richard price - observations on the nature of civil liberty, the principles of government, and the justice and policy of the war with america

"overall? this is a short text, but it took me a long time to get through it because i found it very difficult to put it into context. i suspect that that difficulty placing it into context may be why it's not often cited today. whatever it's value as a liberalizing document in it's own time, it reads off today as a manifesto of the type of social conservatism that is often found on the religious right. yet, price was a major opponent of no less a conservative icon than edmund burke himself. when the lines are this blurry, it's no wonder that he's been left unclaimed in the second half of the twentieth century. however, that doesn't negate the text's historical value. it may not have a direct successor today, but it may perhaps be traced forwards in time as an influential text on the socially conservative aspect of the progressive movement of the late nineteenth century."

that was also painful. i had this idea i could do fifty pages of reading in the morning and record all night, but i found myself getting through a few paragraphs of this thing per day. i have to admit i was hugely distracted by youtube, as you may have noticed.

i'm not giving up on the idea yet, but i'm thinking song/book alternation may be a better idea.

derp

i was tangentially blown off course to this text when attempting to get in between the ideological debate carried out by burke and paine over the revolution in france. i seem to have gotten some wires crossed (i'm going to guess it was complications from a google search) in thinking that the editor of my copy of burke's reflections on the revolution in france claimed that his text was in response to this one. rather, the claim was that burke was replying to a sermon given by rev./dr. price in 1789. this text is claimed by some, however, to have had a strong influence on certain american revolutionaries, so i've decided to give it a read through for historical purposes.

price splits his text into two sections. the first states a few assumptions about liberty and is likewise split into three sections: liberty in general, civil liberties as they relate to government and what could vaguely be called sovereignty in the context of empire. price cites locke in his preface and, without having read much locke directly, i'm willing to take him at face value in his claim that he's merely stating lockean principles. the second section discusses the possibility of a war with the american colonies and is really the crux of the text. as the first section is merely a statement of principles, deconstructing it in too much detail is to largely miss the point of his argument about the possible upcoming war against the colonies. however, there are a few curiosities that are worth pointing out to more broadly understand what 'liberty' meant, as a concept, amongst liberals (including proto-anarchists and proto-socialists) of the time period.

price specifies four different types of liberty: physical, religious, civil and moral. the first three are intuitive; the last references the liberty to not be controlled by 'contrary principles'. today, most people would acknowledge that intellectual liberty (the liberty to define our own principles) is a key type of liberty and contrast it directly against this idea of 'moral liberty' that price is asserting. i think it's worthwhile to try and understand this a little bit better in case i see it jump up elsewhere.

would it not be easy to derive the idea of defining our own principles from not being controlled by those of others? sure, and this is the intuitive connection between moral and intellectual liberty. however, price is being far too specific to allow that derivation. to price, "contrary principles" means "principles contrary to christian principles". specifically, he claims that those who are "controlled by passions" have lost their moral liberty and those without moral liberty are "wicked and detestable". again, it's easy to claim this can be converted into modern language by talking about various types of sexual oppression, but he speaks not of this but of "licentiousness", which no doubt referred to any kind of sexuality that was not properly puritan. he takes it a step further than this in comparing licentiousness to a type of despotism. while he's not explicit, it's clear that he means to state that the despot is satan. his concept of moral freedom is consequently one of freedom from enslavement to satanic principles and, while this is maybe an easily understood relic of classical thinking, it is not at all consistent with intellectual liberty. rather, it reduces the parliament to a rubber stamp for the church and threatens to oppress all those who do not conform to the doctrine dictated by the church-state; "moral freedom" is the so-called "freedom" to not be exposed to ideas that differ from the state's (and church's) official pronunciations. this is 1776, not 1984.

it's not entirely clear how far price would enforce his right to "moral freedom" in an attempt to suppress "intellectual freedom" and emancipate those whom he considers to be enslaved to their corrupt desires. he does suggest that licentiousness should be restricted by laws, but he's also careful to point out that despotism is the greater threat than licentiousness. on the other hand, he makes it clear that he believes that people have the "right" to "protect" themselves from influences that may lead them away from the church. he also seems to reject the idea of a written constitution - specifically because it may restrict government in punishing "licentiousness". i'm really not able to develop a cogent thought from that seemingly contradictory mess of ideas, other than to derive the somewhat outlandish view that price believed that restricting "licentiousness" was a valid act of communitarian democracy, in the sense that it protects the majority from harm (as he sees it). that is, he seems to be arguing in favour of the tyranny of the majority and specifically when it comes to sexuality. such thinking seems better suited to the spanish inquisition than to british liberalism, and yet here it is in an important revolutionary document. i cannot make further sense of it, other than to applaud jefferson's insistence on the lockean notion of separating church and state in an environment where not doing so could have been truly catastrophic.

i also want to take note of how haphazardly price glosses over the problems of corruption that are endemic in government. it does not seem as though price is interested in the kinds of objections that an ancient philosopher like socrates may have provided against democracy. nor does he provide arguments for his claims, but this is to be forgiven due to the nature of the first section as a statement of principles rather than an exposition of them. it is somewhat annoying, though, that, even while arguing against authority, he asserts his arguments in the form of sometimes inane assertions. it may indeed be obvious that pure democracy becomes less and less reasonable as population size increases, but it in no way follows that "a free government may be established in the largest state" by setting up a decentralized representative democracy. while price correctly points out that money is a possible corrupting influence in representative democracies, centralized or not, he does not present any kind of argument as to why his proposals will not lead to that kind of corruption or why "in these circumstances," of decentralized representative democracy, "each separate state would be secure against the interference of sovereign power in its private concerns, and, therefore, would possess liberty". could the corrupting forces not merely simultaneously co-opt several states? i'm not saying they must or can't, i'm just pointing out that there's no argument at all and that reduces price to some kind of cheap mystical guru, pumping out oracular nonsense that seems almost precious in hindsight.

he closes the first section by arguing (i use that word lightly) that empires are impossible to maintain and always eventually result in dissolution. the empire must demand certain things of it's client states, which it's client states will see as rightfully theirs, leading to a conflict developing between positions of imperial authority (which are illegitimate) and expressions of popular rule. the imperial state will need to assert itself by force, which will produce a violent reaction. this is a much easier set of statements to take at face value, although it's perhaps no longer reasonable in our world to think a popular movement can offer any kind of violent resistance to a centralized state. of course, he's setting himself up for a discussion of the situation in america, which he turns to in his second section.

while price provides moral and constitutional arguments, and these form an important part of his perspective, what he's really suggesting is that it is not in britain's self-interest to try and suppress the colonies by force. price is by no means a revolutionary himself. rather, his main concern is the strength of the empire and how to maintain america within it in a way that both grants the colonists a higher level of autonomy and maintains the cohesion of a greater, trans-oceanic british civilization. the real core of his opposition to military action consequently reduces to his perception that such a conflict is unwinnable, from the british perspective; that is to say that the crux of his essay is to suggest that the crown ought to have been using more enlightened tactics than they were using in order to maintain the empire.

was the probability of success really so remote? well, it depended entirely on how many people could be convinced to fight, and price realized that. his calculation assumed that the british empire could not gather any recruits from russia, india or canada (a clear underestimation) and also assumed that every single colonist would fight against the empire (a clear exaggeration that, as a canadian, is especially absurd to me). he consequently derives a force of 40,000 imperial british soldiers vs. 500,000 american colonists. in reality, the loyalists in america actually outnumbered the revolutionaries; the empire had a large numerical advantage in the war. price continues by suggesting that blockading the colonies could not truly harm them because they were entirely self-sufficient. he once again becomes incoherent here, in suggesting that the blockade he opposes would be an act of providence to deliver the colonists from the temptation of foreign luxuries.

throughout his arguments, price persistently returns to this romanticized conception of the american colonists as a pious, pure entity that understands and practices an undiluted, true kind of liberty and continually contrasts them against his perception of the british as corrupted by earthly desires. it's maybe easy to forget at this point that the puritan founding myth was as much of a british invention as an american one and that the historical roots of it carried on in britain for at least as long as it did in america. that is to say that price was producing british stereotypes of america while speaking to a british audience. ulterior motives that price may have had aside, one gets the impression that the british would have generally taken this entirely outlandish, romanticized idealization at face value. the following passage illustrates this:

In this hour of tremendous danger it would become us to turn our thoughts to Heaven. This is what our brethren in the Colonies are doing. From one end of North-America to the other they are fasting and praying. But what are we doing? We are ridiculing them as fanatics, and scoffing at religion, We are running wild after pleasure and forgetting every thing serious and decent at masquerades. We are trafficking for boroughs, perjuring ourselves at elections, and selling ourselves for places. Which side then is Providence likely to favour?

price even ends the text (somewhat hilariously) by comparing america to jesus: he asks the colonists to forgive the empire for it's oppression, as it knows not what it is doing.

on the brighter side of things, it should be noted that price had a fairly refreshing view of indigenous concerns, relative to the period. while he ultimately puts the question aside, seemingly due to the perception that it is an argument he can't win, his articulation both of british massacres in india and of native american sovereignty demonstrate that these were not unknown moral concerns at the time:

If sailing along a coast can give a right to a country, then might the people of Japan become, as soon as they please, the proprietors of Britain. Nothing can be more chimerical than property founded on such a reason. If the land on which the colonies first settled had any proprietors, they were the natives.

indeed, they were.

another thing that price seems abstractly (if not explicitly) aware of is the revolution as a process of recentering the empire in washington, rather than one of an independent entity breaking off and starting a new nation. while he upholds the constitutional principle of "no taxation without representation", he also makes it clear that he doesn't really see the colonists as representing a new national identity that in any way transcends their inherent britishness. he demonstrates this by projecting a possible future where the hanoverian kings (or some other aristocratic family of continental despots) have reduced britain to an authoritarian monarchy, consequently creating a situation where the colonists are the remaining descendants of traditional concepts of british liberty. such a future is one where the colonies would be drastically more populous, have a much larger economy, be more intellectually advanced and command a much stronger military. out of this, price is able to project a fantasy where america is both morally and realistically superior to britain. he dares not suggest that britain would be forced into submission, but the implication is between the lines. he then uses this projection to argue for reconciliation with the colonists out of british self-interest.

overall? this is a short text, but it took me a long time to get through it because i found it very difficult to put it into context. i suspect that that difficulty placing it into context may be why it's not often cited today. whatever it's value as a liberalizing document in it's own time, it reads off today as a manifesto of the type of social conservatism that is often found on the religious right. yet, price was a major opponent of no less a conservative icon than edmund burke himself. when the lines are this blurry, it's no wonder that he's been left unclaimed in the second half of the twentieth century. however, that doesn't negate the text's historical value. it may not have a direct successor today, but it may perhaps be traced forwards in time as an influential text on the socially conservative aspect of the progressive movement of the late nineteenth century.

full text:
http://www.constitution.org/price/price_3.htm

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/books/congress/E/211.P930.1776b/index.html

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/02/25/scho-f25.html

immediate reaction to the new st vincent record

deathtokoalas
i'm not really willing to point any fingers at david byrne. my perception of what was going on there was that byrne essentially hired her to write songs for him. she seemed to be the dominant artist in the arrangement. by far. it's sort of annoying that byrne's inflated sense of importance got a refill from this.

rather, it seems like she's been listening to a lot of tuneyards and is trying to integrate more of an idm/electronic sound into her style. it's a good idea on paper. certainly, radiohead could have delved a lot deeper into the warp records catalog than they actually did. but what i'm getting on the first few listens is that it's come with a trade-off in a lesser amount of attention paid to the arrangements. well, sometimes we just want to clear our heads.

there's some goodness, no doubt. but it sounds like a transition album to me.

Anon Woll
Except she has said before it was a 50/50 process when it came to the songwriting.  He came up with the big band idea and they went from there.

deathtokoalas
well, conceptually, maybe, but i think that's being extremely generous insofar as the idea of songwriting is concerned. i really don't think that david byrne has the slightest idea how to write those kinds of horn parts. insofar as what she's saying is true, that sounds like byrne vaguely describing an idea and annie actually writing it out - which is a process that used to be called "commissioning a composer".

something else that crossed my mind repeatedly was "wow. annie clark is really a big upgrade over adrian belew.". and i'm actually a substantial belew fan.

the point is simply that this "hanging around with david byrne too much" stuff is really backwards. and maybe even a little sexist.

Anon Woll
I think that you got my words twisted.   He proposed the idea of making the record with a horn section and touring with it and she went "that sounds fun, let's do it", then they both composed and wrote lyrics on the album, like a near 50/50 split.

I am not totally defending David Byrne or anything or gonna be part of the "WOW pffft look what she picked up from him" crowd because this actually reminded me a bit of "Marrow" more than a "Love This Giant" song, with that kind of constant staccato and almost march-y kind of feel in all of the non-chorus parts.  I just am saying he deserves slightly more credit than "dude who hired St. Vincent to write songs for him".  She is her own artist and has been developing her stage and studio craft for years and years now.  And yeah, it is backwards and most likely sexist.  Sucks but whatever. Looks like she may be the most successful with this record so haters can eat it.

BubbaZen10
I think David could handle those horn parts. And while i'm actually impressed with her playing, putting her on a par with Adrian Belew? REALLY? Maybe i haven't seen enough of her playing, but that sure seems like a stretch. I really am liking it a lot though. Been a while since some new(er) music grabbed my attention like this.

And btw, wtf did koalas ever do to you??!! ;)

William Sanders
I'm mostly sure that talk of a Byrne influence stems from her change in appearance, an added vibe of eccentricity that includes her use of choreographed dancing/movements during her live show. Byrne implemented the dancing on the Love This Giant tour and she liked the added dynamic, so she's doing it on her own now. That seems like influence to me.

As for the notion of sexism, you're forgetting the stark contrast in legendary status between the two songwriter/performers. Byrne has been a legend longer than Annie has been playing guitar. You can "think" whatever you'd like about who came up with what arrangements, or you can "think" Byrne's not capable of creating those kinds of horn parts, but since you don't actually know any of this, you come off as less than intelligent. 

deathtokoalas
her appearance hasn't changed at all, and you're not doing a very good job at comprehending what i wrote. the obvious truth is that david byrne is not a musician in any sense, let alone the kind of trained musician that clearly wrote those parts. he blatantly has absolutely no idea whatsoever how to sing in key, let alone how to write those kinds of horn parts. in a situation where you have a very capable and educated person on one side and what is basically a lucky opportunistic hack on the other it's not difficult to figure who is doing all of the actual labour.

again, if you'd try a little harder to understand the dynamics involved, you'd realize that byrne has no claim to "legendary status" at all. what he's done throughout his career is piggy back on other people's ideas. the idea that there's some kind of hierarchical difference is precisely the sexist bullshit that i'm calling out: she's a musician and he isn't. you're only claiming otherwise due to a perceived gender misbalance. so, it would do you some good to try and understand the situation properly in terms of balances of power and media interpretation before you start accusing other people of deficits of intelligence.

the foolish thing to think in this situation is that byrne was anything other than the lucky recipient of an eccentric woman fawning over somebody she had a crush on in her teenage years. so, i'll state it in easier to understand terms for you: the idea that byrne is a legend and st. vincent is not is precisely the sexist bullshit that needs to be called out. rather, annie clark is one of the most talented and interesting musicians of our era, and david byrne is a has been that was never more than an overrated hack that took credit for other people's ideas when he was something to begin with.

is that easier for you to understand?

BubbaZen10
Longer than she's been playing guitar?? Hell man, how old is that gal? Try longer than she's been alive! ;)

The "people turn your tv on and throw it out the window" part definitely reminds me a bit of  "Burnin' Down the House." (that descending part is similar) She's working with the guy, and  is probably a fan of his music, so i'm sure there's an influence there, but i definitely hear a lot of other influences coming from her that maybe people don't pick up on. I really see and hear some Cabaret Voltaire in both the video and some of the sounds.

deathtokoalas
yeah.

i think annie's a huge nin fan, personally.

to put it another way, if we were talking about an eno/byrne collaboration, or a byrne/belew collaboration, it would be all about how byrne was hanging out while they did all the work. but when it's a young, attractive woman? it's his superior legendary essence that's managed to rub off a little on the lucky gal.

and that's bullshit.

William Sanders
I stopped reading after "her appearance hasn't changed at all".

I did catch a little of your ramble not far from where I type. Annie Clark will be a legend, she's as talented or more so than Byrne, but she's still young and working towards it. There's a difference, unlike yourself I'm not hellbent on making this an issue of sexism. I won't be supplying the false sense of vindication for you today. Take care.

deathtokoalas
too many words for you, william? not used to reading that much at the same time?

there's no need to get your boxers all unironed about it, either. it's just the way the world works.

BubbaZen10
Man, let me make this clear; i can see a few influences from Byrne's old days, but since i just recently got into this gal and this band, i have looked at other videos on here, and i personally think that, musically, Annie wipes the floor with David Byrne. This is one talented person. (but David IS a better musician than you are giving him credit for here, most certainly)

For real man, NIN definitely in there! I hear a lot of different things coming from her. She's sharp, and has obviously absorbed a lot, like a good musician would. I get how some fans on here are baggin' on this song, and i get why. It's never fun when a band you love goes a little pop or mainsteam to attract new people (like me) but this is just a good damn song, period.

Now, about her being better than Adrian Belew? BULLSHIT!! I saw him with King Crimson in the 80's. She's good. VERY good. She is not at that level yet! ;)

Btw, The Cabs are who Trent ripped off!!!!!! ;)

I think you'll appreciate this song. Look up Sensoria by Cabaret Voltaire.  You'll hear it a little i think. She does a backing vocal line that reminds me of that song.

That is the REAL shit man. Where a lot that you probably like came from. Music-wise, and video-wise. That video was in the MomA. Groundbreaking stuff.

deathtokoalas
trent took a bit from cabaret voltaire in his earliest incarnation, as well as a lot from ministry, bits from coil and foetus and neubauten and a substantial amount from bowie - and he's trying to look like ogre from skinny puppy. i had my industrial phase in the mid to late 90s. and you can hear a bit of that in her sequencing.

but the bit that reznor added himself was this sort of quirkiness. well, it was expanded on in some of the remixes as well. i can really hear that in her writing at points, especially her guitar playing, and it's very much his idiosyncrasy. i guess there's a continuity there in belew.

i mean, we all have influences. i don't deny that byrne probably was one on annie. she's definitely electro-pop in the broad sense that runs from lundgren through to bowie, byrne, anderson, reznor and beyond. it's just the way the argument is being thrown out that is difficult to stomach.

rather, i hope byrne is able to take something away from his time working with annie.

BubbaZen10
Oh, i have no doubt she has reinvigorated him!

The fact you knew who the Cabs were gets you many internet points!

William Sanders
You're too emotionally biased in your assessments, that's why you say so many absurd things. I have no time for that. 

BubbaZen10
Absurd things said are like, MY FAVORITE THINGS!!

I have no time for the too serious shit myself.

I have time koala killer, or whatever the fuck your name is, but make it quick, i have an appointment at 3. TICK TOCK!

deathtokoalas
that was the perfectly sexist remark, william. i'm sort of proud of you, actually.

William Sanders
Of course it was, everything is to you. 

BubbaZen10 
Ok, how much more will you put into this? How far will you push a feminist?

She's made valid points. Anyone who says this chick is riding on Byrne's coattails needs to look into her more. This is one very talented person, and Koalahater might be right that it's actually HIM riding HER coattails at this point.

deathtokoalas
i missed a couple of posts.

i actually think her playing is really underrated. i don't want to do this "on par with" thing. i'm going to state though that i'm an abstract guitarist myself (i have some stuff up on my page if you'd like to click through), and it's a big part of my interest in st. vincent's work. she has progressive streaks, but she's more in a post-punk tradition, and that generally means toning done the excesses. but she did go to berkeley, and her instrument was guitar, and it does come out fairly clearly. she runs off her riffs in a kind of effortless, not flashy way, though - which is definitely not "belewish". she's kind of more of a blues/metal guitarist by instinct. i know that sounds bizarre initially, but if you deconstruct it carefully it comes out pretty clearly. that's more in the sabbath or maiden side of things.

in a broad sense, though, her effects heavy approach has it's origins in the belew and fripp school of guitar. it sounds to me like it's been through a few steps on the way there. there's one specific thing she does often that is very belew and it's this kind of glissando trick through heavy distortion. it's leaning towards the kind of effects belew is known for. and, it comes out in a stylistic sense as well: belew was the guitarist on a lot of the music that preceded this and sounds similar to it: bowie, talking heads, laurie anderson, nine inch nails. and, yeah, a bit of crimson, too. when we're talking about byrne specifically? it's a comparison that's hard to ignore, given how much belew added to byrne's work.

it does sort of intersect with the sexism, though. it's still a little unsettling to see an attractive woman play like annie does. as much as i might like carrie brownstein, and as many heads as pj harvey may have turned, that level of playing wasn't really there. in the end, i think normalizing female shredding is something that's going to be a part of her legacy. there's a  clip from a few years ago where she runs off the riffs to surgeon that's worth watching and demonstrates what i'm getting at. as much as it's distracting from the music, and as much as she's clearly trying to avoid that, i'm not aware of any kind of precedent.

i lost my own train of thought, though. by "upgrade", i meant in terms of general musicality and depth of musical knowledge. there's no use in comparing them directly and ranking one higher than the other. there's a similarity in the way they approach the instrument, but they're pretty different in terms of writing.

part of me does kind of want to hear her do a really flashy guitar record, though.

William Sanders
I thought I was done, people keep bringing me back in. Saying Clark is riding Byrne's coattails is absurd, just as saying Byrne basically hired Clark as the songwriter for their collaboration is absurd, or insinuating that Byrne can't create melodies with horns based on nothing more than a gut-induced hunch is absurd. We can celebrate both artists without shitting on one of them, koalas should give it a try. 

deathtokoalas
byrne was involved with some interesting records in the 80s, but he doesn't deserve a lot of credit for them - as bowie doesn't deserve much credit for the second half of low (he wasn't even in the recording studio when it was created) and neither mccartney nor lennon can really honestly take credit for george martin's work. it would be time consuming to develop this argument here, but people that are familiar with the other works of eno, belew, harrison and weymouth can hear where the genius really originated

augusts1
You should brush up on Byrne's discography. He composed the  score for Twyla Tharp's ballet 'The Catherine Wheel' in '81 & a classical instrumental album called 'The Forest' in '91(both of which I own). He also collaborated w/Ryuichi Sakamoto for the amazing soundtrack to Bertolucci's The Last Emperor in '87. And those 3 are just the tip of the iceberg for his creations apart from his regular albums. He's done plenty of other film work too.

So your assertion that Byrne is a hack & using Clark for his own sexist gain since he has no talent of his own holds no water. at. all. Btw, check his Wiki page to find more of his work referenced there. And I'm a recent convert to Clark mainly because of her involvement w/Byrne.

deathtokoalas
again, if you look at the credits on those records, and you listen to the other work by the artists that did most of the work, it's easy to hear that byrne was not responsible for very much of the interesting components. guitar, vocals & the odd simplistic fill on another instrument. the rest of it is handled by the production teams, which (like bowie) he had a bit of an ear for.

well, and the gigolo dancing. byrne is EXCELLENT at gigolo dancing...

LicoriceLain
Or maybe they simply have very similar musical sensibilities...

grubbymanz
idk i think she is really influenced by byrne and could not say who really arranged what. if you listen to an album like feelings like maybe wicked little doll, and some of the other more synth funky things there is nothing on their collab album that couldn't have been on that album, before she was even putting out music. Also her neurotic pop thing, i bet she was really influenced by byrne and t heads and would not be so quick to consider arrangements on their joint album to be hers based on her recent output,when her style is informed so much by the person she was collaborating with.

deathtokoalas
kramer = nato.
newman = putin.
ukrainian = protesters.

in the end, kramer and newman will make a deal to trick the big oaf into servitude. but, for right now, this is a perfect analogy to explain what's happening in the region.

Tonite
silly witch... Everyone knows that Russia could walk over Ukraine in 24h. if they really wanted to.

deathtokoalas
ukraine by itself, sure. it's not that easy, though. you'll note that ukraine is really just watching the game, as it's being played by external forces.

Kuripo Hirusama
you = the chick from the Shining.

deathtokoalas
you know, i'm not entirely sure what that means.

Rottooth
I think he's saying you look like Shelley Duvall, who starred in the movie, The Shining.

deathtokoalas
i could see it a tad in the shot (which was picked for obvious effect), but overall, not really. i'm an unusually mixed up mutt, so i look startlingly different depending on things like hair colour. i can look very norse with blond hair, very italian with a tan or very finnish if you get my eyes right. on an average day, it's probably closer to kristen stewart. she's actually sort of androgynous looking...

i'm suspecting it has something to do with the shower scene, though, and still not quite sure i get the crux of it.

Kuripo Hirusama
Was she related to Robert Duvall?

El Perro Loco
Brillant take on this man.

Robert Freid (ComradeDimitri101)
Everyone should read this article then-heh:
http://godfatherpolitics.com/14764/putin-get-idea-invade-ukraine-seinfeld-episode/

continuing the discussion with sennheiser

jessica
hi.

sorry to bring up a ghost thread, but i'm a little concerned about the cord that got here. it arrived when it did back in december, and i've been ecstatic about it since. but i've been noticing for the last several weeks that the left side of the cord again comes in and out.

i've swapped the inputs on the phones a few times and am convinced it's the cord, rather than the phones. the red/right in is flawless regardless of which phone it's plugged into, but the black/left one slowly fades over long periods regardless of which phone it's plugged into. often, merely touching it is enough to reset it.

i ultimately think it's a contact issue. that is to say that i think that the metal on the cord is sort of falling out. maybe it's a hundredth of a mm smaller in diameter. and i'd actually be willing to believe it's a production thing if you told me that. it's very obvious that there's not a short in the cord. but it's also obvious that if i keep messing with it one will develop.

i'm just wondering if you have any information that might be of interest. would you be able to verify that there is a small difference in the size of the metal plug going into the phones, over all these decades? is it possible i got a mild defect that's a tad small?

phones:
sennheiser 440-II (ireland)

cord:
069427
Cable steel 3m jack3.5/jack6.3

sennheiser
Hi Jessica,

No problems, please don't apologise!

I am rather surprised that a cable so new could be defective, but it's not unheard of. That's why you've got a 3 month warranty. Before we get into the whole rigomorol  surrounding replacement, I'm bound to ask if the cable polarity has always been respected, you'll notice one pin is fatter than the other. If the cable has been forced in backwards, then the problem may not actually be the cable!

Just asking!

Please let me know about that, and we'll proceed from there!

Cheers,

jessica
i've definitely been careful about polarity - letters always on the outside. i'm certain it's not that. and, as mentioned, it does it with both phones on the black side, and only on the black side.

the entire idea of a warranty completely slipped my mind. it's getting to the end of the three months. so, how does that process work?

(pause)

i'm just a little concerned because you were always previously quick to apply.

i have to say that i don't want to send this cord back. it seems like there's something wrong, but it's a minor adjustment and i know now i can replace the cord when i need to.

but if it is under warranty, i kind of feel entitled to it.

again: if i have to send it back, then forget it. it's not worth the trouble.

also, do you have any information about possible manufacturing mismatches?

sennheiser
Hi Jessica,

My apologies for the delay in response! I was out on holidays.

If you'd be so kind, please provide your address (to save time trying to find it in the computer...) and parts will send you out a new one. No need to return the other, just toss it.

i am so remarkably bad with my hands. it makes me laugh to think i wanted to be a brain surgeon when i was a kid, although to be fair to myself what i *meant* was a mad scientist that hooks up brains to computers rather than somebody that goes in and physically carves up the mind.

there's currently crazy glue *everywhere*.

and i feel kinda funny. aha. ahahaha. ahahahahahahahahah...\

i've been suspicious of this for years, ever since i read a report about how the chinese government pays psychological experts to hang out in forums and use jedi mind tricks to brow beat dissenters back into orthodoxy. what i thought was "well, our government is probably doing it, too, then".

they said i was crazy to believe that...we don't live in china. we live in a free country! we have democracy.

*snicker*

the only thing i've ever been involved with is occupy, and it was actually pretty obvious who the cops were. they didn't hang around at the edges. they tried to take active leadership roles, which is a tip-off in a theoretically non-hierarchical group. but what i found was that most of the activists only rejected hierarchy up to a point and allowed for these positions of quasi-authority. that put me in a position where i was arguing with cops.

you don't throw accusations around. you might be wrong, and then that's a problem. rather, you operate with the assumption that your comrades are cops until you can prove otherwise without a doubt. in most cases, that never really happens.

for me, one of the things that meant was ensuring that the right information got into their notes. i've had a file for a long time. it's an expansion of my large high school file. i'm fully cognizant of that. it's purely a question of what i want the file to say, which is "highly eccentric" and "not a violent threat", rather than "thinks she's che guevara".

there were actually times when i spun it around a little: i went out of my way to mine information about people i'm sure were cops. that meant getting a little closer. one on ones.

i'm legitimately not fearful because i know that i'd have to be completely set up and i know i don't necessitate the motive. they tried a few times, though.

here's an example: i pretended to talk an obvious cop out of smashing up a bar by suggesting she smash up the owner's car instead, fully aware that no cop would ever actually do that. she claimed she had an issue with the bar owner. it was heresay; i never looked into it. logically, smashing up the car would be better if the problem is personally with the owner, right? but, the cop couldn't go with that. smashing a window is a minor annoyance. smashing a car is serious property damage. but, more to the point, i was careful to make the precise argument that the cops would go after the business-smashing anarchist for ideological reasons, but wouldn't have time to prosecute the petty crime. so, the smart thing for anarchists to do would be to carry out petty crimes targeted at particular assholes - not political action with a public message. i watched something click in her brain that night: she knew i was right, and she realized the injustice and absurdity of it. no cars were smashed, but the topic did drop, and the focus shifted to trying to alienate me.

at this point, i feel confident that i could peg a cop pretty easily. i think that's a useful skill.

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/2/25/exclusive_inside_the_army_spy_ring

adrian belew - twang bar king

should have been an ep

this is the first in a string of pop-oriented belew discs that contain some hidden gems but are largely full of filler and watered down bowie and talking heads tunes. throughout this phase in his career, belew demonstrates that he has something unique to add to the genre but doesn't do so nearly often enough to fill up an entire record.

stringing all the hidden gems together creates something pretty solid, though, so that suggests that a compilation of the best tracks would be worthwhile. when island took his first three records out of print, they actually did create a compilation out of them. the compilation is called desire of the rhino king, which is a combination of titles from those discs. frustratingly, the disc throws away some of the best material and keeps some of the worst. rather than solve the problem, it compounds it. what that means is that there's no way to get the best stuff on this record except to download it.

there's a certain bipolar nature to this that falls flat on it's face. belew seems to want to do raw rock and roll, progressive jazz and dramatic pop all on the same record but never all at the same time. the result is that few of the ideas are fully explored. it comes off sounding overly generic and entirely half-assed.

regarding the raw rock tracks, the introductory beatles cover is as bad as the title track. taking it a step further, fish head sounds like bowie fronting the pixies at their most generic. while that may sound sort of visionary considering the date this was released (1983), the track is actually pretty boring - as one really ought to expect from the description of bowie fronting the pixies at their most generic. the ideal woman features spoken word samples and drum loops in that peculiarly byrne-eno way. this in itself would be much less of an error if the topic wasn't so trivial. paint the road is a simplistic horn jam that shouldn't even have been considered as filler. it sounds like a sound check, really. the rail song is a horrific trivialization of heroes, which was no doubt already approaching the status of a classic at the time. we can ride the trains for just one day? singing f#-a# forever, maybe?

see, it's the unrealized potential that's as annoying as anything else about it. the remaining tracks literally sound like king crimson outtakes, but they comprise the best part of the disc - ironically. the second and third tracks sound like they're good enough to be crimson to me, but i have to suspect that they were pieces that fripp couldn't quite work with. perhaps he didn't like the lyrical subject matter of them. the twelfth is all frippertronics. it's not the most developed example of the technique, but it functions as a realization of it's description. the ninth has more of a george harrison vibe. it really excels in it's layered vocal melodies, which seem to strongly foreshadow bjork.

what the record really needed was just a bit more love. it's easy to speculate that belew had his hands full, but the natural question is "why bother?". why not put it aside and wait until there's enough time to work on it? we think of runaway egos as the scourge of young men, but the truth is that they often follow those young men well into middle age. i can imagine a slightly bruised adrian taking his rejected songs and going home with them. which is fine, a couple of them are actually really good, but he really ought to have polished them up rather than releasing them in a near demo state out of pure spite at his master. that extra care would have probably reintroduced the playful, zappaesque aesthetic that the first disc showcases and this one sorely lacks.

so, the assessment of this is that the completed tracks (2,3,9,12) comprise what could have been a very good ep, or the core of a very strong record. however, it's just hopelessly bogged down with painfully bad, unoriginal and half-assed filler. it's years out of print anyways.

stream:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0D_kZ-o484Pbjt81N5OVRZgPqu0v-kaa

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/music/artists/AdrianBelew/1983-TwangBarKing/index.html

so, he's suggesting the "liberal success story" - redistributive processes create a middle class, which pushes for further reforms. interesting that the activist sounds like the upper class liberal, and the profs sound like the working class marxists. maybe those class associations are more real than may be immediately obvious.

i'll admit that the narrative works well as a synthesis of the competing media stories, but that doesn't suddenly make hegelianism scientific. and i've never really been one to actually buy that liberal narrative.

it's interesting to hear a different perspective, though. all these perspectives have aspcts of truth. but i'm not quite convinced by this one.

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11500

the "liberal success story" is today most often trotted out to provide projections for future chinese revolts.

the chinese government pioneered this. imported tactics.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/

adrian belew - lone rhino

strong effort

the thing i always notice about adrian belew's first record is that i always walk away from it weirded out if i listen to it once, but if it ends up on rotation then it makes more and more sense on each listen. that makes it not just a grower but a record that you need to let grow on you every time you put it on. i think that's less of a commentary on the record's abstraction and more a reflection of it's stylistic explorations, which have a certain affinity with gen y indie rock but are, overall, going to be largely alien to just about anybody that didn't live through the late 70s. at points, the record sounds very dated; ironically, though, it's the song structures that sound dated, rather than the technology, which has largely aged quite well. so, the record packs this sort of initial "disco cringe" that weakens on successive listens, when the songs become more and more familiar. in the end, the disc flows well as a cohesive whole.

my connection to the progressive rock of the 1970s and 1980s is largely through sorting through my father's cd collection, and it's a happy coincidence that he happened to have an interest in guitar players, but this isn't a record that was ever in his collection. rather, it's something i've only ever interacted with through mp3. this is true of all of the early belew material, up to the guitar as orchestra. i recall some offhand remarks that his solo work was largely forgettable, which acted as a strong disincentive for further exploration until as late a date as the mid 00s and only after connecting fairly strongly with sides one and two. rather, he had a cd called "sleepless: the concise king crimson" that acted as my early teenage introduction to both belew and robert fripp. unfortunately, my father was one of the people that made the error (and the economics of the situation were no doubt relevant) of selling his sizable record collection at the dawn of the cd era. it's something he slowly rebuilt, but he deeply regretted that decision for the rest of his life. it seemed to have large consequences on his general interest in music, as limited funds that would have previously been dedicated to buying new music became dedicated to replacing old music. the result was that he basically skipped the 90s, only catching up by sorting through my cd collection. i have to wonder how widespread this phenomenon was. anyways, that means that the greatest hits disc was related to the slow, expensive and time consuming task of replacing lost vinyl. 70s and 80s crimson discs came in periodically (and i think he prioritized them because he noticed that i was reacting particularly well to them), but there was never a solo belew disc amongst them.

i think my dad's analysis of belew's solo work was generally correct, but this first disc very much stands out relative to the other pop discs. at the time, belew was coming fresh out of working with five of the most important musicians of the twentieth century: frank zappa, david bowie, brian eno, robert fripp and david byrne. they all show their influence on the record in different ways. see, this is the record's tragic flaw, though: it pulls ideas from a lot of different places into a highly competent combination but it doesn't really present any ideas of it's own. belew would continue this general formula for many years, with varying results but generally not with as much of an attempt to form a synthesis and certainly not as much of an influence from zappa. it's that latter aspect that both makes the disc more interesting than his other solo material (which largely exists as an anachronistic bridge between bowie's berlin period and the talking heads) and essential in the context of belew's substantial body of work.

if i'm suggesting a record from 1982 as essential then, surely, it must be a classic? as noted, the record has a really dated sound and is more of an interesting collection of existing ideas than any kind of statement of it's own. beyond that, there is a juvenile sense of humour on display that just comes off today as totally lame. if there's a debate around whether zappa was an asshole or a comedian, there's little debate over whether he was offensive; belew is carrying on similar themes, but seems generally interested in humour rather than offense and consequently waters his misogyny down to a sort of clownishness that couldn't legitimately offend much of anybody. the record also contains lengthy tributes to the cat and the rhinoceros, which is just not the topical content of classic records. sorry.

despite it's substantial flaws, it is a well produced and interestingly written record from start to finish that happens to wear it's influences on it's sleeves but still stands up as better than average and is fully worth exploring - especially if you're a fan of more than one of the five aforementioned artists.

stream:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqotFbF6sEE

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/music/artists/AdrianBelew/1982-LoneRhino/index.html

independent cd stores. i love what they do for the community, but sometimes i wonder.

i went in to get the new mt. zion disc. i haven't been buying a lot of cds lately, but i try and keep up with those guys. and i've been "saving" a lot of money from not smoking, so i've actually put aside a small amount for a monthly budget. i used to collect those little round discs before real life came around and started demanding i start paying into it. it gave me great enjoyment, so i'd like to get back to doing it. i'm going to be kind of working around my reviews to fill in holes in the collection.

so i thought i'd check to see if there's any belew. they had some of the ones i have and a bunch of the ones i don't really want, as well as one that i have a sort of high-end bootleg of. it was a gift from a friend of my father. my uncle used to do the same thing. so, i have a stack of this stuff - mostly prog-related. i've never really considered them as 'part of the collection'. rather, i've always thought of them more as try-before-you-buy type things, but i'm treating them as though they are for the review site. in actuality, a lot of them are out of print, so those boots are the closest i'm ever going to get. that's the case for this one.

so: $10 for an out of print disc i don't have - collectors jump on that shit. bring it up to the cash...

"geez, this is an old disc."
"yeah."
"i'll mark it down to $6."
"swell."

it's $184, new, on amazon. and i'd be surprised if the disc i got was ever actually played. the insert doesn't look like it's been unraveled before. crisp.

now, that says more about amazon taking advantage of dwindling supply than anything else. it's kind of an asshole price. but, still.

if you collect cds, you have stories like this - and you're glad the indie stores don't do these sorts of rigorous checks. there's not much chance somebody's going to walk into a cd store in windsor and hand over $200 for a decades old out of print adrian belew cd. sure. but, it could conceivably be auctioned for more than $6.

so, i'm happy about this, but i have to wonder....

well, it's a silly question.

it's interesting to see them go back to the oil princess, though. that screams american interference looking for a "moderate" figurehead. i wouldn't expect the protestors to buy that. she's as much of a target of corruption as the president. the trial was politically motivated, but she's also notoriously corrupt. don't let them force you to choose either/or. it's all of the above.

so, the fundamental situation has not changed. there's still a corrupt government in power. i wouldn't expect the situation on the ground to change much.

of course, media will initially attempt to suggest otherwise.

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/2/24/a_coup_or_a_revolution_ukraine

the unfortunate truth is that the only way they're going to put this genie back in the bottle, russian pawn or western pawn, is through the use of force. expect that.

see egypt.

i'm pretty much convinced at this point that the reason obama claimed iraq was "stupid" was that he didn't understand the larger strategy. that is to say that he thought it was about "containing terrorism" rather than containing russia. now that he understands the strategy, he seems to actually want to escalate it.

ok, about robots.

sure. two things.

first, this idea that robots should be smart isn't going to get us anywhere. there's no value in building highly intelligent androids. where robots have a function is simply that they are more productive than us. the focus ought to be on building physical ones, not intellectual ones.

second, our understanding of genetics is leaps and bounds ahead of what it was in asimov's time. a lot of the things he was thinking about applying to robots are better applied to genetic engineering, and we may actually see some of these things happen sooner. from a resource perspective, genetic engineering is more sustainable. but genetically engineering superhuman strength is obviously more perilous than hardcoding it into otherwise dumb as shit robotic systems.

i want robots, and i want mutant creatures, but i don't want androids or cyborgs. the former will make our lives easier. the latter will simply give us a set of ethical questions that will no doubt end in emancipation followed by social problems. android welfare. let's just not bother. let's keep robots stupid...

to be entirely clear - let's leave robots for production, and focus on genetic engineering and computer-human brain interfacing to move the species forwards.

http://revolution-news.com/venezuela-mcrevolution-attempts-regime-change/

so, it seems to be a currency crisis in venezuela that's being spurred on by an undiversified economy. and the protestors in the street seem to not have any particular ideological persuasion.

if there's something to this, it reduces to the idea that venezuela is basically a mercantilist and colonial import/export economy, rather than a socialist state. in other words, what this says is that while the "bolivarian revolution" may have dramatically reduced inequality it has completely failed in producing a self-sustainable socialist economy. they import everything. that's the opposite of socialism...

all the signs are that venezuela is in for a rough ride. this was obvious to me after reading maduro's first public remarks. let's remember that, moving forward.

http://libcom.org/news/express-summary-venezuela%E2%80%99s-situation-curious-people-andor-poorly-informed-22022014

it's not really that we've dropped the connection between wages and productivity. it's more as though the new right economic paradigm argues that the market will determine how productivity should be awarded on it's own and that attempts to modify the way the market distributes wealth using government are actually interfering with the way that things "ought" to be awarded "naturally". it's really the second part of the thing that doesn't wash with me, not the first. it's true that if you don't have rules that protect the weak from the strong then the strong will enslave the weak. i'm not sure how "natural" that is (market economies are no less planned, and are no less human constructions, it's just planned by and for an elite rather than the masses), nor am i one to fall into the naturalistic fallacy in the first place.

but it's not a rejection of the connection. it's this idea that markets determine value for work more fairly than government can, and that setting up those laws is giving workers more than they deserve for the contribution they make.

i want everybody to be able to make truly free economic decisions. however, for the exact issue of fast food workers, precisely? regarding the question as to how productive fast food workers actually are in a social sense? well...

....maybe what we need is a new economic paradigm that considers not just the amount of labour performed but also it's worth in a social sense. i know the guy was sort of dancing around that point, but he wasn't as extreme about it as i would be.

i'd actually rather see mcdonalds in bankruptcy and it's workforce on welfare.

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11510

well, i went to check it out and it hasn't changed yet. i wasn't sure what i'd pick, i just wanted to see the option. i'm not sure if it's a slow roll out or because i live in canada. i can't promise i'll remember to go back and check again later...

i'll be cynical. it's about advertising. i'm not buying tampons any time soon. and i use adblock anyways.

but i do agree that there's a certain normalization attached to this that is overwhelmingly positive. i don't really care about what the gender designation is on facebook, but it would be useful to have more fluid options on a border crossing card or a health card.

http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2014/2/19/cece_mcdonald_laverne_cox_on_facebooks

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116608/silicon-valley-labor-scandals-prove-minimum-wage-hikes-dont-cost-jobs

well, if you listen to snowden, he doesn't sound like somebody i have a high level of agreement on things with.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/02/15/pers-f15.html

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/02/19/you_cant_always_get_what_you_want_iran_nuclear_negotiations
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/02/19/wiki-f19.html
http://canadiandimension.com/articles/5952/
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/02/18/head_in_the_sand_venezuela_economic_policies
http://transitions.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2014/02/17/in_tunisia_its_shoot_first_ask_questions_later
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/02/18/a_comprehensive_strategy_against_terrorism
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/02/15/bang-f15.html
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/02/15/indi-f15.html

she wants to go after middle class 905 voters. rip ndp. now, it's important that reformists get the memo, disassociate and reconstruct.

https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2014/02/20/ndps_andrea_horwath_on_track_to_derail_transit_cohn.html

remember that this is the big keystone; the little one is already pumping.

https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2014/02/19/nebraska_judge_strikes_down_law_that_let_keystone_pipeline_through_state.html

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/21984-william-rivers-pitt-not-the-onion
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/02/20/obama-pushes-for-regime-change-in-venezuela/
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/02/20/masking-tragedy-in-ukraine/
http://phys.org/news/2014-02-sociable-humanoid-robots-advance-human-robot.html
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-drugs-may-transform-downs-syndrome/?MT.wc=SA_MindFacebook

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/02/20/pers-f20.html

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2014/closing-the-free-will-loophole-0220.html

http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/early-music-perks/?WT.mc=SA_MindFacebook

they reinforce their own fantasies and their voting base buys right into it.

i've been having this discussion for years.

"why are you so gung-ho about the conservatives again?"
"because they're lowering taxes."
"why is it so important to you that they lower corporate taxes?"
"because my property taxes are too high."

*pause*

"so you're voting for your local federal conservative mp because you think your property taxes are too high?"
"yup. they said they want to lower taxes, and i'm all for that."
"but, they didn't ever say they want to lower your taxes. i mean, i believe in progressive taxation..."
"...stop trying to brainwash me with your liberal propaganda. they're going to lower taxes, which will get the economy going."
"but it's not..."
"...i know the truth, i don't need to listen to your lies."
"well, alright, then. later."

the end result is that if they claimed that tax cuts affect the weather, and then drew a connection between their policy and an increase in sunny days (even if there's actually been a decrease in sunny days), their voting base would rally around it, and there's your new cpc talking point.

reality means absolutely nothing to these people.

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/02/20/average_family_income_in_conservative_budget_called_fantasy.html

i entirely agree, but the next step is realizing that small groups can co-operate independently of each other.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/21992-the-limits-of-non-cooperation-as-a-strategy-for-social-change

a cell is a cell is a cell. i kind of feeling like dusting off some pre-socratics. regardless, the applications of this are going to be jaw-dropping.

http://medx.cc/312126388

http://truth-out.org/news/item/22043-violent-protests-in-venezuela-fit-a-pattern
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/02/22/ukra-f22.html
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/22045-lapd-goes-to-israel-falls-in-love-with-drones-and-mass-surveillance
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/22042-why-amazons-collaboration-with-the-cia-is-so-ominous-and-vulnerable
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/02/21/is-ukraine-drifting-toward-civil-war/
http://ow.ly/tRG3K
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/torontopipeline/2014/02/22/enbridge_line_9_w5_uncovers_unreported_spills_alarming_communities_along_830km_pipe.html

http://libcom.org/news/express-summary-venezuela%E2%80%99s-situation-curious-people-andor-poorly-informed-22022014

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/02/22/a_house_united
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/02/22/manu-f22.html
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/02/22/pers-f22.html
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/02/21/soon-the-battle-for-venezuela/

i have no idea how accurate this is, but it's an interesting explanation.

note that the government is consequently responding to the crisis by floating the currency exchange rate.

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11518

i live in one of the biggest tomato producing regions in the world, and all the supermarkets are full of beat to shit tomatoes that spent weeks bouncing around in trucks as they were being imported from mexico. i know it's cold out. but you know what the bizarre thing is? the imported mexican tomatoes are hothouse tomatoes. yeah. worse, i know for a fact that the tomatoes in the region i live in are also mostly grown year round and indoors.

i'm new to the area, of course. however, i'm going to have to go out of my way to try and figure out where the local growers are leaving their produce. and, to be honest, that's the kind of thing that calls for some local awareness raising.

i mean, honestly. why are we sorting through moldy tomatoes from thousands of miles away (i haven't actually bought any in weeks), then overpaying for the transportation costs to get them here, when there's a giant surplus 30 miles down the road? stupid, stupid, stupid...

acid mothers temple - nam myo ho ren ge kyo

Meh

the attraction to this is supposedly that it's an updated rendition of a very old, traditional buddhist chant. what do buddhists think about people in canada listening to sacred music without even realizing that it's sacred music? because i didn't realize it was sacred for some time - not when i saw it live nor while i was listening to it, not until i read something that explained the significance of it. to be blunt, the religious significance of the record means absolutely nothing to me and i have absolutely no interest in exploring it further. had it been marketed as religious music, i would have actually almost certainly chosen not to attend the show (which actually would have been a shame because i was introduced to the awesomely rocking mammatus at the gig).

i could consequently accuse the band of cultural appropriation in just about the worst way possible, but that's not a line of condemnation i walk down often and not one i really want to press in too much detail right now. i'd rather just be a punk and call them pretentious.

pretentious, indeed, is the best way to describe this. there are a few sections of more intricate detail, but it's mostly really just a simple, prodding riff repeating over and over, accompanied by sounds that seem to come from nowhere rational at all. within that accompaniment, there's a lot of atonal chanting that a westerner may conceive of as gregorian; this is interspersed with some kind of shamanistic chanting that really stresses japan's ancient siberian heritage. westerners may immediately interpret it as "native american sounding", but by doing that they're confusing a very old shared heritage.

what's really pretentious about it, though, is it's nature as "channeled music". i mean, what do you say to people that think they're channeling spirits into a theremin? is it worth saying anything at all, or is that one of those situations where it's better not to bother wasting your time? so, excluding those sparse patterns that repeat as motifs, the disc is completely aimless by conscious design. i could point out that the record lacks structure and cogency, or point out that it lacks a human element in the improvisation, but who am i to argue with the gods?

where the divinely channeled improv is particularly awful is the guitar playing, which can't have made religious authorities throughout asia particularly happy, i should add. i'm not likely to agree with them in exact terms, but i will agree with anybody that claims that it's in particularly bad taste to load up sacred music with entirely self-indulgent and overly masturbatory guitar work. i might not understand all of this, but i do understand that, and it is weak.

in the end, i can't help but feel that the best audience for this (outside of the stereotypical pothead stuck with the necessity of looking beyond western culture to connect with any kind of spirituality) is anthropologists. there's something fascinating about this on the level of it modernizing something that seems destined for cultural death. but, that's a very analytical application that goes well beyond the level of pure listening, and i simply can't recommend the disc - or the band, for that matter - at all on that level.

stream:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysWbGhvfcWU

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/music/artists/AcidMothersTemple/2007-Nam/index.html

thee silver mt. zion memorial orchestra & tra-la-la band - 13 blues for thirteen moons

Symphonic Benchmark

this is a record that happened in a very different phase of my life; i have to admit that i was actually extremely surprised to connect to this disc at all, let alone as deeply as i did. as it is, it might be my favourite record of the 00s - and a special disc it is, too.

my life in 2008 was virtually unrecognizable from my life in 2005. i'd lost touch with, rejected or been rejected by virtually everybody i had been in contact with; i was spending virtually all of my time outside of work entirely by myself, and largely enjoying it. while i would eventually go back at least twice, it seemed like i was out of school permanently - and without any serious employment opportunities. i was bouncing around from call centre to call centre (repeatedly fired, and unable to care) in an attempt to pay rent, bills and student loan interest payments. the pressures were very different, but, in a very real way, this was a return to the conditions that i first connected with this band in the first place. into that reality of aimlessly drifting through forced meaningless labour, and through whatever alignment that the universe provided, mt. zion managed to yet again produce a record that explored precisely what i was living through and hit me in exactly the way i needed at exactly the time i needed it.

i've long interpreted the disc as a concept record, but i don't pretend that the band meant for it to be one. it just seemed to intersect so much with what i was feeling and thinking that i intuitively constructed a narrative out of it. in this interpretative fantasy, the record follows an honest musician through the horrors of modern existence. it explores the vapid nature of indie culture, constructs villains out of evil bankers enforcing wage slavery to demand loan payments and ultimately ends with an affirmation of pure fucking honesty in the most powerful way possible. in absolute terms, the climax of the record is so precious as to nearly be trite but that's exactly why it's so amazingly powerful. you mean there really are some hearts that are true in this world? really? why are they so hard to find? in the midst of the extreme doubt i was experiencing, i definitely needed somebody to tell me exactly that at that exact point.

it's not just the conceptual aspect that drives this thing, either. in completely unhyphenated terms, it's just a fucking sold rock album full of messy, no wave stomps and flat-out kickass riffs. see, the kind of indictment of popular culture that the record lays out requires a very angry delivery and the band really delivers on it. the strings are very much pulled back to a more traditional "rock accompaniment", but it's actually an asset, in context. it's one thing to tear down the shit culture we're stuck with, it's another to show everybody how it should be done in terms that the masses can connect to. this had to be a takedown of popular rock music to get it's point across properly; it wouldn't have packed the same punch as a bunch of bartok variations.

it's not often that i will suggest an album is flawless, but i can't find a flaw here. what i will say is that the record is heavy. if things are going well for you right now and you're feeling pretty good about yourself, you probably won't want to hear a record full of rants that question your integrity, your intelligence and your basic decency for merely carrying through with the life that the system created for you to live. that might be exactly why you actually should listen to this very carefully. you might need an anvil across the fucking forehead to get you to behave like a decent person. unfortunately, if that's the case, you're probably more likely to get defensive about it, or run off words by some asshole philosopher that is so lost in meaningless abstraction that they can't see the basic use of being nice to people. that will restrict this record's most passionate audience to people with a conscience - and especially people with a conscience that are just getting bludgeoned down by a society that lacks one.

unfortunately, that means that most people won't really get this. for those that will get it, though, it's really a treat. highly, highly recommended.

stream:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnpQFjefXCRMZAGkNSy2DD7gcSPhsGgZ0

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/music/artists/ASilverMtZion/2008-13BluesForThirteenMoons/index.html

you need to be extra careful about venezuela, because you don't just have imperialists lying to you, you also have chavistas lying to you.

without any special knowledge of what is happening, i'll point out that the opposition almost certainly does not represent the protestors. it may be entirely true that the opposition is working with the united states to overthrow the government. however, pointing that out is not the same thing as accusing the protestors of being right-wing - as they clearly are in the ukraine, i might add.

all the "independent" media reports are essentially the same. students represent the upper middle class. poor support the government. it's counter-revolutionary. but that's of course based on the false understanding of venezuela as a left-wing state in the first place. it can't be a counter-revolution if a revolution never happened in the first place. i'm well aware of active leftist movements in venezuela that are deeply opposed to the existing government.

within all that confusion, there have been tons of false images floating around, and it's hard to believe that's not something that's been orchestrated.

so, again, it's like anywhere else: there's three sides here, not two. the state and the opposition are well understood, and the opposition is definitely an imperial proxy. but the actual people, what they're fighting for, what their political ideals are and their end desires are a far more difficult entity to understand.

http://www.policymic.com/articles/82817/these-photos-being-shared-from-venezuela-are-fake

you know, given the prevalence of these "free trade" agreements, which are of course consciously designed to enslave the rest of the world into producing good to import to america, it's ironic to consider the role that america's place as an import driven market played in the revolution. that is to say that a big part of the reason that the landholders revolted was that they were denied a local market by being forced to compete with imported goods from elsewhere in the empire.

it plays back into the narrative about the revolution being a civil war in the british empire. those local landowners are now transnationals that are integrated with their british counterparts. recreating that condition of local landowners seeking more power would require a redistribution of wealth that is itself revolutionary. for that reason, those conditions cannot recreate themselves.

just a reminder that, liberal rhetoric notwithstanding, this is the first thing the united states actually did.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariff_Act_of_1789

if you could write a program that perfectly emulates the neural processes that lead to thinking and set it in motion, the machine would be thinking. or, at least it would be insofar as it would be doing exactly what we do when we think; if we can think, the machine can. if you take it to the next step, you could even conceivably upload your own brain (maybe even by something as simple as a scanning process) and emulate your *own* thinking. not going to happen tomorrow, sure, but...

really, i'm a little disappointed to see him get this backwards. it's the kind of thing we usually see him criticize. it's not that the machine cannot act like a brain, it's that the brain acts like a machine. we realize the heart is a machine, kidneys are a machine. what's with the mysticism surrounding the brain, noam?

again: they're very openly interfering, and if they take over they're going to be a us puppet government. whatever the problems with the existing government, setting up a puppet state is no solution.

however, this report doesn't do a good job of separating between the protesters and the opposition. the opposition usually has little real control over protestors in the initial stages of the uprising. it takes time for them to take over.

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/2/20/venezuelan_protests_another_attempt_by_us

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/21/science/earth/more-bite-left-to-winter-but-it-hasnt-been-as-bad-as-you-think.html

damned hiccups.

i remain flabbergasted that there's not something over the counter for this.

still reading that silly puritan revolutionary nonsense. well, my head's just been throbbing....slept for something like 90 of the last 100 hours...i'm awake now, finally. hope to be done by the end of the night.

live just randomly struck me as the proper soundtrack for this stuff, 'cause it intersects properly into that area of christianity that i have a lot of respect for. be nice to people. have some fucking integrity. well, i'm an open socialist - on a basic definitional and historical level that largely means i like the morals and reject the theology. engels informs us of the difference between historically utopian (religious) socialism and his new brand of scientific (marxist) socialism. i digress. but i don't think that jesus would have been a hippie, really. he would have been more of a punk, out to smash the corporate state.

this record has a lot of errors. it's more of a guilty pleasure, really. i've grown to love it's flaws (funny how that happens, sometimes), but roughly half of it is admittedly undefendably awful. and this is certainly the last record they did before the singer got too preachy to listen to.

...but i've got a really weird soft spot for this disc, explicitly *as* the christian rock it is.

well, i think another reason they went downhill after this is that they stopped working with jerry harrison. that's probably not a widely understood narrative.

also, i'm again confused as to what the difference is between this and emo, other than that this is better than essentially all 90s emo i've heard - on their own basis of "emotional songwriting", "introspective lyrics" and "developed vocal melodies".

yeah. i'm doing far too many things at once. there's still that music history site i want to do, and here's the thing: i don't think we should have a thing called emo at all, dumb marketing, but if we're going to, and people are going to write this history, then this isn't just it but is some of the best of it. even if nobody realized it. *i'm* realizing it and will have to write it in.

as a would-be revolutionary, i am perpetually annoyed by the way the united states propagandizes and controls foreign resistance movements, often in ways that the people on the ground are not aware of. but i've come to expect it.

the americans are backing yet another hard right group in an attempt to assert their global hegemony. they never, ever support democratic forces, either. it's always the most right-wing, racist, fundamentalist fascists they can find...

i hope ukraine doesn't end up like syria.

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/2/20/a_new_cold_war_ukraine_violence

i had a thought walking through the rain: what we need to deal with flooding issues are elephants. if you just let an elephant walk through the streets it would suck all the water up and voila...

....except there are some problems. it's too cold for elephants, and that's not clean water, and it has to find it's way back out eventually.

so, robot elephants. seriously. this is the future of flood control.

i mean, we could maybe deal with the weather issue by genetically engineering mammoths, but it's still not humane to have them out lapping up water on the street.

it's not a crises, it's a reorganization of global trade and global wealth. and it's not going to "resolve" in the sense of a return to previous levels of employment. this is the new reality.

akyuz is full of relevant observations, but he's confusing cause with effect. lower consumption is an effect of falling wages, which is itself a result of global trade agreements that seek to take advantage of the surplus of global workers. that's an irresolvable situation that will keep wages spiralling down for as long as the labour market is global (unless it collapses itself first). further, the ideas he's suggesting are highly problematic in the context of a society that needs to be focusing on changing the way it uses energy and produces waste.

worse, if you were to ask around, i think you'd get the feeling that there's a general resistance to this idea of centering the economy around frivolous production.

the other side of this isn't a return to the past. that cannot happen. rather, the current situation will entrench itself and worsen. this is the way the system was designed. rather, people need to adjust to the reality of global markets by moving into the future in a way that focuses more on local economies.

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11508

it's dry in here and not likely to spill over. i don't feel the structure got the test i was expecting it to, but it's not really a needed test, either. i'm not expecting this kind of snow again next year. but the temperature didn't climb to where it threatened it would, and the rain didn't come down nearly as hard, either. really, windsor seems to have completely skipped the system.

that's ok with me. there's still a lot of water to get out of here, but the temperature is going to drop enough to stop the melt and let it drain.

head is also clearing. what a wasted week...

i think that what we delude ourselves as thinking of democracy requires people like medea benjamin to push for due process with drone strikes, or glenn greenwald to get information out, or ralph nader to keep corporations on their toes. if the system that exists is going to work at all, it needs these kinds of liberals and libertarians to ensure it holds up it's own axioms. "the rule of law", and all that other liberal stuff. they talk about king, and that's another good example of the kind of perpetual reformism that the system requires to fulfill it's own promises.

but, if i look around me, i don't think "we need a bigger movement". two reasons:

1) co-option. and you can't just blame this on the hierarchy, "the masses" have to take responsibility for this. they melted all over obama. i don't see a way to avoid that. sorry.
2) if it can't be co-opted, it can be destroyed much more easily if it's centralized.

i could talk about how al qaeda's decentralized structure (rather than it's ideology or tactics) is something to try and emulate. to me, that was the promise of occupy. unfortunately, not everybody on the ground saw it like that. but, i think it was a first step. overall, i think a more valuable historical example is the kind of secret societies that were dominant in the french revolution. they realized that open organizing would be brutally suppressed, so they did it underground. we're not yet at that point, we're quickly approaching it. we need to sort of get that loss of democracy that we've been experiencing over the last few decades and find a way to adjust to it.

that is to say that this discussion belongs to the 1960s. there's a long list of fundamental realities that have changed so deeply that we just can't hope that we can organize these kinds of popular protests and hope that the state will respond, except in the kind of small scale ways that define what reformism is.

so, there's a housing problem in detroit. do they need a large scale organization? no - that's either going to be co-opted or repressed. rather, they need to find ways to quietly create clandestine, decentralized squatting networks with no active leadership that actively reject any kind of media exposure.

and i think that's a big reason why these larger movements aren't happening: the resistance is now anarchist, not marxist.

the "temporary autonomous zone" is becoming a more attractive model than working through a hopeless system.

field of broken dreams: if you build it, they will co-opt.

24 hours from now, i will know whether this basement is unusually flood resistant or not.

there's about 20 cm of snow on the ground. it was 7 degrees today, which was warm enough to turn the neighbourhood roads into a series of interconnected ponds. starting around 10 am, we're going to get close to 50 mm of rain (tapering off about midnight tomorrow), around with temperatures rising to around 10 degrees at about the same time. the temperature is then going to drop back to freezing very quickly...

that's kind of an algorithm for flooding, so it seems to be a virtual certainty that there's going to be some water issues in the neighbourhood. the roads are going to flood and the sewers are going to back up. that's very easy to predict, and not really much to care about from my perspective. what i'm worried about is that water seeping in...

i'll find out.

awake, but still not fully alert.

you have to keep in mind that i'm somebody that has historically routinely gone well over 48 hours without sleep, on nothing but coffee and nicotine. nicotine is such a powerful stimulant, for me anyways. i'm well aware of the reality that if i just go buy a pack of smokes i can get some 36 hour days in. but i need to cut the reliance on it.

so i'm not used to this...

i'm hoping the flip of that is that the option for really long days will be there if i want it by just getting a pack.

drugs should be used as drugs, y'know?

producing humans that are naturally wired on caffeine - or that don't form a resistance, at least - strikes me as a worthwhile application of genetic engineering.

personally, i'd love to have that dna flipped...

c'mon, brain. you're supposed to like humidity.

the hypersensitivity is off the wall, but so be it. i think the pollen or whatever may have something to do with it (i've never been checked, but it's something that comes and goes). but, every little change in my surroundings produces these exaggerated responses. the atmospheric pressure changes, i get a stomach ache. the moisture level of the air changes, i get a headache. i'm starting to wonder if i was born with a swim bladder.....

in the end, it's just more proof that i am not a member of homo sapiens. sorry. like i've said - i don't mind being on the same clade. that's ok. but i'm not the same species as the rest of you.....

physically feeling snot harden at the top of your nose might be the weirdest shit ever.

actually, i feel a lot better since i woke up from a nap. weirdness, though.

it's actually the constant napping that's made me rather useless this month. awake for a few hours....zzzzz....again and again...

it's partly the fact that i keep putting myself in nicotine withdrawal. i realize this and realize i just need to make a fucking choice. as i've been stating for years, it's not the cigarettes that are stopping me from quitting altogether, it's the other things we smoke for recreational reasons. which i'm infrequent about. but it's putting me in constant withdrawal....

yet, i'm wondering if it has something to do with the weather, too, given how sensitive i seem to be to it. it's been so cold. and now my sinuses are thawing out.

coffee has stopped working, which scares me. i don't like the stronger options. maybe i'll switch brands.

those moments when you suddenly, without warning, have a "water up the nose" reaction (in error) as a part of the rehydration process that follows turning the heat down (and thereby moistening the inside air) in the spring....

"wait. i can breathe again. woah."

i can't believe nobody has picked up on the catch-22 reference.

...there's no argument at all and that reduces price to some kind of cheap mystical guru, pumping out oracular nonsense that seems almost precious in hindsight.

i'm an ass. sorry. but i know it can't be a sears poncho in 1776.

i have been so absurdly distracted this month...

i know there's some articles floating around about the melting waters up north messing with the jet stream, but every article i've seen on the topic actually presents itself as a minority view against the consensus. if you think about it for a second, it doesn't actually make any sense. we've had unusually warm winters for 20 years, then all of a sudden the warming trend results in coldness? i mean, i don't like to make a habit of agreeing with people like rush limbaugh but i think the truth is that the media is jumping on this in ways that demonstrate that most journalists really don't have the slightest understanding of what they're typing about.

you mean teaching people grammar for four years doesn't give them a deeper understanding of climate science? my mind is blown.

anyways, the article itself is interesting but please draw specific attention to the chart published, which points out specifically cold years in 2013, 1993 and 1976. specifically:

1976 -6
1993 -5.5
2013 -5.3

those are the three coldest years in the last 50. it's very interesting because it very clearly demonstrates how two different phenomena - cyclical sunspot activity and increasing greenhouse gas concentration - work together. we see that temperatures at the minimum of each cycle have increased slightly. it's entirely reasonable, based on this data and what we know about these two phenomena, to expect another especially cold year around 2030 - although not quite as cold. -5, perhaps. or perhaps -4.5 or even -4, if the warming picks up.

now, if you zoom out a little further to the last 100 years you see especially cold years in the late 50s, late 30s and late 10s, further corroborating a roughly 20 year cycle. further, the 30s (~-6) and 10s (almost -8) are the coldest - further corroborating the warming trend. this even pulls out the slight cooling trend in the middle of the century (when the bottom of the cycle hit in the late 50s, it was -5.5, a bit warmer than the 30s, so it's actually the 70s bottoming that demonstrates the cooling).

going back to the media, they want to present these ideas as counter to one another. and, certainly, the crackpots that want to write off climate change as all sunspots and no carbon aren't helping to clarify how they work together.

but this simple chart demonstrates it very clearly.

http://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/has-it-really-been-that-cold-in-southern-ontario/21691/

that's presuming the sun behaves, of course.

my understanding is that this particular relationship is demonstrable across the northern hemisphere (and only the northern hemisphere), and is not localized to toronto. it just happens to really cleanly show the relationship.

there was some murmuring a few months ago that the sun's low activity might be about to throw us into a cold snap for a few years, but my understanding is the sun has come back.

nor is it as simple as just sunlight. of course, i don't understand it down to the precise details. i'm not a climate scientist. but i think the idea is intuitive enough. i mean, it's been cold this year because of the air coming down from the north, which is specifically related to wind. when the wind roars it's way south, it gets cold down here. due to the way the earth is tilted, the amount of sun that hits the northern hemisphere has well known effects that are related to the onset of ice ages (milankovitch cycles).

maybe i should state the argument that convinced me that carbon has an effect. i'm a skeptical person. i was agnostic at first. but, the more i looked into it, the more i realized that "natural conditions" "should" be pushing us into an ice age. that is to say that we are hypothesized to currently exist in an interglacial. i say hypothesized because the future doesn't exist yet. but, based on what we know about the way the climate's been changing for the last really long time, we've been coming in and out of ice ages pretty regularly and seemed to be about on the verge of entering into another one (based on how long past interglacials lasted). that is to say that, based on past climate data, the reasonable conclusion to come to would be that we should expect to be entering an ice age just about any year now.

yet, the data states the climate is warming. therefore, something must be working to counteract the onset of an ice age. the chemistry of carbon works together with the correlation of rising carbon. that's something that requires a terrestrial explanation + correlation + mechanism - enough to convince me.

milankovitch cycles are like 20 some thousand years, though, and has to do with the way the earth orbits as much as it does with the way the earth is tilted. it's not at all the same thing. but the parallel to draw is that both ideas rely on differences in the amount of sun hitting the earth at northern latitudes - very small changes. milankovitch' ideas are based on very small changes making big differences over thousands of years. the sunspot thing is very small changes making relatively small differences over a short period of time. so, it's just a difference of scale.

like i say, that's just an intuitive explanation - the sun's energy hits us on enough of an angle in the north that small variations have the ability to set off chaotic changes. like lightning hitting a pond. that's the cause of most weather on the planet! so, i think that's uncontroversial. the difficulty is working it out in more detail than that. and there's been some studies noting the correlation i'm pulling out; in fact, that's entirely what i'm drawing on (i'm not one to make shit up).

here's my source. again - it's only the northern hemisphere.

http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2013/11/solar-activity-and-the-so-called-%E2%80%9Clittle-ice-age%E2%80%9D/

as an aside, that brings up an aspect of the climate change discussion that nobody talks about. there's this sort of implicit assumption that if we stop carbon emissions then the climate will be static. of course, that's ridiculous. nobody would actually say that. the climate is in constant flux. yet, it remains implicit. in fact, we have every reason to believe that if we were to erase all the warming we've created with carbon then we'd be headed directly into an ice age. that is to say that the carbon we're dumping into the atmosphere is preventing an ice age.

i don't think we want to enter an ice age anymore than we want to go into a warming feedback cycle.

that doesn't mean we can just let the carbon flow and get away with it. milankovitch cycles or not, we can't just terraform the planet into venus and think we'll be ok. but, i don't think it's something the models take fully into account - and it is something they SHOULD take into account. the question of how much carbon is necessary to offset the milankovitch cycles is a valid one, as is the question of how much is too much. we want some carbon to offset the cooling, but we don't want so much that it melts the permafrost and unleashes all the methane. if the latter happens, it could very well take us out of an "icehouse" and into a "hothouse", and then we're totally lost in the woods without a compass.

i don't think that the numbers that are generally thrown around in the media are created with any of that in mind. like i say: it's just that implicit assumption of stasis that everybody knows is ridiculous. but, the other side of that argument is that ice ages don't happen that rapidly and that it's a lesser thing to be concerned about. yet, is it really? that's an assumption i'm less than comfortable with.

what i'm hoping is that we're going to see some stories in the next few months that point out that it's going to take a few years to thaw all the refreezing that happened this year. of course, that won't buck the trend. it might buy us some more time, though.

....but the flip side of that is when the cycle does it turn it could be worse than we're expecting.

i'm just working out possibilities of the way the models are flawed. we'll have to find out. but if there's something deep to the idea that sun activity does have these cycles in the north,

1) we'll need to recalculate the effect of this minimum
2) we'll need to recalculate the effect of the coming maximum around 2020

i think it probably won't just balance out.

this is more precisely what i'm talking about. as you can see, the amount of energy is very small. it's not enough to have serious climate effects on a short term basis (although the milankovitch theory, which is accepted, states that larger changes occur over thousands of years due to changes in the earth's distance from the sun, how it spins and etc). however, the idea is that the small differences in energy might be enough to set off weather patterns - and specifically that it might have an effect on cyclones raging off the coast of siberia and, by proxy, affect how the air pushes southwards into north america and europe.

i just want to make it clear that nobody is suggesting that less sunspots = less sunlight = cold. that neither makes sense in terms of energy or in terms of the cause of the cold we're experiencing (which is already frigid air moving south, not southern air becoming frigid due to the sun not warming it or something). rather, it's the idea that small changes in the amount of energy hitting northern latitudes can affect weather in the north, and that the weather in the north then affects shit further south.

which is not any different than el nino / la nina. it's just in siberia instead of the pacific, and follows a different pattern of air movement.

http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov/weekly/Earth8.pdf

lol. there's a whole section in this dude's book. he's a contributor at a prominent climate site (realclimate), fwiw.

http://books.google.ca/books?id=g97ktyTE7LIC&pg=PA157&dq=solar+activity+and+earth%27s+climate+6.5&hl=en&sa=X&ei=R-cCU-vqLoqz2QXksoCwCA&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=solar%20activity%20and%20earth%27s%20climate%206.5&f=false

btw, i'm pointing to the 22 year hale cycle of magnetic reversal rather than the 11 year sunspot cycle that all the literature is citing. they're related. it's the same argument, i'm just stretching it out over two cycles. but i should be clear.

the nasty cold is only ~20 years (and sometimes a few times in a down cycle) 'cause there's other stuff besides the sun going on.

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0442%282004%29017%3C0034%3AEOTSCI%3E2.0.CO%3B2

if you're still reading this and can't understand that document, what it says (amongst other things) is that the 11 year solar minimum (not the 22 year one) might create either an extremely cold polar vortex or an extremely warm one depending on whether the wind is easterly or westerly. it works that out by either pulling heat up or down from the atmosphere. this paper was unable to determine a cause or pattern underlying the direction of the wind.

meaning it's not quite the same thing as i'm saying, but it does present evidence that the solar minimum is a cause of extreme polar vortices.

and with that, we have once again derived the immortal words:

the answer, my friend...

</thread>

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2014/02/sochi-activist-arrested-pro-gay-chant-2014217194521160147.html