in societies with social-leaning health care systems, it's a legitimate social issue because it drains resources. and, no, i don't think the answer is to move to private sector health care. poor kids shouldn't lose access to health care so overweight rich people can hog the resources. fat people should stop hogging the resources.

social theorists refer to peer pressure as an "informal control mechanism". i think you're getting at something a little deeper, involving things like individualism v collectivism, and statism v anarchism. i don't see a problem with the idea of using exclusion and mockery as a method to try and alter antisocial behaviour. i would maybe question the efficacy of certain tactics, but not the general idea.

and i have to be blunt in stating it: if it makes you uncomfortable, that's the point. the next step is to stop making excuses and do something about it.

but the thing that really bothers me is the air conditioning. especially up here in canada, where we only get a few weeks of weather over 30 degrees. i want to enjoy that, not be running the heater in june because the fat guy upstairs breaks a sweat at 20 degrees.

this article treats a research topic as a closed book. plate tectonics are not currently well understood - there's vague ideas that are probably mostly right, but acting like we're certain about something we're only beginning to understand is a type of arrogance that only the internet is capable of. there's plenty of published, peer-reviewed material out there that considers tidal drag to be a primary force in plate movement, and the movement in the field is towards a greater acceptance of this, not a lesser acceptance of it.

regarding the issue of gravity in planetary alignments, the "too far away" rebuttal simply misunderstands the argument - and is mostly flat out wrong. it's not about the "creation of new gravity", or something, but about offsetting an equilibrium. if it weren't for jupiter, the earth would fall into the sun. the larger bodies in our system have effects on our orbit that we can calculate quite easily if we know a little about celestial mechanics. the idea about the alignments having an effect on tectonic movement is that it "blocks" the gravity that we already know has an effect for a few moments in a sudden manner, creating a shock.

you also have to keep in mind that small planets can block out large ones if they are much closer. and i'm not going to present an opinion on whether there's actually an alignment on the date in question, because i don't feel like doing the math, because there's nothing that could be done about it.

the ancients kept very detailed seasonal and astronomical records. they were very interested in the topic. after a few centuries of record keeping, it's reasonable to think a few correlations could be pulled out of the data using crude identification tactics. and, they were pretty good at arithmetic, too. what we see coming down to us as astrological mumbo jumbo is partly a preservation of this, in the face of barbarian destruction horizons. it needs modern methods to confirm. but it's not inherently absurd.

so, take heed: viral rebuttals are often as bad or worse than the nonsense they claim to debunk.

www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/for-science-debunking-2015-earthquake-asteroid-doomsdays/51599/

brad - Jessica's fist post states that 'plate tectonics are not currently well understood'. Really, I always thought the geology was pretty advanced, as mankind has been studying the earth for a long time, and they have a solid understanding of what makes earthquakes and volcanoes.

jessica murray - the theory of plate tectonics did not develop until the 1960s, and there's still a lot of kinks to work out. it's pretty clear that there are giant slabs of rock moving around on the earth, but exactly what makes them work is not at all clear. if we understood this well, we'd be able to predict earthquakes and volcanoes. when alfred wegener initially made the proposal that continents move around (around 1910), he was written off as a fringe lunatic and more or less ignored until after he died. and he actually initially proposed tidal drag as the dominant factor.

jeremy - Jessica, one planet passing in front of another does not block the gravity. The force of gravity passes through mass without being hindered. There would be no shock effect during a planetary alignment. There would be a very tiny, very gradual rise in the magnitude of gravitational force acting in that particular direction. Tidal forces and the moon may well have some sort of effect on plate tectonics. But gravity drops off rapidly as distance increases. So the gravity we feel from the moon is so much greater than the gravity we feel from the other planets that it would totally dominate the effect, and the gravity from the other planets would be insignificant when compared to the moons.

jessica murray - it's not true that gravity passes through without hindrance. i put "block" in quotes for a reason. it's more of an interference issue, that can create amplification (+ or -). nor is it true that we don't feel the effects of gravity from another planet. i actually looked this up, and the argument you're presenting comes from a rebuttal to the idea that pluto could affect human weightlessness - an obvious farce. but, you weigh much less than the earth's crust does, and pluto is very far way, so it's consequently a very bad argument.

as mentioned: jupiter has a measurable effect on our orbit. this understanding is a consequence of relativity, which calculates the center of mass differently than newton did. nor does gravity from the moon "overpower" gravity from jupiter based on distance. rather, both forces continue to act.

as mentioned, the idea is that a disturbance in the gravitational field would put the balance of existing forces out of whack. jupiter and the earth are already pulling on each other in a measurable way. any disturbance of this would necessarily create a shock, by definition - the question is whether that shock (and it's countershock) is big enough to have an effect. and, as i mentioned, this is currently an open research topic.

the time machine (percussion & bass mix)

this is a "drum and bass" mix, with pitched percussion for the melodic parts.

written in early 2001. drastically rearranged in june, 2014. further remixed over july, 2014 and may, 2015. this version of the track was completed on may 26th, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/percussion-bass-mix

republishing stuck in the middle of an alley closing in on all sides (inri043)

i've been in the process of closing down my second artistic phase for longer than i'd like, but i'm really getting to the final points on it, which means taking one last run through everything and making final decisions on it. this is the fourth mix i've appended to this single over the last week, but it is now final. closed.

so, behold inri024, which is now a 90 minute 12-track "single" of reinterpretations of this track.

inri024 has been updated and permanently finalized.

===

this is one of the tracks that i can't date well. i do, however, remember working on it during the winter, which means it must have been late '00 or early '01. i'm going to consequently deduce that it must have been what i was working on over the 2000 christmas break and date it coming out right after it.

actually, i have another reason to date it in early '01 rather than late '00: the introductory piano part was recorded live into my notation program on my dx100, which i was given over christmas (maybe a little before; it was a cheap garage sale pickup) to act as a controller for my recently broken jx-8p, that i had tried to take apart over the summer to clean a sticky key (a common problem with mid-80s roland analog synths) but failed and left keyless. it's still keyless. yet, the dx still drives it....

that introductory piano part formed the basis of the track, which built itself up fairly quickly. somewhere, i lost the nwc file by saving it as midi, which ruined all the formatting. it's been sitting on my drive ever since.

why put together seven different midi versions of the same track, and sequence them after a polished recorded version? well, this was never actually meant to be computer music. i was just composing something the old fashioned way with the intent of later giving it to some musicians to play. that never happened. what did happen was that i found myself playing it back on multiple sound cards over many years, trying to make it sound as good as possible in the short run - until i could finally get the chance to sit down and actually record it. while each of the different renders has it's strong and weak points, i ultimately don't feel that they form a total order. something i thought about doing was recording tracks independently on different cards and then pasting them together, but that would have just created another dozen incomparable mixes. rather than arbitrarily pick one, i decided to just upload all of them.

in hindsight, i think the format is interesting in itself in terms of it being a psychological experiment with sound. the differences from track to track are sometimes inaudible and sometimes extremely noticeable. stringing it all together in a row like this is challenging to any listener in the sense that it rips apart the process of becoming familiar with a piece. it means listening to exactly the same song through multiple different sound libraries. i think your brain would have to interpret that as a sort of a trip, especially when it comes to trying to build associations in sound within tracks that are both similar and different sounding, soundcard wise. i think that might be part of the reason i had so much difficulty isolating tracks in the first place.

so, listening to the ep through all the way is likely to be a bit disorienting and might ultimately be a strange experience. however, if you like the track for what it is as a collection of overlapping sequences of notes then i hope you get something out of the process of comparing and contrasting the renders together.

i have included the original midi file as a bonus item in the download, if you want to play with it on your own. the added guitar sections in the final version are recent additions and have not been written out.

thematically, the track is meant to orchestrate a feeling of claustrophobia with society pushing down on you too hard. it's meant to transmit a feeling of existential dread. at the time, i really felt stuck with life in general and not sure how i was going to get out of it.

four further remixes were added at the end of may, 2015, which has forced me to move two of the midi renders to 'download only'.

written late 2000 & early 2001. the renders present here are all from after 2013. minor instrumentation changes to facilitate a small wind section were implemented in late april, 2014. live guitars were layered into the final version over may, 2014. initially released on june 7, 2014. four new orchestral mixes were added in late may, 2015. re-released & finalized on may 26, 2015. as always, please use headphones.

credits:
j - electric piano, programming, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, vocals, vocoders, digital effects & treatments, digital wave editing, composition.

the rendered electronic orchestras variously include piano, bass, synth bass, distorted electric guitar, clean electric guitar, other guitar effects, steel string acoustic guitar, nylon string classical guitar, sitar, violin, viola, cello, contrabass, french horn, trumpet, trombone, tuba, oboe, english horn, bassoon, synthesizers, clarinet, flute, piccolo, xylophone, glockenspiel, woodblock, tubular bells, orchestra hit, jazz drum kit, hand drums, melodic toms, orchestral drum kit, hammered percussion, marimba, taiko drum, synthetic percussion and electronic drum kit.

released january 10, 2001

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/stuck-in-the-middle-of-an-alley-closing-in-on-all-sides
 

stuck in the middle of an alley closing in on all sides (slow string orchestra fade out)

so, as mentioned, i'm going through inri024-inri050 and posting final updates.

this has been added to inri024 as an absolute final update.

written late 2000 & early 2001. rearranged, rendered and faded out on apr 27, 2014. further remixed on may 26, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/slow-string-orchestra-fade-out