the impressions of objective art."

Now, Gurdjieff was very interested in art and the execution of art as it was applied to the control or extension of humans, seemed less so interested in the actual nature of the source of creation, and he talks about the more pure nature of his concept of "objective art" to some extent in a way which is indicative but maybe inaccurate (music having an "inner octave", a subtle structural complexity that can be sensed on a different level, citing the music of a snake charmer, which may or may not be the actual mechanism by which the snake is "charmed".).

C.G. Jung says"The essence of a work of art is not to be found in the personal idiosyncrasies that creep into it—indeed, the more there are of them, the less it is a work of art—but in its rising above the personal and speaking from the mind and heart of the artist to the mind and heart of mankind". He theorizes about a "collective unconscious" that all humans (in fact, all life forms with nervous systems) share. We can postulate that the act of creating "objective art:" somehow causes that collective unconscious to permeate the artist's creative state in a way such that it finds its way through the artist and then into the art:

Then, the whole 'creation' thing leads us to consider its antithesis, destruction, which leads us to physics (can't destroy anything, can just transform it into something else) into metaphysics (what are we actually creating/destroying and why, is all "creation" of the same "spirit" or "essence"-- that is, is everything that is created done in the same way and/or at the same behest that EVERYTHING was created, indeed if we "transform" something through destruction are we acting in the same spirit-- and is it true "we" are really doing the creating/destroying anyway?).

So that is some shit to be saying in parentheses, but there it is.

Now, there are theologies (metaphysical systems) that indicate that various forces (light and dark) vie for control of the universe and as such manifest themselves through "bad" and "good" actions. There is an interesting Theosophical motto that reads "There is no religion higher than truth" which of course cannot be argued with, [edit] certainly a most true religion is the "righter" religion, and a religion found to be "mostly untrue" is undeniably flawed.

[edit] What is "THE" most true? I think it does have a lot to do with what resonates best with the "truth seeker in question", because you won't apply the effort into divining the truth from something that is too obscure or too hard to understand or with too much weird baggage. That is only opinion/speculation, because I can only speak for myself from my own experience.

Then, there is "true" "True Enough", and "True", and also of course when you get into this area words start to fail-- suffice that"True Enough" is a subset of "True", but does not lead indefatigably to "True". In general, a religion can relate inaccuracies with regard to certain aspects that are peripheral to its core thrust and still be "True Enough" and "True".

For example, that the Bible may or may not describe the precise mechanisms of creation exactly actually does not pertain to its validity in respect to its description of God's relationship to man, any more than a book of microwave recipies need provide an in-depth explanation and schematic of the components of a microwave oven or the methods for its manufacture.

Also, I think now that "True Enough" and "True" are sometimes outweighed by "Startlingly Insightful". It is Startlingly Insightful that the Bible indicates creation as happening in stages, almost identical to the stages of evolution and even astrophysical phenomenon as put forth in science, given that it precedes this science by thousands of years.

But, latching on to those things that are "Startlingly Insightful" can also be dangerous, because they can be red herrings-- they appeal to us emotionally, but in the overal scheme of Truth they are illustrative yet not always substantive. To arrive at real Truth, Pathos and Logos must work in accord, in the way an argument in court employs both rhetorical appeals and reason based on evidence.

Something that is reassuring is when a religion also promotes those tools that arrive at the truth as part and parcel of its teaching. Conversely, we have to consider that a religion that does not include these tools is counter to Truth.

So I've read some things about God and also about Jesus, because of course the Startling thing about Jesus is that he returns from the dead. Not only does he "manifest" himself, but he manifests himself in the physical form that he had when he was killed. So, after the resurrection, he walks among his followers but cannot be Biologically Functional. That is to say, if Bones McCoy was to hook Him up to the sick back apparatus, He might not not read as being humanly alive.

Why do I say this? Well it could be true because his body was not in a condition to be functioning. He was not only badly beaten, pierced, cut and crucified in a way that caused his key biological systems to fail, but was stabbed with a spear so that "water and blood poured forth". Not trickled, but poured.

So even if Jesus were "divinely defribillated", His biological body wouldn't seem like it could continue to function without significant surgical repair and blood transfusions. However, the account indicates the wounds in limbs and side still extant, so no such repair occurred. But also these are details, the mechanical point is not so important.

What is important is that God (if god is God, the True God) is able to rewind, edit and fast forward time, and overlay, co-locate, and otherwise manipulate space and matter. There are lots of historical dumb arguments by intelligent people, arguments that had people calling one another heretics because of details based primarily on *sequential* thinking, and which caused torturing and killing and so on that completely miss this.

But, if like in a science fiction book, you give your Primary Deity character the power to do these things, operating in multiple dimensions, then everything happening in a subset of dimensions becomes very easy to explain. Maybe harder to explain in a science fiction frame of mind is why such a powerful being would even bother with us? Science fiction beings are always out for power or conquest. There is the "saving the world" theme, but from whom? Who could even pose a threat to such a powerful sciene fiction being? You get into "why do bad things happen" etc. at some point, but maybe the most exciting parts of the sceince fiction story would be how the Primary Deity exercises His power to influence all the things that do happen and hoping for a really happy ending (or, if that sounds too doom-laden, a really exciting set of unending sequels).

One of my greatest lessons: making Tuna Salad on a commercial scale

2011-04-12T10:25:00.003-04:00

When I was going through the very beginnings of a phase of "finding myself" in my late teens early twenties, a process that (now that I think of it) consisted mostly of losing myself, I was able to get a job at a salad and sandwich shop in Philadelphia.

I had never worked in a kitchen before, so this job was as at entry-level a level as possible. It wasn't a chain, but the owner had some ideas about expanding, so he had some good recipes and procedures for making the fool [edit] lol, typo, that should be "food" but I'll leave it in there, tarot reference.

It was really very good food, healthy, and the best part is that you could get fed at a discount, which was good because I was sharing an apartment with three other people and money was very tight. There were also free sodas while we were working, which wasn't as good health-wise, but at least it was fuel. It was the first job I had that supported me living away from home.

The owner, Mr. Stein, was Jewish and maybe somewhat stereotypical in that regard: he wanted to avoid wasting food, so he would scold if you didn't slice a carrot down to the very end of the carrot, and wanted portions to be consistent. But this was all part of the business, and actually the basis for some very good values for me as I continued on the journey of finding./losing myself.

One of the first things I was assigned to do was to make a batch of tuna salad. This might seem trivial, but it involved a can of tuna fish larger than any I had ever seen before, about the size of a bowling ball, and a gallon tub of mayo, pounds of celery and onions. The owner assigned this to me personally, and warned me sternly if I wasted the can of tuna, it was expensive, and would come out of my paycheck, so I needed to follow the recipe. But he also gave me some guidelines, which I will always remember:

1) You want the salad firm, not runny, so you drain the tuna.
2) There are three ingredients that will most dictate the consistency of the salad: the mayo, the tuna, and breadcrumbs.
3) You drain the tuna, and then add the mayo *but don't add all the mayo the recipe calls for*. Add about half of it first. Then mix it in. Then add a little more of the mayo the recipe calls for, keep mixing, making sure the consistency is right. You can't take out the mayo if you overdo it! So this is important.
4) Then, you want the tuna salad to *stay* consistent. That is why you add the breadcrumbs, these will bind the salad, and also absorb moisture that later leaches out of the celery, onions and the tuna. Also, if it turns out you add a little too much mayo, you can add more breadcrumbs than the recipe calls for to compensate-- but not too many more, because that will make it seem like you are adding too much "filler" and detract from the tuna-ness of the salad.

I was genuinely afraid that I would ruin that salad, but I used his guidelines and my common sense, and it turned out ok. I had never made that much food for anyone before, it was enough for what seemed like 100s of scoops of tuna salad. He tasted and approved, it made me feel good.

So, he wanted you to follow the recipe strictly unless it wasn't best for the "spirit of the salad" to follow the recipe strictly.

On a sadder note, I betrayed his trust at one point-- I was in the walk-in fridge doing an inventory, and there was a case of strawberries. I had run out of money that weekend, spending frivilously mostly, and hadn't eaten for about a day. So I ate some of those strawberries, they were so good-- and the manager opened the door as I was in mid-bite.

She saw that I stopped it immediately and didn't say anything at the time so I finished the work day, but the assistant manager (who was a friend of mine) called me up later at home, said the manager had told the owner, and he was really mad, so the assistant manager said I should not return afterwards [edited from previous, I recall it a little more clearly].

But I will always remember the lesson of the tuna salad-- in any endeavor, ascertain which is the "meat", which is the "sauce" and which is the "binder". Don't add in too much of what you can't take out later on, but if you add a little too much, you can compensate a little with the opposite.

so busy lately...

2011-04-07T21:41:00.000-04:00

It seems like i've been running around like crazy for the past weeks, hardly being able to think. And now the weekend is almost here, not sure what will happen this weekend, haven't had time to think about it.

P. Diddy "Coming Home" Tour

2011-04-06T14:17:00.000-04:00

Everybody says a lot of things about rappers and hip hop artists and it is maybe odd that I should even comment, but I've been impressed with some of P. Diddy's songs and videos from time to time, impressed on a deep level, even. Yes, that is maybe banal, he's just another pop icon, more or less deriving artistically from other pop icons etc. etc... but I think he expresses things that men think, that *all* men think and feel in a very straightforward way./

I hope to be doing more music soon.

2011-04-06T11:01:00.000-04:00

I like to play music outdoors, so I'm hoping to do that.

Now, I've got kind of a problem, how do I relate it:

There are things that I have to do, and things I love to do (like music) and things that a person *thinks* I have to do (not music) and when that person who *thinks* I have to do those things sees me *not* doing the things they want me to, they get very agitated. Like, threaten me and my belongings, throw my stuff on the floor, spit in my face and call me names and shatter my emotional well being agitated. The, uh, audience for these events is a younger audience, comprising two people who I love very much.

Most of the time, there is a "detente" and we can cooperate, but I want more time to do what I have to do and want to do, not doing what someone else thinks I should do. Meanwhile, there is a veneer of civility that is presented outwardly.

It sounds ... fantastical, I know. But it is true. It is a very difficult situation, extremely stressful. This blog is one of the few ways I can outlet. If you read this, thanks, it makes me nervous to post this here but I just have to outlet.

As usual, so many things, but nothing new under the sun :-)

2011-04-05T12:40:00.000-04:00

Reading the Emerald Tablets has brought a lot of things back to me, memories I cherish, because I was really an avid reader growing up. It led me to this site, which really fascinates me on several levels. www.thegreatwhitelodge.org
There is lots of humor in the universe, and lots of wisdom, but also lots of sadness and despair, and lots of "nutty stuff" even in some of the most scholarly of pursuits, also "woo woo"/occult etc etc and so on and so forth.

Really, none of it is more or less than how it resonates with one. We can only be what we are.

The Emerald Tablets of Thoth, #1, excerpt

2011-04-04T22:11:00.007-04:00

I've been active, more like overactive, on Twitter recently, and ran into a talented "speed painter" Quinn Michaels. His pallettes and his surrealistic slant really appeal to me, and seems like he should have thousands of followers on Twitter.

He had links to the Emerald Tablets of Thoth mentioned elsewhere in this blog, and I tweeted him that I'd like to do some spoken word/music using them. He immediately replied that would be awesome (!) and so I did, and he graciously put them under thisspeed painting video.

I've read various things about the source of these tablets, hoax/authenticity arguments, etc., but I think they are very very interesting. Here is the link to the soundtrack with the text I read.

The text is very thought provoking, in sort of odd ways. For example, I once heard portions of the confession of St. Patrick read on the radio, and it almost seems like this author is "confessing" for Thoth, testifying regarding his thirst and quest for undying knowledge. But at the same time, reading between the lines, it seems like accrual of knowledge isn't everything-- Thoth is a member of a pantheon, after all, not all encompassing.

On one hand, the power and invincibility of his science-magick is immense, and his accomplishments grand, but on the other there is a sense of a compassionless deity. He reaches an agreement with the "people of Khem", and aids them, teaches them, to his satisfaction and to their benefit. He also describes how the Atlanteans became corrupt, and so their immensly powerful science-magick worked to their downfall.

The mysterious "Dr. Maurice Doreal" who translated these tablets may well have done just that, or he may have constructed an elaborate literary world a'la Lovecraft. Personally, it doesn't matter to me, the writing and words are wonderful, and they fit together so well and powerfully.
Quinn's use of the Buddhist concept of "Maitreya" is an interesting comparison to Thoth, and very similar to parallels drawn by other theosophists, for example C.S. Lewis' comparison of the Corn King of pre-Columbian America to Jesus Christ.

These things always come down to a matter of faith. You think you can 'discard' the notion of a higher power through logic and science. And, logically, one can draw the conclusion that one confusing, tangled up set of eschatology is just as good as another and that these sets of myths are indeed 'the opiate of the masses' made up by desparate people to soothe themselves. However, equally logically you can conclude that there really is something to the "one-ness" and some kind of relationship with a higher power because so many different cultures from different times and places have these parallels.

I know the Egyptian gods were on the side of the "bad guys" in the Bible and largely thereafter, in terms of the ultimately ascendant cultures in the region, but I'm thinking that in the context of the Egyptian ethical framework Thoth was used as an archetype for teaching scribes their duty and giving them a sense of mission. There is not a sense of 'evil' or 'good', and no threat of his condemnation other than a very specific one, the purported deity of wisdom and record-keeping saying: "Look, you, don't forget what I've taught you and noted here-- this learning was an immense undertaking for me and a tremendous labor of diligence and duty that went to your ultimate benefit". This certainly seems like a perfectly reasonable thing for the Egyptian "patron saint of scribes" and deity in charge of record keeping and learning to say, and identical to aspects of the Biblical God.

A pseudo-history of Atlantis?

2011-04-03T01:11:00.001-04:00

There is something I've read about the colonization of Ireland that is interesting. As usual, I won't cite anything accurately or scholarly-like, but I once read a book which I believe was called "The History of Ireland" which was in the library of Catholic University in Washington DC. My wife studied there, and from time to time I would have to go help her with this or that and I ended up wiling away some time at the library.

So what I remember of this book went something like this: Ireland for the longest time was uninhabited. There was once a settlement of Phoenicians or people similar to these. There was some manner of cataclysm that befell these people, which caused them to "fall to the ground, trembling, breaking their elbows" and suffer other ills, and they were annihilated, leaving the island once again uninhabited.

Then, later, there were the Gael, who came from Northern Spain. A more involved tale has the original Gael people emigrating from Egypt, where although well connected to the Pharaoh they had fallen into disfavor due to their sympathies with the Israelites. They left Egypt via the Mediterranean Sea, crossing it and heading up the Danube, which was at that time a more completely passable waterway that traversed the whole of Europe longitudinally. These exited out of the north of Europe, sailing around the edge of the coast until finally coming to rest on the Northern Iberian peninsula (Galicia). Further conflicts caused a portion of them to leave Galicia and sail north, where they encountered the island we call Ireland (Erin). Through a series of efforts, battles and alliances, most notably with the Picts, they established the kingdom of Dalriada, which spanned both Ireland, the Scottish Isles and mainland Scotland.

Now, more mysteriously, which is to say more blogworthily, it may well have been that the earliest civilization on Ireland was not Phoenician, but Atlantean . The theory is that Ireland was the seat of the fabled Atlantean culture, and they suffered a calamity that led to their downfall. Moreover, the calamity was due to the Atlanteans turning away from "the Children of Light" and instead towards darkness.

There are in various places scattered writings referred to as "The Emerald Tablets of Thoth". There is an alchemical 'primer' that has several key phrases that are rumored to be the basis for all alchemical study and experimentation that is referred to by this name, and also a series of verses that \are purported to be Thoth's own words, describing his life and his effort to faithfully record the knowledge of Atlantis for future generations. These more elaborate tablets are said to have been translated by someone calling himself Dr. Doreal, whose origins are fairly normal but whose writing dealt with subjects ranging from Occult interpretations of Biblical scripture to the nature of UFOs. His critics soundly proclaim he fabricated the legacy of Thoth, having been influenced by books like Tarzan and later sci-fi/fantasy fiction.

Whether or not he "channeled" Thoth or created a fantasy theosophy, "Dr. Maurice Doreal's" Emerald Tablets of Thoth are wonderfully written in a lofty sort of Hermetic language, and are laden with appealing symbolic interconnections and allusions to ancient "science/magick" types of technology. It's very interesting stuff that splits off into various tangents "Children of the Light" vs. darker types, "Atlantean immortals" on one hand and "the little people of Khem" on the other. There are assertions of hidden chambers of wisdom and power beneath the Greaty Pyramids, as well as science/magick that allows people to travel astrally, be incarnate or not as is their will, and the notion of beings controlling aspects of the behavior of gravity, space and time.

multimedia links

2011-03-23T16:57:00.000-04:00

I have been adding to this blog for a fairly long time at this point, and I think it is fair to say that it is significantly devoid of substantial value. Harebrained thoughts expressed in poorly constructed sentences about things very few people care about. Toss in a bunch of links that are now long since broken because stuff has moved, and we have a pungent cornucopia of sludgy digital detritus, hmm?

anyway, in yet another attempt to add some value to this travesty, I include some multimedia links:

http://soundcloud.com/utenzil <-- mp3 links

http://utenzil.com/mp3/free <-- more mp3 links

http://youtube.com/utenzil <-- youtube channel

http://utenzil.com/ <-- main music project website

http://facebook.com/utenzil <-- Utenzil facebook page

Thanks for reading (although I am pretty sure the o nly traffic I get is from people looking to place comment spam!)

Some either sci-real or sci-fi about time perception

2011-03-18T21:21:00.000-04:00

So here is my notion/theory that is either just silly or maybe just a little silly. I had some questions, like this: "why should things in the dark have different colors? Could the colors be functional?"

The second set of thoughts/question was "All matter on earth, living or otherwise, is constantly bombarded by solar neutrinos. Solar neutrinos are weakly interacting with matter. Could solar neutrinos, albeit invisible and weakly interacting, be somehow involved in biologial processes, particularly thought?"

I thought this because a) the brain is a different color than all the other organs in the body and b) the brain looks something like a neutrino detector and c) it can be the case that very, very, very small amounts of some substances-- nanograms-- can alter thought processes. So thought processes may be susceptible to the weak interactions of neutrinos.

I also thought this because signals, nerve signals, are actually more of a "cascade" across cell membranes. They are asynchronous, and they often have a start and an end. But if our thoughts are asynchronous, how can we perceive time? That is, without something marking 'measured temporal units', how can we perceive or experience time? In fact, we *share* temporal coordinates, so it is like our time sense is coordinated, like the clocks on cellphones are synchronized by the network.

Another thing that I thought about was neutrino detectors. Structurally, neutrino detectors look a lot like brains.

Solar neutrinos can pass through matter and we are bombarded by a constant stream of these. Again, I understand that thought/nerve signals are kind of a "domino" effect of cascading charges throughout the body, and as such it seems like these are not synchronous. My curiosity (because I've got a background in computers) is why we should perceive time if our thoughts/brain signals are asynchronous. In a computer, you have a "clock signal" that is a constant pulse. The clock signal is used to ensure instructions happen as quickly as possible, but is a separate system from the instruction interpretation/calculation components of the computer.

My thought, which I have no basis for other than kind of a self-amusing notion, is that solar neutrino collisions with key brain structures provide enough "ticking" to provide the 'temporal metronome' that allows us to perceive time. Again, the nature of neutrinos is that they are "weakly interacting", but in a system designed to respond to their interaction (like a neutrino detector) they have discernable "blips", which are called scintillation light. In other circumstances, they can induce Cherenkov radiation, another type of light.

So my more general curiosity is: does some solar neutrino interaction occur within the brain in a way that it is useful to the brain's function?

A Tiny Bit of Personal Stuff

2011-03-09T10:59:00.000-05:00

I said I would not post too much personal stuff, but just to say I am married. My wife is a teacher. She's a really good teacher, I think a little strict sometimes, especially with me. But, I go with the flow and learn each day.

A really interesting idea

2011-03-08T11:27:00.005-05:00

I have a thing I do, to keep my mind sharp, and that is to look up words that I am not quite sure of the meaning of, but have some idea of. The word that occured to me was "cytocheme" but then I realized it wasn't "cytocheme" but "cytochrome".

So I looked up "cytochrome" and I thought 'ok, that is a part of a cell that has colors'.

And then I thought, "why should a cell have colors? Cells live in the dark.".

And then I thought about neutrinos, neutrinos that hit us supposedly billions of times a day. And neutrinos, when they hit something, are supposed to give off little blips of blue light. But then I thought about energy in general, how energy gets absorbed, and then wondered if the colors in cells were functional, so that when a cell got exposed to a certain kind of energy, it would cause some energy to be absorbed. And then I thought about neutrinos, blipping little blue blips of light, and sending those to cells, which would absorb their energy.

Isn't that interesting?

[edit] I am going to elaborate a bit on this if I may-- so, anywhere there is light in an otherwise dark place, that light will cause different kinds of energy to occur based on the colors surrounding it. Even if it is a very, very very small amount of light.

[edit edit] A little bit more, to tie in with previous posts, neurotransmitters deal with multiple signals at once. I am thinking they do this because they are surfaced with different colors when the little sparks go "blip".

[edit edit edit] and a little more: the reason medicines work in the brain the way they do is because they alter some parameter of the various colors involved.

[edit....]

and of course that is silly, because that is not how they work. But, it might be interesting that when neutrinos give off light in a place full of chemicals and different colors, that different types of energies are found.

In a very dark place, where only neutrino lights blip, the type of energy something absorbs or rejects from that light could be determined by it's color. So it is tranduced into that type of energy.

why The Stupid ?

2011-03-02T20:27:00.000-05:00

In my previous post I mention The Stupid, to grasp the "moment of stupid". Why? Well, because from a 'quest for originality' standpoint, everyone seems to be going for "the clever", don't they? Do you see what I mean? No one will expect anyone going for The Stupid. It is kind of like 'The Producers' logic. Ha ha. Ha?

But, no, more ... well, a little more... seriously: The Stupid is the cause of so much suffering. There is a thing I remember reading about islanders in the Southwest Pacific, they share their dreams, and discuss their dreams. If one of them has a nightmare, he/she is encouraged to confront the monsters in their dreams, and to try to bargain with them or defeat them and cause them to give them a present.

There are other primitive cultures that regard all of life as a Dream, of course, and we compose The Dream as we move through it. So, listen:

Isn't The Stupid like a monster in our Dream?

We need to catch The Stupid and bargain with it, I think.

or is that Stupid?

A glimmer of a direction, this is it.

2011-03-02T10:54:00.001-05:00

Sometimes one might think oneself creative in the act of creating something, othertimes, one might be creative without thinking about it. I think we would recognize the former as being somehow 'disingenuous/insincere' when compared to the latter, but maybe the latter is less 'cerebral/intelligent' when compared to the former.

First world artists who incorporate the 'naive' art of tribal or more ancient/exotic cultures into their work are sythesists, [edit] NO! synCRETists, a sort of creativity. I am thinking that some examples show us that if they grasp the right exotic culture at the right moment in history and inject it into our awareness with the proper influence, they resonate with the larger collective consciousness.

Picasso is an obvious and successful example of this, incorporating African motifs into his work at the turn of the 20th century, when the perception of the first world mainstream had a nascent awareness of the existence of Africans as actual people, and maybe more important as a people and culture that imaged various aspects of the human reality that were neatly kept in cupboards and only hinted at by the predominant European culture: overt imagery dealing with fertility, sensuality and passion.

So the African/tribal idol/mask imagesthat Picasso conveyed into the larger global cultural consciousness were like "active pharmaceutical ingredients" in his art, and the medium-- paints, colors, palette, subject material-- were like "excipients", the flavored syrup, the gel capsule.

Something of a belief, but also something for which there is clinical evidence, is that underneath it all, there is a shared commonality between every culture/people comprised of humans, who in turn have "realized" a synthesis in order to operate.

The Synthesis is one of perception and physical reality. You perceive and know that there are mechanics involved in perception which are ruled by physical realities. We perceive physical realities through these mechanics, and believe that we can perceive the workings of these mechanics, despite their involvement in our perceiving of them, through scientific endeavor. This belief seems reasonable enough, I do not challenge this belief but merely state it is a belief. Repeated application of scientific methodologies has yielded results that support it which is why we believe it.

So as we apply our perceptions to the understanding of reality, we exercise reality, dwell in reality, and alter reality. How cautious should we be in this, how bold? We are very bold, really. We slap things together and cause noise and light and heat and sparks. On a personal level, our perceptions of pain, fear or discomfort might indicate that we are being too bold, but we often ignore or surpress these perceptions in pursuit of a higher understanding or fulfilling experience. We tell stories, we make them up and tell them, insinuating these into other's memories. We make noises, making them up because it is interesting or amusing to us.

Today I read about someone who takes a foreign instrument with an unusually tuned scale (to our ears) and incorporates this with more usual Western instruments. This is interesting, an interesting synthesis/formula.
Is it smart? It takes some smarts to research these things, to know of them, to know their values and mechanisms and methods.

Do you have to be smart to be creative?

No. Because being smart is a thinking thing, and we stated earlier that you can be creative without thinking about it. So...

so...
so what if rather than trying to be smart, we forgo being smart when trying to be creative. we be simple. we be stupid. Stupid.

What if.. what if we Place Ourselves in the moment of Stupidity. The locking oneself out of the house. The forgetting of one's car keys. The losing a glove, a sock. The forgetting the words to a song, or the name of a person in front of one's face. The moments one dreads, then laughs about later. The times one is roundly ridiculed for, derided for, scorned and vilified for.

This is a universal human commonality. These are universal human commonalities, the Simple, the Stupid. The unwitting, the senseless-yet-it-is-there, it happens. Horrible horrible things happen, life changing, reality altering things happen, due to The Stupid. Great things, clear things, happy things happen, due to The Simple: "It all happened because of one simple thing...".

I had an experience I will tell you about. Long ago, when I lived on my own, for a brief time I lived in a shared house, essentially renting a room. There was a boy who was a relative of the woman who owned the house, he was 10-12 or so and he emotionally/mentally challenged, and he would come there from time to time. He was very mentally disorganized and wild, had to be badgered into behaving controllably. He didn't really speak, she could understand what he would indicate and he would listen to what she said, but it was like the connections were very brief. He would race up the stairs, and down the stairs, but seemed kind of antsy like he was doing something wrong no matter what he was doing, sort of a pure energy kind of being.

One day something happened outside after he got home from school and some kids were mean to him or something, and he was upset and the lady was upset (she was either his mom or his aunt, it wasn't clear). She told him to come and sit on the couch, watch TV, which I happened to be doing just before I had to go to work-- I worked in the afternoon then.

He sat down next to me on the couch. I think I said something to him, "Hi, how are you?" or something. He kind of leaned against me there and then kind of took hold of my arm, like he was scared or sad, and he leaned his face against my arm. Truth be told, he was normally a kind of irritating presence, all that wild energy, but I felt sorry for him and so I thought I should say some reassuring sorts of things to calm him down.

So he was holding my arm with both his hands, and kind of resting his mouth on my forearm while I was watching TV. I had to get up to go to work, so I started to move.

He dug his fingernails into my arm. I looked down at his face, and he was looking up at me with a look of sheer malevolence on his face. I was really taken aback, it was like the whites of his eyes were red. I looked into his eyes and there was no connection, he was just locked into this hateful face mode, and he was not going to let go of my arm, and he was looking at me like he wanted to kill me.

So here I thought I was consoling a little scared kid, but instead there was this daemonic creature locked onto my arm, and now *I* was scared.

I tried to pry him loose, using not just a little bit of strength, no luck. He kind of made a growling sound, as if to say "No way, this is my arm. I found it".

Finally, I called for his aunt/mom, "He won't let go!". She snapped some orders at him and he came out of it, running over to her and then up the stairs in his furtive manner.

Now that I think about it, he was probably treated very poorly, maybe even horribly abused. He was utterly stupid, and simple, but he existed and he was human, and for that brief time he was more powerful than I, so smart and complex.

Points of view, what to do...

2011-02-12T23:21:00.004-05:00

I wrote some lyrics tonight that I will put into a song.

There is a song that I heard literally decades ago on a jukebox in Philadelphia. This song was released on an indie label and never got distributed other than in the Philadelphia area, I think. It was more or less 'snuck' onto the jukebox. But I found a recording of it on youtube, it is a great song. It is not a genre of music that I like, the way it is done here, the original was more straight rock-- but the lyrics, and the melody are really good. So the more purely acoustic treatment it gets in this video is different than I recall it being on the record, but here it is: Suzi Said So.

It has a great chorus, but it seems to me that it comes too late into the song and only occurs once, so it doesn't "hook" they way it would if it were structured more along "The Manual" pop lines. But the lyrics are great, of youthful longing and loss and missed opportunities and fond memories, they paint such a picture for me.

The performer/artist is Kenn Kweder, and he used to perform during the mid-seventies early 80s in the Philadelphia area, when the rock singer-songwriter era was in full swing, and when Springsteen was emerging as a phenomenon. He played with a band and was billed as "Kenn Kweder and The Secret Kidds" and I saw him with that band there at a place called The Bijou. He seemed to be able to really sync up with the moods and minds of the crowd, but he also seemed either high, or manic, or having some kind of mystical vision while he was performing. It was very wild, but a great experience.

Everyone was really elistist and snotty about music then, where punks were demanding everyone be so authentic and the rock fans squared off against the plastic disco glitz that was threatening to de-Dylanize all of music, and to convert the generation that questioned authority into shallow robots. But the production style in rock and outside of rock was more and more lush and really creative and so much demand for all kinds of music. Basically, everybody's attitude was really shitty, and you simply could not make any kind of decent recording without a recording studio.

It was all big big big business much more than now and there was no way you could make any kind of record without having some backing money, and so if you wanted to be weird and put yourself on a pedestal and not put the hooks in your songs where they should be then you would not end up on the record shelves.

edit: An article from a 2002 Philadelphia Inquirer, on Kenn's official website

Thoughts about pain, pain relief, and life

2011-02-11T14:30:00.000-05:00

I recollecting this from a decades old reading experience, so forgive the lack of details. One of the first books in Larry Niven's sci-fi Ringworld series described a spaceship crash into the Ringworld "universe" and the effect the crash had on its occupants.

One of the space travelers was a sort of rich elitist Paris Hilton type character who, in the fictional far-off future, had led a life where she never experienced any significant physical pain.

The crash landing had left her with a sprained ankle, and to the character the experience of this pain was profoundly shocking-- as the story sets the scene, the cushy far-future robot-protected, near-programmatically perfect life of this character was so well insulated that it precluded any event that could result in physical injury.

So during unfolding of the story that followed, the pain of a sprained ankle in and of itself was something of a challenge for this character, but the realization that life could even contain events that could result in such debilitating pain was a life-altering, shaking revelation for this character.

Now, in real present-day life, we of course experience some kind of pain on a daily basis. A sprained ankle can be a significantly painful event: not ordinary pain, but it doesn't provide any life-altering realizations. It is more of an "oh, shit" event. "Oh, shit" because you recognize that, for at least a little while, you're going to have to deal with this pain and maybe even have to adjust your plans around whatever temporary inconvenience the treatment for it presents, but at the same time life will go on and you'll be expected to keep up.

But it is interesting how the same sort of painful event can effect different people. Sometimes, something painful happens to someone and they start to tell you about this, and you might be moved to say "Oh, come on, suck it up: it is not that bad" and other times you are moved to sympathy because of the severity of the event.

What is interesting is that medicine can provide an amazing amount of pain relief. We routinely undergo operations where anesthesia renders all kinds of awful invasive wounding to go completely unfelt. We may be injured in some sort of really bad accident, and the body's own reactions cause the pain to be diminished, and then whatever emergency medicines cause the pain to mostly go away altogether.

But the pain that is most problematic is the pain that goes along with just being alive and generally active, where various stuff happens that makes you hurt to the point where you are not exactly yourself anymore.

For example, I have some problems with back pain due to some lumbar discs that were deformed because of a long ago car wreck. I have some additional problems with my back due to muscle spasms that have occurred off an on throughout my life, since I was 12. Then not too long ago, I mention somewhere in this blog, I broke my femur just below the hip.

So I have pain and stiffness on a daily basis due to these individual issues and due to their combination. I have to think a little before I stand up after sitting for a while, and I have to roll over in bed in a careful manner, to avoid stretching out my back musles in a way that will cause them to spaz.

Now, if you dont' have any back issues, are "normal" in that regard, and if my conditions were somehow magically transplanted into you while you slept, you'd probably wake up being pretty uncomfortable. Like the character in the story, you'd all of a sudden have these new life challenges that would make you uneasy about everything you do, something happening that never happened before-- you didn't get a chance to adapt to them over time, like I have.

You might go to your doctor and say "I woke up and all kinds of things were wrong with me, I hurt a lot". Among other things, like getting an MRI or an x-ray, your doctor might prescribe some pain medicine for you to "get back to normal" and that would be good, and it would probably help.

We have various remedies for pain in our society. At the same time, we also have penalties for "being a wimp", for complaining about those pains that are considered "part of life". We also have ways of expressing or identifying ourselves as "pain tolerant anti-wimps": tattoos, piercings, tough fashions and hard attitudes.

I think it is fair to say that the amount of pain that you consider as "part of life" defines the social class you identify with in a big way. When you are injured and you go to the hospital, you may be asked to rate the pain you're experiencing on a scale that is completely subjective, where the lowest is "no pain at all" and the highest is "the worst pain you've ever felt". But I'd have to say that a lot of people, including myself, would be hard pressed to remember a time when they felt "no pain at all" in their natural state. I am always experiencing some pain, but it is at a level where (I believe, anyway) that it does not affect me unduly.

One of the reasons I'm thinking and writing about this is because of the news stories about medical marijuana, the people that go through what they do in order to become eligible for treatment with it, and also thinking about the issues with pain treatment in general and the situations a person who is dealing with pain deals with.

If you hurt, and someone asks you to do something, you are slower to respond. You are not slower to respond because of how you feel about them or because of what you are being asked to do, but because of how you feel. If you are being treated for pain, there can be the perception on the part of those around you that you are somehow being "coddled".

So, the combination of seeming to be less willing to "pitch in" or seeming to be somehow less fully engaged combined with the perception that you are getting some kind of special treatment can be continually damning for the person in pain. They are using their physical discomfort as "an excuse". They are self-absorbed or self-centered.

For you, my pain is suspect, an inconvenience. But for you, your pain is meaningful and to some extent debilitating.

Now, if someone is using medical marijuana as a pain treatment, then they have all of that perception working against them plus whatever stigma goes with the dubious application of an otherwise illegal substance towards their pain relief. And of course I'm sure there are unscrupulous people who get with unscrupulous doctors in order to get a recommendation for medical marijuana, and they are more or less malingering and they probably think they are somehow getting away with something.

But isn't the "payoff" of success, of the achievement in social class standing, a reduced presence of pain? If you have achieved material wealth, you have ready access to the best medical care, you have comfortable living conditions, you have ample time to rest and relax. Is there some sort of class envy of people who get pain relief, that they are somehow cutting ahead in the line of life before they'd suffered sufficiently?

Who decides how much suffering is "part of life"? Some people seem to think if you are not sufficiently unhappy and in some sort of pain for some portion of your day, you are not entitled to the relaxation and freedom from pain that you get later on in the day, or over the weekend. For these people, it doesn't so much have to do with what you produce or acheive, but more to do with what you've put up with.

Do we need to worry about how much freedom from pain is too much?

One thing is for sure, it gets to be a pretty stupid argument. If someone's pain relief isn't hurting themselves or someone else, what is the problem? I think if you are experiencing enough pain to where you need strong medication to deal with it, you are pretty well sidelined. You are not going to be able to drive, you are not going to be able to do a lot of things. That is not a situation to seek out, to strive for.

being thankful again

2011-02-01T23:02:00.000-05:00

I have a lot to be thankful for. It sometimes gets a little hard to remember that, the winter cold cold wet cold doesn't mix well with things having to get done. You can do things that you have to do, and still feel good about everything, and you can have winter cold cold wet cold and still feel good about everything, but the two together are maybe fairly unpleasant.

But it is not as cold as it could be, nor as wet as it could be, and the things needing to get done aren't as bad, boring or menial as they could be, so that is something to be good for.

An online acquaintance passes...

2011-01-24T14:15:00.002-05:00

Recently, an online music community that I'm a part of suddenly lost one of our own, Martin Brown, from Toronto. He was one of these people on a music discussion forum, that always had something reasonable or interesting to say, a good sense of humor-- just someone you never minded reading their posts.

He was 39 when he died, on top of that, while his mother was preparing for the funeral, she passed away suddenly as well.

In response, a group of us formed an ad hoc collective, Quietman, and put together a tribute album. People from all over the world contributed and collaborated in different ways-- for example, I provided lyrics and melody to a reggae track by a fellow in Jamaica.

All proceeds go to his wife and three kids-- we have a lawyer handling the escrow fund. Please go to the links below and listen, and if you like it -any of it- please buy it. Thanks!
a link
another
and another

geez what twaddle blather... how about some more electronic music blather

2011-01-19T00:11:00.000-05:00

I use a notebook to make electronic music, as I think was a stated early goal it was to have a lightweight portable studio that would give a good quality sound with generally good production quality while permitting live performance and improvisation.

Things move so fast, they really do. My latest notebook is going on 4 yrs old, this is old indeed. I am still on Vista, this is not so good. But my system works well enough for me also... really, my oldest system, with older OS and DAW software works well also.

At any rate, the best music tech thing to have started to become more widely used is Soundcloud. It is a convenient and easy way to share compositions, a bssic account is free, and a more elaborate account is inexpensive.

Well, it is late and I am getting tired.

music and perception and communication

2011-01-17T13:11:00.000-05:00

I have been reading Boing Boing more regularly, it has always been a fun/interesting blog with a great deal of variety and activity.

The way things tie together, and untie, then re-tie is something that you observe throughout life. For example...

Like a lot of people I work in a cube office by day. I sit in a comfortable chair in a well-illuminated and clean workspace, that gets some natural light as well, in a mostly quiet setting. While the various Dilbert-esaue commentary on cube dwellers is abundant, and often on the mark, I am by and large very grateful for the conditions and employement therein.

The office is "mostly quiet", because there is the ventilation system that runs, the soft clicking of keyboard keys, and the sound of traffic with occasional sirens going past the window on the street three stories down. There are various machines and things humming, also, that seem to make for a high-frequency 'wash' over the whole thing.

Unless it is artifically introduced, there is very little "musical" noise in this environment-- no regular rhythms and very little harmonic noise. It is mostly white/pink noise.

Which makes the other noises once I get out of the office seem very rich in musical content sometimes. Even the sound of a compressor running seems musical, and there are pleasing harmonics in the most unusual things.

To try to point out these sounds and perceptions to someone else would be an fairly intensive effort: for one reason, just by talking you'd be disrupting the audio environment. For another, not everyone will hear it the same way.

If there are purposes for music other than the overt ones like entertainment value and expression, I think one less obvious is to provide a frame of reference for sounds. You can say "it sounded like a trumpet" and people know what you mean.

One thing I've wondered about is if a theoretical person grew up hearing instruments that are nothing like traditional instruments, what they might say to complete "this thing sounded like...". "This thing sounded like the instrument in the melody on [song title]" maybe. But if you hadn't heard the song, you would not have the referent, and so there would be no communication.

Also, instruments communicate things through their inflections in a subtle way. There is often a very easy connection to be made between an instrumental line and a series of implied words and/or emotions. These implications are not based the context of how they are used in songs, but how they instrinsically evoke certain feelings.

It is very easy to make electronic music that is theoretically very musical but devoid of these interesting inflections. It is also possible to add a great deal of inflection, using formant filters and such, but there seems to be a correlation between the 'fluidity' or 'connectedness' of a phrase in a way that it hints at language. Because of this, a "live" instrument or voice in an electronic piece can add a great deal.

It is that "hint at language" in a series of sounds that I think captures the ear and is pleasing.

I feel like I have to say something about the guy that shot those people

2011-01-14T23:23:00.003-05:00

President Obama had some wonderful words to say in Tucson, Arizona after the shooting incident there, about the people who were killed and injured, and the people who helped subdue the attacker and tend to the wounded. It was a very amazing talk.

There are lots of things one thinks and feels when something like this happens. You of course wonder why someone does this. I was a young man who was alienated, distrustful and skeptical, not particularly popular, feeling isolated and misunderstood, having no strong sense of purpose or determined and well-motivated direction. It is probably the case that a lot of young men feel this way.

But to be so out of sync, misaligned, self-absorbed, narcissistic... not sure what to call it... as to think that something like this is any kind of course of action... it is just overly bizarre.

One of the strangest things is how they have gotten pictures of this guy throughout his school years, year after year, looking like any normal middle-class suburban kid who had no idea he was going to grow up to go to prison and look like Uncle Fester.

You get very wrapped up in yourself as you come out of being a teenager, when you are that age it is actually pretty disturbing, you see yourself metamorphosing into an adult, and you have no control over that and it is nothing like what you thought you'd be. And this happens to everyone. It is difficult, not sure how that can be made easier.

It is disheartening, don't want to talk about it anymore.

...eh, I'll just say this: it is never as bad as it seems, and there are parts that are very beautiful. This was a very bad post, sorry, just more babble.

civilization and being human and being animal

2011-01-14T01:37:00.000-05:00

I'm thinking that the quality of a civilization is evaluated by the one experiencing the civilization.

However, from civilization to civilization, peopla in the ruling classes of the various civilizations tended to experience the best that the civilization had to offer, and so we might say that if in civilization "A" the people in a 'lesser' class that is not the ruling class experience somethihg better than the ruling class of civilization "B", then civilization "A" is better. So it is significant "progress", when people who are considered less important in the scheme of a civilization are better off than even the most important people in the civilization before them.

There are questions, I guess, about how much is enough. For example, we are concerned with all kinds of interactions between what has to happen to make the "stuff" we have and the environment. This sort of thought was never an issue when the places that ended up being Superfund sites were used to make stuff. Our ignorance was bliss indeed in those times.

But now "having it better" still means having it faster, brighter, more complex, louder, broader, slicker, cooler and more stimulating but also cleaner and less harmful to the environment. This is good, it broadens the scope of "better", raises the bar.

There is also living longer. Living longer, getting older, living more of your life as an old person. "Old" has to do with animalness more than humanness: for female animals, if you are old enough to reproduce this makes you an adult and if you are too old to reproduce you are old indeed.

This is not the case in the realm of humans-- being able to reproduce can occur well before being what civilization considers an adult. But, male or female you are considered "older" if you are as old as a female who is of the age where females are in menopause. This is typically considered to be "in their forties" but of course it can be later.

A few current civilizations recognize that the male will able to reproduce throughout his life, and make allowances for multiple, concurrent wives so the male can have more children. That is less typical among modern civilizations, and even in those where it is an option it can be hindered by the expense and the complexity of it.

One of the reasons I'm thinking about this is because as a male, getting older, it seems apparent that older males have more going for them than when they were younger. Better off financially, less inclined to reckless behavior, more informed through study and experience, more independent and self-sustaining-- all of this and still able to reproduce Measured by civilization's standards, then, it would seem that the older male is more valuable.

But the signals that civilization gives off are just the opposite. Younger, reckless, ill-informed men (and women) are all the rage.

Isn't that kind of interesting? You see all these nature shows where animals generally prefer to mate with the males that have proved their worth to the herd/pack/pride whatever.

It seems like that makes sense, that the proven specimens are those whose traits you want to preserve in the species for the continued improvement thereof. But we are informed quite differently by our civilization, to the point where I'd be puzzled and a bit disturbed if a younger, attractive woman would prefer me to some poor, dumb guy that resembles one of the various famous Justins.

Now is this because we manipulate the messages, the signals, that civilization produces? The advertisements, the music, the movies and TV, all of that, that conditions us towards our preferences in mates? If it is, then why is that message being sent?

I'm not saying that alpha specimens should have perpetually fertile harems in some sort of eugenic utopia-- although that certainly seemed to be the goal of several prior civilizations.

I'm also a romantic at heart, and don't have a problem that the message is clearly that we should "mix it up" and never feel constrained to the road more travelled.

Would it be better if the male were to be mated until his children reach self-sufficiency, and then having proven that his offspring can advance to that stage, he finds another younger mate and repeats the process? Theoretically speaking, of course, because I think it's pretty clear that males don't mate in order to have children. But then that means more older males competing with younger males for the same women, which raises societal tension. So it is probably good that males aren't wired that way. Males have children because of societal indicators and pressures, not because they think it is the greatest idea ever and they feel they just have to.

And then there is that. Lots of people never mate, lots of people mate but never have children and they are fine with that. Some people have children and have to give them away. Some people can't have children even if they want to. More and more people are mating and having as few children as possible.

I think that is all ok, but also a little worried about the people who are having as many children as they can but are unable to feed them. It devalues children across the board, it devalues humans, and makes them more like animals.

dreams

2010-12-12T22:36:00.000-05:00

I love dreams, really vivid dreams whose imagery stays with you for years. For one, they make me feel so smart, that all of that could be produced in my head.

I have dreams about crossing a bridge. I have dreamt several times about crossing a bridge, there is always an obstacle to get across the bridge, and there is always a very really feeling of fear, urgency and anxiety about crossing the bridge.

I have gotten across the bridge a couple of times, and it is always interesting on the other side, but oddly, it also always seems like I want to get back to the side I started on.

Sometimes the bridge is frighteningly high, it goes up up up in an impossible arch, but I have to cross it. This is the scary part, that it is such a high bridge. Or, it is a very busy bridge. Or, it is a very busy and poorly marked bridge, and I have to get off at just the right exit without slowing down.

It seems like there should be a very reasonable explanation for what the bridge means, a bunch come to mind: bringing two sides together, making a transition from one thing to another, making a change-- a change that involves some difficulty and some strictures.

I really love my dreams.

tuesday night, interstellar space and dark bodies, madness

2010-11-30T23:32:00.000-05:00

Tuesday is the night that I take the garbage down to the road. Two large plastic receptacles on sturdy wheels, each mostly full of the previous seven days' detritus. The distance to the road a little less than two tenths of a mile.

While I walk in the night, without a flashlight usually, I look up at the sky. Tonight it was drizzling and overcast, nothing much to see.

So I thought about things I
read today that had to do with the sky and the stars and the sun and interstellar space and I was interested to read that most everything that had been theorized prior to 2009 was now thrown out, based on some
evidence gathered by a space probe in 2009.

The edge of the heliosphere is the furthest reach of the sun's electromagnetic solar wind. You can think of it as a kind of shell or balloon skin, because the force emanating away from the sun pushes interstellar matter away from the solar system.

Forget about the model of the solar system as a set of little balls orbiting around one big ball, and think of it as an egg, filled with the radiating, bursting energy of the big ball as well as those little balls that revolve around it, the shell of the egg is the furthest reach of the energy. You can read the article, but the point is that at first they thought the egg was like a comet, with stuff trailing behind it as the sun races along it's course around the galactic center.

But that isn't the case. It is looking more like it is not only not a comet, but not necessarily an egg. It might be "bumpy", like an osage orange. And it is also not "even"-- there is a bright band of energized atoms that does not correspond with a plane that runs through the sun's equator.

The sun rotates once every 27 days. It is like a big washing machine agitator, the way the ripples of solar wind come out of it along its equator. Most of the planets' orbits are on that equatorial plane, more or less. So, if there was a bright band of energetic atoms on the outside of the "shell" you might expect that it would run along the plane of the sun's equator, but that is not the case. Instead it seems to be along the plane of some extra-solar force, maybe from along the plane of the galatic center.

Maybe it corresponds to the orbit of some most distant companion to the Sun which has been proposed: Jupiter-esque, giant, dark body that may be the troublemaker that nudges objects from the Oort cloud (which is outside the heliosphere) down into the Solar System's interior. As this companion travels along it's lonely, distant orbit at the very boundary of the sun's influence, it mixes the interstellar material with that of the heliosphere, causing this bright band in it's path and moving bits of stuff from the Oort cloud.

If this were the case, it would seem that there would be a particularly energetic spot in the bright band right around the vicinity of the companion, and that energetic spot would move in an orbit around the most distant sun. I see such a spot on this map, it is reddish, in the lower left-- but not sure if it moves along the supposed path:

But at the very least there is an extrasolar force that interacts with, and effects, the heliosphere, and that heliosphere is organized and bubble-like. That extrasolar force may be the Oort 'nudger', or it may be the postulated dark companion.

'genres', and making some of the music of the type i like

2010-11-30T00:54:00.000-05:00

My plan is to put together an album of what I'm calling "nu-fusion".

Some of my favorite music was played long ago by Return To Forever, Stanley Clarke, Weather Report, Michael Urbaniak, called "jazz fusion", where it was thought of as being a cross between rock and jazz, or at least jazz and some other genre. Much of this music featured technical excellence and dazzling solos along with odd time signatures.

Now, other long ago music I liked was by Utopia, King Crimson, Frank Zappa, Brand X, UK, Heldon. These also often featured more technical virtuosity/solos along with odd time signatures.

Since then, hip hop has emerged as the dominant mainstream influsnce-- it is difficult to find any popular song without some hip hop influence evident in the rhythm/drums.

So what I am calling nu-fusion has an element of technical virtuosity, odd time signatures, effects/electronics along with modern hip-hop influence.

I think my music thus far has been touching on all of these things but not integrating all of them, and so my next disc release will aim to integrate all of them. I plan to use the same 'formed stochastic' approach that I use to play live, where I've got a framework that I flesh out and modify as the performance goes on. Some tracks will be very long, some might be as short as songs you'd typically hear on top 40 radio. The tracks will be built up, and then performed over with live instruments and/or vocals, so I will be able to perform them live along with the computer-based portions.

Things heard on the radio

2010-09-16T14:39:00.000-04:00

When I listen to the radio, I listen mostly to talk radio. Listening to music, I listen to music mainly on the internet.

I like talk radio that is funny, sports talk (if it is funny) also news and commentary (usually not particularly funny).

Listening to NPR, I heard that 15% of the population of the United States lives below the poverty line.

That is a little more than 46 million people. Or, about a million more people than live in Spain, and some thousands less than live in Ukraine. It is many millions more than live in all of Canada.

I have lived below the poverty line, and it is very much like living in a different country. While you are not legally restricted from doing some of the same things as other people in your country do regularly, you are economically restricted from doing some of the same things that other people in your country do regularly, and then legally restricted from some of the things that other people in other countries do regularly.

For example, in the United States you cannot really live in shelter unless you already own it, or you pay somebody for it, or if you commit a crime and are imprisoned.

If you built a shack of discarded materials and tried to live like someone in a third world country, if you did not own the land you built it on you would be hauled away to jail.

But, my larger point is that the people who live under the poverty line in the US are really like the population of a different country-- you experience the country differently, and things that other people in the country take for granted are not available to you.

I think one of the things I remember most about being poor is having to stand in lines.

When you have money, when you have options, if the line for something is too long, it's like "Aeh, forget this" and you go elsewhere-- your time is valuable and you have multiple, preferable ways to spend it. Conversely, if you really want something you stand in line for it.

If you are poor, there are lines you must stand in whether you want to or not, because you need to. To collect some kind of government benefits, to board public transportation, to obtain medical care. If you are really poor (and I was thankfully not ever this utterly poor) you are standing in a soup line.

When the streets are crowded, it can be a long line, a long line you are walking through slowly to get to the next line to stand in.

True, once you have money and can even afford a car, you can wait in traffic, which is painful, and you burn fuel. But it is more comfortable, a rich man's wait.

It is telling that when people become rich and famous that the first thing they want to do is to never wait in lines. A private jet available at one's whim, the VIP entrance, jumped ahead in lines... this is the pinnacle of achievement, and of course these people live in a different country to some extent as well.

When the government wants to demonstrate how powerful they are, it seems like one way the choose to do this is to make all people, regardless of economic status, wait in a line.

"Yeah, well: get in line." is the response when you voice a widely shared opinion that needs some action but has gotten none.

When find yourself poor, and standing in line, and look around at the other people who are standing in line with you, it is can be a very stark experience. You will see some very poor people indeed, and you are among them, and get a strong sense of the actual country you live in.

OK! OK! OK? You want the future here it is...

2010-08-14T02:16:00.000-04:00

The two greatest threats to humanity are:

1) Overpopulation

and

2) "Faux" Religious Extremism

Here is why:

The plant is a limited space. Even if there are mechanisms for finding energy and wealth despite the current paradigm, space is limited. No amount of free energy and materiel will zatresult in a large scale off-planet colonization effort, we are just too far away from everything else.

Now, if a few chosen escape to other worlds, that is different, but I am referring to the majority, because if the majority perishes that is failure.

Secondly, re: 'faux' extremism. This refers to the fervent emphasis of select portions of whatever religious teachings while ignoring other aspects of the same teachings. There is some appeal to this direction in various quarters, but because the inconsistent emphasis is, well, inconsistent, it is imcomplete. Being imcomplete, it is imperfect. Being imperfect it is invalid. This should be clear.

But there are observed cases where the two potentiate one another, and this is dangerous.

everybody else is doing it, so I should too: Things I Hate!

2010-08-14T01:05:00.000-04:00

I am normally not a hater. But, there are some things I just hate.

For example, I have a Verizon wireless broadband connection. Yes, I am one of those idiots that pays for limited broadband. I do not live in a place where wi-fi is ubiquitous, and cable ... well, that is the next thing.

So I connect my USB wireless device, and start the application that is used to configure it. The application indicates "two bars" of signal, which is not bad. Then, I connect to the network.

The bars drop to zero.

I fucking hate that. Seriously, what the fuck?

Today, I get a call about my credit cards. This company wants to lower my interest rates. Ok, so I will listen to their pitch. What is the name of the company, I ask? This woman who is calling does not tell me. OK, so now they start to ask for information about my credit cards. Seriously, what the fuck? I tell them, truthfully, that I plan on paying off all my credit cards and never using them again, because they change shit without telling you. They change your limit, they change your rates. Fuck them, seriously what the fuck? They are only for things that are neccessary from here on out, fuck them.

She hangs up on me. So, fuck her and her fucking nameless company.

Poisonous creatures...

2010-07-14T23:54:00.000-04:00

I think that it is interesting that there are creatures that have developed venom. It is fairly easy to see how a plant or animal would become poisonous to eat, because the ones that had some poisonous component would get spit out before being completely consumed, and therefore could live to reproduce, whereas less toxic specimens would not. And then you could see why creatures might have more toxic secretions, that would allow them to consume and digest other creatures more easily than creatures that did not, and so they would increase their chances of survival.

But that elaborate mechanisms like scorpion tails and retractable stingers and folding fin spikes and fangs would develop for delivering the poisons, that is kind of freaky, don't you think? That spiders build webs, and then have these elaborate venom delivery devices, that is just really wildly amazing.

I realize this is all sort of sophomoric commentary, but then this is an electronic music blog, what do you expect?

Here is an industrialsurburbodarkrockcore band from here in maryland that you should have a listen to White Shadow.

My setup in the near future (?)

2010-06-14T16:23:00.000-04:00

I am currently using Vista 32-bit Home Premium because it came installed on the notebook. I did have some issues with this, that seemed to relate to the video drivers, because Ableton support gave me an options.txt entry that solved the problem, which involved pops and clicks when parts of the interface were moved around.

Here is a video of what happened prior to this fix, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MU2k0Rh_rI#t=1m45s and you'll hear some crackles fairly loudly around the 2 minute mark.

However, the optional switch fixed it completely.

At any rate, if I make a near term change it will be to upgrade to Windows 7.

Now, what about upgrading to another notebook. Let's say I would want to, although I am neither inclined nor materially positioned for such an upgrade.

I'd have to really think about that, because it seems like only really expensive notebooks are coming with firewire (IEEE 1394) and my audio/midi interfaces are firewire.

I do not know why so many notebook manufacturers have decided to forgo the firewire port, doesn't seem very smart. But anyway, I would follow my own advice here in the previous post if I were to upgrade, and avoid upgrading my notebook until solid USB 3.0 interfaces came out.

My Setup as of 06/2010

2010-06-12T21:06:00.001-04:00

I am running Windows Vista 32bit home premium on a T7200 based HP 17" notebook with 2GB of RAM and 250 GB of 7200RPM disk space.

My primary music application (DAW) is Ableton Live 8.1.3.

My audio/midi interface is a MOTU Ultralite "mkII" (I quote this because the most recent is a mk3, and it was the one before that), this is a Firewire only interface.

I have several MIDI controllers that I can use, and some of those I typically use.

The one I typically use most all the time is the MIDI Guitron http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q745GVuE9Rs shown here in very poor quality video with subtitles that I think made some people believe I was deaf. In fact, I was recording directly into the camera with inadequate impedance matching, which results in a horrible buzz if there is not any input to mask the sound, and I thought it would just be easier for people to read the words anyway. People either think it is great and say nice things, or they think it is ridiculous and ridicule me.

Then, I use a Frontier Transport. This gives me "navigational" control over Live, scrolling, scene triggering and track selection.

I also have a nanoPad, nanoKontrol, nano Key to use when i want to use something USB for a quick setup. Also, an FCB 1010, and an old MPD drumpad to use as a footswitch.

Lots of people want to know what sort of setup to buy, type of computer, interface, software, etc..

My advice is always this (and I am writing this blog post so I can link to it from now on when people ask):

The first thing you should ask is, do I ever want to play out using a computer? That includes "laptop battles", mobile DJ, etc.. If the answer is yes, then you will need a notebook or laptop. If the answer is no, then you can save a lot of money by getting a desktop. A very powerful desktop setup include an adequate video monitor can be had for the price of a less powerful notebook. Plus, if you decide you want to play out, you can get a notebook to play the productions you do on your desktop (although that is less "live improvisational computer-based electronic performance", and more on that later).

Then, they might ask "how much should I spend"? I remember reading somewhere that the closer you spend to $US 3000 for a system, the less long term value you get for the money. Three grand is a lot, especially for a notebook, and it likely means you are buying a system with the highest-end CPU available.

But the highest-end processor available is the one that will drop the furthest in purchase price with the advent of the next year's CPU offerings, so a system with a set of specs that runs you $3000 one year will run you considerably less for the same set of specs the next year.

However, if you skimp on processor, you will have problems if you are using music production tools. You want as high end a system as you can afford, without going overboard.

I've been using Ableton Live software since 2004. They come out with a new version each year that adds more new features and more creative flexibility each time. In addition, I have amassed a collection of VSTs that I have purchased, downloaded for free, and made myself that I continually consider pruning and continually convince myself it wouldn't be worth it.

Because I like to play live, during that time I have bought 2 notebook computers specifically for music, and one for visuals projection. Each time I have put together specs "one or two notches down" from the fastest processor, and gotten the fastest discs and additional RAM. Also, these are 17" notebooks for the music systems, because I like the ability to put a large number of tracks onto the screen.

Then there is "Mac or PC"? And of course the Mac is a "personal computer" but of course there has been some morphing of the terminology so now it is Mac or PC.

What I'd say is, choose the one you are most familiar and comfortable with. They both have advantages and disadvantages, and they will be more and more competitive as time goes on.

The oldest notebook now runs Live 6 perfectly (under XP), and the newest notebook runs Live 8 perfectly (Vista 32bit). If I upgrade the newest one to Windows 7, then I expect to be able to do more with the same system.

And when i say "runs perfectly", I mean this:

I am able to drop instruments and clips onto tracks, on the fly, without clicking/popping artifacts.I am able to mute/unmute and arm/disarm tracks on the fly, change patches on the fly use the midi controllers I chose, trugger clip, basically to do the things I want and to route midi with "midi yoke" add on software however I want *AS LONG AS I KEEP AN EYE ON THE CPU*

You have to keep an eye on the CPU, to make sure you are not pushing into a "lockup" scenario. Think of it as having a limited stage on which you can fit performers. Improvising on the fly with a computer is like having a limitless cast of instrumentalists that you can bring on stage, where you can magically toss a musical phrase to play to each one and they play it, and then you can modify what each one plays however you like, by changing the phrases and/or by adding more effects.

This is what I mean by "live improvisational computer-based electronic performance", you are building a track from an empty or limited set of elements, choosing rhythms, instruments and musical elements before an audience's very ears on the fly.

But there is always only so much space on the stage (or in your recording studio). So what you are buying when you spend more on CPU is more space on the stage, or more tracks on your board, and more capacity in your effects racks.

Having said all of that, there is really only so much that you can do at once. If you are looking to create soundtrack type orchestral pieces, or intricate layered rhythms and other patterns, then you need a fair number of tracks.

So I think you don't want to be "on the bleeding edge" when you buy your initial technology, but a safe step behind it. Look at the *fastest CPU* that is available on your build and buy, then look at the ones a little less racy. There is a definite "fall off" in price, a couple few hundred bucks, very often, but the difference in actual speed might be only 0.0x GHz.

The above advice is meant to be "timeless"-- as things progress, it should be as valid. However, as of this writing right now, the advent of USB 3.0 is a really big deal. Also of this writing, there are not any audio interfaces that are offering USB 3.0 speeds. But, when there are, having a USB 3.0 port will be important.

UEMA gets a new look

2010-06-11T22:14:00.001-04:00

I hardly ever refer to this blog in this blog but when I do i usually say "UEMA" because it is too much to write otherwise. This is very bad web-sensibility, because if other people start calling it UEMA then new people might start trying to go to "uema.com" which is owned by a squatter, but then if you know that it is not what I call it but that it is what it is then you are cool and they are not, so maybe that is best overall.

So, it is for you, dear reader (and the singular is probably literally accurate) that I largen the fonts and brighten the colors somewhat overall, and re-arrange some things that did not work so well. Other links to other things will be added as well in the sidebar, also.

Also, soon exciting news about a gig in a major east coast metropolitatn area will be posted. It will of course be on an "off" night in wonderfully yet nattily bohemian location.

And those are your clues.

Some music, rambling and such

2010-06-09T23:36:00.001-04:00

As noted several times, I am an awful blogger. There are very few pictures, and not too many links of interest in my posts, there are spelling errors and run on sentences and poorly articulated concepts and semi-pretentious phrasings. I read some really stupid stuff that I've written, and don't go back to change it, also.

So here is a link, http://soundcloud.com/utenzil to music i've been working on, so this post has a link.

I've been reading about a lot of things recently that kind of fit together. For example "outsider art" or "Art Brut" or "Naive Art", where people with very little or no training execute works that are considered as actual art by the people who consider those things. Then read an article about Adolf WÖLFLI http://www.adolfwoelfli.ch/ who sounds like he had a horrible life and did horrible things and went horribly insane, but created these amazing artworks.

And then I read about William S. BURROUGHS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_S._Burroughs who had a pretty good start in life but then it went horrible and he did truly horrible things and wrote stories that had horrible things in them that garnered great critical acclaim. He either squandered a perfectly good upper class existence so that he might ruin himself as a result of some psychological turmoil, or he suffered greatly having to be someone he did not value and so sought value in actions and places that were risky, bold and daring although ultimately fairly horrible and self-destructive.

Wölfli and Burroughs were very dissimilar in their upbringing. Burroughs was born into a situation where he was highly trained and educated, Wölfli was a peasant who was abused, neglected and scorned. They both became criminals. Burroughs fomented a psychological condition through self-administering illegal substances, Wölfli's psychological condition seemed to be a result of his experiences and he commited sex offenses.

Both of them end up finding their way into very difficult conditions that brought them into an inescapable state. Burroughs unintentionally shot his wife dead while playing a foolish game and managed to escape the legal/physical consequences but could not escape the psychic impacts. Wölfli was confined to a psychiatric hospital because of repeated sex offenses, and because he was violent: he could not escape the legal/physical consequences, and seemed to be composed mainly of psychic impacts.

Each of them attempted to "artist" their way out of their predicaments. Burroughs said that he had to write himself out of his situation. Wölfli seemed to think he could write himself into a new situation.

Burroughs discarded what could be considered "traditional opportunities for success". Wölfli never had any.

Both were first widely regarded as having produced work of dubious, if any, value.

Burroughs was highly educated and trained, but was a naif after his situation had become horribly disturbing. Wölfli was a naif at art but very experienced at being disturbed.

Now of course I had heard/read about Burroughs but had never heard/read about Wölfli until recently. I am very likely misusing terminology re: "naif" but the point is still that "moment of cognition" and the effect thereof on the psyche renders one childlike. The expression of the impacts of those moments ends up being a need.

Die Antwoord is very interesting i think

2010-06-08T23:29:00.005-04:00

I have been stricken by this South African rap rave project called Die Antwoord for a few reasons:

1) They use a "pc computer" to produce as indicated here.

2) They have a great sense of humor too.

3) They have done the viral internet thing very successfully.

4) They are 'putting it on' at the same time as 'being real'.

5) They are not US or Europe based, but South African, which is interesting.

6) They have that "serious not taking themselves seriously while being serious about what they are not seriously about" transcendant quality.

Because I am something of an anti-blogging blogger, I am going to summarize what I've read without really linking to cites, but you can find all this stuff by searching for Die Antwoord.

The "main character" in the project is Ninja, who is a performance artist who has been active in South African hip hop for some time whose real name of course is something else.

He has re-made himself into this image that he wants to emanate. He is intentionally vapid in that rockstar-ish way, being irritating when never really saying what his music is all about in the way that shows contempt for people who seem to feel like they are entitled to that sort of information, but it is clear that a lot of thinking and good production sense has gone into this project.

In one interview Ninja mentions the "filters" that exist between subconscious and conscious, and how the art he feels is most worthy is the art of children, madmen and criminals, because their filters are either weak or distorted in a way that allows those things that the rest of the world "filters out" to be made apparent.

I like this because it is Jungian in a way, it recognizes that creativity is something that is not controlled but "channeled" or guided out of some unseen part of us.

What I admire about this project is their success in the realization of their vision, and their use of the things around them. Their videos shot in South African sunlight, where the colors are so intense. Other people in the project, Yo-Landi Visser, who is beatiful, shrewish, angelic, demonic and... well, vuilgeboost all at once. DJ Hi-Tek, an amiable giant couch potato-esque everydude. Appearances in their visuals and videos by friends, including an unusual artist who brings an otherworldly aesthetic to their visuals.

Somehow they bring to light the "next level" surreality from this weird meld of bizarre and mundane and it is exactly what they are aiming for.

not so good things and worse things.

2010-06-04T22:29:00.003-04:00

I have an HP 17" notebook, a dv9000, which is a little less than 3 yrs old. It is my primary music notebook at this point, it is currently running Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bit. The system started running very hot one day and it froze, then it would not reboot, then the LCD display went blank.

Now, I do music and play games on this notebook-- the hard drives are nearly full with Ableton project related files and saved games the two largest consumers of disk space, followed by VSTs and video. I use the notebook continualy several hours each day, and my dwelling is not highly humidity/temperature controlled, and it has 7200 rpm drives as opposed to 5400, so it runs a little hotter.

I attached an external monitor, per some troubleshooting steps on the HP support site. The external monitor showed that the system was failing to initialize the video card, BSOD BCCode 116.

This was bad, so I engaged HP online support, they have a 24x7 chat. My interactions were good, they of course wanted me to do all the things I had tried already (boot in safe mode, install latest nVidia driver) and then some of the tedious, drawn out things that support people ask people to do as a matter of course (run a HDD test via bios, reseat the RAM). But all in all the things were reasonable and led up to finally backing up everything and sending the notebook in for repair. It was of course out of warranty, and the price to repair was low enough to be far cheaper than a new notebook of comparable capabilities but high enough to be pretty painful.

The support supervisor indicated I should back up all data and programs. I had backed up some things, but really to do it perfectly correctly would've been a nightmare of tedium, so I asked him if I could just take out the HDDs and he was amenable to that-- they would put in a test HDD to run what they needed anyway.

The turnaround was fast, I was impressed. I sent it to them on May 27, prior to the long weekend, and it was shipped back to me on June 3. They send a box and a fedex slip to send it back, with packing instructions and a form to fill out. So although it was an expensive, unexpected repair, it was done quickly and well and I was happy to see how many parts they replaced.

It is interesting that I read HP is downsizing its workforce and seems to be having some problems-- their product and services have been good to me. However, their latest comparable models, the 'newer generation' to the one I have, seem to lack Firewire ports, which are kind of useful for music and really essential for digital video.

Meanwhile, the worst thing ever seems to be unfolding before our eyes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_EJP6EtZqk

Horrible horrible stuff, the entire coast of the United States from Texas to Long Island would appear to be threatened by this. Wonder what happens when the storms blow in? The rains from those storms come up from the Gulf and into the agricultural areas of the southeast and mid-atlantic.

In the latter 20th century, the scary scenario was acid rain. It still is, and it hasn't been eliminated, but regulations controlled the causes. Now, can we expect "petro rain"?

maybe what i'm trying to say...

2010-05-09T21:39:00.004-04:00

When you listen to/read the news, things don't seem very good. Some things are very irritating, also-- because they are hard to believe. For example, a financial situation in Greece seems to have caused some freaking out in investment land. Then, or so it seems, this caused conditions in the stock market that triggered a cascade of automated stock sell-offs.

The BP oil Spill in the Gulf-- this was hard to believe, at first, that it could even happen. Then it was sort of mysterious, why such severe damage to this huge oil rig, where were the missing people and so on. Then, it took on very awful proportions, and now it is starting to come out that the reason for the explosion had to do with a pocket of methane gas and a sequence of procedures that led to the release of the gas. I was listening to NPR radio in my car when this was being discussed, and I heard a quote from an expert who said "they made a really dumb mistake, they took the weight out of the pipe before they set the seal". I didn't catch the name of that expert, but it seemed like his opinion was that the procedure that was applied was irregular. Now, what most of the news is saying at this point is that "a chemical reaction" occurred in the eement that was being used to create a seal, that in turn caused the gas to expand suddenly.

Now, I know next to nothing about this stuff, it is both interesting and frightening that people have the knowledge to draw oil up from that deep beneath the seafloor, and also understand that how methane gas at that depth can behave (freezing and so on), and also use deep sea remote controlled robots to attempt to clear away the problem, etc..

I also know that when cement sets it gets very warm, and if the methane gas was frozen and the cement got warm enough to melt it, it seems very likely a bubble would happen. But this should not be a mystery, it is very predictable.

What seems most clear is that if you are poking holes into a planet and are not sure what will come up and are also not able to control whatever comes up, then you had either be doing that in a place where it doesn't really matter what ultimately comes up and how it comes up, or you shouldn't be doing it at all.

Unfortunately for everybody, they were doing this in a place were it matters a lot, abd the government is right to insist they stop doing it until they can guarantee this can be avoided.

And in all of this, maybe what I am trying to say is that everyone ends up trusting people who are experts at what they are doing, but at the same time these experts have great difficultly explaining what happens when something goes wrong-- not because they can't, but because it is very complicated and requires signficant data and analysis thereof. The more complex things get, the more complex the explanations will get, and it also seems like the more disastrous the consequences can be.

Ok, more disasterthinkscare

2010-04-19T22:21:00.006-04:00

YU55 stayed at 1 for a while, but now is back to zero, so pretty much as expected there.

And of course this volcano, Eyjafjöll, here is my doomsday scenario based on this:

Phase One of the eruption is complete. The glacier surrounding the mountain has been largely melted away, and the ash generated as a result of the mixture of the magma and ice will have died down. However, the magma pressure continues. In Phase Two, the magma rises, it will push up further into the cone, and into any channels that may stretch away from the volcano's core, which will include channels that connect with Katla, the much larger volcano to the east, and that would be Phase Three.

This seems very likely, because 100% of all recorded Eyjafjöll eruptions have been followed by Katla eruptions.

This would be much more disruptive than Eyjafjöll, especially for Iceland in comparison, the amount of flooding from the melting of the glacier around Katla would be immense-- not that the flooding from Eyjafjöll was insignficant, but damage was controlled.

Something interesting is the eerie 'face' of the one volcano, imaged with radar satellite prior to the eruption as seen here. The one smaller eye, and the larger, the "mouth" distended, almost anguished. This is none other than the face of Baldr, at the time of Loki's ultimately most cruel joke. I wonder if Katla's radar face is Höðr, Baldr's blind brother, or is it Odin's enraged expression at the time of Baldr's murder?

I wonder if I shouldn't get to bed?

Incoming asteriod 2005 YU55

2010-03-19T11:53:00.002-04:00

There is an asteroid that has been upgraded on the Torino Scale from a 0 to a 1. This is unusual, because usually as more observations are made as an object draws closer, impact likelihood is adjusted downward. It is the case that a "1" also indicates that after it is watched a little longer, it will become a "0".

The asteroid's size has been re-estimated, 140m diameter up from 130m, which is typical when an object gets closer, you can see it better. Here is an orbit diagram, Java applet.

If it were to be on a collision course, an object this size has a high probability of surviving entry mostly intact rather than exploding in the atmosphere, and of course it depends a lot on what it is made of and how dense.

A 0 Torino Scale rating means "will never hit us" where a 1 TS reading means "very very unlikely it will hit us and as we look at it more it will most likely turn out it will never hit us". So, it should be downgraded back to 0 in the next week or so-- unless it isn't, which would be very interesting.

because it was...

2010-03-09T22:33:00.002-05:00

because they had made the world a game
it had no consequences
and because it had no consequences
it was not real
and because it was not real
it did not matter
and because it did not matter
it was of no effect
and because it was of no effect
it was harmless
and because it was harmless
it was blameless
and because it was blameless
it was nirvana
and because it was nirvana
it was transcendent
and because it was transcendent
it was surreal
and because it was surreal
it was beyond the scope of normality
and because it was beyond the scope of normality
it was abnormal
and because it was abnormal
it was out of control
and because it was out of control
it was unpredictable
and because it was unpredictable
it was without precedent
and because it was without precedent
it was unique
and because it was unique
it was singular
and because it was singular
it was one
and because it was one
it was whole
and because it was whole
it was indivisible
and because it was indivisible
it was elemental
and because it was elemental
it was basic
and because it was basic
it was a basis
and because it was a basis
it was a foundation
and because it was a foundation
it was firm
and because it was firm
it was resolute
and because it was resolute
it was final.

and so the game became real.

the formless is forming, plus i suck

2010-03-09T19:38:00.002-05:00

You are only as good as your last performance. Someone said this, I think, and if they didn't then they should have.

My last performance was not my best.

I go to places to play music on my own, it is part of my adventure. I went to Baltimore again, to play at The Depot as part of a real time collaboration experiment that may occur on a monthly basis. The collaboration part went fairly well. A live electric guitarist joined, and that added a lot, we had a nice array of beats and sounds, although it made me feel lonely for my guitar.

Then some of the individual artists took turns playing. They were good, they had some tracks well planned out but they were also trying out some new things, you could tell.

Then I played. I was using my MIDI Guitron to play, and I had dared myself to play completely improvised, and had sketched out only the barest things ahead of time-- the patches/synths I'd be using. I picked some drum beats more or less at random, and unfortunately didn't like what I had selected. So i played along with that for a bit and it was sort of.... darkcore with stupid beats.

Then I chose a little more appealing beat, something with a groove, and added some effects. This was a little better. I played along with that, but my patches were too... heavy.

So it wasn't a very good showing, I'm afraid. But the guy who had organized the event seemed ok all around, and I'm hoping it will happen again this month.

I'm going to start putting together the tracks for the next assortment. It is going to be a very measured dose, that is my first intuition.

of cabbages and kings...

2010-02-10T09:48:00.004-05:00

Now I will take the time to consider the music thing. What I started out to do (to some extent) was to be a little silly, and to also get an understanding of what kind of music production could be done on a limited budget.

Consider a band, a traditional 4-piece rock-type band, more or less modestly equipped where each musician spends something on their gear in the ballpark of $500-$1000 each depending on how much is used and how much is new. If you consider a guitar, a fairly decent one, for two of the musicians, a keyboard, and an amplifier apiece for three of the musicians, that is about right, and then a drumset in about the same price range. That doesn't include a practice PA, so $1000-$2000 for that depending on various things, new/used, how powerful etc..

So the higher end of that budget *just to get started with a band*, not premium equipment, is about $6000. Then you practice. It is fun to practice, most of the time, and that is part of the fun, but until you are able to play something that people want to hear, you have no chance of making money.

Then, when you have managed to stay together through that and are ready to play, you will most likely first need to play for free, or you will pay someone like a booking service to get you gigs, or you will pay for a venue and promote yourselves.

What tends to get you through to this point is that you are having a good time. But you also are probably working at something else to pay for all of this or you have a nice investment/trust fund income.

It is interesting, about many artists in the modern age: a lot of then don't need to worry about making money with their art. The people who populate communal art studios, the kind where you can walk around and see them painting or sculpting or designing jewelery or involved in creating other works for sale, how do they afford that space? If you sell a painting for $5000, that is really something, but how long does that pay your studio rent and pay for additional supplies? Not very long.

So what's the point? Well the point is that it seems much more fulfilling to pursue whatever art more for the betterment of it, rather than the fun of it, although there is fun in it.

Of course it is all a lot of talk until it is done, not particularly exciting talk either, but my next assortment will be the best I can put out. I've been composing and fiddling and building and exploring to that end over the last two years, and meanwhile I'm getting good responses to my first three although they are highly flawed in many respects.

So it is coming very soon.

ISS live feed, an 'anomaly'

2010-02-05T13:13:00.003-05:00

I was watching the International Space Station live video feed, available here from 1pm to 1:08pm EST.

The view is absolutely incredibly wonderful.

While watching, I heard a very low, bass guitar low, voice speaking, unintelligibly, interspersed with some beeps, possibly answered by another voice of the same type.

Then the camera went dark.

SO, they were either having stream problems, or they have encountered the outer space version of Somali pirates.

But it is a wonderfully beautiful view.

[lol] there was a view of the space station, which was live moving video, and a view of the earth, which was a still picture. They were both pretty cool, but the view of the space station external, with a Soyuz visible, was the live one.

well, I missed January...

2010-02-01T19:08:00.002-05:00

I had hoped to post at least once a month, but January flew by. Some very very bad sad things in January. Horrible earthquake in Haiti-- otherwordly horrible.

Somebody I love very much was diagnosed with cancer, years after having had an operation to rid them of the same cancer and being cancer free for the longest time.

One of our dogs died-- he was very good, a big old dog who loved my little daughter just desperately.

On the bright side,

I have been working on music, have a Soundcloud page with some new things.

There is this wonderfully talented person that I came across on the internets. I feel dumb not to have known about her before, because I love the sound of the cello, she is a successful DIY artist, and she uses Ableton Live software as well.

that which is hidden and theories

2009-12-30T03:24:00.004-05:00

When you are a child, you have fantasies, daydreams or imagined activities, even imagined possible futures, based on the limited information that you have accrued. When you are older, you still imagine and fantasize, based on a little more information, but the scope of your daydreams might be narrowed to things that seem more plausible.

As an adult you have these daydreams and fantasies to amuse yourself, to make yourself feel better. As a child, your daydreams might be more uncontrolled, broader but also more "real" (because you have less grounded information to base them on, there is less of a distinction between real and fantasy to start with) and you might even scare yourself with them.

The most effective fantasies are anisotropic: they have a direction, a vector that they follow, that leads to a satisfying resolution. If things aren't going well, you might imagine a world in which you are successful, you conquer or achieve something: you score in an athletic contest, you give a performance that is received with wild applause.

But because these are fleeting and self-generated, they are essentially a forgone conclusion. This is why stories appeal to us: a good story promises the satisfying resolution, hints that one is in the offing, but might steer away from the direct path to it, in order to heighten the tension.

So, it is fair to say that everyone who can comprehend a good story likes a good story. There are varying opinions on how good a story is, or if it is good at all, but enough desire for stories exists that a wide variety of stories of varying quality can be told.

If imagination is hidden, then, and the story is the surfacing of imagination, and we all like stories, then it stands to reason that we all share a certain hidden part.

Now, because we have the fantasies we have based on the information and experiences we have, it stands to reason that if a population has the same information and experiences that the individual members of that population might imagine similar fantasies. Conversely, when presented with a fantasy, a story, the individual members of that population would receive it similarly.

Imagination in the purest form occurs in dreams. Unlike our waking daydreams, a dream proceeds as if someone we do not know is generating the story line, so it can surprise us. People experienced in semi-wakefulness during the dream state can nudge the dream one way or the other, taking advantage of the immersive simulation being generated to inject some of the waking fantasy into it. However, it is much less likely that individuals in a similarly experienced population will share the same dream.

This is because dreams are a byproduct of the mind tagging, sorting, merging and linking experiences and so the experiences in the filing system that are not affected by the process do not come into play, and the experiences being processed have not yet been codified.

The dreams, other than outright nightmares, that I find unsettling are the ones in which I'm being judged or assessed somehow. During the dream, I am engaged in some activity that is the main subject of the dream, and it is pleasant enough, but there is someone else weighing the value of the activity in the background. I cannot account for this, because of course everyone in the dream is me, and I am the only person having the dream.

So I think that sensation of being judged or graded is my own 'notes to myself' being processed. We do not go through our daily activities without considering how we might improve these, and it is not always the case that the activities are so consuming that they cannot leave room for some self critique. So these experiences are internal and self-generated, paradoxically in the dream state they seem like they are coming from an external source (which they are, from the point of view of the primordial dream processor, they are 'metadata' that was generated earlier by the waking self). That is one theory anyway.

Now my other theory, which is the theory I started to introduce truth be told, is the theory about the movie and television fiction industry. So if everyone has a similar experience but cannot generate the best fantasies to suit themselves, it stands to reason that the movie/tv story industry strives to serve as their fantasy processor. And, because there is no line between dream and fantasy when the artifact is being generated externally, the movie/tv story industry also serves as the dream processor.

That is, the movie/tv story industry is akin to the unconscious. It works on a separate thread, observes and records information that we are unaware of, and then presents it having a cast of characters and a direction.

Then, if the movie/tv story industry (I say 'story' to separate the factual or documentary aspects) is akin to the unconscious, are there also the same kind of 'clues' we might find in a dream as to what the future holds for the population having the "dream"?

history and philosophy and art and Slovenia

2009-12-29T19:38:00.006-05:00

First, I had been reading about the NSK state
NSK State,
which is an art collective that was formed in Ljubljana in the 1980s, in what was then Yugoslavia and now Slovenia.

I was reading this because of the music of Laibach, which is an electronic/industrial band that has a very unique aesthetic.

In a nutshell, it is a movement that takes taking itself seriously very seriously, but which does not really seem to take what it is taking seriously about itself as seriously as what it does seem to be seriously about. They have chronicled their own rise with a movie entitled "Predictions of Fire".

More tangibly, they have taken up the historic thread of aesthetics cast off by totalitarian regimes and infused this into the presentation of their work,
and to me it projects the future as clearly as the early avant garde modernist art of the 1900s. The images they invoke mjust have
immediate visceral connection with people in central and eastern europe, but also globally. They are also wryly commercialistic,their webshop banner's dynamic text proclaims things like "WE ARE THE INCOME OF YESTERDAY" and "WE KILL TO SURVIVE.
WE SHOP TO STAY ALIVE".

On one hand NSK is a humanist movement in its spirit, and they recognize and most importantly are unafraid to recognize the part that the essence of traditional nationalism plays in human culture. Everybody loves their country. On the other hand, they seem to be having a good time assembling their aesthetic from the utility drawer of discarded "state-oriented-art", and Laibach recycles a lot of their own work, so they do not write material at the pace of a flash-in-the-pan pop band, instead refining and re-releasing their works.

A possibly disturbing aspect of NSK, and Laibach, is that they seem anti-American. "The End of History" is a phrase associated with America in Laibach's work. The basis for this is healthy, however. In order to maintain a clear objectivity, all symbols of state supremacy have to be scrutinized for aesthetic durability as well as what they attempt to obscure with their symbolism.

As purveyor of one of the most ascendant set of state symbols, America's oeuvre must be held up to the light, candled in order to ascertain the true shape of the embryo within. Paraphrasing from the film, "the triumph of capitalism over communism does not mean that capitalism will endure endlessly. This is because capitalism's 'active ingredient' is greed, and greed's characteristicis to destroy itself once it is sated".

In addition, a fascist state is a "corporate state", where ruled by a board of directors whose authority is complete. US corporations and the USA are at times indistinguishable, much to the delight of (and profit for) the corporations.

So anyone from a country as small as Slovenia is rightfully skeptical and even a bit afraid of the US.

Slovenia. It seems like an unlikely place to unravel the unraveling that has occurred in the past three decades. But it is actually one of the most logical places to do so. Here is a place, as the film mentions, where " the border between East and West has crossedfive times". From the perspective of this place, Slovenia, the minor fracas that was the disintegration of Yugloslavia to us in America.
But, regarding the Balkans, as it says in the film "when Europe falls out of balance, it is visible here before anywhere else".

The NSK info also provided pointers to Slavoj Žižek who is a philosopher and researcher whose theories springboard from Lacanian psychoanalysis and a bit of "old fashioned Marxism" by his own reckoning. In still photos, he looks happy and scholarly. In video,his audio aside, he is intense and somewhat manic, constantly fidgeting and gesturing. Then, with the audio, he is all of that plus a Slovenian accent with a squishy "ssss". He sometimes seems to be peering into some other-dimensional cabinet or bookcase for erudite concepts, and other times seems to be frantically but eloquently explaining his way out of a misdemeanor.

I doubt that Slavoj Žižek could not have been born and raised in America and achieved the same scholarly worldview. He would have been taunted mercilessly in high school and become a disaffected gambler or something.

In the US, we tend to see continental Europe as France, Germany, Spain and Italy, with some smaller derivatives of themselves in-between. Oh, and maybe Greece.

Then if we are asked to strain ourselves and include a countries from Central and Eastern Europe, we might come up with Poland, Czech... something, Romania? Bulgaria? maybe. Ukraine? possibly, but that is pretty advanced.

Slovenia? Is that a country? It is hiding, not quite Eastern Europe, and not quite Western Europe. Or, both.

At any rate, I guarantee that if you take a look at the NSK video series, and any of the YouTube videos featuring Slavoj Žižek, you will learn a lot in just a couple of hours.

A Brief Biography of Every "Community" site

2009-12-26T18:41:00.002-05:00

There was a time around the turn of the century when something very auspicious, but mostly unnoticed and insidious, started to happen.

Websites with applications on them started to be referred to as "platforms".

Not platforms in the sense of a combination of computer machinery and operating system (as the term had been used more typically until that time) but in the sense of a website that was running some applications.

And now people refer to things like Twitter as a "platform", like it is a mostly stable base to build things on, when in fact it is a website running some applications, as the whale-being-borne-by-birdies notice reminds us.

Facebook is also a "platform" now, MySpace is also a "platform", which at this point is mostly known for being too slow and being surpassed by Facebook.

Facebook became popular for reasons not very clear, but mainly (of course) because Buzz was Generated. Now there are many more people on Facebook than there are in the United States... well, many more unique IDs, anyway.

Facebook, like MySpace for the most part, is a way that you can fill in more forms that populate a website application that displays the information you provide in a genericized format. The forms are sometimes straightforward, and sometimes not. The "edit this thing" link is a way to pull up more forms. What "this thing" might be is not necessarily clear until you begin to edit it, and partway through editing it what does become clear is that there will be many more "things" to edit until you have the page that you sort of want. "Sort of want", because it will always be displayed the way that the website application... excuse me, "platform" wants it to look. Because of course the platform is a place where advertisers can put ads, that is what it is a platform for.

Because Facebook is the type of web application that accepts information about people, it is a "community" platform. Now, the actual mechanics of the application is that it accepts data that describes objects, so if the data accepted was about vegetables, it would be a "garden" platform, I guess.

So, in a community platform you edit a bunch of things and then are able to submit that information to the platform's seach system, which generally sucks, so that people can sort of find you, if they know some of the information that you entered into the platform.

More in the context of this blog, if they know that you are an electronic musician, and then enter in the search terms "electronic musician" there is a good chance that you will be among the results they are looking for, somewhere in the pages and pages of results, that is.

But that is not the concern of the providers of the platform. Their concern is that advertising gets displayed while people use their applications. In fact, if there is one key aspect of Facebook that works in its favor it is that unless you actually know some of the information about the people you are looking for, you are unlikely to find them. They want people looking for things that are like a description to find zillions of them, to prove that they are in there, but you won't actually find anything (any one, that is) unless you are describing a very particular thing.

So, here is the biography of every community site:

ACT ONE: it builds a dataset containing snippets of information about the people who join the site and enter data into the site's applications, essentially a directory. If you belong to the directory, you can link yourself to other people in the directory (basically, when you link them that way, you add them to your data along with your other data). Many many people join it, looking for various things. The creators of the platform have all kinds of data to provide to advertisers (aggregated, de-personalized) so they can target advertisements. The members of the directory are able to find people they may not have been able to find otherwise, or they may be people that they see everyday.

ACT TWO: More and more people join, the platform creators have no real clue why. They try to add some features to make the platform more appealing. These features meet with mixed reviews. EVERY feature will meet with mixed reviews, because there is a vast cross section of people in the directory so OF COURSE that will happen. Also, the platform creators have lots of money, or opportunities to borrow lots of money, so they start spending money on things they believe are cool but which may never bear real fruit. The platform starts to sprawl, with features this way and that. Somewhere, elsewhere, there is someone building another platform, with The Features that People Really Like. It begins to Generate Buzz.

ACT THREE: The community platform begins to react more slowly, many of the people who have connected have exchanged email addresses and tend to contact one another more directly. Others get bored, and find other ways to share 14 second videos of themselves doing stupid things. Community members who joined to promote a service or band or product realize that keeping their wall and discussion groups seemingly active is a lot of work, and that the lack of an active wall or discussion groups is a way for new people who visit to ascertain, at a glance, that they are failing. The people who built the applications built them hastily, in a way that will require more technical work to occur in order to keep them running just as they are, let alone the cool features. The young people who generated buzz start to generate buzz that the platform is passe', to the point where participating in the platform indicates one is behind the times. The site stagnates, it becomes another brand of platform that is supported by advertising. The advertising either supports the operation of the platform, or it does not, and the platform either folds or is bought by a company that will operate it at a loss for tax purposes

ups and downs, nows and thens...

2009-12-21T12:33:00.004-05:00

There are times when I get excited about things and they make me happy and get me motivated, and then they let me down.

I have a feeling this happens more often, to more people, now that so many people are participating in so many things online. What happens is the new site or new online community that seems appealing and fun, and then various aspects of it let you down and you realize that it is just a front for some advertising scheme. It starts to run slower, the features are lacking, then it gets dull.

The digital age is an exciting thing in general, and it would be great if it could actually work. I mean, to be able to sit at home creating one's digital artifacts, upload them to market and be paid handsomely, this is what so many people want to be able to do.

But the only thing that really seems to be making money on the internet is advertising. The actual price for it goes up and down, of course, but it always seems to be able to make some money.

In other words, there are various sites here and there that act as online shops for digital wares which have varying degrees of success or failure. But *everywhere* there are sites providing advertising, and no matter what kind of site. If you can advertise on it you can make some money, but most people cannot make enough. It doesn't really matter *what* site you provide, as long as it draws some traffic you can advertise on it, and if it draws a lot of traffic you can make good money advertising on it.

The original internet was intended for the exchange of information by introverted geeks who didn't want to actually go places to meet people. Yes, I know that there is more detailed and accurate history, but that is the bottom line. There are still pockets of resentment for the whole commercialization of the internet, and to be sure I do not inhabit any of those, but the whole spirit of clever people putting things out for the whole world to share has its roots in that original idea.

Then, huge media interests tied their giant wagons to these clever people, sensing the next big thing and a way to make a killing.

Making a Killing was the name of the game. Just like in the music industry, or in professional sports, the people who want to Make a Killing have come up with means to analyze offerings and get an idea of how much they are worth bothering with-- how many hits they can produce, how well they will play for how long-- and then provided money to gain some control and secure some return. Or, in some cases, purchase them altogether, hoping to bind and harness the creative output to their own financial advantage.

So that begat a formula, a whole life cycle: a group focuses on a clever and innovative idea, they get it to the point of being able to demonstrate it on the internet, and then they hope to be bought out by some corporate interest that will, in turn, "brand" the whole thing and support it for mass consumption.

That is, to take the clever innovative idea and turn it into just another product.

The people who came up with the Formula for Making a Killing on the internet were hailed as geniuses, or at least promoted themselves as such to the point where it was accepted that they were. They were able to make it happen, you see. These clever, innovative ideas were commonplace, but to Generate Buzz and Monetize these things Effectively, that is what had to happen in order to make a killing.

So a lot of effort became focused on being able to Generate Buzz in order to Make a Killing.

As a result, to get back to the original theme, once something is Buzzed Up to the point where it can Make a Killing, it doesn't necessarily need to work well, or completely live up to its hype. People get excited because of the Buzz, they come and see and sign up or whatever. Then, they get discouraged, for any number of reasons.

But, at that point, someone has already Made a Killing, so it is not so important that people are discouraged. The people with the original clever and innovative idea will struggle with it to make it work, to live up to the hype, and they become discouraged but they have been committed to Those who have Generated Buzz.

An additional irony is that, because new clever and innovative ideas often depend on other creative and innovative ideas for their inner workings, there is a series of things that don't work quite as well as they have been Buzzed Up to be.

Maybe it will help if I became more cynical, so as to not become excited by something that seems clever and innovative. But that is no fun, either. Mainly what becomes instantly exciting is when someone does something on the internet that makes you think "hey, that is the sort of thing I would do in that realm, which isn't my main realm so I would never do it, but it is cool and I'd like to use it".

But it tends to fall short at first, and maybe at always. So, pursuing fun and excitement in the digital realm is something of an emotional roller coaster.

record labels and the "real" music biz...

2009-12-01T16:44:00.006-05:00

This is a very good article that describes the some of the mechanics that are involved in a record contract.

The interesting thing about this article, which I came across from a mention here, is that it made it easy to see what a record label does and how a label can actually make money if it is successful.

There are thousands of CDs in a mainstream-type music store from hundreds of artists that you will never buy. If you take a moment to consider it from the store's point of view, it is often the case that the slots on the shelf contain product that does not move. But it gets rotated out to somewhere and it is not like it physically spoils, so as long as enough of it sells it's ok.

From the record label's point of view, there are two kinds of musical artists: those that are 'recouped', and those that are not. That is, those whose output has more than paid for the cost of the promoting and publishing work that the label does, and those whose output has not.

There are two kinds of problems for the record label: 1) the kinds of problems when they don't have enough recouped output, and 2) when they have too much.

The first problem is the one we think that most labels currently have: too much cost and not enough hits. Solution, concentrate on established acts.

The second problem doesn't seem like a problem, all the artists are recouped by big hits. But it can be a problem because when your investment is small but your return is huge, you end up owing a lot of taxes. So you introduce some additional overhead into the mix, and you pay less taxes.

So, from the label perspective, the artists like the one who posted this article are really just "ballast". That they get upset when they get cut loose is irritating to the label.

last.fm has gone wonky on ol' Utenzil

2009-11-29T00:02:00.002-05:00

So Last FM is a pretty nice music site for independent artists. You can stream whole tracks, picking and choosing from tracks from an artist's catalog. When you enter "Utenzil" into the search widget on the first page, before you even press enter it pops up all of the albums as suggested results.

But, if you do press enter, you get nothing. Then, if you go to the third album, "Dog's Dinner", you get some compilation of bands ?? They have made a mistake. Poor Utenzil has been misrepresented, as well as the groups on the compilation. Waaah. And they were doing so well.

back to a more musical vein

2009-11-25T21:21:00.002-05:00

There are so many things that you can do with Ableton Live. It is truly engrossing. Drum Racks, their virtual drumkit framework, for example, and slicing loops to midi.

If you have a beat that you like and you can tap it out on a table or a coffee can or congas or tupperware or what have you, record it to a clip in Live.

Then apply the 'slice to midi' function to the clip (look this up in the manual if you want details, just describing the process here).

It slices out the transients and plugs the samples into a drum rack, quantizing the transients to midi notes and plugging those into a midi clip.

Then, the bomp you did in the middle of the tupperware for the kick, you can replace with a real kick, wherever it appears in the rack. The 'slap' you did for the snare replace with a real snare, and the 'tap' for the hi hat with a real hi hat, etc.

To add a bassline, route the midi from the drum clip into an adjacent midi track and drop in a bass instrument plug. Transpose it down if you need with a pitch plug. Drop in a scale plug and turn off the notes you don't want to hear. If you want to vary the length of the notes, drop in a note length plug, and use an envelope in a dummy clip to mix up the note lengths.

For some rhythm/harmony type overlay, duplicate the bass track, replace the bass with a pad or keys type plug, transpose up an octave or two or three, adjust the note length clip to play longer notes, and then drop in a chords plug in there somewhere, maybe in front of the scale plug.

Finally, drop a rack that mixes up the rhythm of the drums a little, it might contain Live Cut or dblue Glitch or Beat Repeat or something similar.

Then sit back and listen to it play, adjust here and there.

Pain, being in

2009-11-24T20:53:00.002-05:00

I have some level of constant pain, and have had for about half of my life so far. It has been worse lately-- now, I am not complaining about so much as noting its effect, because I think most people are in the same situation.

Since I broke my leg, it hurts off and on throughout the day. My back is messed up because I have some extruded lumbar discs, and also am prone to lower back muscle tears and spasms, so it is rare that I don't have some sort of pain from my back.

The soles of my feet tend to hurt. This is because I was near a lightning strike, and it ran up through the ground and up my legs. It was a very unusual, highly unpleasant experience. It wasn't particularly scary, because it was impossible to know what was going on as it was going on, but it was very disturbing afterwards. I may have posted about here somewhere in this blog but i can't find it.

I broke my toe a while back, also, and it is stiff.

So these are the more prominent discomforts, they are a little more noticable in the colder weather. But I've had these for a long time now.

All these things cause one to make nearly unconscious accounting for them. You hesitate a little more before moving, plan your steps a little more, you think ahead when you are walking through a store because if a cart comes out from an aisle, it hurts if you have to turn to avoid it. I think about how this sort of discomfort has to affect professional athletes, because these mental allowances as well as the sensation of pain itself is draining.

And no way am I in as much pain as a lot of people are, so again I'm not complaining but I'm noting that if you think that most people are in pain, then it helps to cut them some consideration when they are not seeming to act or move they way you'd like.

because of the Pain drain.

wondering about things I know nothing about...

2009-11-13T23:51:00.003-05:00

Neutrinos. They started out supposedly massless, but then it was decided they have mass. What if sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't? Also, if they didn't have mass, they would travel at the speed of light. What if sometimes they did, and sometimes they didn't?

It is important to wonder about things you know nothing about, because it allows you to believe you may be clever while you are finding out about them.

yowee, just when the cosmos seemed all safe..

2009-10-27T22:48:00.002-04:00

...something like this happens.

Now, it is kind of interesting how little we heard about this. This waggish headline follows up a little more.

But, in short, a 30 foot or so meteor entered Earth's atmosphere over Indonesia and exploded with the force of a little more than two Nagasaki bombs some thousands of feet up. What's more, "...assuming an estimated size of 5-10 meters, we would expect a fireball event of this magnitude every 2 to 12 years on average...".

REeeaally? More or less random detonations of nuclear weapon proportions every 2-12 years or so? This the first we've heard of this. Maybe a little more interesting is that meteors of this size would not connect with the ground unless they are 25 meters(80 feet or so) across or bigger. And, in that case, some major damage could occur.

Now, even more interestinger, there was no advance indication that this was going to happen. While it is the case that many objects of relatively small diameters are catalogued and more are being discovered all the time, this is no means all of them. And 'relatively small' meaning less than one kilometer estimated diameter, but the majority of those being discovered are larger than the one that blew up over Indonesia, which makes sense because they are bigger, and therefore easier to see.

Many more have been discovered recently, the most ever, and this is because they are looking harder, with better technology-- it is true.

But even so, they missed that one over Indonesia. They would need more telescopes, more money to build them, to catch more.

One 80 footer could wreak havoc.

The speed of light is constant, right?

2009-10-25T22:39:00.002-04:00

I read this article and found it interesting. I do not understand all of it, but I get the gist of it.

The gist of it is, a new paper has been written that proposes that gravity seems to have worked differently 8-10 billion years ago.

Gravity from a mass is known to affect space and time around it, to "pull" on it, and this is demonstrated by the effect of "gravity lensing". The larger the mass, the more its gravity might affect light passing near it, this is called gravity lensing. Non-visible objects with great mass are sometimes discovered through the observation of this lensing effect.

This effect is defined in the Relativistic framework as an effect on space and time. The effect was regarded as being equally 'active' on both: each would be 'molded' by gravity in equal measure.

But this new study indicates that, for at least a small portion of deep space, that gravity seems to have had a greater distortive effect on time than space 8-10 billion years ago, three times as strong an effect on time compared to its effect on space.

This would seem to mean that light traveling through a gravitational field that is 8-10 billion light years away would be travelling at a different distance/t than 'local light' does, because "t" would be different-- significantly different-- and distance would be different but not proportionally different when compared to local light.

Light is supposed to travel 186,000 miles per second, per second. But if gravity is messing about with the base values of 'miles' and 'seconds' with different 'pressures' applied to each, then that is very interesting.

Now, it seems like if light gets bent, and slowed down, but it shouldn't, then there is where it should of gone however fast in the absence of gravity as well as where it actually did go. And stuff moves around, so the light may be affected or not.

So what is 'there' where it should have gone if it wasn't affected? Well, dark-- light cannot go there, because while there is space for it there is no time for it.

Gravity distorting time at a different rate than it bends space is a really interesting thing to think about.

I will not say what I will be doing...

2009-10-20T23:11:00.003-04:00

so I will do some more music, another collection released, I think. Don't worry, it will be self-absorbed and self-indulgent, fairly strange, both intricately contrived and sloppily thrown together-- in short, exactly the sort of insignificant musical offering that you've come to expect from Utenzil.

But bigger.

That's all I'm going to say.

one other thing and back to music stuff..

2009-10-20T22:44:00.002-04:00

I said before that the solar system orbits the Pleiades, to be clear what I was describing was the 'theory' of the whole 2012 thing.

But the real thing to maybe take away from all this is the enormity of so much around us in the universe. Someone who knows about astronomy and answers questions for laymen has a good description of our galactic location, the galactic plane and the Earth's relationship thereto.

But it is agreed that the Solar System "bobs up and down" in relation to the galactic plane, and that the Earth revolves around the Sun at an angle (60 degrees) relative to the galactic plane. And there are still double-domed labcoat wearers that hold out hope for an apolcalypze, although 2012 isn't circled on their calendars.

at any rate, it's all on wikipedia...

2009-10-03T22:52:00.006-04:00

So what is maybe most useful about all of this 2012 stuff is how it causes one to learn more about the celestial neighborhood.

When I was a kid there was 9 planets, now there are 8 and three dwarf planets, Pluto, Haumea and Makemake. Oh wait, there is also Eris, four dwarf planets.

Space was "a vacuum". There were mysterious "cosmic rays".

But now. the space that the Solar System is in isa Bubble that is still pretty vacuum-ish, but has some hydrogen atoms floating around in it, even less hydrogen atoms than the surrounding Cloud. So we are in a bubble in a cloud. Surprisingly, the cloud has a lot of energy in it, but we are protected from contact with the cloud by the Solar Wind and we are protected from the Solar Wind by our Magnetosphere.

So we are in a 'bubble' that is sparsely filled with interstellar gas as opposed to the surrounding 'cloud' (which is a good thing, because that gas gives off energy) and further protected from any impinging gas by the solar wind which in turn we are protected from by the magnetosphere. The Local Bubble is courtesy of a star that went nova, leaving a kind of 3D 'crater' in the surrounding cloud of interstellar matter.

Now, something interesting about the Local Bubble is that it is thought to be narrower along the galactic plane. The reason this is interesting is because we are so far from the center of the galaxy that effect of the supermassive black hole at it's center is regarded as nearly negligible. Yet, it seems to mold the shape of the vast superbubble that surrounds the solar system.

So, as we approach the galactic plane, our surrounding celestial neighborhood will be subjected to different forces than elsewhere above or below that plane.

Something I am curious about in this context is the thing that hit Jupiter a little while back. Now, to be sure, scientists know there is a Kuiper Belt, full of Kuiper Belt Objects, and the Kuiper Belt is a 'stablized' collection of the kind of objects that are found in the Scattered Disc where most periodic comets are thought to come from at this point. Whereas scientists theorize that there is an Oort Cloud that other comets might come from, or not, and there is an "inner Oort Cloud" or Hills Cloud.

But my point (if I have one, which clearly I may not) is that there is a whole crapload of stuff floating around in the space around our Solar System, some of it definitely real, some of it theoretically real, which will come under the influence of a different kind of force along the galactic plane. The 'crapload' will come under such influence, because of what seems to be generally accepted thought that the Local Bubble is influenced by whatever force along the galactic plane.

The more firmly established celestial bodies will not be as influenced by this force because of all the protective energies surrounding them. But if there is a floating field of less stable trans-Neptunian and further detritus, it seems like it may be more influenced. Now, it doesn't mean that it will be influenced to Hollywood epic proportions, but it seems like it would be influenced to some extent.

Now, the interesting thing, the 'funny' thing, is that if that scattered collection was influenced to Hollywood epic proportions, where little misshapen iceballs started to squeeze into line along the galactic equator in such a way that some significant portion thereof bumped into each other causing their headlong descent into the Sun-- and Earth's orbit around it-- that knowledge along with a little less than $US 2.00 would get you a large boutique-ish coffee of any number of various brands to sip as the resulting cataclysm tore the world as we know it asunder.

What you might have an idea of, then, is when to purchase that coffee.

Could the Maya, knowing that their distant descendants would be in a rich coffee growing region, have established their calendar and impressively aligned architectural legacy which would cast various shadows during this alignment, and have been leaving such a message?

We can only wonder.

2012 stuff, gamma rays this time

2009-09-26T23:29:00.003-04:00

Earlier I wrote about various 2012 doomsday scenarios, which involved some sort of space rock/comet/interstellar flotsam/Planet X hitting the Earth and causing a Hollywood style near extinction event, and how it seems unlikely. Also, a "mysterious attractive/gravitational force" scenario where the Solar System is affected by the pull of the supermassive black hole at the Galactic Center (Sagittarius A, or Sgr. A) doesn't seem very likely because of the distance of the center: we are far more affected by closer attractors.

Now, a scenario with a little more recent and scientific evidence surrounding it has to do with gamma ray emissions from the Galactic Center. At this point in our Earth's celestial rounds, the Galactic Center is obscured by interstellar dust, and so telescopes using non-visible wavelengths are used to study it. The doomsday scenario involves the Earth being exposed to extremely powerful emissions of gamma rays coming from the Galactic Center as we move into alignment with it. These emissions, remember, unlike the visible spectrum, are not blocked by the interstellar dust and that is what allows radio telescopes and things like the Chandra telescope to "see" them. Also, gamma rays have directional characteristics (anisotropy) and so can be emitted as "beams".

So the 'end story' goes like this: the Earth and the Solar System come into the alignment with the Galactic Center's equatorial plane. The Galactic Center emits extremely high energy gamma rays (this is known to be true) particularly so along it's equator (this is not known to be true) and so the Solar System including Earth is bathed in ultra-high energy gamma rays. Gamma rays are ionizing radiation, and so can cause cellular damage.

Now, revisiting the earlier "Solar System like Saturn's rings" model, there is also this information regarding "stardust clouds" nearing the Solar System. What it indicated was that interstellar dust could affect the terrestrial climate.

Now there are some sites that put this and other information together to indicate Solar System-wide global warming, all Sol's planets getting warmer, and this being caused by some outside influence, like interstellar dust clouds or increased gamma ray emissions.

SO, now, this is maybe something. Or nothing, because while there are indications of some planets experiencing climate change, including ours, it may be temporary in some cases, and in the case of our planet, it seems like humanity's activities have a hand in it. In addition, the current Solar Maximum is due to peak in late 2011 or 2012, so there will be more solar flare/storm emissions from the Sun.

What it comes down to is if we are headed into an interstellar cloud bank, a galactic plane of increased gamma ray emissions AND the Solar Max peak in 2012, then we may be in for some issues.

So, would building a bomb shelter help? As always, it depends on the amount of food and water you can stock your bomb shelter with, and I guess how much poop your bomb shelter septic tank can hold. If you could pull a setup like Christopher Walken does here then you might be just fine. But then, if the Earth warms up to be above 130F, you likely will not.

One thing is for certain: we have no other choice than to ride along on Earth on whatever path it goes, through whatever cosmic perils.

Jung's Red Book

2009-09-23T21:45:00.002-04:00

This book will be very expensive, according to the publisher's website but I very much want to purchase a copy. Because what people write about what they think is different than what they actually think, and when someone tries to write what they actually think, and that person is regarded as one of the great thinkers, then that is very interesting.

The experiences that led Jung to theorize much of what he theorized are captured in this book, and I have found many of the various tools and terminology based on Jung's theories useful and meaningful.

A sticking point for me, though, is the 'collective unconscious'. It seems like it could exist, there are things that imply it might, but it is difficult to prove. The parallels between the Tarot and I Ching, two different divinination methods from two different cultures in two different times support the notion of a collective unconscious, for example. But nothing is really proven by that kind of strange exercise: one is not isolating hormones or psychoactive chemicals that exist naturally in the brain that are shown to lend themselves to 'storing' shared unconscious memories. But there is the similarity in 'deified personalities' that exist in different cultures that had never had contact prior to conceiving the personalities-- Loki and Coyote, for example. Many disparate human cultures have generated similar deified personalities for Earth. So it seems like there is an intuitive 'groove' or tendency in us that is shared: a cognitive 'parser' that assigns like attributes regardless of cultural overlay. But is that a collective unconscious? Maybe. It seems to be a collectively shared template.

There is kind of a problem with reading things about Jungian theories, because it takes a long time to accrue the knowledge that supports them, the people who write knowledgably about them are kind of giant blowhards. Korean shaman would become 'certified' by going through a series of initiation rites that could induce psychosis, but they aren't as articulate either, I guess. So there is good and bad in all of it.

But I do want that book.

2012 stuff...

2009-09-14T23:06:00.005-04:00

I hardly know anything about astronomy or astrophysics. But like a lot of people I like to imagine what awful calamity the universe has in store for us, and the whole 2012 "galactic alignment" thing has me imagining things which are fun to imagine but have no idea how true they might be.

So the whole alignment thing is that the Sun, and hence the Solar System, revolves around the Pleiades, which are that tiny little bundle of stars way straight up mostly in the same place all the time.

A theory is that the Pleiades are the remnants of a galaxy that once collided with our current Milky Way, and although it has been consumed, momentum causes the Solar System to revolve around it. So the Solar System revolves around the Pleiades like the rim of a wagon wheel around the axle.

The Solar System and the Pleiades, in turn, revolve around the supermassive center of the Milky Way. But the Solar System revolves around the Pleiades along a plane somewhat perpendicular to the plane of the galactic equator.

This Pleiades-centric revolution causes the track of the Solar System relative to the center of the Mikly Way to "bob" up and down, above and below the plane.

So if the Milky Way is a wagon wheel spinning on its side, the Solar System/Pleiades arrangement is like a little wagon wheel spinning around a spoke-- that is, with a spoke emanating from the galactic center as its axle-- about three quarters of the way away from the center. And of course the Earth revolves around the Sun, which is similarly on a spoke of the wheel that has its center in the Pleiades, but the Sun's equator is mostly parallel with the plane of the Pleiades. And of course none of the wheels are neccessarily perfectly round, but elliptical and some more than others, and even then not always perfectly elliptical.

All of this revolving happens very slowly, even though the speeds are very high the distances to complete a revolution are vast, and all of the parts of the pieces of the galactic region we are in stay more or less together in relation to one another. So, again, if the galaxy is ideally a flat disk, then we are sometimes below, sometimes above, that disk. In addition, as the Earth rotates, its axis remains at a constant angle ot the sun, but it is like a smootly spinning top which leans as it spins. As a result, we, on its surface, over centuries see changes in the positions of constellations.

And of course this galactic disk it is not ideally flat, it is kind of fuzzy, but mostly disk like, so there is the idea of an imaginary line that is the exact 'equator' of the galaxy, that we are either above or below as this assemblage revolves around the galactic center.

At any rate, there is this notion that on Dec 21 or 23, 2012, we will be right on that galactic disk's equator, and the winter solstice will align with the equator of the galaxy. And, depending on what you read, that already happened in 1998, but the Mayan calendar recycles on 12/21/2012 so that is more woo-woo. And, again, the fluffy nature of the galaxy makes it hard to tell exactly where that equator is, but the belief is that the Maya, who had clearer skies, I guess, used the crossing thereof to set their calendar start.

The conventional wisdom is that this means nothing: the equator of the galaxy has been traversed before, and it will be again, it is a momentum thing and so there.

The unconventional wisdom is that there is a 'focus' of gravitational force at the equator, and when we hit it all kinds of things will happen.

If you think of the supermassive collapsed stars at the center of the galaxy to be like Saturn, and the galaxy is its "rings", then the rings arrange themselves on that thin line around the equator of the planet. There is a point closer to the planet where there are no rings, and presumably the ring material fell into the planet. Also, there is a point outside of the rings where Saturn's pull does not arrange things into rings.

And of course it does seem like orbiting things tend to arrange themselves around the equator of the thing they are orbiting.

So if we are descending to the "horizontal center" of the disk, then things might be orbiting there around the larger galactic center that we are unaware of, as if we are passing through Saturn's rings. But what will that be made of? Mostly it would be gas, it seems, if there is anything. That "interstellar dust" that looks so lovely in Hubble photos. Or, some of the same types of flotsam that the Oort Cloud is made out of. And even if it is "concentrated" along that plane, in this case the "Saturn" is millions of light years away, so the sorts of things that would remain under the galactic center's influence and not have been swept away by some other group of nearer stars would be meagre, so even a concentration would be sparse. Even though the supermassive galactic center is huge, they say, it won't have that great an effect on the Oort Cloud so far out-- not as great an effect as nearby stars who we are already familiar with.

But if we encounter a "membrane" of the same sort of stuff that that Oort Cloud is made out of, it seems reasonable to consider that that thin layer stuff might perturb the Oort Cloud and cause some things to fall towards the Sun. In which case some many years later we might see them as comets. But not neccessarily on that same day in 2012.

The Oort Cloud is far, far out from the edge of the Solar System. If the Solar System is the nucleus of a bubble, then the Oort Cloud is the skin of the bubble, geometrically speaking. But it is not a continuous membrane, it is made up of particles. So if there is a flat but sparser layer of the same sort of "granular bubble skin" at the galactic equator, then we can imagine it will have some effect on the Oort Cloud. So as the bubble descends through that layer, the layer will tend to maintain its position for some time, and then fall under the influence of the Sun's gravitational pull, and other body's pulls, which may result in their "accretion" into the Oort Cloud, or accretion into the other attacting bodies. The bodies with the most mass will exert the strongest attraction. But this is all based on the surmise that there is a layer of stuff that the Earth will pass thru at the galactic equator, and that the layer is not so sparsely populated that it would actually matter-- both of which are surmises based on the notion that *something* has to happen on 12/21/2012 because that's when the Mayan calendar flips over to a new "long count" era and it is all just so... cosmic; like.

Also, given all the above in our hypothesis, some things in the Oort Cloud and the layer being penetrated might get knocked loose. But, nowadays anyway, things have a lot of trouble actually colliding with one another in this celestial region. Instead they are dragged along by something else's gravity, until something bigger drags them another way. But if our "Oort Cloud Skinned Bubble" is descending through a less dense layer of some of the same kind of skin, some bits of the skin will be drawn away by the leading edge of the "bubble", and bits of that skin will remain more or less in place by the time our Solar System at the nucleus of the bubble passes through that skin. So there may be a chance for new things to come under the influence of the Sun, and some chance for things to hit us.

Now, to mention another woo-woo theory, there may be some mysterious force that emanates from the galactic center that we do not know about-- some kind of hyper gravity-lensing that occurs at the equator of the galaxy. We see that other galaxies seem to have not one disc, but two, stacked like pancakes, but with horizontal space in between them. Why is that space there? Because some mysterious force clears that area around their galactic center's equator: it is a matter-free zone. And we are descending from the upper disc towards that equator. But again there is no proof of this, it is speculation based on a simple observation.

So if that is true in our galaxy. we may hit that zone, and it sucks the whole Solar System down a little further towards the galactic center, before our momentum around the Pleiades brings us out down below the galactic equator. So we still revolve around the Pleiades, in a manner roughly perpendicular to the galactic equator, but that "wheel" is turned slightly to the side by the massive, mysterious force. (Also the roughly perpendicular thing is just to help visualize all of this, it is more like a 45 degree angle-- there are good youtube animations that illustrate this well but they are all hard selling the woo-woo theories so I hesitate to link to them).

Even then, not a lot happens, because the current mechanics that hold the Earth around the Sun and all the other pieces are still intact. The proximate forces are the ones that are most powerful, and those continue to maintain their effects.

Now, what if for some reason there are all sorts of star and planet pieces, like Saturn's rings, spinning around that galactic center, and we're headed smack dab for em? Bigger chunks, not 'grains'.

It seems to be really hard to find things that are willing to get tangled up in the Solar System and slam into us. Lord knows they try. Here is a list of some of those things that are already known about. The ones with an "LD" of less than one are coming closer to us than the moon is on average. The one coming closest, soonest, is Apophis. But that isn't until 2029. It is coming nine hundredths of a lunar distance close, which is a little less than 35000 kilometers, which is a little less than 22,000 miles. That's about a hundred times further away from the Earth than the ISS orbits.

But, maybe some pieces will break off of Apophis and we'll see some stuff worthy of Hollywood movie effects. Or maybe NASA's math is wrong, and it slams into us!

At any rate, though, it looks like 2012 isn't going to be apocalyptic so far. Even if the "descending into granulated bubble skin" theory is correct, it seems like we should expect to see the discovery of a whole bunch of new comet/asteroid type things increase dramatically, so the chances of something hitting us become "less astronomical", but still, well... astronomical.

OK, so here's the next thing but not much...

2009-09-01T19:58:00.002-04:00

From the previous posts you can get an idea of how the divination systems work irrespective of cultural assignation.

A fellow named Terence McKenna put together an interesting comptuer program based on the I Ching where it essentially generated a waveform that was supposed to represent all of the moments in history up to the end. I think the idea is that he permuted the changes over and over and arrived at an interesting graphic representation of 'novelty' over time because some hexagrams are energetic and others are reticent, more energy would mean more new things happening. He used entheogens for some of his research, and because of that, and because a lot of it just sounds loopy, he wasn't taken too seriously. Not that he should be, but not that he shouldn't be either.

He ended up with the end (or all new things at once, as he indicates) happening in 2012. This was well before the whole Mayan calendar thing became widely known, so that is kind of interesting. But maybe it just happened that he hit MAXINT and so there was no valid return at that point in his program.

But because the interpretation, not just the value, of the I Ching hexagram is part of the system, there is something left out of a purely programmatic approach.

almost forgot, did that looper demo video

2009-08-29T00:48:00.001-04:00

Here is the video that demonstrates Live's looper.

so a little more on I Ching and Tarot

2009-08-25T23:08:00.006-04:00

So let's consider the Major Arcana. C. G. Jung wrote a preface to the Wilhelm translation of the I Ching wherein he considers the use and meaning of the oracle. He also advanced the notion of archetypes, and "suggested the existence of universal contentless forms that channel experiences and emotions, resulting in recognisable and typical patterns of behaviour with certain probable outcomes."[ref.]

That notion lends itself to a hypothesis for explaining a mechanism for the operation of the Tarot: by providing a framework for the arrangement of archetypical images, we employ their 'essences' in divination.

The Major Arcana are these [ref.] In the context of a comparison with the I Ching, it is interesting to note that many "yang" male archetypes have corresponding "yin" female counterparts. Others aren't necessarily paired, but exhibit one or the other characteristic (or both). The application of the labels is intuitive, and that is the way a lot of this works.

None (0 or 22) The Fool (yang)
1 The Magician / The Juggler (yang)
2 The High Priestess / The Popess (yin)
3 The Empress (yin)
4 The Emperor (yang)
5 The Hierophant / The Pope (yang)
6 The Lovers (both/either)
7 The Chariot (yang)
8 or 11 Justice (yin)
9 The Hermit (yang)
10 Wheel of Fortune (both/either)
11 or 8 Strength / Fortitude (yin)
12 The Hanged Man / The Traitor (yang)
13 Death (yang)
14 Temperance (yin)
15 The Devil (yang)
16 The Tower / Fire (yang)
17 The Star (yin)
18 The Moon (yin)
19 The Sun (yang)
20 Judgment / The Angel (yang)
21 The World (yin)

There are definitely clear points of intersection with the symbols from the I Ching. One reason this is interesting is because the notion of "pre-civilized/pre-dream" pre-history mentioned in the I Ching indicates less of a clear separation between subconscious and conscious. Taking the commentary "at its word" regarding the I Ching, the symbols were recorded at a time when this separation was taking place in the human consciousness.

Some of the assignations are more arbitrary. You could argue 'The Hanged Man' although a man is not capable of much action, being the recipient of a punishment and as such more 'yin' like, and to be really serious about this the precise assignation should be a keen debate among people more versed in the nuances of these essences. But what is apparent is that there is definitely correlation in that sense.

So the more obvious points of general intersection are hexagrams referring to powerful officials and priests, hexagrams referring to hermit-like wise men, hexagrams referring to Heaven, and hexagrams referring to tribulation (imprisonment, strife, chaos).

There are direct, specific intersections as well. This is very interesting, and I do not know what it means. "Enveloping/Youthful Folly" is a direct analog of "The Fool". There are some that are maybe slight stretches but seem very plausible "The World" and "The Receptive/Earth", "The Creative" and "The Sun".

Now there are 64 hexagrams and only 23 major arcana. However, the cards have different interpretations if they are inverted, so there are 46 possible interpretations.

In the I Ching, there are three dimensions: hexagrams, lines, and the interpretation. In the tarot, there are three dimensions, the card itself, the orientation of the card in the spread, and the interpretation.

In both, there is another dimension, and that is the temporal dimension inhabited by the querent (the querent is a "3D being" also of course but the dimension in question is "what time has in store" in the context of divinatory systems-- the querent has ready means to discern the tangible dimensions).

So in each case the system operates in four dimensions. Part of the exercise is to get some understanding of why these things should work, anyway. That is, what is it about them that seems intuitively to make sense?

What these divinatory systems comprise is a means for "triangulating" in time, and the mechanism that performs this is a combination of the querent's understanding of their current situation and the interpreter's 'reveal' of the meaning of the symbols that is synthesized in the querent's mind.

In the case of the I Ching, the 'interpreter' is the text describing the hexagram and lines. In the case of the Tarot, classically the interpreter may be a mystic, but may also be a text being used by the querent.

Now, the 'loosey goosey woo woo' part is how the connection is made from reading/hearing the interpretation and the application to one's situation in a way that renders the consultation meaningful to the querent. This is where the 'mystic' can play tricks, and draw out information that helps lend credibility to what their interpretation means. "The King of Pentacles refers to a dark haired man of material wealth or influence-- is there such a person in your life?" "Why yes, my Uncle Ed..." and so on.

So the readings/consultations that are meaningful are the ones that you do yourself, using texts as references to the meanings of the various symbols.

Now, this all seems like a lot of mumbo jumbo and may well be... but it is interesting to note that many famous people made significant decisions, some even that selected the course of history, based on these types of consultations. It's also interesting to note that the I Ching is ancient, but the use of Tarot cards as a means of divination and its popular perception as being that is much more recent, 18th and 19th centuries: the tarot deck was first conceived as a game.

In terms of actual use in history, and because of that some value of actual "ascribed validity", the I Ching has been more relied upon. You can think of it at the very least as a way to generate random quotes and 'scenes' to meditate on that may bring some insight. At the very best, it is advice that resonates with some inner awareness that we all have that 'knows' what is going to happen, and allows us to get a glimpse of that knowledge.

But that still doesn't explain how the interaction between the querent and the divinatory system 'works'. The cards are shuffled, the order is randomized and the cards are laid out. The coins are tossed, there is some chance that each one will come up one thing or the other and provide a number that corresponds to a line.

The 'new age' thinking is that some force emanates from the querent when the handle the cards or coins, and this 'reaches out' to the forces surrounding the divinatory system and causes it to resonate with the querent. Yeh right.

But there is something, maybe, to be said for the 'alignment' that takes place in the event of the divinatory procedure occurring in the same continuum as the querent. The divinatory system is at rest, inert, until acted upon by the querent. If the system is set to completely random values at the outset, and then manipulated into another state of 'randomness', something has happened that the querent has caused. So the outcome of the procedure is influenced by the querent. That the outcome is 'for' the querent is in the acceptance of the interpretation.

The interpretation is also multidimensional, like a 'mini dream'. This is key, because we know dreams can fortell the future based on reports of dreams doing just this. I didn't mention this previously, but it is a key portion of the exercise of understanding going on here, that dreams and the interpretations of divinatory systems are similar. But the interpretation has at least two primary parts: what the symbols classical mean, and what they mean to the querent.

Here is something crucial: we know that what we see in dreams are manifest internally-- all the pieces come from within us. Therefore, based again on reports of dreams being able to depict the future, we have that capability.

How the divinatory systems work, then, is by presenting symbols to us that activate that potential: they bridge the conscious and subconscious by presenting the 'pieces of a dream' to the dream-making machinery, which resonates with those symbols and gives us the feeling of meaningfulness, which in turn helps us make the connections.

As an aside, a fallacy that I think is important to mention: in tarot, the importance of a card does not depend only on whether a card is major or minor arcana. What also matters is where they fall in the spread, and which aspects of the meaning of the card resonate most given that position.

Also, in both these things, sometimes they seem to be very clear in the message, and sometimes not. When they are very clear and the message is bad, it can be disturbing: you can get flashes of exactly what they mean that you will reflexively repress.

ha ha at this blog...

2009-08-25T23:01:00.003-04:00

I have a friend who actually knows me actually read this blog. I said something to the effect that it is supposed to be a chronicle and so it supposed to be read from the beginning. Wondering if that was actually true anymore, I went to the beginning.

Ha ha. Ho ho. What travails! How intrepid our hero! What a blog, rather: what a littoral of broken links upon which the oily sea of obscurity halfheartedly blups it's oily waves!

yeh, there were some ok links to some pretty good stuff, but of course a lot of it moved so now there are little blank x graphics and links to dot gone 'domain for sale' pages.

Which means... which means...

I'VE OUTLASTED THE BASTEHDS! muah ha.

More on I Ching and Tarot

2009-08-09T21:51:00.002-04:00

Now, is it purely a mental exercise to consider parallels and similarities between the I Ching and Tarot? It is a mental exercise, but maybe not just that.

The commentary surrounding the I Ching is very specific regarding its origins. It goes something like this:

Prior to the time of organized society, humans did not have dreams, 'were not troubled' by dreams. Then, as the first laws came into place, the natural state of the human psyche was 'framed in'. At that point, dreams were the consequence: there were thoughts that were submerged, and so had to manifest themselves.

Around this same time, the hexagrams were somehow manifestations of a subconscious thought process that helped men invent new things, and the correlation that the commentary provides along with the inventions in question doesn't make a lot of intuitive sense, but the point is that when men contemplated the juxtaposition of two of the energies or forces indicated by the trigrams, they derived new things.

So the trigrams were regarded as a way to tie back civilized man to the pre-civilized mode of thought.

Tarot, being a more westernized form of divination, is maybe more readily understood as a collection of archetypes, as opposed to the more abstract forces of nature involved in the I Ching. But, both refer to sets of archetypes, both in a timeless sense and in a particular historical frame of reference that can be projected into a current frame if one understands the references.

Now, whether or not these things tell the future is one thing. Whether or not they lead one to believe that they represent some deeper knowledge is another, and whether or not the exercise of attempting to understand the message provided by a reading or consultation is 'useful' is yet another. That people have consulted fortune tellers since time immemorial is a fact. That people have been deceived by quacks is also a fact. That Nostradamus predictions sell stacks of tabloids is undeniable, and that there seems to be some sense of valid prophecy in what he wrote has been nagging people for centuries.

Nobody can really make sense of these things to the point where they can be as easily explained as negative charged particles and positive charged particles sticking together to form atoms.

However, that is the exercise, so if we regard Yin and Yang as opposite charges, and hexagrams indicating an imbalance of one or the other, then that the hexagrams should change to remedy that imbalance is as readily understood as electrons and protons. And that the states of imbalance should be 'catalogued' in the idiom of sets of broken or unbroken lines, or as archetypical states of being as indicated on a set of cards, so they can be applied to something as important as telling the future should not seem outrageous.

OK, so the identification and collection of certain situations, actions and types of people as referred to in both the I Ching and Tarot should make some kind of sense, what makes less sense is how the arrangement of those elements is caused to occur through the activity of the consultation or reading.

Because in each case the reading depends on randomization of the elements and then their arrangement into a framework. On one hand, the six lines and in the other in the layout of cards. So the effectiveness of the result lies either in the clever manipulation of the person doing the reading, in order to mold the received set of messages to fit the question at hand, or the willingness of the querent to do the molding themselves, or some combination of the two. The messages themselves are vague enough to fit almost any situation, so it is a matter of just making them fit.

And you either take issue with that, or are satisfied with it. This is the unknowable part: what happens if you get some kind of messages that make sense, in an unexpected way, and so you tend to pay some attention to them while remaining skeptical. It is no help that shady 'fortune tellers' who try to pry into the nature of the question or person's past will try to make that connection happen artificially.

But the point is this: when you get a message via the I Ching or Tarot that makes sense to you, it makes sense in a certain way because it is designed to, and it is designed that way because it was designed to work.

So how does it work?

On divination

2009-08-07T11:11:00.005-04:00

I recently read a book "The Man Who Loved China", which was about the eccentric Cambridge professor Joseph Needham. His major achievement was the compilation of authoritative volumes on the history of science and technology in China, many of which were remarkable as being discovered well in advance of their 'discovery' and application in Western civilization.

Early on he wondered to the effect of "Why did China remain so 'backward' technologically in spite of advanced scientific knowledge?", which is referred to as "the Needham question" and is regarded as either a valid wonderment that reveals the forces that shape a society or a vapid construct akin to asking 'why didn't so and so get famous even though they are pretty good looking?' depending on who you read.

Anyway it reminded me of the I Ching, which I used to spend a lot of time with, which reminded me about Tarot cards. There is a thing I've been wanting to do for a long time, and that is correlate the Tarot with the I Ching, and I think I might start doing that.

[edited a bit later]

There are four suits in the minor arcana, each has a particular orientation-- wands (activity, labor) cups (emotions, spiritual) pentacles (financial, material) and swords (legal, societal).

There are four possible states of the lines in the hexagram of the I Ching, yin (yielding, resting, broken line) yang (moving, creative, solid line) and yang changing to yin (movement to rest) and yin changing to yang (rest to movement).

Not to indicate that there is a direct correlation to "cups" and "broken line", this is fallacious within the construct of the Tarot reading in comparison to the I Ching consulation. But it might be said that cups and pentacles have the quality of yin (receptive, material) and that swords and wands have the quality of yang (motion, activity).

Yin is the receptive, firmament, earth, traditionally characterized female. Yang is the creative, aetherial, heaven, traditionally characterized as male. In the Tarot, Major Arcana are depicted as male or female and/or denoting action or inaction.

Another correlation between Tarot and I Ching are Tarot suits and I Ching trigrams, the components of the hexagrams. Pure Yin, three broken lines, is Mother. Pure Yang, three unbroken lines, is Father. Then the varied broken/solid line combinations are either daughter/sister and son/brother.

So could it be said that the four "suits" of the I Ching are Father, Mother, Sister, Brother? There are of course three sisters (Fire, Lake, Wind/Wood) and three brothers (Mountain, Thunder, Ocean/Abyss). That the brothers and sisters are older and younger than one another influences the has a bearing on the meaning of the trigram and also on the meaning of the hexagram that contains them.

More purely there are just two "suits" of the I Ching, Yin and Yang, where the others are varying combinations of these. But, again, if we have a correlation between the two pairs of the four suits of the Minor Arcana to Yin and Yang, we have a correlation between the Tarot suits and the hexagrams which are either more yin or more yang.

Swords, Wands == Yang == These Act, more towards One Does

Cups, Pentacles == Yin == These are Acted Upon, more towards One Has

There is a bit of a mental exercise where you have to consider that the 'gender aspects' of these things are simultaneoulsy pure and theoretical as well as societal and traditional.

Now, what I'll need to think about more is the correlation between Major Arcana and the I Ching. There are 'double trigram' hexagrams, where the a trigram is repeated, there are eight of these, corresponding to the pure archetypical power of each, and conceptually these are maybe Major. But there are many more Major Arcana than eight. It is definitely the case that the Major Arcana are for the most part either light/dark or male/female. It is also very much the case that the hexagrams of the I Ching denote an equal continuum of change, similar to the frames of a movie. You consult the oracle to find out a) which frame you are in and b) what might be in the next frame. The combination of lines forma a picture. In the Tarot, the combination of cards forms a picture of where you are and where you are going, the cards are the "lines".

Consider the Tarot Celtic cross method, containing ten cards, and the I Ching hexagram, containing six lines. The first two card positions of the Celtic Cross indicate the present (that which covers you, that which crosses you), the past (that which is beneath you, that which is behind you), the future (that which is above you, which could be; that which is before you, which is most likely) and then your 'house' (immediate surrounds), your 'town' (others options, general environment), your hopes/fears/aspirations, and the outcome.

So, six positions, Present, Present, Future, House/Environment, Mind/Hopes/Fears, and Outcome.

Outcome
Mind
House
Future
Past
Present

In the I Ching, the lines "move" from bottom to top. If there is a change in the bottom line, it often denotes something affecting the beginning of an enterprise. In a Tarot reading, the progression moves from "where you are" to "where you've been and where you are going".

Although this lines up in a certain way, I'm not sure how valid it is when considering the I Ching consultation and interpretation vs. the Tarot reading.

With the changing lines, yin->yang and yang->yin, any of the hexagrams can change into any other, and they are always doing so. It is the combination of the lines at the moment of the casting that provides the hexagram. What they are at any time and what they will become and is a mystery that cannot be ascertained without the consultation. At what rate the change will occur has to be a determination made by the querent. In a time of little energy, fewer lines are changing. In a time of much energy, more lines are changing.

The presentation of an I Ching hexagram gives the consultor something to consider given their current situation, with possible hints as to the nature of the outcome. Consider the I Ching as a three dimensional cube, with Creative at a one corner and Receptive at the diagonally opposite, where each corner of the cube is in turn marked with one of the eight "double trigram" hexagrams. If you travel from one corner point to the other on the same plane, you can change one line. If you travel from one corner point up or down, you can change two lines. I will draw a picture of this later.

That's all I have time for right now.

have to write something somewhere...

2009-08-01T10:35:00.002-04:00

I want to write something today, and wanted maybe to post it to a forum, but no not really, and not to twitter. So here I write. Now, the others have an advantage in that I know someone will actually see the post there, but it is not so important that it be seen than I write something because for some reason I need to.

There are people in the world that I "get", and people that I don't. It is not bad if I don't get somebody, it just makes me aware that there are so many different ways to be in this world.

For example: I don't get physical therapists-- maybe by "don't get" I mean I perceive that I have zero aptitude for what they do. They have to deal with people day after day and work through procedures with them and hear about their pain and do this person after person. So they have to understand that someone is experiencing pain, and they have to touch them and care for them, but at the same time they have to run the procedure because this is what will help the person get over their problem. It is a very difficult thing for me to imagine myself dealing with. I have an appreciation for what they do, absolutely, and the notion of helping someone through a difficulty is a great thing. But I just could not do it.

I get people who work in retail. I did this when I was in high school, and in college. You stand at a counter, briefly interact with a customer, provide information to some limited extent, there is a potential for a minor exchange of pleasantries, sometimes for unpleasantries but there is always that, and then you go back to your world and they theirs. I was not great at it, because I don't like interacting with people so much, but I was ok enough.

Maybe oddly, as opposed to a physical therapist, I get doctors. I think the difference is that the doctor is troubleshooting as well as running procedures, and that is more complex. So I could see myself dealing with the intellectual aspect of that in a positive way, and there are lots of different kinds of doctors with an incredible variety of things to know in great detail. The physical therapist is observing and modifying the procedure, I guess, so there is that. But I couldn't see myself dealing with so many random people in such a tactile way I think.

So I am misanthropic I guess.

Today I am going to try to do a video that demonstrates using the Looper effect in Ableton Live. There are lots of people who use Live that seem to have huge amounts of time to really delve into it, so I'm surprised no one's come up with a fairly good tutorial video. But you have to actually perform in real time to get it to happen, so it is a different kind of thing. Anyway that is my goal for today and I hope I am able to do it. I kind of dread it though, because it is a lot of work. It is not so much the taping it and doing it, it is the editing. It can be real drudgery, but if you don't do it the video can be very dull, or half assed seeming, or just not seeming like it is worthwhile information.

gravity

2009-07-17T15:46:00.003-04:00

I have a thought about gravity.

The hope is that some notion of quantum gravity will be realized, in order to reconcile classical physics with quantum physics. The Planck constant is central to quantum physics. But, the Planck constant incorporates a notion of measurement over time.

For gravity, it is always "now".

broken leg... don't know if I mentioned, and other stuff

2009-06-02T22:37:00.008-04:00

I broke my leg on the last day in January in 2009. Specifically, I broke my femur just at the hip joint, so it is a broken hip, specifically an "intertrochanteric fracture" thereof.

Intertrochanteric is Greek for "you can't believe how much this hurts, no really". If you want to really know what it means, here you go.

What it requires is that a titanium rod be run into your femur and a large-ish titanium bolt be run into the neck of your femur to hold the rod in place, and the recovery from that hurts a lot, too.

I understand why the elderly people who fall and break a hip are pretty much done for most of the time: it is a devastating injury.

It hurts enough to need some kind of pain medicine most of the time, ibuprofen seems not to work too bad at this point. I just wish it would stop hurting.

OK, more on topic: Downloading the latest version of Arkaos NuVJ software. You would know that if you followed me on Twitter which is what you are supposed to say when you are on Twitter but, like most of life, mainly it is fairly lame most of the time with the brief glimmer of info and humor and interesting stuff now and again.

I noticed that people are actually visiting this blog on purpose, and sorry not to provide more items of interest. The people who used to visit this blog on purpose quite a bit used to be Eastern Bloc comment spammers until the comment bot filter stuff got added, so I guess I really should write more stuff here.

Because of that, here is a link to an MP3 of some bouncey techno of a genre referred to as East Coast Donk:
download it here

As far as I know, I am the world's leading producer of East Coast Donk.

New videos

2009-04-25T22:28:00.007-04:00

I am doing some 'electro crchestral type' electronic stuff. I am actually improvising these orchestral-type pieces, using arps and 'note multiplier' effects to create the harmonies and moving lines-- then I match them up with video. Recently got a Stockhausen CD and it had more of an impression on me than I thought it would-- I know it's cool, maybe even passe' cool at this point, to say you've been influenced by Stockhausen, but there is a lot going on there.

Ableton Live, version 8

2009-03-30T23:33:00.003-04:00

I have been beta testing Ableton Live 8. I really like it. The features that they have added and particularly the new effects, instruments and presets are great. All the Live version from 6 forward have had a lot of "meat", a lot to learn. I can't say I've learned it all intimately, not at all. But it is amazing as you start to work with the software and learn the features, how they are all useful to something that musicians actually do.

I am kind of a sucker for Live, because it was the first DAW software that I tried out. I tried ProTools, and I see how that is: it is a good computer based recording studio. But Live seems so much more of a composition, improvisation and performance tool all in one. As they are adding features, it is becoming easier and easier to compose really complex and full music.

Orchestral softsynths are something that I'm getting fonder of, in conjunction with my MIDI Guitron controller. I think I am going to start calling it something else, but we'll see... also, I have added a Korg nanoKontrol to that, in order to have more control over dynamics per tra. My next collection of tracks will likely feature a lot of that, weird improvised orchestral stuff.

Last.fm, Utenzil tracks

2009-03-30T23:25:00.002-04:00

I listened to some of the music that has been put up for streaming on last.fm.

It sounds better than I remember it.
Listen to this.

worrisome things

2009-01-17T22:41:00.004-05:00

There are lots of things to worry about. The price of gas, I worry about that a fair amount. I have nothing to do with it other than to use it in my car- for example, I do not invest in petroleum related things directly, although I have a 401k that might. But I worry about it because every time it goes up these things happen:

1) Various experts say that it is not a big deal
2) The price of everything goes up
3) Various experts start talking about the economy going sour
4) The economy gets labelled as "being in a recession" or something to that effect.
5) It gets more expensive to do things.

So this gives you a few associated things to worry about: for example, why are various experts so full of shit? How many times does this have to happen to prove that it is a big deal? When are we going to get away from gas, anyway? And so on...

It is funny that gas that is less than two dollars a gallon is "cheap gas". When gas goes over two dollars a gallon, people worry-- I know I do. But how did it get from ninety eight cents a gallon to where it is now?

The Saudi oil minister was being interviewed on TV. He said "Saudi Arabia needs to sell oil at $55 a barrel to keep the country running". Right now, oil isn't going for anywhere near that. It is going for the same price it was when gas was, like, seventy five cents a gallon. So what is going on with that?

The other thing to worry about is what people want versus what they are actually doing. People everywhere want a better standard of living, and to know where their next meal is coming from, and to be free from oppression. Yet, where these things are the most lacking, people have more children than they can afford, they aren't able to produce enough food, and they end up with awful self-serving governments.

Something related to that is what has happened to America in the last years. I characterize like this: the 'economic powers that be' took a look a few years ahead, and saw where things were going. They made a whole bunch of money on jacked up gas prices, then they pulled a whole bunch of money out of the stock market. Now, yes, there were all of those "investment instruments" that bundled in rickety mortgages and were, in turn, it looks like the money in these was used to secure yet other things. Again, you have to wonder about the experts who managed all of that.

Now, it's not a 'conspiracy', but it is two groups of people with financial power where each group acted the same way, and there were these two ways they acted:

Group 1) operating corruptly, serving their own interests and bilking people out of money (like Madoff, that guy in Europe that committed massive fraud)

Group 2) big groups of investors acting on a very large scale, moving lots of money very quickly in order to protect it's value.

There is commentary about a "house of cards" and so on, but really, how many "bad mortgages" for what total amount of money were there? Some commentary makes it sound like the whole financial mess is due to people who bet on adjustable mortgages because they could sell their house at a high value before the rate went up. I am sure there were people who did this, and that these were some of the debts that were rolled up into these "instruments" that eventually got much better ratings than they should have. But I doubt very much that this is really the basis for what happened.

Regardless, whatever happened has had the effect of devaluing the US currency. Because a huge amount of money has been pumped into the system, making it possible for loans to occur once again from all of those bankers who have come down with terminal risk aversion. And real estate will go up again, for the simple reason that they aren't making any more and actual people need to buy homes, not as investments, but as places to dwell.

Really what people worry about is the modern cost of living. I would say that there is less of a 'keeping up with the Joneses' mentality but there is definitely an 'optimal comfort level' mentality. That is, given where one is with one's wage-earning ability, that one is able to live well enough. And yes, that means some gadgets, nice food and entertainment.

But, with regards to the rest of the world, without a significant impetus towards something better, America ends up being less of a "growing concern" and more of a stagnating one. Hard working hard playing America #1 has always been striving to stay well ahead of the international Joneses, and the Euro has been worth more than the dollar for a while now.

It would be really great if the U.S. could be the green energy revolutionary, come out with the best and most viable alternative energy methodologies and capitalize on those. But, a lot of that is being farmed out to Asia- those superduper batteries for the cars of tomorrow, the electronics. Will the new government cause something to happen to improve this situation? A lot of people are hoping so, and worrying about if that hope is well founded or not.

There is always a way to find something to worry about, but it seems very easy lately.

Setting up some things...

2009-01-01T20:54:00.002-05:00

I have two laptops for music, one for video visualizations. I don't have expensive video software, I use the NuVJ/Arkaos software for putting together visualizations that I compose, and I also have visualizer software that is "sound/frequency" activated, and two DLP video projectors.

I use multiple display/extended desktop settings to run the fullscreen version of the Arkaos software in, so I route that part of the desktop to the 2nd video display. There is a control UI that indicates which buttons on the NuVJ controller will launch which clips.

There is an issue in synchronization in that I cannot sync via midi with the NuVJ/Arkaos combination, unlike the "full" Arkaos which will receive midi sync and which is very nice but also much more expensive. It does have a bpm 'tap' button that actually works pretty well to sync up to the beat that is playing, and it also allows me to manually sync in multiples or divisions of the bpm clock beat.

I plan to use this equipment in the following way:

1) Attach one video projector to the laptop running NuVJ, and daisy chain the other projector to it, or...
1a) Attach the other video project to a music laptop which also runs a sound activated visualizer.

2) One music laptop running Live current version and another music laptop running Live one version back. Use a mixer to move from one set to another.

2a) Sync the two, for very large "orchestra" type sets.

I have several Midi control devices. I have gone kind of overboard with these things, but they are very fun, and each is not very expensive:

Korg nanoKontrol and Korg nanoPad
Frontier Tranzport, wireless controller
P5 Glove whose output is software mapped to MIDI
Joysticks whose output is software mapped to MIDI
An FCB 1010 Behringer foot controller
Custom "MIDI Guitron" double necked guitar-like controller.

Two MOTU ultralites for midi/audio interfaces. I have a couple of other midi/audio interfaces also, so I have one MIDI interface for each computer, if I want to do something musical on the video machine also. I also have a MIDI splitter to allow my main midi controller to feed both Live instances simultaneously.

I have an old Casio CZ 5000 midi keyboard that I don't use for live performance, but have used in "the studio", my home recording setup.

In the next day or so I will hook all of this up and put a video together of it working.