it's incredibly pointless to try and argue whether white or black slavery was "worse".

firemedic30ca 
It's not really an argument of which was worse as much higher as it is a demand for recognition. The fact of the matter is every race on the planet has been a victim of slavery. It's rich vs poor, and was never skin color vs skin color, like most are taught to believe. The sickening part of this is the refusal of any one to accept it, there by allowing another part of our dark history to be forgotten.

Now, slavery was horrible no matter what your color. However, there was a point in time in which African slaves were highly priced and sought after as they were considered harder workers, while white slaves were not. This lead to more deaths among the white slave population simply because they were a dime a dozen and less desirable. The torture and punishment was essentially the same, but whites suffered a higher mortality rate. One could argue that because the blacks lived longer and suffered more, that life for them was worse because they weren't afforded the mercy of dying and no longer being a victim.

Facts are facts. This happened, and the circumstances are what they are. Accepting it doesn't make you racist, doesn't down play black suffering or change it in anyway for the rest of the world. It only changes the perceived power of those that continuously attempt to use black slavery to their favor.

deathtokoalas
i was responding to the comments section, which is full of debates about which is "worse".

but it's equally important to take slavery out of the western colonial context you're pigeonholing it into. the largest slave trading civilization in history was not america but the islamic empire, which transported upwards of ten times as many slaves out of an area that included modern day africa, india and ukraine. it's quite instructive to look at the systemic system of slavery that the arabs set up. it's a little bit unique in it's "diversity of slavery" due to the fact that they were in the middle of the world. an arab slave harem would have had people of just about every colour in it. nor would their colour have had anything to do with their condition. the mongols also took white slaves.

from the racial perspective, the arabs did not treat ukrainians any differently than they treated africans. both were inferior peoples. and they lived roughly similar lifestyles based around small agricultural villages, pastoralism and hunting. arab slave traders would land in the crimea and go out and round them up out of their villages. it was really identical to anything you'd imagine a spanish slave raid of west africa would look like, except the skin colour was reversed.

what it actually had to do with in all of these circumstances was not race or wealth but religion. i mean, it's about economics, obviously. but the criteria for oppression was always "you're in the wrong religion". the muslims simply enslaved anyone who wasn't muslim. white, black, whatever - didn't matter. the basis of slavery in western colonies is actually based on a papal emulation of this muslim economic policy, starting from a papal bull in 1452 that gave the portugese king the right to enslave non-christians. the british enslavement of catholic ireland is also religious in justification.

and, they were consistent about this in weird ways, too. one of the oldest churches in the world is actually in ethiopia. it seems to have been christianized in the roman era, and then cut off from europe - and never islamized. when the portugese arrived in ethiopia and found christians, they did not enslave them - because they did not have papal authority to do so. in fact, they formed an alliance with them against the "saracens". the result was a war where white europeans and black africans fought against arabs based on religion rather than skin colour.

so, what you're saying is correct. but it needs broader context. slavery is not and never has been about one race's superiority over another. it's always been economic in justification, and centered around broad civilizational themes. skin colour was one civilizational theme, but very short-lived. things like religion and language have historically been far more important in determining who the elite subjugates.

cogli
you are absolutely correct. And that is continuously manipulated for and by what ever socioeconomic agenda is being foisted upon us at any given moment..at which time talking of Koala we could use the ReClaim Australia movement as a classic example of your theme...the main thing that stands out with all of this is the manipulation of ignorance, lack of historical knowledge and context. Interesting also that throughout these discussions when discussing the Americas nobody has thought to mention the Chinese..on a scale of who had it worse ..phew! that's like losing the number 10. .............. But the interesting thing with the Irish that I have found, is how profoundly the Ireland Irish were shocked and horrified by what racist bigots the American Irish had become by the early 1900s..this blog and others like it made me do a little digging and there are a massive number of comments by De Valera, Collins, The IRA right the way through to the 70s when discussing funding from The USA how they are happy to work with The American Black liberation movements and Islamic groups but were not in favour of accepting aid from Irish American groups they labelled " a bunch of racist bigots"..which was bit surprising compared to urban myth....... Interesting also is that the polling in the USA showed that The Jewish Americans were by far and wide the greatest supporters of the Black Liberation and Black equality movements throughout the 40s 50s 60s and 70s ..so some eye openers there...and if we go back to your premise and apply it to the current elite model, it is interesting to see that Ireland has deliberately and forcefully blocked all attempts for anti Islamic protests to get off the ground.. their anti Islamic march as a result, managed to get only 12 protestors..where as the Australian elite are using these protests as an asset/ blind/diversion...so the alignments are still following very very old trading paths at the same time as showing,... how cultures self colonise to fit the elite of their environment in order to survive and succeed...your comment reminds me of the statement by the ex head of IBM at a Multinational Corporations meeting in the 90s :::"we are now in the privileged position where we  farm the entire world by the logic of profit..We  decide what education a country gets or if it gets one. What toothpaste they use and what they eat for breakfast and Culture, Race,  Religion and National Boundaries are  just another marketable product."

deathtokoalas
i think that nativism is a natural and almost inevitable reaction to oppression, and a lesson we have a hard time learning. up in canada, protest movements tend to integrate themselves with indigenous groups. over time, it seems like we've lost the plot on this. the reality is that an indigenous protest has greater legal protection; so, a native group can blockade an oil company and not have the cops break it up the same way that they'd break up an environmental group's blockade. it makes a lot of sense to build alliances out of that to get to common ends, and it consequently makes sense for protest groups to push solidarity with indigenous sovereignty struggles.

but, nobody really looks into the society they're fighting for: one where gender roles are enforced through expulsion, women have very few rights, gays are banned from everything, positions of civil authority are limited by ethnic background...

i look at their proposals and say "this is israel.". and, yet it's the same friends organizing solidarity rallies for the native groups that are organizing solidarity rallies for palestine. ironically, the only answer i can come to with this is that it's a type of marginalization. that is, it seems to be rooted in some kind of weird stereotype of the "benevolent indian" - the "noble savage" - that couldn't possibly cause anybody any harm.

i think if you really take a look around at the world, this is a pattern that repeats itself through history. the more you tear down an identity, the more it breeds violent forms of nationalism and extremism.

in some cases, there's little choice. the black liberation movements into the 70s were necessary, and their work has been left unfinished. with the racial profiling, school-to-prison pipeline and massive racial inequality in the united states, it seems like there's no other way to go. that's going to produce these exclusivist strains. like, i'm not on the side of anybody that clams that white people shouldn't be allowed to rap - or black people can't like rachmaninov. but, when your culture is constantly being ripped apart, that exclusivity is an inevitable reaction by people trying to reconstruct an identity.

it's easy to say "these are the last people you'd expect this from, they should know better". but, maybe that's misunderstanding the issue. maybe, it's more reasonable to think "you'd expect people with a history of being repressed to lash out at others".

web
So very true. We were never there so we do not know. All we know i what is told to us. Those who truly knew what happened are sadly gone and with them the truth.

deathtokoalas
well, i'm obviously drawing from sources. i'm not consulting my crystal ball. this information was recorded. it does exist. and, not just in historical documents, either. the video suggests dickens, and he is certainly widely regarded as a valuable source of information on the topic in england - to the point that i read dickens in high school. there's the famous text by engels, of course. and modern scholarship (zinn, for example) is ensuring that the class basis of slavery is not forgotten.

i mean, even a cursory history of greece will point to the helots. as oscar wilde pointed out not that long ago, slavery and civilization are intrinsically related. this isn't likely to be forgotten, even if it's kept a little obscured.

untitled (out of ram mix)

so, i've spent most of the night listening to two nearly identical versions of this track and trying to decide which one i want to use.

when i initially recorded the track in cakewalk (as an experiment with the program) on a windows 98 machine, i ran out of ram after eight tracks and had to go back to my normal wave editor collage-build mixing process to finish it. unfortunately, i didn't really like the edits i made and ended up defaulting to this version for many years. however, it was only saved in mp3...

on aug 11, 2010, i converted the track to 32-bit directly from the mp3 (which i verified in dec, 2014 via phase inversion) and uploaded it to bandcamp, as a part of the never really finished and with now unclear future tetris project. while i don't feel that the sound quality of the track is sufficient to act as a base for a final version, the process of compressing, decompressing and then converting to 32-bit produced something special on the bottom end that i feel is worth keeping for it's own sake. however, i'm going to have to keep the track as download-only for two reasons. the first is that i'd have to convert back to 16-bit to burn it. the second is that there's not going to be room on the disc for it, anyways.

so, i'm leaving that as it is - and the next thing i'm going to do is revisit the remix of this that i did to emulate it. now, yes, i'm going to take a snapshot at this point, but it's also going to act as the core of the final mix, so it's going to have to be a little more produced sounding. that's kind of why i felt the need to make this available. it seemed foolish to sit there and try and make a clean mix sound like a muddled mp3 mix; i got a cool bass sound out of the compression, and i should just let that be. if i'm going to remix it, it makes more sense to remix it for optimal quality.

so, that's the next thing. i've got a few hours to blow while i wait for the temperature to hit zero, then i need to do groceries. it won't be done today, but it will probably be done and uploaded for tomorrow.

this is dated to sept 1, 2002.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/untitled-original-out-of-ram-mix

i saw it again out the window tonight...

it's definitely too small to be a cougar, but the tail is too big to be a house cat.

it might be a fisher.

this is outside the fisher range, though. hrmmn. it's in the "historic range".

it could have been a pet. either way, i don't think it's cause for concern. there's my "testing" and neutralizing...

i mean, fishers are violent, nasty things. no doubt. but they're not powerful enough to pose me a serious threat the way a mountain lion would...

i used to bicycle up the cross-canada trail behind bells corners through stittsville and out to carleton place fairly often, and there's tons of deer back there. it's less that we humans don't fall into their "natural prey" like you'll hear some naturalists suggest (either out of some remnant creationist intuition, or out of an attempt to not create panic), but when there's that much good food to eat, skinny humans full of leather and cotton are less appetizing.

you move pretty quickly on a bike like that when there's no traffic to worry about, but you can hear things. and you can feel yourself being stalked, somehow. they're back there, and if somebody were to really look for them they'd no doubt be shocked by how many.

melanistic pumas are not supposed to exist outside of south america. but, it strikes me as a little bit daft to rule out the possibility altogether. those genes gotta be in there somewhere, waiting for the right mutation.

that's clearly a house cat, though.

it does look like a house cat - due to the ears, and the grooming behaviour. and some of the side shots look like a house cat's face.

however..

evolutionarily speaking, a cougar is basically a really big house cat. so, there's a lot of shared characteristics. for example, a cougar can't roar like a lion - and purrs like a house cat. it also grooms itself like a house cat.

there have been some cases of house cats growing very large, and it really wouldn't be out of the question for a population of feral cats to grow to the size of cougars over many generations if the right evolutionary pressures were present.

it's consequently hard to be certain - although i'd lean towards it being a house cat. it's definitely not a lynx or a bobcat, though.

if you could have gotten a shot of the tail, it would have been more clear.

you know, i wonder if people were sitting around in the 50s wondering when they were going to pull out of korea and japan and germany...

i don't understand why this is such a difficult point for people to get their heads around. one does not conquer a country and then pull out. the premise is absurd.

purple robes = emperor. bit of a fuck you, actually.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCF3XyAyXMU

it's a nice speech and all, but there's two concerns.

1) unlike chemical warfare (where blowback is a problem) or mutually assured destruction, rape is an effective means to control a subjugated population. it is perhaps the single most effective means to control a subjugated population.
2) there have already been several agreements signed, including the rome statute. the united states will not ratify this agreement, for obvious reasons. rather than sign new agreements that are unlikely to get ratified, it would make sense to ratify and enforce the agreements that have been agreed to and signed.

it's difficult to take ol' johnny boy seriously on this. i don't doubt he means it on some level, but he's fighting against all this double think. this has been a sort of constant for boomer age democratic politicians. the gen xers don't even seem to have the moral conflict raging in them, so this administration might actually be the last moment of sanity for quite a while. like, you could see it with hillary all the time - she seemed to actually have difficulty articulating some of her speeches. she was visibly revolted at herself more than once. but, she couldn't fight against her careerism. that battle raged, but her career always won. every time.

with ol' johnny boy, it seems like it's more of a military oath. dies hard, i guess. so, again, i don't doubt that he'd like to see some movement on this. so, why not ratify and enforce the rome statute? the russians might actually go along with it, if you take the lead (the chinese, on the other hand, wouldn't sign an agreement to consider signing an agreement, as it would restrict their options regarding signing the agreement). because it's not what's really going on, and he's under no real illusions about it.

part of his job, as secretary of state, is to sell war. that means sanitizing it, to neutralize the opposition to it. and, women have a disproportionate opposition to war. if we can rebrand war to be free of rape, might it be easier to sell to women? the future of the democratic party in some sense rests on this proposal.

and, again, i don't think ol' johnny boy is really opposed to this sanitizing, either. i mean, if you can kill a few less troops and still get the same objectives? keep the kids at home, send out robots instead. yeah, i think ol' johnny boy would see some good in that.

but a realist needs to be a realist. and this is a public relations campaign.

otherwise, they'd ratify the rome statute. right?

almost all of them do have degrees. the reality is that you actually pretty much need a degree nowadays to even bother applying; not only are these not jobs for kids, but they won't call you back unless you have post-secondary. fuck, i have two degrees and i can't even get an interview in fast food. whatever cultural bias exists to suggest these are jobs for kids doesn't actually make any sense. think it through for a few seconds, rather than allow media to define it for you. you don't let kids play with that much money, or let them run dangerous equipment, or put them in charge of running an operation that requires strict adherence to strict rules. these stores face massive performance-based competition on a wide open market: they need to get things out faster than the restaurant across the street, they need to be cleaner, they need to have better service, etc. the owners can't afford to hire children to do these jobs, and risk underperforming. they need and desire people with experience, work ethic, maturity and mental discipline that they can plug into a high-paced, physically demanding work environment. the idea of the apathetic, slacker teenager working at mcdonald's is some kind of tongue-in-cheek early 90s snl skit, not anything remotely reflecting reality.

but my point of commenting here today is to point out that this is a complete waste of time from any kind of leftist revolutionary perspective. you can expect career unionists that just want to enforce the status quo to get behind this kind of thing. the union hierarchy obviously wants to increase union membership. but that's the extent of it.

an actual communist would look at the situation and argue that these restaurants should be abolished altogether. imagine the situation of a worker in detroit driving by a closed factory on a daily basis on her way to a fast food job serving other working-class people. do you think a socialist is going to look at the situation and say "gee. she deserves more money.". no. a socialist is going to look at the situation and say "fuck fast food. that factory is unused. let's smash the doors down and get it running again.".

nobody is doing that, because there are very few socialists on this continent. there is no threat of something like that happening. rather, we're stuck in a situation of pointing out that it's something that could happen, if only people would stop wasting their lives working these pointless jobs.....

so, i don't have any opposition to building robots, but i don't see any benefit of building smart robots.

i read a lot of science fiction when i was a kid, and it presented me with the proper moral questions that are coming up in reports like this. but, it also gave me a lot of fantasies of a world where robots take over the role of slaves. as i grew older, i started to realize that the science fiction of the middle part of the 20th century was actually an extension of the leftist ideals developed in the latter part of the 19th. robots are our most realistic path to communism, and probably the only realistic option we have in front of us to abolish the human misery necessary for industrial capitalism to function.

so, why are we so obsessed with building them in our images? i don't see a value in it. robots making cars and running supply chains sounds like actual emancipation, in a way humans have never come close to accomplishing. but, robots telling us what time it is sounds like an extension of the capitalistic enslavement we're currently trapped within.

as so many people have said before me: the value of technology is what you do with it. it's not inherently evil. but we need the proper foresight in place as to how robots can free us from labour, and how they can make the whole situation even worse.

put simply: keep them stupid.

some people drink 3/4 of a bottle of something on their birthday and pass out somewhere.

i ate 3/4 of an x-large pizza and passed out somewhere (safe). although it may have been the cough syrup. so, maybe not tomorrow, but the next day at the latest...

i probably won't eat for like a week, now....

"it seeks then in russia the enemy it has lost in france, and appears to say to the world, or to say to itself: if no one will have the complaisance to become my enemy, i shall no longer have any occasion for navy or armies, and shall be forced to diminish my taxes. ... unless i make an enemy of russia, the harvest of wars will be terminated." - thomas paine, 1792

new cold war? no.

well, he took me *half* seriously. and it turns out he could fill out the forms, but decided not to. instead, i got two appointments in february - which is enough to string me along without pulling off the aspirin stunt. it's still possible, but not for another month. we'll see how that goes.

i dropped some hints, mentioned i may need to "generate a crisis", so it shouldn't be a total surprise. i think he's mostly got me coming back in for observation on the 2nd; i can see an actual psychiatrist on the 17th.

this message will self-destruct in 24 hours.

i just realized they scheduled me with a nurse, who can't fill the forms in, anyways. i don't think it's likely that i'm going to be taken seriously, today.

i'd consequently say it's almost completely certain that i'm going to be in the hospital by noon. i'd just point out that the purpose of this is to create a crisis, because they seem unable to react to perform on a crisis management level and solely able to perform on a crisis response level. that is, i seem to have little choice but to create a crisis situation if i want to get these forms filled in. this is a very stupid/liberal way to organize a system that is likely to cost more in the long run than a focus on prevention would, but we live in a very stupid/liberal society....

the point is that i'm not putting myself in serious danger, at least not today. i will give them a time frame before i begin to consume the aspirin. i will consume the aspirin in the medical facility, if i have to. they will have no choice but to call an ambulance, and they should be able to pump my stomach fairly easily.

i will ensure that this is done in an easy to respond to manner the first few times i do this, because the point is to draw attention to myself rather than to actually succeed. classic cry for help scenario. if this drags on unsuccessfully, and i'm faced with eviction again, i will choose a more decisive way to kill myself than overdosing on aspirin at the doctor's office. i've explained my position on this, and the rational factors that may or may not lead to my decision.

i'll update if there's a different outcome. but that would be a surprise to me.

i've given them every opportunity to respond in accordance with their public mandate, and wash my hands of responsibility regarding the consequences of their inaction.

i can only hope that more people are willing to take this kind of a confrontational stance when it comes to dealing with public institutions that have been co-opted by liberalism, and are now working against their designated purpose.

hopefully, people get fired.

yes, as others have pointed out, legalizing marijuana would make it more difficult for kids to get it, not easier. i was fifteen once. want beer? that's hard - you've gotta convince somebody to buy it for you, or you need to steal it from somebody's fridge. want pot? that's easy, you just need to find $10 and not be hopelessly socially ostracized.

but, here's the thing: he's not actually going to do this. the liberal party has been promising this for years. it's like national daycare - it's a populist campaign ploy. the whole campaign on the left and govern on the right thing. if they actually do it, they'll lose that voting demographic. and that says nothing of drug war pressure from the united states.

these ads may be popular amongst the base, and may help raise money. but this is not a smart strategy from the conservatives given that it's essentially a non-issue. seen a poll on this? support for marijuana legalization in canada is nearly as popular as cats are on the internet. and, when you start talking about people under 50 it's almost universally agreed upon. it's just making them look like a bunch of old, out of touch fuddle duddles.

let's be honest...

if pet were alive, he'd be using exactly the same tactics as harper: he'd be pointing out that his son is intellectually unfit to run the country, calling him an empty suit and a bleeding heart and mercilessly making fun of his hair.

as much as i'd like to see a change in government in this country, the reason he'd be doing that is because it's true.

the liberal party has fallen a long way over the last twenty years. i'm not going to write another retrospective or post another eulogy. but there was a long period of time where, even if you didn't agree with them on every issue, you could count on them to run somebody with a head on their shoulders that wouldn't do anything stupid. those days seem to be over.

what i will say is this: there is no longer a default choice. if they get back in, it's not going to be another dynasty. and there's no clear answer as to how we can get back to that sort of passive comfort level of at least being pretty sure there's an option that's at least not going to fuck anything up.

it's a trick question. all eastern coyotes are coyote-wolf hybrids. there are not any pure coyotes in this region. if you see something that looks like a coyote, be aware that it is certainly part wolf.

their primary diet consists of feral cats, which are more along the size of an animal that is at serious risk. that includes small dogs. however, they will eat your labs if you give them the chance. you should keep them on a leash.

they seem to be all over the city at this point. i'm right in the middle of downtown, and just walked outside and saw tracks across my front lawn that seem intermediate in size between a wolf and a lab. my neighbour feeds the stray cats; i suspect there'll be at least one missing in the morning.

you need to be careful with these think tankers, as they're all working for somebody.

the sunni/shia thing is a tool to promote various conflicts, rather than the point of the conflict itself. well, there may be some legit nutbars in saudi arabia. but it's a secondary concern. it's not hard to guess what it's actually about. it starts with an 'o' and rhymes with "coil".

take a step back. the meta conflict remains the cold war. the intelligentsia has wanted to move on for years, but it's a lot of delusional neo-liberalism. history didn't end. it didn't even shift. same shit carried on without a blip. it's just that the americans got a step up on the game. what's been happening since 1990 is that russian influence has been waning, and the chinese haven't been able or willing to step in, which created a power vacuum. the various proxy wars are the result of local interests stepping into this power vacuum and jockeying for control.

so, you've got this saudi arabia v iran thing. but this is not the dominant conflict. the saudis are armed to their teeth with billions of dollars of us arms. the iranians know better than to poke them. it's a conflict that's over before it starts. even the israeli intelligence people have come out and stated that iran is unable to pose any kind of a military threat to anybody in the region.

rather, the dominant proxy war happening right now is between turkey and saudi arabia. unlike the iranians, the turks are serious players and pose a serious threat to saudi ambitions in the region. europe's continual refusal to allow turkey in (and if i were turkey, i wouldn't even want in at this point) has forced them to focus to their south. syria. iraq. egypt. all this instability is the result of turkish aligned groups fighting with saudi-aligned groups to walk into the vacuum created by the assumed inevitable russian pullout (which is in fact not inevitable, and not happening).

meanwhile, america is doing what the british have been doing for centuries, which is keeping everybody at each other's throats and profiting off the conflict from all sides.

i mean, what's been driving this mess in syria is the question of which american ally is going to take over when the russian-backed assad regime falls - the saudis or the turks. but, in fact, it seems as though the russians are going to maintain control of the region, even if it means that all that's left of it is a pile of rubble.

and the saudis and turks are reduced to bickering amongst themselves on the iraq/syria border, while the kurds are all like "hey, wait a minute here..." and the population is increasingly siding with iran as a stabilizing force.

well, i've got all my documents in order. tomorrow morning at 11:00 am. at least it'll be nice out....

i'm going to have to bring up the ms thing. i don't know if there's some kind of test for it. it may be the best way to do this. i mean, i can handle some muscle spasms and stuff but i've recently been getting the classic difficulty swallowing, and i think i'm really better off getting it diagnosed. if i can get them to take me seriously...

it's an mri...

detroit has a serious wild dog problem, but i'm not aware of one here and getting across the river would be rather difficult.

City of Windsor naturalist Paul Pratt said he hears reports of coyote sightings from everywhere in the city, even downtown. Coyotes took down a deer in the woodlot behind his LaSalle house about a month ago.

They’re mostly nocturnal and largely go unnoticed, Pratt said.

“If you have small dogs or cats, you shouldn’t let them out at night unattended, even if you’re in a built-up area.”

He said there are more coyotes in Windsor now because there’s more wildlife in Windsor – skunks, feral cats, groundhogs, possums and deer.

“There’s all this wildlife, something’s got to eat them,” said Pratt. “We have coyotes.”

i'm pretty sure i've heard them rustling around where i can't see them. with all the cats and the skunks around, it seemed like a matter of time. but it took the snow to reveal them: very clear canid tracks coming up across the front lawn, right to the door and across the other way. right where the cat that's been following me around sits, actually. relatively large, at that - if these are coyote tracks, it's a big coyote. may be one of those coywolves...

i suspect that may be the last i'll see of that cat.

it's said they're around, and you'll rarely see them. they know they can't really take you down. but there's kids around here. and it's enough to be a little bit more cautious about going out at night.

i haven't set up my new blog yet, and i have my meeting on monday. this post will eventually self-destruct. but, for now i'm going to post on the results of my meeting in the comments of this post. i suppose if there's no posts here by tuesday, that's bad news.

existence (vst mix) (for thru)

this was a piece i wrote up in the fall of 2001. i can't remember exactly what the root of it was, but it had something to do with a voice-leading assignment for what was the equivalent of a course in music theory 101. the root of the piece may consequently come from what was presented to me. i can't recall exactly - but i believe the assignment was to build the different voices up.

my negative relationship with music theory is stated throughout this page and was well established well before the end of 2001. i had an interest in the music theory course for the purposes of deconstructing the theory - in the context of writing, specifically, and not performing. i actually have one of those classic stories - i failed this course. it is actually the only course i have ever legitimately received an F in. hey, if einstein can fail math, i can fail music theory.

the story actually revolves around sight-reading aspect of the course, and specifically it's vocal content. there were three aspects of the course (theory, vocal sight-reading and african drumming which i'm thinking was meant to be a rhythmic component but was really just a ridiculous waste of time). i really wish they would have let me sight read on a guitar, or even a piano, because i'm just simply not a talented singer; i've never had aspirations to become one, and i had a lot of problems controlling my vocals. even with that being said, the reality is that i had a very low level of _interest_ in this. i probably could have passed the course if i spent less time on abstract algebra and more time singing in the mirror, but i just couldn't be bothered...

i really disapprove of the way the course was designed. i was interested in learning about music theory, and needed the course as a pre-req for more advanced courses, which i never ended up taking. i still don't fully understand why i had to pass a singing exam to take further composition courses. the best answer i got was that the school didn't want graduates who couldn't pass a singing exam, but i was at no point enrolled in a b. music so it's a pretty weak response.

anyways, this was a voice-leading assignment that i perverted into something mildly atonal and then built up into something else. you can hear it if you listen, except that it's all "wrong". i'd have to sit down and analyze it to come to a more detailed exposition on it's "wrongness", and i'm not going to, but it's not hard to hear how "wrong" it is, either.

i was clearly listening to a lot of glass at the time, but this goes beyond his medievalism. i'm using so many "wrong" notes that it's ultimately just chromatic - although there's no tone rows or anything that's formally serialist about it. it's not meant to abolish the structure so much as it's meant to just flaunt the rules. that gives it an almost satanic feel, in the context of a vocal piece using "forbidden" intervals.

but, looking back, i think that what the piece really explores is existential anguish. i was in the second year of a math degree (after switching from physics after switching from software engineering) and really had little idea where i was going with it. i was considering switching into music and probably would have had i not failed the singing exam. the thing is i actually knew i was going to fail the course at that point, and was just feeling lost as a result of it. i ended up in math as this sort of default choice, vaguely thinking i might end up teaching somewhere but not having any real interest in it...

so much choice, so few options. i suppose that this is how i expressed what i was feeling about this reality at the time.

i can't remember the exact way this happened, but i believe the piece was initially written for voice (as a voice-leading assignment) and then expanded into further voices and then converted into a composition for nine instruments. i've picked halloween as the date, but that's symbolic - it was around then, anyway. it would have been around december that it was put aside, because i don't remember working on it after i moved.

this version was created in october, 2014 by mixing three separate vst mixes together: the choir mix, a string orchestra mix and an arranged mix.

written in the fall of 2001. rendered, remastered and remixed in late september and early october, 2014. this render is from october 3, 2014.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/existence-4

the walk (vst mix)

this was written as the introductory walk scene to the first rabit is wolf single; this vst version is exclusive to this collection..

written late 2001; re-rendered through vst on jan 10, 2015.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/the-walk-2

as much as vice and others want to put a happy spin on these guys, they sure seem like crazy terrorists to me. lipstick on a pig and whatnot.

wow. i've been calling myself an evangelical atheist for years, and thought it was a sort of a unique description. is mr. eno also an alphabetical egalitarianist and general grammar anti-authoritarian? you know what they say about great minds...

...and regarding u2 and christianity, bono's position has always been very skeptical of organized religion, despite wanting to connect to the moral underpinning. i'd interpret him as a secular humanist. i mean, it's kind of weak to suggest he needs to share philosophical positions with the artists he produces. but there's not much hypocrisy, if you really follow what bono was actually saying.

"i'd break bread and wine if there was a church i could receive in."

as for what's he's saying...i get his point..

but, if you legitimately reject the concept of faith, it's not really a debate of whether you should or shouldn't have control. i think this is kind of meta - he's discussing the question of whether we can choose to be in control, which necessitates us being in control in the first place.

and, ironically, if you really don't believe there's a power, that breaks down to really not being in control - you're at the whim of the universe. it's not just some kind of pantheism. it's the inevitable consequence of really seriously diving into atheism. atheism is not some randian thing about free will. in fact, it's christianity that gives us free will (calvinism aside, but calvinism is very weird in relation to most religions). atheism rejects that and replaces it with stochastic processes, randomness, chaos...

it's a better fix to add this to adblock:

youtube.com##div#theater-background.player-height

the intersection of two identical particles moving in completely opposite directions (vst mix) (for thru)

ok...

so, to understand this piece, it's necessary to go back to 1998.

i was working out primitive sequencer parts for the first inri demo and it just sort of crossed my mind that there was really nothing stopping me from composing symphonies except for a lot of music theory. well, if i could write electronic music without training, why couldn't i write symphonies without training? i mean, the score writing program exists in front of me. it was just a question of experimenting with it. i could do it myself...

...but i actually already had a pretty hefty disdain for music theory by the age of 17. i'd managed to come across a music history textbook that traced the deconstruction of western theory from beethoven through to schoenberg and this, combined with my experiences as a guitarist, was enough to prevent me from taking it seriously. the perception i had was of modern composers viewing music theory sort of like how biologists viewed creationism. i use that analogy fairly frequently. it just didn't strike me as relevant.

now, i've softened a bit over time to a view that music theory is best understood in terms of the underlying physics. this renders the theory useless, but upholds the basic relationships between tones as physical, mathematical realities. the thing is the next step of abstraction is understanding that these mathematical objects can be arranged and analyzed in any arbitrary way, and the conventional theory really *is* a fallacy akin to creationism. so, i still hold to the general thesis. this is actually the first serious example of me putting that disdain for the idea that music should have a theory into real action. i remain adamantly of the view that art is not a realm where theories should exist or be viewed with anything other than scorn. theories are rigid, formal things; art is informal, chaotic.

so, it's 1998. i have a scorewriter and a very basic soundcard and i want to bullshit a symphony out of it. i did this by composing a single brief melody by randomly mashing notes into a scorewriter. i then took that melody and pasted it over top of itself at differing speeds (64th, 32nd, 16th, 8th, quarter, half, whole notes). i then took that, cut it off near the end of the half notes and pasted it over itself, backwards.

that might sound like it's going to sound awful, but it actually sounds quite lovely. one could analyze it quite easily, but it's creation is beyond the realm of any rules of construction.

which is where art belongs.

...excepting the algorithm i used, of course. i suppose it's more reich than schoenberg, but kind of more xenakis than either.

in 2001, i ran the midi file through my soundblaster live!, which as primitive as it is, has a much nicer wavetable in it than the primitive soundcard i used in 1998 and 1999 (i don't remember what it was). i also slowed it down by about 20 bpm and allowed the full file to "intersect", which let it breathe more.

why? well, i was writing a lot with scorewriters at the time and was just experimenting with the old file, really. but i was also finishing up what would be the only year i would spend in the math-physics department, and thought it sounded like i would imagine intersecting particles *should* sound like. i was generally interested in finding ways to combine science with music then - an interest that is present in older tracks as well and that has stuck with me. i may explore these themes further in time. one of the ideas i really wanted to accomplish was a physical modelling of the universe, to actually simulate the music of the spheres, as pythagoras imagined it. i think i underestimated the complexity of such a task....

of course, i never expected the music of the spheres to be tonal. and i wouldn't expect the sound of particles intersecting to be musical, either. but, we can take some artistic license. if intersecting particles are to make a sound, it OUGHT to be something like this!

written june, 1998. reimagined june, 2001. slightly rearranged and re-rendered at the end of july, 2014. this render is from july 24, 2014.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/the-intersection-of-two-identical-particles-moving-in-completely-opposite-directions-4

the symphony of psilocybin induced madness (vst mix)

this is the vst update, for the second half of the thru disc.

the core of this was written in my parent's basement in the spring of 2001. planning on going to a rave that weekend, i had previously purchased a large amount of drugs; i was, however, forced to stay in due to having a calculus test that sunday (the rave was out of town). well, my parents were gone for the weekend, most of my friends were out of town and i had a massive stash of drugs...

it is quite literally a symphony of psilocybin induced madness and was written directly into an ancient, hacked score-writing program. while it has been labelled as a symphony of drunken confusion in certain contexts to get around certain social stigmas, this is inaccurate.

written early 2001. this render was completed on jan 10, 2015.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/the-symphony-of-psilocybin-induced-madness-4


also available here:
http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/vst-mix-3


inri027 has been updated:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/the-symphony-of-psilocybin-induced-madness

take heed, google: you've been doing things better than your competitors have over the last few years. i'm using a lot of your services right now for that reason. but, if you start getting invasive you're going to start driving people out and propping up your competitors.

i suspect google is actually trying to get people to move to chrome, but the way chrome works is very invasive and it's very bad on ram, as well. again: i'm more likely to avoid youtube than i am to use chrome.

i'm more likely to not use youtube than i am to accept autoplay. it's just not a good feature, and if i can't control it then i'm not using the site.

if you're annoyed by youtube breaking flashblock, and simply do not consider allowing autoplaying videos to be an acceptable option, one workaround is as follows:

1) temporarily put youtube in your flashblock white list
2) install an out of date version of flash
3) clear your cookies/cache/etc

that way, whenever you go to a video it will tell you that flash is out of date, which will block the autoplay.

hopefully, flashbock resolves this quickly...

the time machine (vst mix) (for thu)

regarding this piece, my memory is blurry; yet, i have a vivid recollection of playing parts of it for my guitar teacher on a sunny day, where there was still snow on the ground. it's funny how we remember seemingly irrelevant details, but i guess the atmosphere of the performance is important because the performance is. that would date it to roughly march, 2001.

i switched the piece from classical guitar to piano halfway through writing it, and vaguely remember thinking that an impossible interval had something to do with it (a specific c# cannot be hit on a standard classical). yet, that doesn't change the fact that it's guitar music. the counterpoint is very guitar.

to further complicate things, i've long wanted to turn the piece into a jazzy idm romp. it has a kind of a jingly feel to it that belongs in the warp records sphere.

conceptually, the time machine aspect referred simply to the slowed down guitar chords at the beginning of the song. if you play it a certain way, it sounds like time is collapsing in on itself. or, so i thought, anyways. the various versions i have created here have made an attempt to take that idea to it's logical conclusion. it's a mix of the vision i had at the time and a bit of hindsight.

written early 2001. drastically rearranged in june, 2014. final render completed on july 5, 2014. as always, please use headphones.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/the-time-machine-5

stuck in the middle of an alley closing in on all sides (vst mix) (for thru)

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.

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..

written late 2000 & early 2001. initial instrumentation and render completed mar 7, 2014. minor instrumentation changes to facilitate a small wind section were implemented in late april, 2014. final render completed on may 3, 2014. as always, please use headphones.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/stuck-in-the-middle-of-an-alley-closing-in-on-all-sides-5

that's an incredibly immature cat, with no concept of personal property. you expect a puppy to act like that. but a grown cat? no. it's supposed to be the adult in the room...

you know, it's really remarkable. as hard-right as this administration has been been, and as hard-right as successive administrations have been for decades, the media continues to push them from even further right. is there any end to this continual rightward movement of the center?

but, the discussion on israel demonstrates how important it is to have a policy wonk in this position rather than a pr person, and i hope this is corrected in the next administration. i'm not sure if she got this job as a favour or because the administration legitimately wanted a pr person. but, being unable to express the administration's position on this matter is a point of failure that has no end point but confused messaging.

whatever your views on the conflict (and i'm far more empathetic to the palestinian struggle than the reporters in this room), the logic underlying the line of questioning is beyond warped. it's ultimately rooted in the base assumption that the united states has sovereign control over palestine. one could not coherently arrive at these questions without this core imperialist assumption. the logic suggesting that the state department can provide incentives by dropping support is the kind of thing that makes sense in the context of like the american civil war or something, and even there is going to come up against dramatic opposition from states rights supporters. the key is sovereignty. washington had sovereignty over virginia. it doesn't have sovereignty over palestine. trying to apply this kind of model to the behaviour of an independent, sovereign state (and this applies equally well to some of the questions about syria) is the kind of warped nineteenth century logic that led to the first world war.

the american position here - and this goes back to at least carter - is to try and engage the "moderate" palestinians, for the precise reason that it's well understood that completely cutting them off is going to send them to the arms of hamas. you cut the funding, that's what's going to happen. not less rocket attacks, but more of them. and without getting into the hypocrisy in too much detail, it's worthwhile to point out that it doesn't seem to have even crossed anybody's mind that the same logic applies to israeli attacks on palestine, which are always considerably more catastrophic. the more you isolate israel, the worse the attacks become. both of these things are demonstrable from shifts in policy over the last fifty years.

so, yes, you have to engage with the "technocratic government" if you want to prevent them from working with hamas. cutting them off will force them to work more closely with hamas, because it will then become their only option. that's the entire fucking point of the strategy.

and, it's imperative that the state department can put somebody in this position that can explain that, rather than let the hare-brained analysis of these dipshit reporters stand up without challenge.

missed pickup

jessica
hi.

it seems like you missed a recycle pickup today at 805 marion. the thing is i'm not quite sure what to do with it. i can't take it back inside, it's been sitting outside all day.

do you do missed pickups the day after, if they're pointed out to you? or do i need to find some other way to dispose of it?

public works - environmental
Good Morning Jessica,

Thank you for your e-mail. You may call 311 to report any missed garbage or recycle. It will be assigned to a Supervisor of your area for further investigation.

jessica
i'm sorry, but i don't have access to an inside telephone and it's a little cold to stand outside. is there an email address i can contact, instead?

i mean, otherwise the stuff is going to have to sit outside until monday at the earliest.

(pause)

never mind, i braved the cold and they're going to come get it.

BUT

it would be useful if there was a website people could go to to report something like this. it would be a simple form to fill out and would probably cut down on costs for the city, too...

public works - environmental
Yes there is a site available at http://www.citywindsor.ca/
Type in 311 in the search bar top right if you read down the page there is a link 311 online that has a form for you to fill in and send to the call centre.

deathtokoalas
the point is that he doesn't own the rain. therefore, he has no right to prevent it from flowing downstream and he has no right to modify the eco-systems around his property. use of public resources needs to be determined collectively, not individually. that being said, the jail time is an unfortunate penalty; a little direct action in the form of blowing up his dam would have been preferable.

George Vasquez 
100% correct. That asshole got off light.

deathtokoalas 
well, like i say: it's a little ham-fisted to put somebody in a cage over something that can be easily resolved by activism.

Young Master Gandalf 
Then tell me, who does own the rainwater that falls on your land????? imo everbody has the right to collect rainwater for use on their land. You Americans are really nuts. And you could even claim it's a gift from God, knowing most of you are Christians, so what's wrong by using Gods gift he gave you? If God didn't want him to use rainwater, he would not have let it fall down on his land.

deathtokoalas 
it is because nobody owns it that it must be allowed to flow through.

i mean, putting out a coffee can or something is one thing. but, this guy is building a dam. he's not just collecting a bit of water falling on his property, he's expropriating it from miles around.

the right way to look at rainwater is that you take what you need and let the rest run by, so it's accessible to the other creatures (human or not) in the region that also require it. the theft in damming is from everybody, miles around.

there have been wars fought over this, when one country decides they want to dam water in such a way that prevents it from flowing into another country. and, for good reason. that's theft.

Young Master Gandalf 
That was over 150 years ago, now there is water plenty. And the states don't own the rain. But I know, you Americans have stupid rules and laws. And imo this has nothing to do with collecting rainwater, it had to to with blocking rivers and streams of water, it was never about collecting rainwater, cause your neigbour could just do the same with the rain that falls on his land. It would be something else if he had blocked a river, a brook, a stream, a chanal, then you are right to imprison him, but for rainwater??????????????????

deathtokoalas
i was unaware that rainwater patterns changed that dramatically in 150 years. but, there are two contemporary examples of this: proposed dams on cataracts on the nile are creating tensions between ethiopia and egypt, and chinese engineering programs are upsetting the indians.

i'm a canadian. but, i believe these rules are set on a state-by-state basis and generally allow a certain level of collection for personal use.

we seem to agree that this is well beyond that.

it should be illegal just on the basis of affecting the wildlife in the region.

Young Master Gandalf
I live in the Netherlands and there is no law that prevents me from collecting rainwater for personal use. If I had some land, and want to make a pond or a small lake on that land, nobody can prevent me from doing just that. If however there would be a creek, or small brook on my land, then I'm prohibited to block that waterstream, imo those are two different things!! The example you give, is about the NILE, a natural river, and that's something complete different.

deathtokoalas
i'm not well read on dutch law. however, i would have to think that if there's enough water running through your land that you can dam it, then that qualifies as a stream.

that would be different from a free standing pond.

Young Master Gandalf 
Just dig a hole in the ground, and wait for the rain to fill it up, there you have my free standing pond.

deathtokoalas
it's not quite that easy - it's going to evaporate, seep or spill over.

regardless, what he was doing was rerouting runoff from a broad area with pipes (you can see it in the video) and damming it. that run off would have found it's way into streams - and as you can see, it was a substantial amount. so, it's still not comparable.

the issue here is less in the collection of rainwater and more in how much he was collecting. it was clearly beyond any reasonable concept of personal use. i'm not sure how the netherlands interprets common law (i know you had an early parliament, but i suspect your law is probably based on civil law from years of spanish domination), but that's how english law works - it tries to determine behaviour relative to an abstract "reasonable person" and then rules based on that criteria.

turns out the roots of modern dutch law are napoleonic, rather than habsburg. good to know.

see, this is the shit i want to see. that guy on his knees is a cop coming to the realization that he's on the wrong side of the fight. a little dramatic....

you know, for once, it'd be nice to see a parody of existentialism that doesn't miss the point altogether (and i'm not sure how he's characterizing the statement about artistic integrity as randian except by wording it in a bizarre way, although i'll admit i ran into a few people at occupy that tried to merge worker politics with support for ron paul - and were promptly made fun of).

see, it doesn't matter if he gets through college and gets a higher paying job or if he takes the job as an office temp (although reality is that he'll be lucky if his college diploma gets him a paying job in an office, that's where mom's social standing plays a role). whether he's making $50/hr or $10/hr, his life will still lack meaning. he'll still be forced into employment he has no interest in. the point is that the effort and the social standing that comes with it doesn't make a difference in an individual's happiness.

nor is the doctor's ferrari anything more than a temporary alleviation of the deep emptiness that defines his existence.

it would be easier if more people realized all of this, as building a movement to create a system that provides meaning would actually become possible. alas, we're instead persistently driven into the false promises of illusory happiness that consumer culture provides for us.

now, if you'll excuse me, i am going to ponderously play a single chord on an out of tune guitar for an hour as i meditate on the purposelessness of capitalism.

i've just unblocked about ten thousand people, which apparently required a lot of ram. i don't know what google was doing in the background, but it's clearly calculating something.

i will no doubt have another ten to twenty thousand people in my blocklist by the end of the year (those fedora idiots will be reblocked on immediate contact), but i always clear all my blocklists at the beginning of the year because, hey, it's a new year. maybe the idiots of the world have grown slightly. without that kind of optimism, there's just no use...

but, have no illusions: i am not all of a sudden less likely to block. it's just my yearly pardoning.

it's funny how the coughing itself can tire you out, even as you're just getting over it, making it seem like you got kicked back to the start of it. woke up feeling like somebody spent eight hours jumping on my chest....

it was the perfect storm to ignite my asthma/bronchitis. it's a result of living in a second-hand smoke environment when i was a kid, and comes up whenever i get a flu in the winter. it happened before i started smoking, smoking hasn't made it worse and quitting won't make it better (although i haven't been smoking a lot lately). the flu comes and goes in 24-72 hours, but the bronchitis it triggers can last for up to six weeks after it's gone.

i'm a pretty strong advocate of the idea that people between 17 and 60 should *not* be getting yearly flu vaccines - we're better off fighting it ourselves. unless we get a nasty strain...

...but i think i'm finally accepting that the bronchitis has put me in the "special" category, and i may finally crack next year.

i honestly think i just sort of got used to it.

this kind of thing has been going on forever and shouldn't surprise anybody.

i just want to point out that there's no contradiction in criticizing the administration for it's tactics on human rights grounds and working up reports to justify further intervention elsewhere. liberal interventionism is a weird animal. but it doesn't see anything wrong with arguing we should blow up libya to get rid of ghaddafi and arguing that we should use democratic processes to modify our own behaviour, too [although it would never argue libya should use legal means to reform itself, or that ghadaffi should blow up washington]. and it can be legit, too.

so, you shouldn't get caught in this trap that suggests that criticism of the american record on human rights somehow means the group isn't working to justify intervention. it's just wrong.

it indeed doesn't make sense to turn an ally into an enemy...

...unless you think you can convert an enemy into a slave.

i don't know if the russian narrative is purposefully ignoring this or missing it altogether. i've been pointing out for years that the russian policy positions are just hopelessly naive. consider bmd, for example. they want to join the system? that's their response? when you hear this, what else is there to do but take a sip of vodka, put your head in your hands and laugh/cry? i know they've started building their own recently, but i don't think there's been a shift in policy..

so, i'm going to claim that it's established that the russians are consistently naive. which makes the question as to whether they really get this or not valid.

the americans don't want a merger. that's what would happen if they started integrating, and it leaves open the threat of russian pre-eminence in the alliance. there's a few countries that might find themselves in agreement with russia more often. it's giving the russians an opportunity to establish hegemony right underneath the hegemon's nose. that's not how hegemon's behave.

nor do they want to be in this perpetual conflict point with russia, or even to integrate russia into the empire in a passive way.

what the americans want - and you have to contemplate this carefully - is to defederalize the russian state into small republics, then integrate each of them into their system independently. if they're going to be able to do this at any point in the near future, that window is closing.

so, no it doesn't make sense to convert a possible ally into an enemy. but it does make sense to seek to dismantle and permanently obliterate an enemy altogether.

whatever else you want to draw from this video, it's rather clear that the vast majority of syrians prefer the modern, secular stability of assad's russian-backed government over the threat of a return to saudi-style extremism (i say return to, but i think it might be millennia since such totalitarianism, there). that ought to be respected, and tactics for regime change ought to be modified.

and the saudis ought to be told to fuck off.

in the long run, there's no future in the region besides the conquest of saudi arabia by secular forces and the deposition of the regime there. this is where we need real regime change. and it's only a matter of time before an administration is elected that has the clarity of thought to realize it.

whether the saudis are toppled by an american-led push or by a mass uprising (perhaps one that is iranian or russian backed), it is certain that they will be toppled. smart american policy would seek to topple them on america's terms, rather than help them carry out their disastrous policies and then wait for the consequences.

careful - most shrews have a venomous bite. it won't kill you, but it will sure hurt...

that was another 15. one of the nice things about not having any responsibility is that when you get a 48 or 72 hour flu you can just sleep it off. everybody *should* have this right. but, most people don't.

i think i'm awake now...

yeah.

i'm groggy.

but i'm ok.

i feel a little bit better, but am still unlikely to be able to do anything besides copy & paste for the next 12-15 hours, if i don't fall asleep (like i did this morning).

definitely a virus....

i just woke up from about 21 hours of straight sleeping, which itself came after a short awake period of about two hours. i've basically been sleeping since about 5:00 monday afternoon. which means i need to eat.

deciding to sit down and clean this up over the next few days worked out fairly well, because i'm so sore right now that it's just about my only option regarding things to do.

i've been noticing a sort of stretching issue for a while, now. i guess i spend a lot of time with legs under a desk, or with legs curled up when i'm sleeping (i can't help it, i go full fetal over night no matter how i fall asleep), and i walk a lot on top of it, so slightly sore legs are not a strange thing for me. when you're sore, you should stretch....

what i've been noticing stretching for the last little bit (specifically the one where you push your legs out from your body while lying flat) is that there's a point where it almost seems like my limbs are pulling out of their sockets. it's only ever happened previously with one leg at a time, but it's this mix of pain and numbness that's sort of hard to describe in any other way than it feeling like the leg is about to pop right out...

i've ultimately concluded that, despite the displeasure, this is probably good for me - because it tends to work. however, i need to, once again, point out the ms-ness of such a circumstance. it's part of a number of things pushing that way, but, i mean, there's not much to do about it..

before i went to sleep yesterday evening, i got a little stretch in and it hit me in both legs for the first time, which actually collapsed me off the bed and down on to the floor (i'm ok, obviously). but did it ever hurt. if you were here, you would have seen me collapsed on my thighs and sort of gasping for air.

given that i woke up with a cough, i'm now not really sure if the reason i'm sore is due to sickness or due to falling the wrong way. but i *am* sure that i'm not likely to move far from this spot for two or three days.

which should be enough to get this cleaned up. unless i can't stay awake...

it's a kind of a complex point.

i think she's missing it. the idea is that all that hegemony stuff is more effective if people are willing participants. i know i'm putting some words in there, but it's really the whole point; this sort of "peace research" is not about reversing the hegemony, it's about institutionalizing it.

so, are the actors using ideas about history and religion and other things to create chaos in the region? yes. to an extent. i think the american military has demonstrated it's ignorance about things a few times. for the most part, though, i think these things are intentional or at least made intentional when they're pointed out; the bush administration may not have foreseen the sectarian fallout, but the military presence in the region has sure done everything it can to use it as a divide and conquer technique. so, it seems naive to suggest that they don't know any better when they're clearly going out of their way to cause all kinds of mayhem.

but i think that's missing the actual point that he's making - what they don't realize is how much more successfully integrated these regions would be if less violent tactics were used to subdue them. and, to a major extent i think he's basically right. there has to be significant wealth redistribution in this region.

regardless of the back door politics that may or may not have gone into enacting and dismantling glass-steagall, the reason it was effective has less to do with trying to reduce speculation and more to do with putting rules on what can be used to speculate with. glass-steagall doesn't abolish the kind of wild financial behaviour that leads to these brutal crashes, it just protects certain types of savings from being gambled on.

the reason this is important is that the bailout is then only possibly used the way it's meant to be. bailouts were a type of socialism when they were brought in. if a bank is going to go under, the state steps in as a "lender of last resort" and keeps the bank afloat. but, why would the state do that? it shouldn't be to protect investors. not even the most ridiculous state capitalist would argue this is justified. it's to protect citizens that have their savings in the bank. this is the entire ethical and legal basis of bailout legislation, and it's not functional when the banking isn't separate.

now, if you separate the two types of banking, you can just go ahead and let the gamblers ruin themselves. the size of the institution is no longer relevant; the state has no obligation or mandate to protect investors.

this is very poorly understood by the general public - both activists and non-activists. glass-steagal is not a way to fix the banking system, but it is a way to stop bankers from gambling your savings off. i don't feel the interview helped to clarify the point.

i think a big part of the confusion is that people can't contemplate the idea that if you have money in a bank, and the bank goes under, that money no longer exists. banks are just viewed as these magical machines that produce money from the ether, relative to the totals we have in them. our totals are absolute. they cannot be modified.

but this is total ignorance.

i think the necessary educational component here needs to be in what actually happens to your money when you put it in a bank and why this is not a safe practice if bailout legislation is successfully reversed. that naturally leads into an explanation of why the continuing existence of bailout legislation is so hugely important to working people, and an explanation of the things that the banks are doing to abuse that social safety net.

so, it seems like the production of hair is something your body does to help remove harmful cholesterol. and i'm growing increasingly uncomfortable with modifying that excretion system, such as via electrolysis. testosterone is produced from cholesterol...

it's pretty wacky, looking into this sebaceous gland. it's constantly producing clones that it then smashes in order to expel the cell contents, which get converted into hair. that's almost how a virus works. now, supposedly the cholesterol is good for your skin, and that's fine. but, your body seems to see the need to expel it. generally, when your body expels liquid it's to get rid of something it doesn't want.

if i go in there and smash up all the glands, i'm going to end up with a build up of that cholesterol somewhere else. and, if you want research money to do a salacious research report on, i think it would be interesting to try and measure a relationship between heart disease and hair removal.

untitled (vst mix)

this takes the midi file as it was created in 2002 and updates the playback to utilize modern vst synthesizers and guitar modellers. render finalized on dec 26, 2014. 

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/untitled-vst-mix

the reality is that canada benefits from warming in just about every way - longer growing seasons, better exploitation of resources and a more enjoyable climate. to any body governing canada, this is not a crisis but an opportunity. and i think that this fundamental calculus needs to be understood in approaching ways to deal with canada. canada will never respond to this as a crisis situation - because it is not a crisis situation to canada. it is just about the best environmental conditions that are even possible for canada. it is optimal.

but, see, that screws the rest of the planet over. so, as a canadian, i'm torn between recognizing what is good for my area of the planet and recognizing what is good for the planet in general. and, that's difficult because it means that this region is going to have to make sacrifices for the well being of other regions. which doesn't tend to happen. this region is actually notorious for that.

and, it's particularly problematic because we're actually even in control of the factors increasing the warming. it's not just us, it's russia as well. but we're a dominant factor due to our extraction techniques, and our permafrost.

the reality is that putting the frozen person in charge of the thermostat is going to lead to higher temperatures. that is a fundamental calculation that has to be recognized about how future canadian governments are going to react to this concern.

if we get a liberal government in, they may increase foreign aid to areas undergoing desertification out of a sense of legitimate guilt. canadian liberalism is really the last remaining branch of the original british liberal tradition, and by far it's most complete extrapolation of thought in the canadian constitution and charter of rights and freedoms. i think it's reasonable to project into the future this legitimate feeling for the necessity of reparation, and to have that feeling shared by a broad sense of the population. canadian liberalism can still produce this sense of legal fairness - i'd argue probably uniquely in the british tradition.

but none of that will stop canada from increasing emissions, it will just a set a self-imposed price on it's behaviour.

another strain that's going to develop is that canada is going to see itself increasingly isolated with russia. now, the current government is behaving rather stupidly in regards to this, so any kind of natural aligning is going to be stunted until they're removed from power. but, it's increasingly inevitable that we're going to see closer co-operation between canada and russia as their policies align internationally, if not domestically.

the reality is that the basis for canada as a non-aligned state is already well established from the trudeau and chretien years. the liberal party in the second half of the twentieth century didn't want nato to define it's international relations and often acted as a semi-neutral go between for american interests, while resisting nato operations in favour of united nations operations. it wanted an independent foreign policy, and had one up until the current prime minister took over. if a liberal government is able to re-establish an independent foreign policy, that kind of relationship might develop between canada, russia and the united states - the latter of two which are on the path to direct conflict. that kind of third power actually has a very important role to play right now and canada is kind of uniquely situated, between them in multiple ways, to play it.

given the american psyche, and we've seen this repeatedly in american history, it's more likely that americans will get up and leave the regions they've damaged than stay and try to fix it. and, the direction that californians and texans and others are going to move towards is north. the question is how far north.

the idea that canada has any real say in the matter is pretty tenuous. we're utterly dependent on the americans for security, and if they decide to move a few units into montreal or toronto we're not really going to have much to say about it. there have been concrete plans, even, to do this - some as a contingency plan for world war two in case the british fell and some as recently as the succession referendum in quebec, which would have ended with clinton declaring montreal the capital of the new state of quebec.

so, is the reality that canada has similar security issues to a country like poland? i think this discussion immediately requires an acknowledgement of the difference of scale. canada is lightly armed, but very large and there's a dramatically different (shorter) history there, despite much of it being unfriendly. yet, it's the same basic dynamic, where canada could conceivably be in need to seek protection from a force which has no future historical role but to dominate it. there's no need to work out the hypocrisy, because there's no need for consistency.

with russia, further, the situation is far less ominous - we really have nothing but commercial relations to look forward to, as russia couldn't possibly pose anything but a pyrrhic threat to canada, no matter how hard it tried to.

i think that sets up some historically strange dynamics that are going to need some foresight to navigate around.

one could even say that russia has met it's match with canada, in terms of natural defence barriers. i mean, they could maybe pull it off. for a week. then, they've doubled their size and are open to immediate dismantling. from all directions. it'd be a race with china for central asia.

which opens the country up as equals, which is my point. cross-polar trade could be the dominant economic relationship in canada within a few decades.

the thing about the kennedy assassination is that it remains unresolved. whether the resolution ultimately ends in filling in details to the official story or in a different story altogether remains an open question, but what is clear is that the story is incomplete. so, theories, in this context, are valid hypotheses to be checked - even if they seem ridiculous.

i tend to lean towards lbj as the most likely suspect. but there were of course a dozen other people with motives and ability. in the end, the story may never be told.

you have to wonder, though, if, at the root of it, it wasn't just some high tory reaction to the irishness of the whole situation. i mean, you have to imagine that these conversations happened in london.

"history has turned upside down, i tell you. there's an irishman in charge of the empire."

british heads of state have been killed for similar crimes of ethnicity in the past. and, really it's not clear that the mindset of the british lords is altogether much different today, when it comes to certain things, than it was a thousand years ago.

given the conspiratorial complexity of certain theories, i just sort of like the simplistic stupidity of this one.

this is a softer argument that i think i ought to try first and foremost, and continue moving back to...

the fact is that i went in to see the doctor in the first place because i wanted to discuss factors that were disabling me from finding employment. i went through a long process from that point, but the essential premise has remained in stasis. i remain in need of that discussion about factors that are disabling me from finding employment. that needs to be a basic step forwards, and it's unlikely to resolve itself in a period of three months. so, if you're not going to diagnose me on the spot then you need to put the things in motion to have me have that discussion relatively quickly, so i can get another year or two to either be diagnosed more rigorously or to try and carry out any recommendations.

it's funny how you meet these people that think they can conquer any odds. it defies the entire concept of odds to think you can conquer all odds. so, there's an implicit misunderstanding of the concept inherent in this perspective. so, to me, the more interesting question is how such absurdity can arise?

i think there's a simple psychological explanation that essentially renders the concept as relative - despite all arguments to the contrary. it's ultimately just not carefully thought through, of course. but, i think the way it works is basically this - if you've never put yourself up against serious odds, if all of your challenges in life are things that you're more likely to succeed at than fail at, then you might gather the perception that odds aren't important. if you've always been favoured, and you've always won, it's possible to delude yourself into thinking you'll always win. see, that's the odds working, though. kind of comically.

so, you get these situations where people are faced with 100:1 odds and they approach it with the attitude that the situation is inevitably going to unfold in their favour, like every other situation always has. which is the comfort of modern existence, i suppose.

but there are rationalistic explanations for morality, and focusing on supernatural explanations in the form of universals is missing out on an opportunity to study something in detail.

when you're dealing with questions of biology, and the key point to get across is that it is a question of biology, the kinds of laws you see in physics are usually not applicable - because we're experiencing things at the micro level. you zoom out enough, you'll see those laws start to work. but that doesn't mean that what we're observing is universally "true" in some sense. it just means that things begin to demonstrate an order when you view them from a far enough distance of abstraction. which is basically a tautology, and doesn't imply anything of any value.

so, when you're looking at the moral systems of individual cultures this universalizing approach is completely backwards. those universals are just aggregate data. rather, each culture is going to develop an entirely individualized set of moral codes and ethics that apply uniquely to their environments. in other words, it's a question of evolutionary biology.

so, a culture with more scarce or less developed resources might have a tendency towards competition, whereas a culture with more developed resources might have a tendency towards a more social distribution. these things can get crossed when cultural values change slower than the technology does, which is essentially the situation we're in right now. when you look at specific examples of the way that settled people constructed moral systems vs. the way that nomadic peoples did, you see these kinds of differences come out starkly.

i just remember getting into this debate with profs into law or philosophy, and feeling like i was talking to somebody stuck on the other side of an epiphany that should really be old news by now. our morals don't come from a higher being. there's nothing universal about the way they operate. they don't exist in some cloud somewhere; they can't be revealed through mathematics, logic or empirical discovery. rather, they're attempts to ensure our own survival (some failed) that can be understood relatively well when looked at in an evolutionary perspective. nor are they entirely unique to humans in anything but their reflective complexity.

if you really want to entertain the notion, breaking the cycle would necessarily mean erasing yourself entirely from history. there's interesting consequences of that (as history would take a different path without you, however miniscule), but it's not what i was thinking about at first.

what that means is we could never know of anybody that's actually succeeded, because all trace of them would cease to exist.

it follows that all claims of enlightenment through this process are necessarily false.

but, frustratingly, it doesn't eliminate the possibility. it even opens up explanations as to why the event seems so rare - we can only remember the fakes.

it's remarkable how these ideas can reinforce themselves through seeming absurdities.

do dogs understand that they're being used for nefarious purposes?

like a drug sniffing dog for example. do they have enough awareness and empathy to say "yeah, i smell it on this person, but they seem cool so i'm not going to draw attention to it.".

well, we know that dogs are very good at sensing personalities. they seem to react differently depending on your emotional state. so, it's not pure fantasy.

i don't think i'd want to be the one that tests that idea....

you have to wonder if wolves have similar capacities. i mean, they're pack animals. it makes sense that some kind of concept of emotion would develop out of that. but, i would think that contact with humans would be a driving force in evolving that trait. knowing which humans are cool and which humans are assholes is something a semi-wild dog needs to be able to do on a day-to-day basis in order to survive.

you can see something similar in elephants. apparently, they react negatively to people who speak certain languages, because they associate poaching behaviour with those languages. that's something of value to pass on to future generations, even if it's kind of racist.

but what i'm thinking of is pretty sneaky. i think dogs may need at least a few more centuries before they can do sneaky things like that...

i'd love to come across a file of mine deep in the state (i think i'm getting my psychiatric evaluation, just from a distance) somewhere that has this broad stamp of deduction on it, in startling blunt clarity. like, a file marked BONKERS in red stamp. presented as a medical diagnosis...

our evaluation of this suspect is that she is simply bonkers.

....signed off for by a doctor, illegibly, but with credentials typed in boldface. to scream it's legitimacy.