just a correction: mulcair was not leader of the ndp in the last election, jack layton was. there was a complicated mix of sympathy for a dying layton (who everybody agreed blew away duceppe in the debate), a desperate attempt to stop a conservative majority (and maybe allow an ndp-liberal coalition, which itself is a complicated mess), revulsion at ignatieff, generational change and a feeling that the bloc wasn't accomplishing anything, partially on harper's repeated suggestion. quebec has a history of this sort of thing, moving in giant leaps and bounds from one party to the next, in some kind of weird mass consciousness. it's kind of eery, actually. and the west does the same thing under repeated upheavals of "prairie populism".

but, i agree with the general point being expressed here. and, the frustrating thing is that, if the goal is solely to take power, it isn't bad politics for the ndp to do what they're doing....they got a boost of a few percentage points this time...for some reason or other (i suspect age), the deciding factor seems to have been that turnout, and specifically tory turnout, was very low in the gta.

anyways, the ndp has four years to think about it, now. one way or the other, they're going to emerge as a very different beast next time around. it didn't translate into seats this time around, but the ndp seem to have broken through to some different types of voters. for better or worse. it's actually the tories that walk out of this in crises.

i think we saw the beginning of the core of their voting demographic withdrawing from public involvement due to the various factors associated with aging: lower mobility, lower interest, etc. but i'd like to see some numbers verify that or prove it wrong. if they don't find a way to mobilize young people, and these abstract financial scandals pushed through the sun franchises really aren't it, the tories could be devastated the next time through.

----

LeGioNoFZioN
the Progressive Conservative party of Ontario is not a "tea party" like conservative government, it isn't even hard right.  people who use that are scare mongering and intellectually dishonest.  The Liberal and PC party's are nearly indistinguishable to anyone being truthful.  their rhetorically different, but historically so similar MPP's jump from one party to the other relatively frequently.  with Horwath the new head of the provincial NDP, it seems they are drawing more to the centre, and are gaining support for their centrist move in Toronto.

(lengthy but typical discussion about climate denial is removed as i am not a party to it and it does not include worthwhile arguments)

deathtokoalas
the canadian spectrum is rather difficult, because the provincial parties are independent of the federal ones. some of the most right-wing parties in canada in recent memory have been from the ndp, and some of the most left have been from the liberals.

so, you have to look at the status quo. hudak's proposals are not centrist or middle of the road relative to the status quo, he's very far to the right of bill davis and even to the right of the alberta pcs. he would be the most right-wing premier in the country. that doesn't make him mussolini, but it does take him out of the mainstream.

well, maybe he's not more right-wing than brad wall. second most, then. point stands.

a4d3
How was he part of the new ice scare in the 70s? He was studying Venus before he realized what a dramatic effect GHGs have on climate. Also, I recommended him because he is one of the most respected scientists. Not everyone agrees with all his points but he breaks down what is agreed upon very clearly.

LeGioNoFZioN
I read about it years ago, this is the only article I could find on it online at this point http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2007/sep/19/inside-the-beltway-69748548/?page=all

but the point is he was advocating for global climate change in 1971 based on a computer model he created, which turned out to not be correct in any way. And he has been on the receiving end of some serious cash for his research post 1990's.  My point is he has a vesting interest, and financial gain to be made out of his advocacy.

a4d3
This comes up all the time but it's really pretty weak if you think about the way the world works, in my opinion.  The first question is, what serious cash? Where does it come from? How does it compete with the profits of energy companies almost entirely invested in fossil fuels? (for fun, google the largest corporations in the world when you have a chance). The second question, noting however that the article mentions the ice age was not something he predicted but a colleague of his did,  wouldn't it have been easier to have stuck with the cooling hypothesis of his colleague if he was after money? Why work so hard to reverse it? And then, if you consider how many scientists around the world studying different fields support the theory based on their own research, how plausible is this dark money hypothesis? It's also worth noting that despite some scientists predicting cooling in the 70's, metastudies of research during that time period show that even then cooling was predicted by a small minority of scientists. So as far as I can tell, (although you didn't imply this) all the talk about how scientists change their minds like the wind changes direction is really misinformed.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s-basic.htm

I stand by the recommendation but, as I mentioned, feel free to look at any other respected scientist.

deathtokoalas
these arguments are terrible. none of you have the slightest idea of what you're talking about on a scientific level, so you try to discredit each other with red herrings about finances or argue around the red herrings with aloof rationalizations. one can attempt to explain the motives underlying bad science by looking at the source of funding, but one cannot reasonably draw inferences about the nature of any research by looking solely at the funding. i know it might seem like environmentalists do the latter, but they in fact do the former. is it subtle? to me, it's glaring, but maybe it's not so obvious to others.

jonathan swift died a really long time ago, and the fact is that he didn't really understand what he was tearing down well, anyways - he was really just drawing a giant strawman. but, for whatever reason, he remains this kind of hero amongst a certain type of luddite, who continue to perpetuate the same strawman fallacy hundreds of years later. it's kind of distressing.

even if he did have a convoluted point in attacking the easy target of astrologists and pythagoreans and then calling that a satire of science, there were hardly things such as confidence intervals or correlative statistics at that point in history.

so, let's try and keep up a bit better.

does anybody have any substantive criticism or support for any papers this guy has published?

---

LeGioNoFZioN
what these two fail to note is the non stop string of corruption and scandal and waste from the liberal party since they came into power.  the literally make the Mike Harris days seem like a cakewalk in comparison.  Only the hard left and extreme left folks are vexed with Horwath.  The middle of the road folks who used to vote liberal and are vexed with the Liberals for their incompetence and blatant corruption ... the average unionized labour worker ... they are going to vote for Horwath.  I'm a libertarian enthusiast, unlike most of my friends and the one thing I hear in most of my circles is anyone but Wynne (the Liberal leader).  I've never voted NDP before but if it helps prevent Wynne from holding power, I'm all for it.  I'd vote any party that stops the liberals from capitalizing on their fear mongering campaign to retain power in the face of corruption and scandal. 

deathtokoalas
but the tories have corruption built into their governing philosophy. their prime goal is to sell off public resources to their buddies. this idea that they could possibly be less corrupt is just laughable.

i don't want to get too abstract, but you should flip through plato's take on democracy in the republic. the basic conclusion is that democracy is an inherently corrupt form of government, but that accepting a little bit of corruption is a valid trade-off if you want representative government. it's a very grounded, realistic analysis.

the blunt truth is that expecting a democratic government to be free of corruption is utopian type thinking. but, if you're a free market enthusiast, you're used to that.

LeGioNoFZioN
I disagree with the idea that selling off public assets is corrupt.  I think it can be either bad or good depending on the asset and what it's use is.  so I would argue applying reason to each case would determine whether selling any given asset is positive or negative and blanket statements are too general to ever be accurate. 

I recognize some degree of corruption is unavoidable, man is an imperfect creature. 

Free market enthusiasts don't expect democratic governing to be free from corruption, to the contrary we expect it, and we expect it in larger amounts the more power a given government can exercise

deathtokoalas
right, but they don't just sell them off, they sell them off to their donors. they're total scam artists.

what i meant about markets being utopian is the idea that they can work without being regulated....

LeGioNoFZioN
I would agree selling assets off to donors as a pay off is a BS move, but that isn't the case in all public asset sales in Ontario in the last 20 years, whether PC Liberal or NDP. 

Markets can work without being regulated, but once you start, it is nearly impossible to stop, and regulation impedes development, growth and advancement.  regulations are often well intended but often produce results other than the intention of the regulator.  I recognize some areas and some sectors should be regulated for everyone's well being, but those areas are few and far between.

deathtokoalas
do you have an example of anything that's been privatized in ontario over the last twenty years that hasn't led to a profitable industry for the politicians' buddies and higher prices for consumers? privatizing the electricity system was a catastrophe. it's a surreal comedy that the tories are trying to pin the disaster on the liberals. how about building roads at public expense, then selling them off to private investors? but, do you have a counter-example...?

i actually agree that market regulation tends to put the oligopolies in charge, telecommunications are a good example, but i follow the economic logic that thinks of markets as an unstable system that seeks equilibrium in collusion. it follows that a free market is only possible if an outside force exists to constantly prevent firms from colluding with each other, either by breaking them up by force or by providing incentives for them to continue competing. unfortunately, when we take (1) into account, we're left in an impossible situation. our actual option is between state ownership and private oligopolies. so, i'd argue we should nationalize the lines rather than regulate them....

----

a4d3
Merge those goddamned parties !

deathtokoalas
despite the problems with the ndp recently, if you merge the ndp and liberals you eliminate any leftward pull on the liberal party and create the kind of dynamic that exists in the united states, where the two parties are constantly competing for the right, because there's nobody to vote for on the left anyways. that is to say that the democrats have no fear of moving too far right because they know nobody an inch left of centre is ever going to vote republican.

there was supposed to be a level of dialectical thinking in the two-party system, but they fucked it up. the idea is if you have two competing ideas, they'll combine to form one. but it doesn't happen. the spectrum just pushes one way or the other. it's not necessarily going to have to push right (it was pushing left for a while in the 30s) but it's always movement in one direction, because it's a process of competition rather than one of synthesis.

the way to get the right kind of dialectic going, and it's what we should want if we're thinking clearly instead of ideologically, is to create thesis and antithesis on the left and right and let the synthesis form in the middle. that creates a natural governing party. and, it's fine so long as corruption is kept in check one way or another.

we need the ndp to get back to their principles.

what they don't realize is that they are liberals and what they think is liberalism is actually a type of right-wing populism pushed historically by the progressive party, often as a front for christian groups. liberals are all about free speech, free markets and individual rights. crucially, they're strongly in favour of a separation of church and state.

what these idiots have succeeded in is little more than to confuse people about words and concepts that they don't actually have a good understanding of. if you watch the show, you're left to conclude that liberals are a type of fundamentalist christian.

rather, a liberal is exactly what stone and parker are, and their target of ridicule is religiosity - bordering on what engels called utopian socialism.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hriKiBbw3nU

why are all the burns' excellents on youtube sanitized to make it seem like he's just a nice guy with a bad rap?

where's the evil corporate overlord? are ceos not allowed to be villains anymore?

fucking liberals.

it's actually fairly common here to see unifor banners paired with conservative party yard signs (you know the ones, they're standard across north america) on the lawns of upper middle class houses. unifor is the big auto/energy union. i've been aware of this connection for a while, but i kind of expected it to be an under the rug thing rather than something openly flaunted. it's surreal to see how normal it is.

it doesn't make sense on first glance, but it does when you work the politics out in more detail. big union members in southern ontario are very well paid. they're more worried about their taxes being too high then they are about their collective bargaining rights and their political choices reflect that economic comfort. it's no longer "the bosses are stealing my wages to live in luxury" but "the government is stealing my wages to distribute to the community". the difference in function is less important than the perceived lost wages, regardless of the comfort they live in.

nobody wants to talk about it, though. the conservatives don't want to risk losing one of their most effective attack mechanisms, so they keep attacking them. the ndp don't want to come off as utterly irrelevant, so they keep acting like they represent them. but it's all a charade...

there's an election today. i'm not voting. i do sometimes, i don't sometimes. for today, i'm in a relatively new riding and i simply don't know the local candidates or local issues well enough.

i don't expect much to change, though.

kinda feelin' bad about the centipede.

hey, i never tried to capture the thing. well, the whole symbiosis revolved around it's freedom.

i saw a baby one the other day....

the thing is that if i knew it was in there, i would have helped it out. how long was it in there?

a morbid, ridiculous thing to obsess over. i need to go find some steel wool...

i was wondering where my little centipede buddy went and why it was slacking off.

turns out it fell in a pot, couldn't get out, and dehydrated

i think the reason i wasn't seeing the roaches was mostly due to the weather, not the centipede. still...

there's a gaping hole in the wall for pipes. i've done enough drywalling to know you're supposed to fill holes this big, but that was overlooked. i'd guess that keeping the roaches out has a lot to do with filling it up with steel wool. it's way too big for caulking, and i'm not buying a drywall sheet for this....

the other bad spot is in the closet, near the piping, but one thing at a time. and i think i've mostly already fixed it anyways, although i saw one in there yesterday for the first time since last september.

i managed to keep the roaches out more or less completely over the winter, i don't think i saw more than two, but they're back now with the warmer weather. it's not at an infestation level, it just seems like they're freely entering from outside. but, if i don't find a way to close the entry path, i'm really asking for trouble.

they're the asian species, which means they'd actually rather be outside. the asians don't usually infest, they just come inside looking for water. but, they bring the most bacteria with them because they either come up through the pipes from the sewer or they come in under the wall from the yard, where they're known to eat various kinds of animal feces.

so, while they may not want to stay here, they're filthy disease carriers while they're in here.

i'm going to rip the stove away from the wall today and see if there's any way i can block the entrance points. foam. steel wool. whatever. the only way to really kill them off would be with a community-based program; i could spray everywhere in here and kill every single one that's in here, but if they're breeding freely next door (or in the sewers) then it's just a waste of effort. knowing that isn't likely, the key has to be to keep them from coming in.

well, the internet polls were completely inaccurate, as one would expect them to be. hopefully, that's the end of internet polls. the ivr were better than i'd have expected, but i think they got lucky. with turnout at 46%, polls are tough indicators. the one telephone poll i assumed would be closer was not entirely wrong - it got the ndp numbers the closest, of all the polling done.

overall, there was really very little change overall in seat count or distribution, so i'm not admitting a bad prediction at all. it seems like conservatives in the gta decided not to vote for anybody, and i'm going to guess it had something to do with hudak's transit plan.

to be clear: what i got wrong was low pc turnout. which is a strange thing to see, and something nobody was really talking about.

what the polling firms were pushing was the idea that low ndp turnout might push a liberal majority. the phone poll demonstrated that this was probably wrong. instead, low pc turnout pushed the majority. so it seems like the polls got it right, but it was actually a sort of a fluke.

if it wasn't the transport issue, why else couldn't the conservatives get the vote out?

age of voter, maybe?

2018 - 1945 = 73.

life expectancy in ontario is 81.

there's going to be some big changes, soon. is this the beginning of it?

for those out of the province, i should mention that the premier elect is openly gay. i'm not aware of any other premiers or governors that are open lesbians, nor of any that have won majorities. but if it was a factor in the election, nobody talked about it. it just wasn't mentioned. as it shouldn't have been. which is why i'm mentioning it. it's some social progress to elect a gay premier without anybody even noticing she's gay....

it kind of ties into the changes in demographics that may have kept the vote down.

i don't think anybody expects the tories to lose their hold on rural ontario. but, if the age structure shifts, they might be hopeless in urban areas unless they make some radical shifts.

uploading guitar demo from 2010 to soundcloud

this is another broken jam session and will come off as really simple (and it is, on some level) if you don't appreciate the subtle dissonance. regardless, it's easy to hear the stomp under it. i don't write much of it, but i'd love to start a really dirty garage rock band...

https://soundcloud.com/deathtokoalas/2010-09-19a

the only recent reliable telephone poll i've seen in ontario has the pcs slightly ahead, but the situation pretty much in a tie at 35 - and the ndp at a not-so-catastrophic 24.

i think the headlines of a liberal majority are more or less a scare tactic.

official prediction: liberal minority, with very little changes overall in seat count or distribution.

a few points.

1) the green movement is not new, but in twenty-some years and dozens of opportunities i have to say i've never seen a green candidate control a debate, until now. but, it's a bit of a pyrrhic victory because...

2) ....if you look up on the stage, you have four factions of what should be a liberal party. the socialist candidate hardly sounds like a socialist, but would make a good left liberal. likewise, the kind of conservatism juncker is promoting really sounds like the right-wing end of the liberal spectrum. that leaves the self-identifying liberal in the centre, which is about right, and the greens as a special interest party. but, if these different strains of liberalism were to put aside their petty squabbling and integrate into a single party, it would be the greens that would be offering the most compelling and thought out vision moving forward. something that really stood out was the green candidate's understanding that the economy is not driven by monetary policy or tax rates but by aggregate demand. she's the only of the four that seemed to understand this.

3) worse, this is clearly political theatre. the body they're being elected to is almost powerless. so, what is this talk of forming a grand coalition to stop the anti-immigration parties from taking over the powerless parliament? it sounds like an excuse to ignore what little democracy exists in this process. are they seriously trying to paint a wide far-right brush over those that oppose the euro? because it turns history upside down. when will the european left stand up and declare that europe will no longer be crucified on a cross of gold?

4) as creepy as these anti-immigration groups are, it's becoming clearer and clearer that they're boogeymen that have been created by the banks to frighten the population into the status quo. and, should they not like the status quo, the alternative is crippling austerity. i've seen this movie already.

deathtokoalas
my experience is that geeks are actually generally jocks deep down that couldn't hack the hierarchy, so they end up hanging out with nerds (who tend to be more open-minded) by default and build up these passive aggressive inferiority complexes against them as a result of being constantly incapable of keeping up with them. over time, it just seethes into this sort of animosity, and in the end their inner jocks come out and they end up acting like assholes, which creates a more hostile reaction from the nerds.

in the end, it's really the geeks that are actual outcasts, as they end up hated by the jocks they couldn't compete with and the nerds they feel inferior to. nerds, on the other hand, generally remove themselves from society out of a lack of any interest.

i don't fit all the stereotypes. i don't game, for example. and i'm a guitarist (albeit a classical guitarist). but i definitely identify more with nerds.

A Typical Guy.
Mind blown..

TheWondermittens 
Beautifully said

Alice Pan
I'm more of a geek than a nerd, but I don't get what you're trying to say? I'm not really social (if I could I wouldn't go have social interaction with more than 3 people) and trying to hang out with jocks or nerds, I have some friends who are nice and they're not really nerds, geeks or jocks.

deathtokoalas
i think i made myself clear. is there a specific aspect that isn't?

people aren't numbers so these categories aren't perfect, but geeks are generally people that would be jocks if the jocks didn't look down on them because they fail at jock things and consequently never really drop the type of hierarchical thinking that nerds tend to absolutely categorically reject.  so, in their own minds, they end up trapped in between two different rungs on the hierarchy - they perceive of themselves as better than nerds but not as good as jocks and really "settle" for nerds as companions until they're able to somehow climb to the next rung, and all the while holding them in contempt. the thing is that they're actually generally not good at nerd things, either. over time, it tends to eat away at them and cause them all kinds of self-doubt, as they're constantly unable to keep up with the nerds at nerd things. that feeling of inadequacy is a direct result of that kind of jockish hierarchical thinking, which is the core of the problem. as they perceive of nerds as below them, and they have this persistent kind of competitive jock thinking, losing to nerds at nerd things sets off all these weird reactions and strange behaviours to try and keep themselves above the nerds in their own minds. it ultimately results in them behaving like the jocks that they really are.

i suppose the odd geek might grow out of high school, but my experience is that they usually don't. but i think you'd have to be in your late 20s at the least to have an experience of what happens to geeks as they age. as more of a self-identified nerd, i'd really caution younger nerds to avoid them as they grow older, because almost all of them will eventually turn into jerks.

is that clearer or is there something else you want a better explanation of? 

GabeCoding
I can't tell what gender you are OP

deathtokoalas
how does it have anything to do with the contents of the post?

got some life shit worked out today, things are continuing to come together.

1) got accepted by a psychiatrist around the corner. i'm hoping this guy can do two things for me. the first is diagnose me with something i can rely on for longer term disability - i'm thinking i'm probably clinically schizophrenic, even if it's only a problem when i'm thrust into the "real world". there is no real world. there. qed. i laugh, but it's self-deprecating. the second thing i'm thinking is that it'd be nice to have cheap, legal, easy access to marijuana. i'm actually *very* convinced that it helps keep me stable. i don't even need large doses, and i wouldn't really want to be stoned all the time, but i'm very strongly of the opinion that a bit of pot every few days is very good for mental health, and may go so far as to say i'd probably have harmed myself by now if it wasn't for the pot. further, i won't take drugs in the form of pills. i'm a hippie like that. so, if he tries to prescribe me wellbutrin or prozac or something, i won't fill the rx - i'll ask for pot instead.

2) stage one of my border documents have been approved. i think the combined governments of the united states and canada are real assholes for standing over the bridge with an ax declaring that none shall pass, but they're the fuckers with the weapons, so what to do but mutter under your breath? i've wasted almost a year of my time due to this stupidity, which isn't making anybody safer and really *should* be a political liability. but i can't even vote against it. one day, we'll tear these walls down. for now, it's relieving to be just about through the annoyance. i need to go for an interview to prove i'm not arabic, i mean a threat to security. catching the swans show is not looking likely. and there's not going to be too many more chances for it, either. ugh. fucking fascists.

fucking hipsters.

this is the right direction, but hovering around $.80-$.90 is kind of an everybody loses scenario, because it's not enough to bring jobs northwards but is enough to cause investors to lose money. it has to dip under $0.80 to have any kind of positive effect on job creation in canada.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/top-business-stories/canadian-dollar-forecast-to-stick-below-90-through-end-of-next-year/article17692021/

my life has changed a lot since '06, when i saw the industry i worked in collapse due to parity. right now, i'm really better off with a good exchange rate, because i'm unemployed anyways and live near the border.

but getting the exchange rate down further would really help a lot of people in this country.

uploading guitar demo from 2008 to soundcloud

going through my lo-fi demoes a few days ago, i realized that i'd already released most of them in the form of two existing demos.

the first was entitled "impressionist jazz punk" and was mid 2005. i'll be uploading it as is to bandcamp when i get there (i'm currently doing stuff from '01 and moving forward chronologically) and then deciding what should be redone. the second was a six track proverbs demo that was supposed to act as a plan for the proverbs symphony. it still will, if mildly modified. so, the bulk of the tracks won't go to the lo-fi site.

i kind of forgot about the rest. this is a jam from early '08 that i put aside for further work and forgot about.

https://soundcloud.com/deathtokoalas/2008-02-16a

the time machine (midi piano mix)

this is the next 2001 period piece i'll be working on. my memory is blurry; yet, i have a vivid recollection of playing parts of it for my guitar teacher on a sunny day, where there was still snow on the ground.

it's funny how we remember seemingly irrelevant details, but i guess the atmosphere of the performance is important because the performance is. that would date it to roughly march, 2001.

i switched the piece from classical guitar to piano halfway through writing it, and vaguely remember thinking that an impossible interval had something to do with it. yet, that doesn't change the fact that it's guitar music. the counterpoint is very guitar.

i'll have to analyse the score and determine whether it's actually playable or not, or if i can get it close enough. but this one is an open palette right now in the sense that it needs to be filled out, so the early instrumentation choices are really just a suggestion.

one possible idea is that i may split it into a guitar piece to start and a piano piece to finish. i'm thinking of adding sequenced drums and a more defined, squelchy bass part.

written in early 2001. rendered june 9, 2014.

the issue of the origins of fascism comes up so often. there's ad hoc and clinical answers. it generally goes through mussolini to some kind of guild organization. a lot of demagogues will try and twist hitler around as some kind of union representative, but people that know what they're talking about understand that he was a tool of industry and the system was designed to co-opt the unions away from socialism and towards nationalism rather than actually represent them (that is, "national socialist" is a sort of orwellian oxymoron, that tried to redefine socialism as everything it wasn't). somebody might say something about hobbes in passing....

in fact, hobbes is describing it just about perfectly in chapter 22 of leviathan, which was 1652, in precisely the terms mussolini would use - it's about society being organized into "corps", this whole materialist conception of a mechanical, working whole.

and yet hobbes is usually thought of as the first liberal. what nonsense. he's explicitly rejecting all individual rights (except the right to self-defense) and going out of his way to invest all property in the hands of the sovereign, thereby negating anything resembling property rights (although he seems to expect that use rights should be made clear to prevent squabbling). he strikes me as a massive influence on marx.

but his system is really, truly straight-up fascism. word for word.

i thought vader lost the election and was denied the right to vote....?

i'm worried about this poroshenko guy. check him using the force on that guard in the beginning.

they're right. it's a complex issue about empowerment and exploitation, but it's turned into this sort of orwellian nightmare where empowerment and exploitation are inseparable from each other.

it's post-britney, i think. i remember living through the 90s and thinking we were turning back the clocks. blondie never hit that kind of media saturation, and madonna was all about the power. even the spice girls were in control. but, the whole fiasco around britney as a manufactured commodity really changed the industry for the worse, and what's happened since makes more sense in the context of a discussion of the supremes or billie holiday than one of madonna or courtney love.

it's very well understood that the primary purpose here is image control, and simon wasn't confusing this on purpose but out of an inability to find evidence that corroborated the storyline, but what's the point of doing this at all if you're just going to embed them?

i know. it's dangerous. still.....

- hobbes presents a basic argument for reproductive rights that is something i've also argued for and have seen nowhere else. i'm not big into contract theory, but with the technology that exists today to facilitate birth control and abortion i find it difficult to sentence any male to fatherhood against his will. accidental pregnancy doesn't happen anymore, and can be terminated rather easily if it somehow does (i suppose due to ignorance) and the accident is fully unwanted. there consequently needs to be a sort of a trade off. women need to be in control of their own bodies, but the logical consequence of this is that men should not be held responsible for the child (aborted or not) unless they agree to enter into the arrangement. that reduces the process to two independent choices, rather than a unitary one - the would-be mother must first choose independently to have the child or not, and then the would-be father must choose whether to accept the responsibility of fatherhood. should he reject the responsibility, the would-be mother would of course be free to change her decision. hobbes is not as detailed, nor were abortion or birth control (safely) available in his time, but this is basically the argument he provides. it's one that modern law ought to take more seriously.

now that the song is done, i'm going to take a quick break to finish reading leviathan and then start the process of shifting off facebook to my own site, over here:

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/

i'll be using the network to check show listings, but i won't be posting here further. one of the things i'll want to do, shifting over, is set up various rss feeds.

the reason i'm shifting off is that i don't like facebook's decision to push the ui down from above. i want control over how my site looks. i want the ads removed. i'm sorry they don't agree with that.

but, there's lots of good reasons to get the data off facebook, too.

the best way to reach me is by email. if you don't have my email, i probably don't want you to have it. if you think i do want you to have it, msg me to find out if your intuition is correct.

i have several pages up, so it's going to take some time to transfer things. i'll be following a scorched-earth policy: delete everything as i transfer it to my own site. if there's something here you want saved, now's the time to save it.

what will remain will be a collection of rss dumps, because so long as people continue to use facebook it's kind of necessary to have something.

i think the long run solution has to be some kind of feed aggregator that works at the rss level. i think people are going to end up reading their twitter and facebook and youtube feeds all at the same time. it's probably actually a "woah. you can do that?" type thing. i'd guess almost everybody would switch to it if they knew it was possible. the idea was catching on for people merging msn, icq and etc right before facebook took over.

an interface that could cross-link the comments systems would be really ideal, especially if it could run standalone. and, it could conceivably kill a few sites off that don't want to play by the rules (facebook being the worst).

so, i also want greater control over the serving mechanism. right now, it sounds a little crazy, but wait for it.

i'm actually surprised that what i'm looking for doesn't exist in any kind of stable form. the idea has certainly been experimented with, but it's all for profit companies that fall apart when they realize there's no money in it. further development seems to be geared towards ipad type apps (which i'm never going to go for) and smart phones, which i'll never really get used to. i want a desktop product. fuck the trends...

i only use a handful of social media sites. if i were to build it myself, it would be very basic and never updated. but i'd be happy to throw the software out, open source, for further development.
one thing at a time. i don't even know how to get appspot to send out rss yet.

specifically: i don't want a ticker on a website, or multiple feeds on one page. just a simple, aggregated feed that i can interact with - and preferably through a standalone program that blocks ads and scripts.

it's the most basic, least visual, low return thing you could imagine.

and something like it is going to define how this shit works five years from now.

stuck in the middle of an alley closing in on all sides (final album mix)

this completed live version will also front the 2001 "serious period" album. i was filing the serious shit under jjjjjjjjj (there's nine there) at the time. it's a sort of tongue-in-cheek self parody at the idea of writing serious music. 'cause if i was ever going to commission a piece, i'd have to get rid of surnames and superfluous syllables and just shorten it to the basic "j", just to get the point across about rejecting anything formal. i was tripping out into some rather silly number theory...

anyways, that's the opening track. the second will be some fun to try and put together, but the others should be done fairly quick now that i have some hardware/software that can deal with it.

written late 2000 & early 2001. minor instrumentation changes to facilitate a small wind section were implemented in late april, 2014. live guitars were layered into the final version over may 2014. completed on june 6, 2014.

stuck in the middle of an alley closing in on all sides (final single mix)

this is the final mix, without as many lead parts as i was thinking at one point, and without the vocals i considered adding, but with more than enough atmospheric additions to make the live recording worthwhile. it will end up opening the ep of remixes of this track that i posted to jan 10, 2001 and also end up opening the front of this compilation of material written over 2001, which will be the main album of the period.

i had some bad luck recording this. hopefully, the other stuff gets out a little faster.

written late 2000 & early 2001. minor instrumentation changes to facilitate a small wind section were implemented in late april, 2014. live guitars were layered into the final version over may 2014. completed on june 6, 2014.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

written late 2000 & early 2001. the renders present here are all from the early months of 2014. minor instrumentation changes to facilitate a small wind section were implemented in late april, 2014. live guitars were layered into the final version over may 2014. as always, please use headphones.

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

the rendered electronic orchestras variously include piano, bass, synth bass, distorted electric guitar, clean electric guitar, steel string acoustic guitar, nylon string classical guitar, sitar, violin, viola, cello, contrabass, french horn, trumpet, trombone, tuba, oboe, english horn, bassoon, synthesizers, clarinet, flute, piccolo, xylophone, glockenspiel, tubular bells, jazz drum kit, hand drums and electronic drum kit.

released january 10, 2001

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

the united states was violently anti-socialist centuries before the russian revolution and remains violently anti-socialist today. cuba may not be a perfect utopia, but it has ideas about common ownership that the united states cannot and will not tolerate. this thinking of a "cold war mentality" does not understand the historical war of american landowners against common ownership, which is a struggle that exists independently of the struggle for hegemony over europe.

if the americans are in a "cold war mentality" with cuba, they were in that same mentality when they crushed land revolts in the eighteenth century and when they crushed the occupy protests a few years ago. even it's use during the cold war, and especially in latin america, was generally little more than a flimsy excuse to exert property rights by extreme force. this has nothing to do with democracy, with castro, with dissidents or with russia. it has to do with ideas that the american elite has never and will never coexist peacefully with because, if exported, they would pose a threat to their own power.

Kevin
The US as a whole was not "violently anti-socialist centuries before the russian revolution." In fact, there was quite a lot of sympathy for the labor movement especially among immigrants but also in society at large. In many places around the country, socialists were elected to local and state governments throughout the late nineteenth and most of the twentieth century, even during the Cold War. The idea that socialism is somehow inherently un-American and has no native history here or is some sort of alien ideology is incorrect. I do agree with you that the elites in the US are definitely violently anti-socialist and that the US used anti-Communism during the Cold War as a flimsy excuse to intervene in the affairs of Latin American countries.

deathtokoalas
i apologize if i wasn't clear.

an early source of violently anti-socialist writing from a prominent member of the united states elite is in the writings of james madison.

this is probably the most insightful paragraph in all of the literature written in the period. madison is explaining why he prefers a system of devolved power (states' rights) rather than a centralized federal government.

"The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States. A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction in a part of the Confederacy; but the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of it must secure the national councils against any danger from that source. A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it; in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district, than an entire State."

that is, the entire system was designed to limit the cancer of socialism to a small area where it can be isolated and attacked. it's modular thinking. divide and conquer. and it's pretty smart, if you're a powerful landowner trying to prevent an actual revolution.

Kevin
The thing is, socialism, in particular the Marxist variety, did not exist until after the Revolutions of 1848 in Europe, long after Madison's time. While French socialism has its roots in the French Revolution, it isn't really an actual force until after the 1830s. I'm just trying to suggest that your timeline is a bit off, that's all.

deathtokoalas  
it would be difficult to speak of industrial age economic systems before the industrial revolution. marxism doesn't make any more sense in a pre-industrial society than it does in a post-industrial one. but, ideas of collective ownership can be traced very far back into history. there were crusades launched against socialists in france. you just have to understand that the economic systems were different, so they had different forms - as future (current, really) forms of socialism in a post-industrial reality will not have much in common with marxism. madison lived in an essentially feudal society, which meant that the socialism of his period had to do with social ownership of land (farming co-operatives, essentially) rather than social ownership of production. when there were revolutions in this period (and there were.), that's what it had to do with.

it's actually quite relevant, as cuba is not a productive force and does not threaten to export worker ownership of factories. the threat that cuba poses is in the way that it organizes farming and land use in general, and the place that it poses a threat is in the rest of latin america, which is largely still under the boot of american plantations. even venezuela still exports well over half of the food it produces, and the united states is it's largest customer.

yeah. i've decided i'm not going to find the remaining furniture i need in here, so i'm going to wait until the beginning of august and take a shopping cart of wood home with me. i'll need to varnish it. and i'll probably get a drill, too.

i'm hoping i can find a coffee table before then, but i'm looking for something that's roughly 14x40 and they're just not out there. people want these gross square coffee tables. or glass ones. yuck. if not, it should cost me something like $6 to build one and polyurethane over it.

there's this kind of enclave that i wanted to put shelving into but my initial plan isn't the best one. there's a window in the corner. i was just going to put shelving in square over the window, which would eliminate the need for curtains and make it harder to break in here. i mean, there's bars, but that's merely a disincentive. i've learned over the spring that access to this window is important, due to the air upstairs. so, i'm going to frame around it, instead, and get some curtains after all. that's three walls of framing that has to go around the window. i'm thinking i could probably do it for around $50, which is considerably cheaper than trying to cram a dozen oddly shaped bookcases in - and better because there's no wasted space. i suppose it's sort of a gift to the unit, in the end, because i couldn't really take it with me. but i plan on staying for a while...

similarly for the corner shelving. i posted some pictures. the easiest thing to do will probably be to get some studs and just screw the shelves in, but it's going to depend on scrap wood from the other projects.

i want to build a simple three story desk to put near my bed to put a speaker unit up top, the laptop in the middle and various documents underneath. i've been hoping i can find something, but the space is only thirteen inches across.

the last thing is a cd shelf. the big problem has been "how do i get that much wood here". if i do it at once, i'll take the home depot cart back for the hour walk....

i'll just have to measure it all up in a few weeks.

which means i'm under budget for the first time since february and may be able to go catch a show, if an interesting one is happening this side of the river. actually, i'm still hoping i can catch swans in a few weeks. depends on customs. it'll be a few days one way or another. should put the cash aside for that....

yeah. it's kinda funny. hobbes is actually providing a summary of a number of arguments *against* capitalism. it's one of the better cases against the laissez-faire model that i've yet to come across.

it's not really an argument in favour of totalitarianism, and it doesn't seem to have anything remotely to do with socialism at all (despite some common apparent misperceptions). it's just a really clear and systemic rejection of the whole "free market" ancap perspective; the thesis of the text is most simply stated as "without strict regulation, markets are impossible".

i want to get this across clearly, so i'm going to be careful about writing this section up.

i'm actually going to be putting forth the idea that hobbes was a kind of proto-marxist, with his leviathan being the dictatorship of the proletariat.

what he's describing is something sort of like the borg, not an individualist liberal society, where the sovereign is the literal reflection of the people's will. that's not the type of authoritarianism he's usually associated with.

right-wing collectivism is generally understood today as synonymous with fascism, but i would also put marx and his followers on the collectivist right.

like i say - it's funny. this is currently being very badly taught.

i don't see anything about rights or individualism in here at all. nor do i see much about how princes ought to rule. i see the projection of a platonic and collectivist utopia, kept in line by a cross between thor and odin.

hobbes seems more at the end of a line of thought than at the beginning of one.

4c1dr3fl3x
It's important to note that Ukraine is now only tangling with a largely irregular (but entrenched) force, and the little green men are not to be seen. Even when THEY were rolling around, it was with very outdated armored vehicles (BMP-2's and BTR-80's, same stuff the Ukrainians field), and none of their current fighting vehicles (BMD-4M's, T-80U's & T-90's, BTR-90's) they have. Given the current political dialogue, this means 2 things: 1. Due to their zealous assaults, ethnically Russian groups are actually being met with the violence they said they feared in the first place, that Putin used as an excuse to back his Crimean velvet glove invasion. Ironic, in a way. And a self fulfilling prophecy. 2. Ukraine still has to be cautious about how they deal with this insurgency. Putin may be pulling back support now that he at least has Crimea and is facing the looming reality of REAL political resistance, but if Ukrainian forces go batshit crazy or have one headliner scandal of counter-insurgency misconduct, they will give him an excuse to start a full-on invasion with his forces unmasked under a pretense of stopping a "fascist genocide", and he will take it. Oh, hey they do love to be hypocritical about what constitutes a Fascist.

PerfectDeath4
Yup, Putin doesn't have as strong of a reason for intervening in Eastern Ukraine. The irony is, if these separatists were in Russia, they'd be poisoned, rounded up, or just shot. That is how Russia deals with 'terrorists'. Heck, that is how Russia deals with politics and protests.

AndyHurd
Good points. Every time I watch ethnic Russians from the east rallying for independence I ask myself why anyone would want to bring such violence upon themselves. Self-fulfilling prophecy indeed.

XANX
+1 for commentary and for the Winrai icon

Светлая
SAVE DONBASS PEOPLE FROM KIEV NAZIS ARMY!

Mitkls
the same thing pretty much everywhere around the world actually. However Ukrainian government and forces just don't have enough power at the moment to do so.

PerfectDeath4
The whole, "Nazi" thing was inspired by a neo nazi group in Ukraine that gained a lot more influence in the government after helping to overthrow the old government during the Maidan riots. Thus, RT started blowing things out of proportion claiming the whole government was nazi controlled fascists.

The scary thing is there are nazis on both sides and they are doing a lot of the killing of innocent people because they can with all the chaos.

deathtokoalas
it wouldn't make sense to have russian troops face aerial bombardment when russia cannot retaliate or otherwise protect them - and they can't, an invasion is not on the table (turn cnn off, it's garbage). i wouldn't mistake a shift in military tactics for a greater shift in strategy.

putin doesn't want control of ukraine. unlike the eu, russia is still a welfare state. what that means is that the eu can take control and sell off the resources with little concern for the average ukrainian, but if russia rolls in they're going to have to pump billions in to fix the decaying social system. from the russian perspective, ukraine (and especially the east of ukraine) is an expensive parasite to be avoided. it's the reason the invasion didn't happen years ago. russia doesn't want them.

what russia does want is to control the puppet strings in kiev. nothing that happened in maidan has eliminated russian dominance in the region. it was a short term (and rather foolhardy) strategy to punish a sitting government, not a structural revolution that sent the russians packing for good. when russia finally does take control of kiev again, and it is a matter of time and not a matter of if, it will likely not be permanent, either.

the russians aren't really being coy about what they want in the east, so it's not really necessary to read between lines. what they want is to decentralize the government into a collection of semi-autonomous zones that they can influence without being responsible to upkeep. that way, russia can have it's cake (control the security situation on the ground) and eat it too (avoid being responsible for running and paying for the civilian government).

the russian speakers are really being mislead. they think they're going to get on russian welfare, but all they're really going to get is russian soldiers. if that becomes clear on the ground the allegiances may shift, or a third front may open up.

for now, the russians need to be thinking about delocalizing the conflict and shifting the instability further west. they can neither fight off the planes with their troops on the ground nor invade with a real army. so, other tactics include bullying and creating diversions.

the green men will be back when it's safe for them, but they're not going to bring a real army with them. or, at least, not so long as it would be viewed, internationally, as an invasion. long term strategy is of course to host russian bases within the autonomous zone.

but the prize is still kiev, not donetsk.

Kadaver85
I'm sorry, you lost me at "russian welfare"... What welfare? Krokodil and glue for everyone?

deathtokoalas
it's really astounding how ignorant westerners are.

yes - russia is a far more attractive place to live than ukraine, if you depend on the state to survive. and, ukraine is on the path to getting a lot worse, while russia is constantly recovering.

but, again, that's not happening. the russians don't want to pay.

vacomments
Regarding the second point, I don't think thats the case. We have been induced to, and the Ukrainian government appears to have been induced to forget that that country is still Ukraine and only Ukraine, a sovereign state. Thus, inside their borders, they should choose to combat any domestic threat, in any manner, without fearing or contemplating the possibility of a military invasion by any of the countries bordering it. In case irregularities occur during the combat of domestic threats, such occurrence should be given to the international community, the United Nations, so that it can be analysed, discussed and attempted to be resolved. From a strategic point of view, Putin's annexation of Crimea was a brilliant, almost immaculate move. And thats the problem. (I dont agree with what was done, but I admire the way it was done) Because the Crimea operation worked so brilliantly, that eluded Putin into thinking that it would work as well and as good for the rest of Ukraine. Maybe it is a cliché to say it, but thats exactly the same reasoning error which eluded Hitler in Czechoslovakia. When the soft, old strategy doesn't work any longer, since you are already committed, you will be tempted or forced to adopt a more aggressive model.

deathtokoalas
law only exists if it can be enforced. these ideas about ukrainian territorial integrity are just that - ideas - and only exist in the world we live in by proxy of various state powers that use force to assert them. that is to say that if ukraine cannot control the area, then it is no longer their area, and they can wave all the laws around in the world that they like but they can't reverse it unless they have the power to do so.

i don't know much about poroshenko, but his early actions have made it clear to me that he understands this. the russians certainly understand it. and, the americans are the architects of a global order that does not care about constraints on the behaviour of states.

what the law states is really truly irrelevant. liberals need to get their heads around the reality that this world order has failed and come up with ideas about a new one, not continue trying to enforce the fantasy.

Kadaver85
Yes, because being suppressed by the government is really a good place to live. I'm from a country with one the worlds best welfare system, and when you say that Russia is a welfare state that just cracks me up. How about getting your info from somewhere other than Russian media and history pages/books? You have people living in poverty in every corner of your "great" country. Just take Sotji as an example, they got forced to live in huts with no sanitary facilities because they wanted to build huge hotels where they used to live. You call that a WELFARE STATE!? God damn you're brainwashed. Just look at any damn OECD index or any other index that shows any info about how people are doing in other countries. You're not any good.

deathtokoalas
well, i wouldn't want to live in either of these places, but the blunt reality is that the reason people on the ground are siding with russia is that they potentially offer a better economic alternative. but, i'll state for a third time that this is a false perception, because the russians aren't ponying up.

lavish, corrupt petro-state or imf austerity reforms? it's not a complex choice.

...but, for the fourth time, it's not a real one.

it would have been sooooooo satisfying for an eight year-old kid to run on stage and punch tim hudak in the gut. what a faker.

andrea clarified a few things, but i gotta be honest that i just like the liberals' ideas a little better this time around.

i've been hoping to see something like this from russia for a while, to make it clear that they understand what's going on. american citizens are completely powerless to stop it, so they need to be focusing entirely on defending themselves.

i just want to point out, though, that first strike capabilities don't necessarily need to be nuclear. some of the conventional weapons out there now are more than capable of getting the job done.

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

no, it's nothing like that at all, it's just a cynical ploy to shift the blame from the banks to the jews. again.

rap news 25

i live in canada, where there's more or less a monopoly on lines in any given area. when i was in ottawa, it was rogers for cable and bell for dsl. i'm now in windsor, across the river from detroit, where cogeco owns all the cable lines.

it's kind of wasteful and stupid to suggest running competing lines side by side. but, our regulators have agreed that a monopoly is anti-competitive, so they've forced the line owners to rent the lines out to smaller companies. there are a few quirks to going with a smaller company, but one of the things they offer is cheaper access rates at lower speeds. ultimately, it just exposes how much of a rip-off the major carriers are: how else could a smaller company turn a profit by buying bandwidth from them, then undercutting them on it?

the process of moving down here and switching had me think a lot about it. is an internet line a public good? the analogy that keeps coming through my mind is public roads. we even have the language of an "information superhighway". there are some fringe opinions that disagree, but we mostly all agree that roads should be owned by the public and maintained collectively through taxation. one of the reasons we mostly all believe this is that it provides equal access for everybody. the idea that large companies could take over our roads and start charging us whatever they want for whatever access they advertise is inconceivably backwards to most of us.

it's one thing to stand up against this and argue that things are fine as they are, but the machinery of private property laws is staggered against us. should we not change our perception of what the internet is, it's inevitable that these sorts of changes will take place. what that means is that it's necessary to articulate an alternate vision of how internet lines are owned in order to maintain net neutrality.

i got into a lot of trouble in junior high school when i sieg hieled my english teacher for being excessively authoritarian. it was maybe a little over the top, but i'd consider it an acceptable means of ironic protest, and was certainly not intending to express any kind of racist feeling but rather to express my displeasure at being at the whim of an authoritarian overlord. these kinds of laws are hamfisted and don't work....

surreal.

i'm not going to bother trying to get the historical context in place, or explain why this is meaningless propaganda, but don't forget to boycott ford, ibm, exxon, volkswagon, siemens and bayer while you're at it.

i'm a fan of norm, but i'm not dumb enough to pay for cable, so i guess he's screwed.

he probably means he wants more knight rider fans.

what they can do is distract legitimate anger at failed economic policies away from the elites that they benefit and towards immigrants instead.

this is the chart i was looking for.

and i actually don't have an argument. it's the highest it's ever been.

i mean, i'm not trying to take away "living wage" arguments, the numbers still justify a boost, but the blunt truth is that tying it to inflation at it's peak point is really surprisingly progressive policy.

http://www.canadianbusiness.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Ontario-Minimum-Wage-inflation-adjusted-Minimum-Wage-inflation-adjusted-1024x576.png

i missed this.

have to say i never thought i'd see it. it'd be nice to get a bit of a boost first, but it's a structural fix to a never-ending problem. hope it sticks after the election.

http://news.ontario.ca/mol/en/2014/02/making-ontarios-minimum-wage-fair-and-predictable.html

i ride without one. i find they restrict my vision, and the fact is i'm petite enough that they hurt my neck.

i take other precautions, which include riding on the sidewalk and telling pedestrians to fuck off if they don't like it.

the bottom line is that if i end up thrown across three lanes of traffic and break my neck and rupture my liver, the fact that i didn't get a concussion isn't particularly relevant.

i'd rather spend my time being absolutely certain i don't get hit in the first place.

http://www.smh.com.au/national/health/neurosurgeons-claim-that-cycling-helmets-are-useless-is-highly-irresponsible-20140602-39d6o.html

listen...

i often deny it, but in truth i'm a grown up. i've been around long enough to see how things operate, and i've read a little plato which has helped me understand it a bit. corruption is something you have to live with if you want a liberal, representative government.

so, we can talk of minimizing it, then. fine. but, it's very hard for me to look at anybody on the right and conclude that i'm going to get a government dedicated to fighting corruption, when all i've ever seen from the right is endemic corruption.

...and it kind of doesn't even matter what they say, because i understand that it's built into their ideological understanding of government. they exist to facilitate people that invest in their party. the point is to sell as much off as they can, to ensure private sector profits. roads and hydro were an easy target last time. up next are hospitals and who knows what else...

yet, it's really at their core of their political support, this idea that they'll cut down on corruption, in opposition to all evidence that that's all they do. it's not even orwellian, it's just straight-up, in your face lying. generations of people keep falling for it, too. i don't know how far this goes back. burke, even, maybe? it might be the most successful lie in history.

see, if i were naive, i might think the ndp would cut down on it, but i'm not. at best, we might see union corruption instead of business corruption, but they have a lot of fences to mend before they can even get there. and, it's not clear they even want to.

so, i'd rather focus on issues. they're all corrupt. it's a function of the system. when we catch them, we should be strict, but we shouldn't pretend that it's a political issue that can be dealt with through policy or renewal.

the more i learn about anonymous, the less i like it. "we don't forgive"? what are you, a jihadist group? it just seems like another kind of right-wing populism.

you know, it seems to me that it's been clear that all phone communications (all. everything. yes, your conversation with your mom the other day. everything.) have been sucked in by the five eyes since the echelon agreement was exposed upwards of fifteen years ago, and that the archives (apparently held in australia) go back to the second world war.

all of it. every second. every word.

Molly Mason
Mr Piketty's solution has been tried (and has failed) before. Tinkering about with the Capitalist system is simply a short term, stick a plaster on a gaping wound response - It's time to CHANGE this system to a system which caters for the majority in every respect - the environment - equality and security

CryptedSky
His solution is basically a reboot of John M. Keynes New deal which has worked spectacularly well in the past. When keynesian solutions to keep the economy in check were replaced Friedmanian neoliberal ideology is when the economy started to fail.

deathtokoalas 
keynes requires a mostly closed economy with high tariffs and is consequently not compatible with the modern world and it's irreversible open trade reality. we need new ideas to reflect the existing realities, not old ones that no longer make sense.

the left will continue to fail until it understands this.

CryptedSky
screw you koalas are awesome

deathtokoalas
koalas need to be destroyed due to their subversive cuteness.

the idea of a shop owner reinvesting in the business next door has been replaced by walmart reinvesting on the other side of the world. i suppose an actual world government could do something like keynes suggested, but implementing these sorts of policies in the united states is just going to drain the wealth out of the country.

SoundHysteria
Today another UA military helicopter was shot down with a general on board. All crew and passengers died. Considering how few working aircraft the Ukrainian military has and how many it lost so far. Give it another month and the skies will be deserted.

deathtokoalas
i think i'd be more concerned about what the russians decide to try out to try and get around their air superiority. they've been talking tough about this. i don't have any ideas, though - i understand the political aspect, but military matters are something i have no understanding of. that being said, you can bet they're not going to just sit there for the next ten years shooting down planes amidst heavy casualties. they're going to look at the situation, say "this is impossible" and do something else.

i don't know why they don't just go occupy the winning team's stadium.

the problems of growing...

you know, i wasn't sure what was going to follow after that. it turns out it was the economy. that's probably for the best.

the government is not going to change anything. the entrenched policy for well over a hundred years has been slow assimilation. there have been minor changes - trudeau tried to make the process more transparent, mulroney tried to speed it up with blood quantum rules, harper has been pushing for the enforcement of property rights - but there has been no wavering from the purpose of the policy, and no reason to think there will be unless or until the social, political and economic systems in canada change at a systemic level.

in other words, canada is a colonial state and will continue to act like one until it is not one.

so, the bad guy puts a special face mask on and your grandmother gets zapped. it's a symptom of a bigger problem...

it also depends on the industry. a lot of these same arguments apply to corporate taxation, and are really tied to how mobile the business is.

a call centre can get up and move fairly easily. a mcdonald's isn't going anywhere if it's successful, but the burger king across the street might in fact shut down. a mine or a forest is tied to the geography and couldn't move regardless of consequences. & etc

also, you'd expect low unemployment to have a causal effect on increasing wages.

this sucks.

wow.

well, in the end, they get selected out and the world keeps spinning. hey, look, a spider...

i get the point that you're attacking an unfair caricature, but i spent a while working out of a call centre in ottawa, canada that took a lot of in calls from the southern states and i heard a lot of people with really exaggerated accents - so exaggerated that i could legitimately barely understand them. it wasn't because of a bad connection or static or whatever, it was because we were simply speaking different languages. words i'd never heard before, verb usages that didn't make any sense to me - the whole thing.

ironically, the idea at the time was that canadians were ideal call center employees for the american market because we were cheaper (due to our dollar being around $0.60 usd at the time, which has since changed drastically) and we spoke english that americans could understand - unlike asians or latin americans.

but, i have to be honest - i would personally have a much easier time with an asian accent than i would with a deep south one because, while asian accents might be broken, they're not a structurally different language. the feeling was sometimes mutual - not just "aboot. hahaha.", but "i don't understand what you said because your grammar is foreign to me".

it really surprised the hell out of me, actually. i think i learned that we're not that far from "deep south american" being a different language than "english".

you, on the other hand, just speak a bit slower than i do.

fascists are usually pretty good at lining up behind big money interests when it comes to it. the immigration rhetoric is cause for serious concern (although it's unfortunately true that the function of immigration is to decrease wages, the scorn should be placed at the capitalists that game the system for profit and not the workers trying to survive), but it ultimately serves the interests of the elite because it distracts from the root causes and keeps the violence at street level.

i know what the rhetoric on the euro is, but i think it's just that. the central bankers would be overjoyed to see her (and the far right, overall) win an election.

t's really the oldest trick in the book in europe.

the economy goes down, blame the jews/gypsies/muslims/turks. that way, the angry masses attack them instead of the church/king/parliament/bank. from their perspective, that often solves two problems at once.

but europe also has a low population growth rate, which creates a systemic problem for capitalists that always seek conditions where the number of possible workers far exceeds the number of actually employed ones. there's a lot of very good reasons why that growth rate has stayed low and why europeans should seek to keep it low. however, the people of europe cannot have it both ways without abolishing capitalism - either they need to increase their growth rate, or they need to accept immigration, or they need to seize the means of production for themselves.

---

IamMANnumber1
Germany has brought Europe to its knees 3 times in the last century.

deathtokoalas
"germany" has been in the process of conquering europe, in various levels of severity, for over two thousand years.

chocomalk
Wow do you people ever learn history? Most of Europe's historical woes are attributed elsewhere.

deathtokoalas
dude, it's just like when the visigoths invaded spain, it's just on a different level of abstraction.

chocomalk
Dude it's like saying Europe is not Norway, Sweden, England, France, the Netherlands, Austria etc...all descendants of Germanic tribes. It's like saying Western Germany is Eastern France or vice versa. You are looking at an orgy and finding a few parts you don't like without recognizing the attaching parts. Meanwhile the Romans, the Turks, , The Brits, The Russians, THE GREAT GAME, the(insert name)....

deathtokoalas
i'm not sure you can even make sense of that, so i'm not going to try to.

let's try again.

"germany" has been in the process of conquering europe, in various levels of severity, for over two thousand years.

now, think it through and understand the truth in it.

chocomalk
"Europe" is a relatively new concept, not one to be assigned 2000 years of existence. "Germany" was "Germania". the majority of what we call Europe today, the rest was Rome. So what is your point? That most of the original Germanic tribes that went on to become present day Europe because of a migration somehow tried to conquer itself? Technically the Visigoths would be attacking Rome not Europe. And technically Rome was the biggest aggressor. "Germania" was fairly consistent for about 1500 years regardless of it's name. The rest was Rome, or what was left of it after they fell and "other". The East is another matter. Anyway, you are still missing how everyone was trying to conquer everything..."everything" meaning what used to be Rome/Germania.

deathtokoalas
your understanding of history is a little bit confused, but it doesn't really matter because very little of what you're saying is in any way relevant (and the junkers that built the modern german state were actually not germans but prussians).

however,

1) europe is a geographic area and has existed as it does since roughly the end of the last ice age.

2) eastern europe was in fact largely built by east germans. as i feel you may be confused by a reference to the former soviet state, i need to separate between the east germans (who lived in modern day poland and ukraine and included groups like goths and lombards), the north germans (of scandinavia) and the west germans (of what we now call germany, france and england)

3) germans are not indigenous to the area we now call germany. rather, they moved south near the beginning of the historical period and conquered and displaced indigenous celts.

4) the continuum of tribes in europe were migratory and did not really respect national boundaries. at any given point, you would find not just germans in the area now known as germany but also celts, slavs, iranians and people from much further east, including huns and turkish-speaking people.

5) you'll note i put "germany" in quotes, which was to note that it did not exist as a nation-state 2500 years ago. however, the idea of a german nation united by language, religion and culture is not a new idea. our word for german comes from a greek association of odin with hermes. the germans were those who worshipped hermes. today, we think more in terms of linguistic groupings, of which i mentioned in (1).

6) my point is that "germany" has been in the process of conquering europe, in various levels of severity, for over two thousand years.

chocomalk
Prussian = Germanic, not sure where you are going with that lol.

1. Your vision of this "Europe" as a geological location does not take into account the artificial borders that exclude Russia/Asia etc. We are discussing pre civilized Europe during a time known as the great migration. A time when Europe did not exist as a set location and people came from all over. Sure, same rocks, but it's a whole lot bigger if you add all the stuff it is attached too without those convenient borders.

2. Germanic tribes, is there a point? And at what point are they not "Germanic" even though they hail from the same stock? You mention Goths as if they are not Germanic.

3. Yes they moved south as the Celts moved west, neither were "indigenous. And you quoted a 2000 year timeline, the Celts, what we know of them, predate that and were mainly affected by Rome. They were pushed, Germanic tribes were pushed, Slavic tribes were pushed... they all did pushing as well.

4. This is subject to a very long timeline, but it is pretty safe to say that regardless of who was ruling who, the lines have remained consistent for at least 1000 years give or take and were pretty much formed prior to that.

5. Funny we are communicating in German? No in English...why is that? Because there are other players in this you are not addressing. So the next language most likely for us to speak in would be German?...no it would be French. Although influenced by German, we consider many European languages to be "Latin" based. How could that be? You say this as if it is uniquely German.

6. Your point ignores everyone else, this makes you a bigot. In the same boat as Germany would be every tribe/culture you mention and some you have not. So is there a point? Besides being a bigot and pointing out one guilty party among many?

deathtokoalas
i don't feel you're following me, and i'm a little bored with your continued responses. i'm not seeking to build any sort of comparison or produce any kind of normative statements, i'm simply pointing out that "germany" has been in the process of conquering europe, in various levels of severity, for over two thousand years. and the prussians, now extinct, were balts.

chocomalk
 No, I follow you, you are a bigot. And "Prussian" ≠ "Old Prussian".

deathtokoalas
now that i've blocked that idiot, i want to reiterate my point: that "germany" has been in the process of conquering europe, in various levels of severity, for over two thousand years.

i'm not sure what's going on outside. when i was out there, it sounded like a race track around the corner. air show? several lawn mowers? don't know. but, sitting inside, the waveforms of the different motors are expanding and overlapping with each other and harmonizing, and it sounds like an ambient noise festival.

maybe i just wish i was at an ambient noise festival.

it's nice out.

hurry up, customs.

the russians are talking tough about retaliation for escalation in the east; yet, poroshenko reacted to the airport seizure in strongman fashion. whatever the law says, it's a show of force, and there's little doubt that it was directed at russia. poroshenko is of course a new entity at this level, and i don't claim to understand him well, but i can't believe he would be foolish enough to mean the show of force to be a challenge. rather, it's a message that he will defend himself if provoked.

that doesn't negate the russian threats, and they ought to be taken seriously. they have repeatedly warned that the kind of escalation poroshenko put down will be responded to harshly, for the precise reason that they do not want a full war. for all poroshenko's intent to send a message of territorial integrity and whatnot, the russians have made it clear that they are going to control the area for the foreseeable future. they've also made it clear that they want it done peacefully.

so, they're not going to invade. that would be foolish, and everybody outside of the western press can see that. maybe they can, too, and it's just dramatic television.

they're not going to cut off gas supplies, either. that's a punitive attack on the ukrainian people, not on the ukrainian government. putin understands the difference.

he's not stalin.

rather, he's a pussy cat, as i keep saying. he wants to bully his way forward, but he doesn't want to actually hurt anybody.

however. and this is a big however.

i think it exceedingly unlikely that the russians are just going to sit there for the next ten years shooting down helicopters amidst heavy casualties. as the clear aim is to minimize casualties, they are going to respond somehow. and, the pattern is through a show of force, and the use of the *threat* of that force (rather than it's actualization) to seize control of what it wants.

so, how does putin find a way to bully ukraine into grounding it's planes under the threat of severe consequence? i can think of a few things. they are drastic. i would prefer not to give anybody any ideas.

but note the threat of serious consequence, and that it should be taken seriously.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/31/world/europe/russia-and-ukraine-in-talks-over-gas-supplies.html

i don't trust internet polls. the sampling simply isn't random. worse, there's an age bias that directly contradicts known voting patterns (older people are far more likely to vote).

i'm not expecting significantly different results than the last election - liberals and conservatives around 35 (+/-) and the ndp in the low 20s. it's going to be about turnout.

i'm not voting. i don't know the riding well enough. but it's probably clear that i'm supporting the liberals over the ndp.

most politicians are a little loopy, but i'm strongly convinced that horwath is a clinical psychopath.

hey, i'm in dwight duncan's old seat.

it's a liberal-ndp race, here, which just stresses the need to understand local issues, which i don't. well, in most circumstances, that's how i'd look at it, anyways.

see, i'm not happy about an ndp candidate attacking the green energy act. yes, electricity has gone up, and people are upset, but it's a boneheaded analysis to blame it on the decision to shut down coal plants, rather than these off the wall market-based electricity policies. i expect the ndp to present an articulate solution that argues for public ownership of utilities (and explicitly against running utilities for private profit), not some hamfisted, cursory nonsense. for the armchair accountants in the audience, how about an argument that improving air quality offsets health costs? if there's no longer any idea of sharing social burdens in the ndp's outlook, if it's just self interest and lowering costs, what's their purpose in the existing political spectrum?

....and i like the idea of high speed rail heading out to toronto. it would make it feasible to spend the day there to catch a festival show.

i don't really care about what they say about jobs, because i understand that the existing political reality is that the government cannot create jobs. it's a neat trick they've pulled off to put the responsibility in the hands of the private sector (we're knee deep in the neo-liberal era, folks), thereby eliminating any control they have over the issue, then run election platforms on it, as though they didn't relinquish control. just once i'd like to see a current politician take the podium and state:

"the era where government policy could create jobs ended in the 90s. we campaigned on it. you voted us in to cut the links. we did it. now, you're on your own. sorry. "

beyond that, the structural realities of mass job creation not just here but in a thousand mile radius are just not feasible. the idea that we can create all these jobs for all these people isn't realistic, so we need to adjust how we think; voters need to get it through their heads that the choice is between having some people on welfare and some people working full time and having everybody working part time and also living on welfare. which is actually what socialism is *really* all about. so, it's socialism or welfare and we have to deal with it. a thousand sun readers just had their brain explode. i'm ok with that being a choice, too, so long as the income differential is meaningful. well, it's a choice, right? better than being sent to the walmart under threat of starvation. the choice is simple: do you want more money than you have time or do you want more time than you have money? and, knowing full well that demanding employment is going to hurt somebody else that needs the money more than me, i'll happily choose time over money.

so, it's mostly meh. the ndp will support the rail plan. and the liberals are simply better on the environment right now.

it's a shame. the province needs to reclaim it's resources. it's going to happen sooner or later. the ndp is really missing the boat on articulating a vision of social democracy at precisely the time that it's needed, and at precisely the time it may actually be embraced.

because people really *are* pissed about rising costs, they're just being misled about the causes, and the ndp are not helping them understand them.

http://www.ourwindsor.ca/news-story/4548567-mudslinging-dominates-windsor-tecumseh-candidates-debate/4546298

also, it's a shame the liberals couldn't find a mccoy.

yeah. it's the point. she can't beat the liberals straight up. she knows it. her sole purpose is power, so it makes sense for her to help the conservatives win in the short run, in the hopes that it sets up a direct ndp-conservative battle.

clear as day.

http://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2014/05/30/why_ontarios_ndp_might_back_a_hudak_minority_government_walkom.html

it's not her strategy, either. it's layton's.

russia's more of a market economy than most of europe is, steve. also, vlad would probably dig your new monument. i think he's put a few like it up, himself.

in truth, harper's latest dumb comments are incredibly insensitive to the millions of russians who look to putin to keep the communists out of power. 'cause that's vlad's real competition, after all - not these kleptocratic fascist "liberal" billionaires that the west wants to let back into yeltsin's liquor cabinet.

steve and vlad are actually very similar, kindred spirits of a sort. if steve ever decides to pull his head out of his ass and gain some kind of grasp on reality, he'd see his ideological brethren across the arctic ocean.

but, he'd rather hit the bunker and play with his plasticine soldiers, and send them off to fight his imagined boogeyman. do it for the gipper, steve-o.

i actually think it's fully plausible that steve has been left in the dark and fed propaganda and doesn't really have the slightest idea of what is going on on the ground in ukraine.

nice walk yesterday, although it knocked me out. i guess i needed a good night's worth of sleep. it's been a long time since i can remember a good 9 hours in one stretch.

those cheap shoes aren't working out. i suppose i shouldn't be surprised, although i also think i'm abusing them. they probably would have lasted the summer if i didn't take them on these periodic six or eight hour walks. as it is, they're already softening up on the bottom. i did pick up a pair of skate shoes a few months ago, but wanted to save them until the spring rains stopped. the whole purpose of the cheap shoes was really to wear in spring and fall. so, i guess it's time to switch over. the cheapies were two for one, so i guess i have another pair for the fall. looking at them now, it's pretty obvious they weren't really made for walking.

i got this rare craving for a burger last night. it's something that hits every few months. raw meat is not allowed in the house, so it's not something that's in my regular diet. the few times a year i want a burger, i go buy one. i remembered seeing a local burger place, so i took a walk around the corner....

"motor burger". well, i'm in detroit. sounds like a good place for what i imagine a local detroit burger should be: greasy and messy, with a side of transmission fluid, but that's kind of what i wanted.

it turns out it was actually a sort of bourgeois gourmet burger palace, which makes these weird upper class burgers out of goat cheese and gluten-free buns, then charges upwards of $15 for them. i was tired, and jonesing hard, so i forked out the $22 for a bacon cheeseburger and a non-hydrogenated, baked, organically grown poutine.

i gotta say it was good.

and i guess that's the new detroit.