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Tuesday, November 19, 2013

viewless (original album mix)

this was re-recorded significantly earlier, but left to sit. i updated it over the christmas holidays, re-recording some sections and adding samples.

the star wars samples have actually been removed. that required a bit of splicing, but it's the only actual editing on the track.

original version:
http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/viewless-2

initially, it was a song about being young and not listened to. as i grew up, i realized this is a general condition of society that is not limited to young people. so, i've generalized it here to reflect the illusion of what we call democracy.

recorded in december, 1998. edited on nov 19, 2013.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/teenage-jesus-original-1999-cd-mix

anticipation (original album mix)

this was constructed as a bridge between tracks 16 and 18, which are conceptually linked. it samples the initial demo tape recording and adds some noisy sequencing.

recorded in december, 1998.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/teenage-jesus-original-1999-cd-mix

timeline: 1886

100 99 98 97 96 95 94 93 92 91 90 89 88 87 86 85 84 83 82 81 80 79 78 77 76 75 74 73 72 71 70 69 68 67 66 65 64 63 62 61 60 59 58 57 56 55 54 53 52 51 50 49 48 47 46 45 44 43 42 41 40 39 38 37 36 35 34 33 32 31 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0- 0+ 1 2
000 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900
00 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09

1886

unclear date:

friedrich engels - ludwig feuerbach and the end of classical german philosophy

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/chronology/CE/1000/800/80/06.html

friedrich engels - ludwig feuerbach and the end of classical german philosophy

waste of time

there's no value in reading a 175 year old marxist "materialist" critique of german "idealism" in 2013 that was repeatedly deemed unfit for publication until well after engels' death. eventually, the soviet government finally published it for historical rather than theoretical reasons. hegel's brand of platonism is too insane to require a rebuttal, and marx was never able to truly understand what science is. it's the deaf arguing against the deaf, with the intent of leading the blind.

the critique, at it's core, is presented as a rejection of the idea that history is teleological. yet, marx is no less teleological than hegel or feuerbach, he just derives a mildly different ideal. as mentioned, engels is confused, primarily, by marx' bizarre concept of science, which in truth has more in common with something like intelligent design than it does with any kind of real science. it's also plagued by a decidedly classical/newtonian mindset, precisely as the world was entering the modern era. so, the dichotomy presented here is blatantly false. do we need a dialectic, then? maybe. historical materialism is a branch of german idealism, rather than a reaction against it. nor does it have anything at all to do with science. this essay is utter nonsense.

points of interest...

- engels has made similar, but more interesting, arguments elsewhere in deriving "materialism" from baconian science and pitting it against continental philosophy.

- engels suggests two flaws of eighteenth century materialism. the first is the idea that natural laws only function at a chemical/physical level. the implication is that natural laws also apply to human behaviour, but the statement is too vague to really analyze. if he means to suggest that there are mechanical laws that govern human economic behaviour, he's certainly wrong; today, we model the complexity of human societies using dynamical systems and chaos theory rather than causal laws. human behaviour is dominated by uncertainty, rather than certainty. in truth, physics is also dominated by uncertainty; we don't model molecules using causal laws anymore, either. there is indeed a cited flaw in eighteenth century materialism, but it's in the idea of assigning mechanical cause to the universe in the first place, not in it's limited application. this observation is devastating to marx' pseudo-scientific arguments. the second supposed flaw is that it doesn't understand history as a "process". but, what is this but a restated teleology? the flaw in materialism is that it wasn't idealistic! ha! some materialism!

- the attempt to describe evolution teleologically is painful. biology profs could conceivably use this text to teach common fallacies in evolutionary thought.

- "the conviction that humanity, at least at the present moment, moves on the whole in a progressive direction has absolutely nothing to do with the antagonism between materialism and idealism". marx/engels did not deny their teleology, they just didn't realize that teleology is inconsistent with baconian science. rather, they seemed to think it was an essential aspect of materialism that actually helps define it.

- historical materialism is explained, here, as a hidden variable theory. events may seem random, but they are controlled by hidden laws. i wonder if there's an analogous bell theorem? do humans obey an uncertainty principle?

- to be fair, if you replace marx' teleology with a concept of chance (as measured with probabilities, rather than causal laws) then his description of things as being processes does have some insight. it completely negates his entire dialectic, sure, but it at least realizes that everything exists merely within a moment that is defined by perpetual flux.

- likewise, the idea that economics and class struggle may play a role in shaping history is a good one, and well-established. the error marx is making is pretty common: he's generalizing the specific. it's just that he's doing it in a way that is exceedingly derpish, in no small part due to his flamboyantly arrogant rhetoric. what he's failing at, badly, in his generalization is three-fold: (1) there's no idea of controlled laboratory conditions, (2) he's falsely equating variables that are obviously widely different and (3) there's no idea of repeatability. they often provide an example or two, claim they've proven something and then turn that into a general law that they claim is on the same footing as the conservation of energy, without any attempt to build statistical correlations or mathematical models. any scientifically literate person would interpret this writing as consistently preposterous, and essentially write these guys off as quacks.

- yet, if you read between the lines, it seems like marx is more interested in constructing a morality out of history than he is in taking historical materialism seriously. he reacts badly to the idea of a history that narrates the ignoble defeating the noble. it's like he doesn't want the bad guys to win, so he's rewriting the story. how seriously this is really meant to be taken really strikes me as an open question. is it just propaganda? is it even really some kind of joke?

full text:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/ludwig-feuerbach/

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/books/congress/B/2973.E572/index.html

this is horribly morbid. it's via a cracked article that turned the sound off in the embed. maybe that's advisable.

i'm posting it for the camera work, which is unreal.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303755504579206493707558658

circus (original discarded outtake)

i spent the entire fall with this, only taking a break to do the offspring cover. i eventually got really frustrated by my inability to get the tone i wanted, put it aside, then went back to it, then gave up altogether. it might be the first example of me getting lost in overproduction, and in that sense it's sort of important.

recorded in november, 1998.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/circus-orginal-1998-outtake

circus (original album mix)

i had spent the last three months frustrated by my inability to get the tone i wanted for this. often when i ran into that problem, putting it down for a few days and approaching it fresh solved it, but that wasn't working.

there was a power outage that knocked my computer out as i was running a part of the track through a transform. the track - and all the digital additions i had added to it - were largely destroyed. what was left was this completely corrupted wave file.

i've never been a religious person (obviously), and i don't want to say i took at as a sign or something. yet, i let chance assert itself; the corrupted wave file became the final version of the track, and i moved on to the next thing.

the closest thing to a completed version of the actual track is here:
http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/circus

recorded in november, 1998.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/circus-original-album-mix

circus (zoo mix)

i was playing around with some guitar ambience stemming from a track i was working on (circus). i had bigger plans for this that would eventually be realized with {e}.

recorded in november, 1998.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/circus-zoo-mix

Monday, November 18, 2013

idiotic (original discarded mix promoted to album mix)

when i re-recorded this, i created two versions. the first is an instrumental version with bad panning, the second is a vocal version with dumb samples designed, primarily, to mimic a skinny puppy song, rivers.

i guess i'm moving to riverz end, here. the samples make the track unlistenable. there were continuity reasons why i went with the sample version the first time around, but it was against my better judgement, even then. i should have followed my gut.

(meaning, i've placed the non-sample version where the sample version originally was and kicked the sample version out to inrijected)

recorded in aug, 1998. edited on nov 18, 2013.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/the-harsh-truth-is-that-only-idiots-wish-for-happiness-v2

dirty magic (remix/cover for inrimake)

somebody on their mailing list was putting together an offspring cover disc. this is half-serious and half tongue-in-cheek - as the band was at the time. while the reaction on the mailing list was polarized, the truth is that it's not outside of the realm of imagination to think they could have released this on smash or ixnay as an 'intermission' or something. well, minus the noise aspect, i guess.

keep in mind that this was just before 'pretty fly' was released (this was oct, that was nov), which had a large effect on the band's fan base. not to say that the offspring were an underground punk band in 1998 or anything, but they had yet to really hit that crossover audience. they were a popular punk band, rather than a punk-influenced pop band.

personally, i didn't like 'americana'. at all.

what this, here, is, is a cover of a track on their second record, ignition, which was released in 1992. even there, it stood out as a sort of a pop/rock song that wouldn't have been out of place on a police record. that's kind of why i went with it. in fact, the offspring have revisited this track themselves on multiple occasions, although i can't cite precise track names.

i think it works on a post-punk level.

recorded in september, 1998.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/dirty-magic

stupid (original album mix)

this was initially an anti-tobacco song, here converted into an anti-tobacco-and-tongue-in-cheek-pro-pot song by loading it with silly samples. there's a completely instrumental version of this i'm putting on inrijected that, in hindsight, should have been the released version.

the initial write-up stands:
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/stupid

even at the time, i preferred this instrumental version (which also has an extended ending) and don't remember the logic behind including the sample/vocal version. i think i may have honestly made an error in construction and then never fixed it.

recorded in aug, 1998. edited on nov 18, 2013.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/stupid-2

so, i finish doing the dishes after making some scrambled eggs and i look down in the sink and see a little worm type of thing squiggling around.

i'm aware of the tremendous diversity that exists amongst worm species, which is why i'm curious to know what the fuck. the thing is that i've never seen this before, anywhere. harmless worm i should not be concerned about? parasite i should be extremely concerned about?

it was small, but far from tiny. about 2 or 3 cms long. definitely a worm - too thin to be a maggot. it did not change it's shape in response to stimuli (in this case a knife that was trying to kill it). nor was the knife successful in splicing it. it didn't seem to have a head, so i don't think it was a snake (and therefore a vertebrate that would be hard to chop in half). i didn't really want to let it stick around long enough to find out. i transported it to the toilet on the knife and flushed. it seemed to still be alive as it disappeared.

i spent a little time on google, and "sink worms" are actually a real thing, but they're generally described as black and extremely small. none of the pictures at all describe what i saw.

if i had to guess, it struck me as a parasite. but a parasite of what? the only thing in the sink was a green pepper that was washed and chopped, which is a process that makes it hard for parasites to come out undetected. i haven't brought any raw meat in here and probably never will.

has anybody else ever seen a feisty little worm in their sink?

i think i can safely deduce that whatever it was did not originate inside of me in any way. i didn't shit in the sink. honest.

nor did i cough in the sink. there's just no way...

...so, i'm slowly coming to the conclusion that it's not likely to have been parasitic. parasites have lots of different life cycles, but none of them land one hanging out in my sink.

i'd still like to *know* though.

bottom line is i think i should bleach my sink. can't see where else it may have come from. the green pepper thing is just...

i mean, you slice a pepper in half. you run it under the water and play with it in your hands. you take the seeds out. i surely would have seen something.

i suppose it's not impossible that i hallucinated it. i've been thinking about parasites recently. see post about smoking.

i'm trying to convince myself that it was the larval stage of a bug i see around, but i can't find anything that fits.

and i haven't seen any bugs around either, lately, for that matter. i think i kicked the roaches out by patching a few holes and leaving the lights on, and that chased the centipedes away. well, after they ate all the spiders, i guess.

"To which the 20-something laughs, having graduated into an economy where peers spend years vainly looking for a job, finding only unpaid internships or low-wage contingency labour, often while living at home. A funded graduate program, with health insurance, seems a welcome escape."

that's right. people don't go to grad school in order to get a good job. people go to grad school because they're not able to get a good job.

employers place a large amount of value on the ability of an employee to bend the rules without being caught. they want to hire the worst people they can find; the more of an asshole you are, the further you will go in the corporate hierarchy.

bookworm losers that are obsessed with outdated ideas like "truth" need not apply.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/11/surviving-post-employment-economy-201311373243740811.html

it's sort of sad to see these "protestant work ethic" arguments that plead with people to adapt and work harder rather than arguments derived from looking at actual economic data and drawing empirical conclusions.

we're undergoing an experiment in global trade. there's no reason to think this experiment will lead to permanency. it's not the end of history. for right now, capital has become mobile, creating a global labour market. this has coincided with massive mechanization, reducing the demand for labour, and incredible increases in health technology, exponentially increasing the supply. as with everything else, increases in supply and decreases in demand produce a decrease in price.

some of this is local. the price of phds has collapsed because the supply has grown faster than the demand. throw a dart in a subway, you'll hit a phd. it's nothing special anymore.

but, most of this is global. shitty wages are a function of global population growth and economic integration. if this is the game that capitalism wants to play, then workers need to respond by coming together and globalizing their resistance.

placing things on an even footing, though, only solves half the problem. ultimately, we need to take two radical truths into consideration:

(1) the most efficient means of global production, insofar as it is measured in surplus value, is not necessarily the most advantageous to local communities. local production may be less efficient, but the jobs it creates are more important.
(2) our current population is many times larger than our current labour potential. there is necessarily going to be a class of unemployed people and it is going to continue to grow. so, how does society adjust to that new reality?

consider: bangladesh just increased it's minimum wage by 77% (or something like that, the article was a little unclear). capital has threatened to get up and move. if market forces are allowed to play out, unabated, then the wage increase will need to be rolled back to reattract investment.

but if there was co-ordinated strike action throughout east asia, that couldn't happen. the threat of moving location would be met by further strike action. ideally, those striking workers would get together to force a regional labour agreement that would act as a counterbalance to the free trade agreements.

there are obstacles. first, class consciousness has to overpower nationalistic interests. second, it has to be demonstrated that self-interest is maximized through collective action. the second point is actually very easily demonstrated through a simple argument in game theory, to all who are willing to learn. classic prisoner's dilemma. third is fighting the tendency towards co-option. the labour movement needs to begin with the basic assumption that governments will never act in their interest.

if such a thing could be sustained, and global wage requirements could be met (and keep in mind that this was once a very mainstream aspect of nafta that clinton and chretien both promised), the logic of local production would reassert itself. indians producing for indians. canadians producing for canadians. trade based on comparative advantage.

the idea of canadian, european and african workers consistently striking in solidarity with asian workers may seem utopian, but it's the necessary reaction to global trade. it's the only way to reverse the currently absurd level of mobility in capital.

http://rabble.ca/news/2013/11/genocide-refugees-and-inconvenient-truth-about-harpers-boycott?utm_content=buffer9e219&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer

why are you phrasing it in terms of competition? i'm not interested in a competitive economy.

rather, the best way to create manufacturing jobs in ontario is to pull ourselves out of global trade agreements and set up a punishing tariff system.

another positive approach that can be taken is to help build solidarity movements in the developing world that will fight for higher wages and better conditions.

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/11/15/political_leaders_silent_on_ontarios_on_manufacturing_woes_walkom.html

it's actually really right-wing messaging. it's distracting. i don't want to hear about the bastards in new york, i want to hear about policies that will increase average wealth. the more you start demonizing things, the less interested i become. i want workable solutions, not scapegoats.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/11/elizabeth-warren-not-ready-for-presidential-prime-time/281554/

i've always found greg palast entertaining. this is pretty good.

the populist movement in the united states was also formed largely to fight against the gold standard. there's the famous 'cross of gold' speech. it's historically been an issue that has had a lot of success as a lightning rod in which to organize people against financiers.

but, neo-liberalism has taken us into some strange universe where everything is backwards.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/20034-rand-pauls-zombie-nomics-versus-janet-yellen

so, it's easy to put this together. the saudis are freaking out and sent their lobbyists to washington to try and take control of the situation. that saudi lobby is powerful. blah blah blah.

...but the bottom line is that the iranians have successfully squirmed out of this and the saudis are going to have to learn to deal with it.

http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/11/13/john_kerrys_iran_briefing_succeeds_in_solidifying_gop_against_him

flaherty tried this once before.

at the end of mike harris' reign of terror, flaherty claimed the province was finally coming out of years of deficit.

upon analysis of the books, it was found that he was hiding an enormous shortfall.

fire sales or not, flaherty doesn't have any credibility.

(and it's not like i care if the government is in debt or not, anyways)

http://behindthenumbers.ca/2013/11/13/balanced-budget-come-hell-or-service-cuts-or-asset-fire-sales/

hillary is quite a bit to the left of obama. it's why ran obama against her, and why she won't get the nomination.

regardless, the one thing i was hoping she could come through on - health care - has been taken from her. leaving her with what purpose...?

no, honestly. now that the health care issue is safely in the hands of the insurance industry, what conceivable reason can hillary present as to why anybody should vote for her?

hrmmn?

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/11/11/the-dynastic-hillary-bandwagon/

Sunday, November 17, 2013

friedrich engels - on the history of early christianity

readable

this is a curious essay that seems to be letting on quite a bit about what engels really thought of workers, or at least did near the very end of his life. the editors of the text i'm pulling it from want to suggest that it's evidence of the christian nature of the communist movement, and a sort of weak point where engels manages to accidentally contradict himself. it may, perhaps, have been influential on various christian left movements (such as canada's ndp). insofar as that's true, however, engels is actually launching an attack on the mindlessness of the working class. when he compares the gestating continental workers movement to early christianity, the aim is not to stress the inherent morality of communism or to place religion as an important part of a workers' program but to stress the idiocy of the uneducated worker; unfortunately, from engels' perspective, the german proletariat is as hopelessly stupid and painfully naive as the early christians were. yet, engels seems to present this hopeless worker ignorance as an opportunity for a charismatic leader to take advantage of.

given that this text was written at the end of engels' life, it may have a certain "bitter old man" quality to it. yet, it may also display a higher level of honesty than earlier propaganda pieces. with his comrade long dead and no future to plan for, perhaps engels is finally telling us what he really thinks.

there's been this underlying concern regarding marxism from the very start, coming from both liberals to marx' right and anarchists to marx' left, that it's really just an elaborate justification for despotism, and that the intended despot was always marx himself. was marx merely trying to build a proletariat army in which he could conquer europe like napoleon did? we'll never truly know the answer to this. this particular text is written by engels after marx' death, but if you read their joint writing carefully what comes out (especially in the dictatorship of the proletariat) is something that seems rather similar to the counter-enlightenment position of enlightened despotism. see, one could conceivably derive the counter-enlightenment (a peculiarly tory position) from a dialectical combination of enlightenment and anti-enlightenment. it's easy to see why marx may have seen something of interest, then, in counter-enlightenment toryism. of course, marx was certainly a product of the enlightenment. yet, he seems to have spent his whole life arguing against it. true, historical materialism is not toryism. yet, in the sense that an enemy's enemy is a friend? the truth is that marx and engels seem to have been very much aligned with the counter-enlightenment, a deeply aristocratic movement. they may have claimed they were attacking the bourgeoisie from a working class perspective, but they lived the lives of aristocrats and their writings stress that point rather clearly from time to time.

this text by engels is a good example of that. it is technically a defense of historical materialism as it relates to the collapse of the roman empire. engels very briefly argues that christianity was the socialism of late antiquity, and the rise of christianity in the empire was equivalent to a socialist revolution. curiously, the revolution failed because the dictatorship of the blessed prevented the meek from inheriting the earth. might there be lessons for the marxist in this realization?

yet, this is really just a lot of hand-waving. what engels really wishes to discuss is how the history of christianity provides lessons to control the german workers with. once engels lays out the argument that the intellectually feeble german working class should be as easy to control through charismatic leadership as the early christians were, he completely changes the topic to an academic debate about the age of the book of revelations, as though he is trying to demonstrate his point: as christianity was a construction of the roman elite designed to control the mass of peasants, communism may be used by the german elite to control the gestating worker movement.

some specific notes:

- engels stresses the idea of communism differing from christianity primarily in where the utopia is placed. engels carefully points out that conditions in the empire were so terrible that christians could be convinced that their death was preferable. communism, on the other hand, aims to convince workers to seek their utopia as built from their own hands. it's not hard to see which approach would be more productive.

- the precise comparison that engels draws is between a greek named proteus (who first convinced some early christians he was a prophet, then used that position of trust to try and take control of them) and a german named kuhlmann (who managed to convince a group of swiss workers that his wisdom was so great that he should be their pampered leader).

- engels' biblical scholarship is interesting, but likely out of date. it seems to be that the majority position is currently to take a late authorship (c. 95) of the book of revelations due to the author being a persecuted christian and persecutions beginning under domitian. engels himself also points out a prophesy of the eighth emperor, indicating a later date (by his own logic of prophecy in scripture indicating a date of composition later than the prophesied events). one needs to be careful with these arguments, though. i'm not fully convinced that christians were persecuted at all, under domitian or not. i'm not convinced there were even early christians! and, how much of a difference does 25 years really make? more interesting to me is engels' deconstruction of the text. the dating is a strong focus of the article, but the real point is that the text is constructed. well, with this particular text, it could be said this is obvious; we don't really need an argument against the historicity of the book of revelations. it's quite obviously either a work of complete fiction or a psychedelic hallucination. while the latter option is not to be completely discounted, if it is the case then the interpretation of that trip is certainly a work of fiction. so, it's a work of fiction either way, and this much is blatantly obvious. the key here is that engels points out that the entire thing can be easily deconstructed into source material. the underlying implication is that the religion is a construction of the elite - just as communism is.

- engels curiously draws the comparison between the different kinds of socialism (marxists, proudhonists, anarchists) in the 1800s and the different kinds of christianity that existed until the church managed to stamp them all out. it's curious in the sense that it assigns marxism to the role of the catholic church in the analogy. considering that engels is deconstructing christianity as a created religion of the upper classes in this very text, this comparison only makes sense if he sees marxism in a similar light. the analogy also naturally produces the non-marxian forms of socialism as analogous to the purer sects of christianity that were stamped out by the centralized church. is this really the future that engels desires? is this really how he sees marxism in relation to the other types of socialism?

full text:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/Marx_On_the_Histsory_of_Early_Christianity.pdf

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/books/congress/HX/6.N5/index.html

i just got my quarterly stomach ache, but there's a big mass of unusually warm air moving in so i'm not sure if i can safely declare the beginning of winter or not.

listen, i'm all for using the climate crisis as an excuse to seize control of factories, but you really lose me when you start talking about controlled economies.

marxism was a failure, and few smart people today want to repeat those mistakes. this isn't a cheeky retro article; the emotion that this kind of rhetoric invokes in myself is fear. that is the correct emotion from an enlightened people in the post-marxist period.

post-marxist. deal with it.

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/19872-capitalism-and-the-destruction-of-life-on-earth-six-theses-on-saving-the-humans

we need socialism without centralization.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prison-beatings-caught-on-video-at-ontario-and-quebec-jails-1.2426904/
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/the-real-poison-is-to-be-found-in-arafats-legacy-8945393.html

current solar technology has resource limits in it's use of metals and a carbon footprint in mining them. it's potentially profitable. i get that. but a seriously sustainable solution uses plants to generate electricity, not photovoltaic cells.
http://phy.so/303362659

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=electron-spherical-electric-dipole-moment&WT.mc_id=SA_Facebook
http://phys.org/news/2013-11-physicists-uncollapse-partially-collapsed-qubit.html
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/critical-opalescence/2013/11/11/what-happens-to-google-maps-when-tectonic-plates-move/?WT.mc_id=SA_Facebook

http://www.nature.com/news/weak-statistical-standards-implicated-in-scientific-irreproducibility-1.14131
http://www.astrobio.net/exclusive/5815/a-new-microbe-living-in-spacecraft-clean-rooms
http://phys.org/news/2013-11-samsung-quiet-mobile-os.html

yeah. i've been in arguments about this. let's see if this has an effect.
http://phy.so/303468346

this is tinfoil hat shit, but i've often wondered if the reason that modern physics makes no sense is that you need military clearance to access it.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/nov/06/serving-reich-physics-philip-ball-review

http://ow.ly/qKiV9
http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/november-2013/seaquest-seeks-the-secrets-of-the-proton
http://news.stanford.edu/pr/2013/pr-nickel-water-splitter-111213.html
http://www.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00625/full?utm_source=NPG&utm_medium=Facebook&utm_content=content+marketing&utm_campaign=FBK_SM_1311_FPSYG&WT.mc_id=FBK_SM_1311_FPSYG

http://phys.org/news/2013-11-discovery-prompts-global.html
http://phy.so/303568379

a polio epidemic developed out of the mess in syria, and is starting to spread through israel. yes, polio.
http://scim.ag/HRSqDa

anthropomorphisms aside, this is neat.
http://www.astrobio.net/exclusive/5812/glassy-coating-keeps-viruses-happy-in-harsh-environments

http://phy.so/303633386
http://www.nature.com/news/astronomers-surprised-by-large-space-rock-less-dense-than-water-1.14135
http://phys.org/news/2013-11-distant-artificial-atoms-cooperate-physicists.html
http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/09012013/article/study-reveals-more-clues-to-origins-of-domesticated-dog
http://globalchange.mit.edu/foodsymposium
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/single-photon-detected-not-destroyed
http://phy.so/303650520
http://phy.so/303676085
http://www.nature.com/news/photons-detected-without-damage-1.14179?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=dengue-fever-makes-inroad&WT.mc_id=SA_Facebook
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/11/09/mira-n09.html
http://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/dear-mainstream-media-word-rape/
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/technology/2013/11/intense-smog-making-beijings-massive-surveillance-network-practically-useless/7481/

http://truth-out.org/news/item/19935-us-a-favorite-roost-of-vulture-funds
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10975
http://www.ifex.org/ecuador/2013/11/08/video_censorship/

well, let's see.

1) tar
2) water
3) carbonic acid
4) dead fish (sugar)

the oceans are officially turning into a lake of coke.

http://phy.so/303625303

this is a little clearer. he found a correlation and speciously attributed it to cfc reduction.

....which makes zero sense.

usually, the argument is presented as follows:

- increases in greenhouse gasses have contributed to warming
- increases in aerosols have counter-acted that warming
- the net effect is that the greenhouse gases have had a stronger effect.

you'll hear skeptics talk about how "they used to think it was cooling". well, yeah. they thought the effect of aerosols was stronger. then they learned otherwise.

now, aerosols are a warming factor? again, no. there's merely a correlation between aerosol reduction and decreased warming, and a lot of people jumping to ridiculous conclusions.

again: why isn't anybody studying the effects of warfare on the climate? wait: government funds almost all research. right. of course.

http://www.nature.com/news/ozone-hole-treaty-slowed-global-warming-1.14134?WT.mc_id=GPL_NatureNews

this is incoherent. aerosols are generally thought to produce a cooling effect. the article only makes sense if it's talking about soot, but it clearly isn't. a decrease in aerosols should lead to an increase in global temperatures.

i have a theory that the pause is related to the increase in warfare that's happened since 2001.

http://phys.org/news/2013-11-ozone-pact-cool-planet.html

(very mild nuclear winter, basically)

they were using extremely powerful conventional bombs in iraq, and they've been blowing up mountains in afghanistan. it's hard to think this has not had an effect on the atmosphere.

i find the academic reaction against wikipedia is more out of fear and doesn't really hold up to serious scrutiny.

if i write you a paper, i'm going to provide citations for anything that seems like it should require one. if you don't trust me, you check the source. when wikipedia produces an article, it is supposed to cite a source - and usually does. if you don't trust it, you check the source. if it doesn't provide a source, you point out it's not sourced. so, it's the same thing, either way.

contrary to the prevailing mythology, wikipedia is actually a valuable resource precisely because it collects a huge number of sources together into one place.

that's frightening to a professional researcher that may see a challenge to their vocation.

i mean, obviously, we all need to be rigourous in checking our sources. but if you carefully work through the issue, wikipedia doesn't come off worse than any other type of mass media or personal communication, and the process of verifying information is really precisely the same.

http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/magazine/physicstoday/news/the-dayside/wikipedia--pro-and-con-a-dayside-post

i'm a little disappointed. corporate personhood is a necessary result of the socialization of production. reversing it is about as well thought out as supporting right-to-work legislation. it's ideological liberalism.

rather, there needs to be a focus to reverse the second half of the ruling, which focused on limited liability. limited liability is about reducing investor risk. this is the real problem, here. if you put the risk back in the investment, these companies will be unable to get off the ground.

for the few that do, a better incentive is to hold the entire organization accountable. no one person can claim that this labour belongs to them; no one person can claim this decision belongs to them.

http://passmassamendment.wikispaces.com/Endorsements+%26+Advisors

what you're going to end up with if you abolish corporate personhood is a mess of liability. investors will rarely be held negligent, as they'll rarely have any direct decision making power. rather, you'll have middle management and low level workers constantly taking the blame because they're the ones that were legally negligent. you'll have people in the same company suing each other.

it will be yet another example of the failure of liberalism. as if we needed another.

on the other hand, if you socialize liability across the company then you necessarily ultimately place all negligence in the hands of the owners. again: the key here is not taking away personhood, it's abolishing limited liability.

more to the point, it's hard to see why chomsky (of all people) would argue that the solution to neo-liberalism lies in continuing the process of atomization.

"He attributed it not to the geometry of 3-D space, but to the algebraic properties of the symmetries inherent to the sphere."

...which are clearly inconsistent with each other given the result.

in other words, the system that group theorists use to describe this sphere is not actually describing this sphere at all, but describing something else.

if it was actually describing this sphere, it couldn't come up with such a ridiculous result.

rejection of the system at such a deep level is far too traumatic for the average mathematician to even contemplate. it is what is.

i think that the evidence regarding the axiom of choice is that it is sometimes true, and that the focus should be on determining a different axiom that allows it to be true under certain circumstances. the axioms should be chosen in such a way that it is demonstrable that the axiom of choice cannot be used to derive this paradox because the condition in which it is true would fail.

however, i think this relies on a deeper geometric question that i cannot formulate and the requires empirical evidence to demonstrate. my faith in our geometric concept of space is very weak.

http://phys.org/news303637618.html

Saturday, November 16, 2013

i am totally nocturnal...

got your mail...

From: Jessica Murray <death.to.koalas@gmail.com>
To: grandmother’s email address

things are ok here. glad to hear things are better with leo.

my fancy, high end headphones broke but they're easy to fix (the cord is replaceable), so i should be able to send a check out on the first of december for them.

i kind of forgot about the mail. i've updated the address at the banks and odsp, so there shouldn't be any more bank stuff coming. the student loan people are going to want me to send them a form and update the address. i should update my address at carleton, too, as well as with cra. thanks.

i'm going to go with an internet phone that will be very cheap, but the number is just for local calls. really, i just need the phone so that i can get documents to cross the border with. otherwise, i wouldn't bother.

i've been working on uploading a lot of music i wrote in the 90s, and getting back to a website i've been working on. the goal is to get that done before the new year, then finish the projects i've left half done. i'm going to start looking for something part-time in the spring, as i'm going to be running up against an odsp review in the fall that i'm not certain will be renewed.

everything i've been doing is accessible from here:
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/

i'm spending all my time alone, but i think i've needed the space, and i think i'm going to need a bit more.

i'll try to get that stuff cleared up on monday.

j

publishing eat my fuck (inri016)

this is something i did between inri demos. i needed a break from structured writing. just wanted to make some noise...

i suppose this is the biggest sample collage of them all, but it's best not to take it too seriously. the idea here eventually morphed into a project called "fuel true anarchy in the americas" (jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/ftaa), a play on the ftaa trade agreement, which itself got toned down in scope.

there's everything from science docs to hitler in here. it's meant to be a passive trip through real and imaginary time that is experienced with the aid of psychedelic drugs, rather than any kind of political statement. it's quite consciously absurd, often juxtaposing ironic statements with their contradictions.

the core of the ambience was produced by a program called sound raider. i then took the sound it created and shaped it by adding in vocal samples, looping certain parts, running things through effects, sequencing the noise into a more melodic shape, etc. it's consequently a sort of a collaboration between myself and the machine, rather than the work of the machine itself.

no sane person could really listen to this passively. you basically *need* drugs to get anything out of this at all.

...and i think i'm probably the only person that ever experienced it properly. hey, it's never too late...

created in the summer of 1998. released as a standalone ep on nov 16, 2013. as always, please use headphones.

this track also appears on my third record:
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inridiculous

credits

j - sound raider, sampling, cool edit synthesis/sequencing, digital effects processing, digital wave editing, flute
gauntk9 - anti-social quip

released july 1, 1998

ignorance is bliss (cynicide mix)

this was never meant to be recorded like this, only played live, usually drunk, but a friend of mine talked me into recording it for inclusion in a radio rock project we were hatching up. well, he was hatching up. i didn't really have much of an artistic investment in it, i just agreed to play bass, because my friend needed a bassist more than any other reason. he wanted this to be a "hidden song". i obliged.

however, he was a little taken aback by the result. he wanted it to be twangy and country, which indicated a misunderstanding of the content. it's comical on a surreal level, but it's not a cheap comedy skit. his ideas would have devalued it and that sort of pissed me off; my refusal to redo it pissed him off. this was part of the reason that the project never went anywhere, except to spark rabit iz wolf:
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/rabit-iz-wolf

recorded in the spring of 2001.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/ignorance-is-bliss-cynicide-mix

hexonxonx (remix/cover for inrimake)

i put together a skinny puppy tribute disc over the summer of 1998 called 'the souls that create'. this was my contribution to that disc. the original version is found on skinny puppy's 1989 record 'rabies', which is better known as 'the one that al jourgenson fuckered up'.

it's based on a combination of reconstruction and sampling, with the vocals performed by a text-to-speech program.

for those curious, the walk/ogre version of dig it with the text-to-speech vocals was released a few weeks after this, and it's hard to think i had nothing to do with that.

recorded in july, 1998.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/hexonxonx

eat my fuck (original album mix)

this is something i did between inri demos. i needed a break from structured writing. just wanted to make some noise...

i suppose this is the biggest sample collage of them all, but it's best not to take it too seriously. the idea here eventually morphed into a project called "fuel true anarchy in the americas" (jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/ftaa), a play on the ftaa trade agreement, which itself got toned down in scope.

there's everything from science docs to hitler in here. it's meant to be a passive trip through real and imaginary time that is experienced with the aid of psychedelic drugs, rather than any kind of political statement. it's quite consciously absurd, often juxtaposing ironic statements with their contradictions.

the core of the ambience was produced by a program called sound raider. i then took the sound it created and shaped it by adding in vocal samples, looping certain parts, running things through effects, sequencing the noise into a more melodic shape, etc. it's consequently a sort of a collaboration between myself and the machine, rather than the work of the machine itself.

no sane person could really listen to this passively. you basically *need* drugs to get anything out of this at all.

...and i think i'm probably the only person that ever experienced it properly. hey, it's never too late...

recorded in june, 1998.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/eat-my-fuck-2

the phantom of the opera (remix/cover for inrimake)

recorded in june, 1998.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/the-phantom-of-the-opera-3

wish (r2d2 mix)

i ran the track through a digital noise reduction and it came out sounding like this.

recorded in may, 1998.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/wish-r2d2-mix

the phantom of the washing machine

glitchy phantom backing tracks, with basement sounds.

recorded in may, 1998.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/the-phantom-of-the-washing-machine

slipping away (remix/cover for inrimake)

this is a reconstruction of a stabbing westward song that was meant for inclusion on a fan-made compilation that i'm not sure ever came together or not. it received positive feedback on the mailing list. it's not very similar to the original; really, this is so dramatically different from the original that it's reasonable to say something like that it's "inspired by" the original rather than a remix or a cover. it does contain creatively reinterpreted samples of the original.

recorded in may, 1998.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/slipping-away

why (wtf mix)

this is a glitchy, instrumental remix of the track 'why' that i only vaguely recall putting together.

recorded in april, 1998.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/why-wtf-mix

karl marx - critique of the gotha program

meh

you'll be forgiven for not knowing who ferdinand lassalle is, but i have to briefly explain who he is in order for you to understand what this is all about. lassalle was a shady character in the german labour movement that marx appears to have believed was a secret agent in the employ of the prussian government, and there is indeed evidence of covert communication between lassalle and no lower a junker than bismarck himself. marx seems to think his purpose was to align the labour movement with a docile form of liberalism that ultimately posed the prussian state no serious threat rather than with marx' socialist international, which most certainly did. as it interestingly turns out, lassalle became one of the primary philosophical guiding forces of the social democratic party of germany (sdp), which to this day remains the largest centre-left political force in germany. the text in question is a short, and very scathing, critique of the sdp's initial party constitution.

there are a couple of things underlying the rebuke. first, it's rather obvious that marx was trying to assert some influence over the new party. second, he appears to be trying to explain to the poor, brainwashed fools that what they're advocating, social democracy, is a liberal form of capitalism and not something that can be identified with socialism. his approach is to go through the five-point constitution, point by point, and offer clarifications, corrections, modifications and additions. it's almost like he's acting as an unwanted editor; as scathing as the criticism is, it's constructive.

unfortunately, it doesn't come off today as substantive. large portions of the short text deal with semantics and "corrections" of points that were almost certainly consciously worded as they are. given that marx' clear motive was not clarification but to take control of the process of writing the constitution, these semanticisms come off as as silly as they are, not to mention entirely void of integrity.

there are, however, a few points to take note of. the first is marx' approach to the concepts of equal rights and equal wages. marx claims that, when applied to a system built on inequality, equal rights will further that existing inequality. he also claims that equal wages will lead to inequality because everybody has different expense levels; some have several children, some have none, and to pay them equally would be to enforce a division. the conclusion is that in order to ensure true equality workers should be compensated at different levels relative to what they require and not at the same pay rate; "to each according to his needs.". the second is marx' clear opposition to state-run education, which many may find surprising but shouldn't given marx' views on the purpose of the state: "Government and church should rather be equally excluded from any influence on the school.".

in the essay, marx asks what a "free state" is and, while i recognize that he's being purposefully difficult, the reader may want to look up the history of a city such as lubeck to understand the context of the term as it was initially used before falling into marx' trap.

in the end, it may be worth noting that, as loudly as marx may pontificate, he is truly the one that should be taking notes; for every society that languishes under the tyranny of the dictatorship of the proletariat, there exists a democratic socialist near utopia.

additional notes:

- "one sees that such hollow phrases can be twisted and turned as desired". indeed, that's what marx is doing here. as mentioned, marx is primarily upset that he is not the author of the text - that the text takes in the ideas of a multitude of leftist thinkers, rather than merely his own. it's worth restating that this reaction is primarily about marx' ego, rather than the contents of the gotha program. he often attacks points merely for the purpose of attacking the points, simply because they aren't *his* points; the result is often trivial, when it isn't banal or even taking things completely out of context in order to "twist and turn". when the program *does* legitimately disagree with marx, he takes on a deeply condescending professorial sort of tone. rather than accept disagreement at face value, he treats dissent as a type of ignorance. a critical analysis of marx' critique should consequently begin with the primary intent of deconstructing his ego, leaving political analysis as a secondary concern.

- "this is the law of all history hitherto.". marx is trying to enforce his silly pseudo-scientific theory of "historical materialism" as though it is a natural law. it's kind of funny, really. see, improving society through reformist approaches like democratic socialism is impossible because of the natural law of historical materialism, which states that workers-->poverty as t-->infinity. never mind empirical study. scandinavia? yeah, i bet you think unicorns exist, too. pshaw. marx has spoken, and it is good.

- marx reacts badly to terms like "useful labour" and "proceeds of labour", fearful that lassalle's junker-penned hidden agenda may be to set up a sort of producerist state that divides the proletariat into a conflict between "workers" and "non-workers". i hope my precise choice of language does not upset karl's ego. now, in hindsight, considering nazism and stalinism, it may seem like he had a point that's worth listening to. however, it seems to me as though the distinction is made to clarify that certain types of labour, such as art, are not social in nature and ought not to be socialized. i think this discussion is better had in german than in english as any subtleties in the language would be clarified; i can't meaningfully have this discussion with myself through a haze of translation, and this is partly why i avoided discussing the critique in more depth in the first place. the critique is based on subtleties of language that likely did not make it through translation....although i suspect it would come off as more rather than less banal in it's original german. anyways, this is a real distinction that needs to be met with head on. i believe that karl stated on numerous occasions that artists are not members of the proletariat - by definition, it is clear that they are not, because they do not sell their labour. yet, is art not a creation of labour? in a worker's state, might there be a fear that art may be cast aside as useless labour, that artists may be forced to work in factories? would it not be valuable to state otherwise in the party constitution so that the matter is settled and artists are not attacked as bourgeois idlers? to be clear: marx makes a compelling argument against the dangers of producerism. reaching the text's highest points of banality, he carefully fills in the accounting holes that the program obviously assumes will be dealt with later on. however mundane it may be, it's at least a valid addition to the program. however, the rhetoric justifying this addition reads off like the ravings of an outlandish conspiracy theorist when compared to the translation i have in front of me, which seems designed to uphold artistic freedom rather than to stigmatize "useless eaters" as a waste of resources.

- marx also goes on a tirade about how the program does not incorporate the concept of a dictatorship of the proletariat. rather than consider that the authors of the program may not want to live in a worker's dictatorship, he accuses them of not understanding the natural science of historical materialism. once again, the modern reader has no option but to snicker; it's enough to write marx off as a fringe lunatic.

- marx interestingly suggests that switzerland - then and now a bastion of anarcho-capitalism - is the model for the state of the future. lassalle's vision is responsible for the modern-day social democracies in scandinavia. it opens an interesting question: if marx were alive today, would he still prefer the swiss model over the scandinavian one? is this an example of marx' liberal individualism dominating his thought, or is it just horrifically bad foresight?

- i must admit that marx does make a good point when he argues against the 'bourgeois' freedom of conscience. why it's 'bourgeois' isn't stated. it would be more consistent for him to write it off as 'aristocratic' - but now i'm guilty of the same thing marx is in this polemic. he suggests that socialists should focus on the goal of 'liberating the conscience from the witchery of religion' and leave 'freedom of conscience' to the liberals. he's unquestionably right; so long as religion exists, it will continue to prevent us from reaching communism. this is something that the left ought to remember as it reconstructs itself.

- one of the better examples of how marx' ego is blinding his brain, here, is his argument that a prohibition on child labour is not just impossible due to it being against the interests of capital (and, yet, most countries today ban child labour...) but would be reactionary if it were possible.

- there's a scary part at the end of the text, where marx suggests that labour should not be "deprived" of criminals, but rather used as a means of their "betterment". one wonders if marx had prison camps in mind.

full text:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/index.htm

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/books/congress/HX/276.M283/index.html

Friday, November 15, 2013

"Unfortunately, this glaring issue did not seem to percolate into the wider Canadian consciousness, and many people remain unaware of it. In 1999, the Supreme Court passed down another judgement confirming that the Peace and Friendship Treaties of 1760-1761 did not cede land or resources. This cannot be emphasized strongly enough: the Mi’kmaq never gave up legal rights to their land or resources. Canada does not own the land that the people of Elsipogtog are defending.

This is not conspiracy theory, or indigenous interpretation. This is Canadian law, interpreted by the Supreme Court of Canada, applying Canadian constitutional principles. Yet somehow, this most important fact is left out of most reports on Elsipogtog as though it is barely relevant."

it's not left as irrelevant; this interpretation is simply not correct. what this is is a fantastical interpretation that certain activist groups are holding to, and no court has ever upheld.

the 1760/1761 treaties are less important in canadian law than the 1763 declaration. treaties or not, extinguished rights or not, imperial decree has unilaterally annexed the land. empires speak with guns, not courts.

the document must be referring to marshall, which discussed rights to land/resource use. this is a question of a positive economic right, not a negative ecological right. one is an individual right, the other is a community right. there's no constitutional protection for group rights in canada. there's consequently no connection there, except in the eyes of some ignorant activists.

if they could show in court that the fracking infringed on some individual right - like the security of the person - then they may have an argument that the court might take seriously. but they do not have the legal capacity to control what happens on crown land. that's just how it is with our law, currently. sorry.

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2013/11/14/the_oftenignored_facts_about_elsipogtog.html

the frustrating part about this is that people don't understand that our legal system is a farce designed to protect powerful interests. it's like a cult that preys on people's psychological weaknesses; the weakness here is people's desire to solve things through peaceful means. so many wasted hours, so much wasted effort....all of it could be prevented if people just looked at the court system for what it is - a farce - and stopped wasting their time with it.

again: the court will acknowledge individual rights. it does not have the framework to acknowledge group rights. there's no connection between marshall and elsipogtog. no matter how much you wish there was.

the relevant jurisprudence in the area is related to the duty to consult, which subsequent rulings have indicated do not imply a duty to listen. farce.

there's of course the possibility that all my ramblings about the court system being a farce could work in the protestor's favour. there are some "activist judges" out there willing to twist the law around to get some positive results. this is what these glimmers of hope are based around.

but the interpretation here by chelsea vowel remains a naive projection of what she wants the law to say rather than what the law actually says.

...and one should expect the court to rule in favour of capital.