deathtokoalas
this entire discussion needs to put "liberal" in quotes. ben affleck isn't defending anything approaching "liberalism", and would probably be unable to even define the term properly if pressed upon it.

i spend more time arguing with liberals than agreeing with them, so please don't call me a liberal (i'm a socialist), but my views with this are somewhat rooted in historical liberalism. i would disagree that liberals don't consider these to be pressing issues in the first place, it's just a difference of opinion as to how to go about dealing with the issue. i think the historical record has been very clear that there is no authoritarian way to eliminate religion. that's really the actually liberal perspective on this - religion is oppressive, backwards and regressive, but it cannot be eliminated by backwards, oppressive or regressive approaches (consider the soviet union). it's not the view that there aren't problems, or that they shouldn't be addressed, but the view that taking a confrontational approach is counter-productive. we've seen how counterproductive this approach is in this region.

if you want to talk about supporting secular institutions (which already exist in some muslim countries) and increasing dialogue, that's one thing, and i can get behind that. if you want to talk about imposing economic sanctions that are going to adversely affect the identified victims or bombing people to accept our morals, that's another issue.

i don't think that's the argument, as ben sees it. the argument, as ben sees it, is that it's not fair to accuse your dark-skinned neighbour that hangs out in the mosque of wanting to blow up the world because he happens to have the same ethnicity or religion as some other people that do. it would be even more unfair (and counter-productive, as well) to deny him a job or place other social ramifications as a consequence of his ethnicity or religion. that's one point, and it's valid, and we have constitutions and other laws across the continent that agree with the point. people consequently need to be careful about the language they use, so they're not carrying on prejudices that negatively affect people.

it's a just position, but that's not really the issue being discussed. whether the religion is the cause of the instability that does exist is another question. it's complicated. state institutions foster the religion, and are probably the actual root cause. but the religion is being wielded by them as a very negative tool of control. would they find another way to create this if you took away the religion? probably.

but the fundamental debate (with liberals and libertarians on one side and trotskyist liberal interventionists and neo-cons on the other) is not whether it's a serious issue, it's how to respond to it in a way that is effective, fair and upholds everybody's rights. bill knows that. it's an easily deconstructed, intellectually bereft strawman...

publishing the wave (inri053)

symphony 3.

this came out of a two-person psychedelic folk project i was working in over late 2001 and into mid 2002. we had brainstormed the idea of a piece that slowly built itself up, like a wave, and that had sporadic pieces of poetry interspersed as it did so. of the two of us, i was the musician, and he was the poet; i generally produced the music by myself. however, my vision of the track proved to be much larger than his, to the point that the two ideas could not be effectively reconciled given the deficit of technology available to us (i simply couldn't find a way to get enough resources to condense the track to under ten minutes). that left me with this seventy minute ambient piece that has mostly stayed hidden in my closet over the last twelve years.

in 2014, i strongly contemplated reconstructing the short version out of existing material, but it would have required a rethink of the process that i felt would be invasive to the poet involved.

this is very much process music. it's built on 36 distinct loops of identical length (just under 57 seconds) that assemble the collage up on a loop by loop basis, hitting it's full point only in the 35th loop. the 36th loop does not fit into any of the patterns that define the first 35, but is nonetheless the climax of the piece. this is followed by a disassembling process that is precisely the reverse of the assembling process. together, this produces the effect of a long wave of sound washing over the listener.

aesthetically, it's likely clear that i had been listening to a lot of "kosmische" style synthesizer music of european origin. it's actually a key part of my musical style, so a bigger exploration of it's themes is not at all out of place. however, i generally prefer to take ideas from the genre and recontextualize them rather than delve into a full exploration. this is somewhat unique in my discography as being an album-length analog synthesizer work.

either as ambient or kosmische or process music, this is mostly meant as background music.

written late 2001 and early 2002. this file is ripped from a cd-r that was burnt around 2002, as that was the option that would produce the most accurate reproduction of the original composition. republished without modification in 2014. as always, please use headphones.

credits:
j - synthesizers, guitar, bass, digital wave editing, production, composition

released january 15, 2002

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/the-wave

well, i got my $4 usb 2.0 card in the mail. looks like a brand new card to me. hopefully it works.

but i wanted to note that there was no extraneous packaging, just a pc card in a electrostatic shield in bubble wrap. that's another all around benefit, both in terms of cost (on both ends) and in terms of waste.

this could be done very efficiently if we were smarter about it.