i stopped by at the doctor's office today, hoping to get more info on the urologist referral. no progress. but, i got him to print off my full blood test results, and it turns out i also picked up hep A.

or, perhaps i got a twinrix vaccine? i went to florida when i was a kid. hrmmn. oddly enough, the presence of hep A antibodies is making me think it's more likely that i was vaccinated.

hep A hits faster. and, i was quite sick about a week after the blackout. it seems a bit quick, though, even for hep A; i thought it was some kind of bacterial infection in my throat, and tied it to a toke at a steve reich concert. could it have been both? apparently, hep A is mostly about anal sex. it felt bacterial. it's gross, but it actually makes sense.

with no memory, it's very hard to say anything.

the fresh air was beneficial; i feel better than i have in weeks. so, hopefully i'm over it. i'm still waiting until early march for the next blood test; results are on the 6th.

also, note: hitler was defeated not by the descendants of aryan migrants in britain, but by a horde of supposedly inferior half-mongoloid russian communists.

i know that's not how it's usually framed. but it's what actually happened.

european civilization suffered several devastating bouts of plague. the one in the 1300s was particularly brutal, killing more than a third of the population in certain regions. it happens to be that this was also the period when european civilization was under it's greatest threat of invasion from both the south and the east.

it is actually not at all outlandish to consider an alternate history where the closest ancestors of the ancestral native american populations - turks, mongols - could have swept into europe and utterly decimated the civilization there. there is even ample historical evidence as to what this would have been like, in the advances of genghis khan into afghanistan, iran and syria.

once again: the best argument against racism is history.

Aug 8, 2014

tubas are actually the best punk instrument if you play them loud enough. for some reason, though, tuba players seem to be incredibly shy and refuse to rock out. i want a rockin' tuba solo, thought punk might be the right search word...

but, no. as timid as ever. sorry, but that tuba player's just not into it. not feeling it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JFkg4rKv9s

aug 8, 2014

this is, in fact, the correct way to play the tuba - with extreme force. to hell with all the weakling bourgeois players that are afraid of playing too loud. to get this instrument to sound the way it ought to requires every ounce of lung strength and emotional catharsis you can pull out of the innermost depth of your absolute being. a proper tuba performance should require an oxygen tent.

it's a shame the quality is bad. i need a good sample to get the dynamics right; i'm trying to figure out how to make my guitar sound like one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6o966wA2N7Q

aug 8, 2014

i haven't listened to this in a while. 2 & 3 are both quite strong - much more interesting than his operas. somebody said something about vivaldi, but glass is far darker and far more vivid than vivaldi. i get more debussy out of it.

i'm trying to find some good tuba samples to model the dynamics properly on a midi guitar. the kind of tuba playing where somebody is blowing into the thing with the aim to knock the house down. it's harder than you might think. oddly, tuba players seem to be unusually reserved and polite folks, which is rather remarkable given the nature of the instrument they play. perhaps they realize the extent of their power and that leads to an exaggerated sense of responsibility. i suppose that would make them excellent nuclear engineers, but they seem to be rather boring musicians. the tuba players of the world really need to throw caution to the wind and let it all loose. they need to unleash all that power and force...

this kind of jumped in my head for the end section, but it's not quite what i want, either.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zem4amEEzL4

aug 8, 2014

impressionism or expressionism, as though they're opposite terms? that's an anecdote your teacher pulled out of her ass and is asking to determine if you went to class or not. the truth is it's both and the teacher's a dork.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA40lE83jLo

aug 9, 2014

i'd love to learn how the play the tuba one day, just to get some of those cracked out bass lines down. it's not socially acceptable, though, so i'd basically have to move to a cave.

maybe that's what i'm missing out on in life. should i sell all my possessions to buy a tuba then find a cave and just sit around playing cracked out bass lines?

"dude, where's that weird sound coming from?"
"oh. it's just jess in her cave, playing her cracked out bass lines. you'll get used to it."
"not sure about that...."

maybe i should ease into it by sequencing some cracked out parts, first, before making any drastic decisions. i hope i can get the computer to pull it off convincingly...

now, how am i going to do this? i don't know what tempo it's in, and i need to get the computer to play back something microtonal.

i'm gong to try and riff something out and see how melodyne interprets it. i remember reading something about melodyne being able to handle microtones. i guess i'll have to do a little research on that first.

if i can get the basic tones down, i should be able to fix it up in a scorewriter from there.

if that doesn't work, i could try feeding it into a synth using the midiguitar route, but i don't know if it'll handle the microtones or snap into the nearest proper tone...

actually, i think i have a better chance at getting really raw, cracked out tuba like dynamics by using a pick.

midi guitar's my best choice...

i need to remind you that i've studied math, and i've studied physics, but i have not studied politics or history. this is my academic background. and you should actually take what i say about science far more seriously than what i say about politics.

put another way, i picked up everything i know about politics at the library or at wikipedia. it's substantial, obviously. but my degree is a b. mathematics.

===

aug 1, 2014

he's not really right, here.

the uncertainty principle is one of those things that's open to a few different interpretations. the standard one is that it's a law of physics, and there's even a mathematical proof for it. what he's saying is in that context, and if you're working in that context it would indeed be impossible - in that context.

but, there are two other interpretations of the uncertainty principle. as neither are demonstrably wrong, it's not rigorously correct to conclude that transportation is impossible due to the uncertainty principle.

the basic idea is that measuring the position necessarily changes the velocity, and vice versa, and there's nothing that can be done about that. but, is that a law of physics or a statement about our tools? well, the answer you're going to hear from a lot of people is actually that it's a law of physics that it's a statement about the tools. i'm not arrogant enough to state that as an irresolvable fact. i see no reason, to write this off, a priori, from any underlying principles. i have to admit i'm a little skeptical, though, as i couldn't imagine how. see, that's the real reason physicists hold to this. the mathematical proof is really just a convenient way to convert an intuitive assumption into something that certain types of philosophers can't really argue with.

the second alternate interpretation of the uncertainty principle is that it is a misnomer - it should actually be called the certainty principle. this is kind of more where i'm at. basically, it's a logical fallacy to deduce that unpredictability implies actual randomness. it certainly implies perceived randomness, but that perception could very well be an illusion deriving from the inability to measure. you can think of it like this: the movement of the planets would have seemed random before newton. you could have come up with probabilistic laws to govern their motion, and mostly got it right. that doesn't mean gravity didn't exist, it just meant it wasn't understood. you don't necessarily have to get to a hidden variable theory from this. the behaviour might neither be (locally) causal nor deterministic. this is a perfectly valid way to interpret the uncertainty principle: it might be that certain things happen in ways that are not predictable and can never be modified but are not actually random, but arise from non-understood causes. that is, the inability to predict the behaviour may actually merely demonstrate that there are causal things in front of us that we cannot alter.

i usually bring up this argument in the context of a fatalist v. undetermined universe, as the uncertainty principle is sometimes presented as an argument for the latter. however, it really provides no information in either direction, as it can be interpreted just as strongly for an argument in either direction. those who wish to argue the future does not exist will say you can't predict the path, it happens randomly. but we can't prove this beyond our perception. we can just as easily say that the seeming fact that you can't predict the path also means you can't alter it, and all phenomenon is the result of a first cause.

if the perceived randomness is merely an illusion, the argument against teleportation also collapses.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mD7X9vGMX0k

ok, i admit i'm just a teensy bit subversive.

being free is not about climbing the ladder, it's about throwing the ladder in the fireplace.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bj0t8YHbL4

currency = slavery.
property rights = feudalism.

capitalism = currency + property rights = slavery + feudalism.

"Organigram has said it does not know how the substance entered its crops but is working with Health Canada to find out more, noting it is a certified organic grower and does not use pesticides in its production processes."

sounds like bullshit. three hypotheses:

1) big growers stamping out little growers. this is what regulation means. but, at least it suggests they're serious.
2) it's meant to justify regulation. i don't care, really, i'd just like them to hurry the process up. if i get convinced that this was a cynical ploy, i'm going to raise hell. but, again, it suggests some level of seriousness.
3) feet dragging.

but, they're accusing a grower that does not use pesticides of having a banned pesticide, and that does not pass the smell test; something is happening.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/medical-marijuana-recall-expanded-due-to-banned-pesticide-being-found/article33643174/

i don't look at the world and say "this makes a lot of sense; something must have built it.". i look at the world and say "this doesn't make any fucking sense at all, it couldn't possibly be created.".

but, even that is a fallacy. for, look at capitalism. the marxists, and then the existentialists, have clearly demonstrated the fundamental irrationality of capitalism and the society it created. but, it is a creation of an intelligent species.

or, at least we like to think we're intelligent. is capitalism proof that we really aren't?

the newtonian universe is dead. physics is irrational. evolution is chaotic. and, math is incoherent. we're truly hurtling nowhere, and not making any sense at all doing it.

just shut up and go have fun.

for me, this is fun - because i can imagine the look on your faces.

http://www.senate.gov/reference/resources/pdf/hconres331.pdf

i think that this may be a necessary consequence of donald trump: a lot of assholes are going to end up with busted up faces because they think it's ok to act in certain ways. and, they're going to deserve what they get. hopefully, he's going to get a good health care system in place to deal with all of the injuries that are coming to his supporters when these chickens come home to roost.

what kind of a fucking retard posts sexual advances on youtube comments?

just shut the fuck up. nobody cares what you're thinking. and, if you were standing in front of me, i'd beat the shit out of you for talking to me like that.

feb 9, 2014

if evolutionary biologists wanted to be real scientists, they wouldn't begin with the assumption of natural selection. it really is teleological.

rather, they'd take genetic drift as a null hypothesis and then attempt to build evidence for natural selection on a case-by-case basis.

i'm sure they'd agree with me, in principle. it's just a matter of pointing it out, then making fun of them until it becomes institutionalized.

then, you wouldn't get biologists talking about the difficulties in determining what the "purpose" of an "adaptation" is; rather, you'd be asking them first to rigorously demonstrate that a specific trait is an adaptation in the first place, rather than the result of chance. that's how real science works - you need to demonstrate a relationship, not assume it as a consequence of a philosophical principle.

kzg
If by teleological you mean that biological entities strive to maintain themselves alive yea. But even that is marginal. Final causality requires some minimum predictability and necessity.

Jessica Amber Murray
i've noticed there's a kind of cognitive dissonance in their writings. they try and self-regulate themselves. if you press them on it, they'll present the standard line "evolution doesn't have a final cause", but you can tell they tend not to actually believe that - that they're waiting for the day that it can be shown that it's part of a plan. there's libraries of books of them arguing with themselves over this, leveling accusations of "orthogenesis" at each other.

in practice, they look at a trait and assume it has a cause, then try and determine what the cause is. but, i would suggest that most observable traits don't have a cause. two things that just pissed me off were:

1) an article exploring the difficulties in understanding why female spiders eat their mates. there's an assumption this is an adaptation, and has a cause. no. it needs to be determined this is an adaptation rather than genetic drift (or a mutation that may have a negative effect on survival)

2) they found old dna in spain that was lactose intolerant and deduced it couldn't have had to do with sunlight. again, that's jumping to the assumption of natural selection. selection, here, needs to be demonstrated. it's entirely reasonable that the mutation may have developed as an adaptation further north and drifted south. at the least, finding the lack of mutation in the south does not prove it could not have been sunlight dependent.

but if you read biology journals, the idea that every trait is an adaptation with a cause is just engrained. it's a philosophical position that takes priority over evidence, and demands evidence uphold it. whatever the merit, it's not science.

kzg
What youre pointing out is not necessarily new. It has often been leveled against biology as a hard science. Heck crackpot creations argue somewhat along that line. But alot of this has to do with the positivist assumption that all science is derived from physics, if not directly, at least in terms of epistemological criteria. Ergo, only efficient and material causality is properly scientific. But of course this is rather gratuitous (can that be explained under its own parameters?) and it led to a bunch of weird shit like phrenology. Evolutionary biology does not fall under the usual criteria of repeatability and mathematisation. Hence efficient causes cannot be isolated. For that to be possible, organic matter would have to function mechanically, that is, within uniform time, not the cumulative time (duration). So this is ingrained in the discipline's world view which, really, is essentially historical. Narratives tend to have some sort of teleological pull. Im ok with that.

Jessica Amber Murray
i know the line of argument you're thinking of, but it's not entirely what i'm saying. i'm just suggesting that they really ought to be more focused on proving relationships that they take for granted, and that they're not reduces to the substitution of a guiding belief system in place of really skeptical science. there's certainly a different set of challenges when working in biology, but i don't think they're incompatible with a general hypothesis testing approach. i mean, to suggest they are is to give up. i'd be shocked to hear a biologist suggest as much. they're certainly doing hypothesis testing, they're just doing it at too weak a level of inquiry.

you can still - i suggest you must - look at a trait and ask the question "is this an adaptation, or merely the result of chance?" in a meaningful sense, by studying all the things around the hypothetical adaptive process and coming up with an argument that this is really the case. they don't actually do that, though. in the best case scenario, they'll grudgingly admit that maybe it might just be chance if they can't figure out the adaptive benefit. but this is really backwards thinking.

where it's a problem is when it leads to wrong conclusions. one of those examples is with the female spiders eating their mates before they mate with them. it's specifically related to a solitary species that only comes into contact with a mate once or maybe twice in a life time. that is, females are eating their male mates before they mate even though the balance of probabilities is that it's the only chance they'll get to mate. this is behaviour that doesn't make any sense in terms of passing on genes. a slow consensus is developing that the spiders just lack impulse control. they see food, they eat it; they lack the faculties to analyze the consequences. it's consequently the result of one type of adaptation (impulsive eating) having a negative effect on a necessary biological function (mating). that's a chaotic development that will harm the long term health of the species, not an adaptation.

yet, leading up to this realization, there were many arguments that the behaviour was an adaptive trait to ensure the proper spread of genes. the female spider somehow determined that the male was a bad mate, and ate it in order to ensure it's genes weren't going to a bad mate. serious people argued this in serious places.

in order to take such an argument seriously, there's a lot of questions that need answers. how? but, it's the procedural approach that was the problem. it's sort of an extreme example; the shift in thinking would be a lot more enlightening with a more subtle example, where it's not so obvious. but this works better to make the argument for that very reason. so, they looked at an organism, they saw a trait and (regardless of it's absurdity) they assumed it was an adaptation for survival - leading to ridiculous conclusions that are being acknowledged as such. yet, if they began with the assumption of random gene flow (as a sort of background process, as noise) leading to random mutations (that may or may not lead to increased chances of survival), and then determined if there's enough evidence to reject that assumption and deduce an adaptation then they would have come to the right answer in the first place.

and, we can debate about what is a better null hypothesis, but beginning with randomness requires less assumptions and is more appealing for that reason.

nor is any biologist actually going to argue with me on the point. they'll gnash their teeth and say "you're right, but we take shortcuts because we're biased towards darwinian thought. if we were to formally study it, we should do it like you're saying". which is just admitting that they're being unscientific. if you look at a microbiologist or a geneticist, they all study more formally. it's only evolutionary biology, which is peculiarly deductive in it's approaches, that doesn't bother.

if they want to be real scientists, they must take the process more seriously and realize that selection is something that must be proven to arise from randomness on a case-by-case basis every single time, not a monolithic force that can be assumed to be working in nature at all times.

to be a little more specific, i'm talking about the third and fourth axioms of the modern evolutionary synthesis, that state that natural selection is the main driver of change and genetic drift is a secondary factor. this is generalizing in too far an extreme. it may be roughly true, but these are statements that require demonstration on a case by case basis, not a general statement that glosses over specific changes. holding to those assumptions has the potential to lead to bad conclusions; methodologically, it's not very scientific.

rather, i would reformulate it to genetic drift is a constant driver of change and selection depends on forces that must be demonstrated to both exist and lead to the resulting changes.

Jan 21, 2014

- Evolution can be explained by what we know about genetics, and what we see of animals and plants living in the wild.

ok.

- The variety of genes (alleles) carried in natural populations is a key factor in evolution.

ok. obviously, variation is necessary for selection, otherwise nothing can be selected.

- Natural selection is the main mechanism of change. Even a very slight advantage can be important, continued generation after generation. The struggle for existence of animals and plants in the wild causes natural selection. Only those who survive and reproduce pass their genes on to the next generation. We find the strength of natural selection in the wild was greater than even Darwin expected.

i don't particularly like the exact words used here, but ok. i would like to see a larger role attributed to randomness and a lesser role attributed to competition. i'll get to this in a moment...

- Evolution is gradual: natural selection occurs, and small genetic changes collect. Species only change little from one generation to the next. Big changes do occur, from time to time, but they are very rare.

for the most part, sure. i would further put forward the idea that those big changes are largely hybrid events, and suggest a "family graph" as an alternate model to a family tree.

- Genetic drift is usually less important than natural selection. It can be important in small populations.

this one, i have serious problems with. there's a huge list of "adaptations" that seem to be defined by random genetic drift rather than natural selection. note that my opposition to the way evolution is understood is that it hasn't entirely eliminated a deity, not that it has. it's still too religious, not not religious enough! vestigial traits are one example that seems to be better described using random genetic drift than natural selection. it's not that i deny competition as a force for evolution, it's that i think they have the primacy of things backwards: randomness defines most evolution, but natural selection can be important when competing over specific scarce resources (and situations of scarce resources would be the exception, rather than the rule, in biology).

- In palaeontology, we try to understand the changes in fossils through time. We think the same factors which act today also acted in the past.

ok - except when evidence exists otherwise. it's really an untenable assumption, when analyzed. but it's necessary - unless it can be demonstrated otherwise.

- As circumstances change, the rate of evolution may get faster or slower, but the causes are the same.

same thing as the last comment. that should be read simply as "the rate of evolution is not constant".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoC82RuAxqw

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

the hazards of long nails on your picking hand, which is also usually going to be your wiping hand...

i scratched my anus.

:(

i should do a psa for kids, so they know.

"remember kids: if you play classical guitar, always wears gloves while wiping in order to avoid scratching your anus."

what else is there to do besides stick a wad of toilet paper in there? so, now i'm going to have to walk around looking like i shit my pants for the next few hours.

jokes aside, it's got me wondering if there's like an e coli risk or something. i mean, opening up a hole in your anus so bacteria can crawl into your bloodstream can't be good news. i guess i just have to hope my neutrophils are populated, armed and ready for battle!

"unfortunately, we regret to inform you that jessica has perished due to complications resulting from a mild case of accidental anal scratching."

i should publicly apologize to my neutrophils for increasing their workload. i can only imagine what they're thinking....

"dude, where'd all this e coli come from"
"the fucking idiot scratched her anus."
"how?"
"classical guitar finger nails."
"she didn't know better than to wear gloves?"
"apparently not."
"what a fucking noob."
"there's a few over there, let's go phagosome 'em."
"i'm not hungry, i just had a bunch..."
"just fucking do it."

at 05:57

and, yes - i think this is correct.

http://consequenceofsound.net/2011/02/the-white-stripes-musics-last-great-rock-band/

the last two were quick. the next one was huge, so huge that i stopped to jump ahead. two months, almost.

it's all in the details. hundreds of tracks; hundreds of guitar tracks. and that felt really, really good. it's going to feel really, really good again, too - soon.

this is a gigantic epic rock song that draws from the mod leanings of the entire rock era from the who right up to the white stripes and everything in between. headphones, please. no laptops, please.

wasps (and hornets) are such insane creatures.

it's trying to kill a venomous spider in order to lay an egg inside of it, which will eat the spider as it matures.

the result presented here makes the behaviour seem like such wantonly pointless violence. ok, ok - maybe it's going after a competitor. but, surely there are less dangerous ways to lay some eggs...

it's stuff like this that makes you realize there's no way this shit was designed. this defies all reason. and there's thousands of similar examples.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQNgxJdqzm4

i'm going to need to update this, but it's what's next. the write-up is key; it's electronic/classical music in a late 60s style.

you have to talk to the alt-right the same way they'd talk to you. it's not my first choice, but it's necessary. and, it's up to them to de-escalate.

they're a bunch of fucking retards that are too stupid to understand basic ideas and should shut the fuck up. 

example: you are too fucking stupid to take part in this conversation. please shut the fuck up.

i'm a little skeptical.

and, like i needed another excuse for coffee, right? but, i'll take it. and, if it's even half-true, my liver should be up to full strength in no time at all.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coffee-liver-cirrhosis-idUSKCN0VR2JN

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38wIuDAq2yg

....and you have to understand that when you say that i'm "lazy", i don't take that as an insult because i don't uphold your puritanical value system that glorifies labour as sacred. and, i claim - with minimal controversy - that this is an american value system, and not a canadian one.

i've stated before that i'd have been a loyalist in the american revolution. that's not meant as an empty inflammatory statement. what it means is that i'd have fled to canada. and, guess what? i'm a canadian. it's just a statement of fact. i wouldn't have fought for american values then, and i'm not going to fight for them now.

you call it "the american dream"; i call it "calvinist bullshit".

not only is it very much not the society i want to live in, it's exactly what i'm constantly railing against.

listen: if you want to live in a world where working hard gives you the right to oppress others, then go ahead and move to the united states. i won't miss you. take off, eh?

i want to live in a society of real equality, where we're not spending all of our time working to get ahead but have a safety net that lets us focus on what is really important: art, expression & science. my concept of canada explicitly rejects "the american dream" in favour of something much better.

this was the next 2014 release, but it was compiled rather than worked on.

it's a hybrid minimalist guitar piece and romantic-era piano concerto, with a strong impressionist undertone and some nods to swing-era jazz. this is not the only piece like this in my discography, but these tracks are rare, because the piano is not my main instrument.

the story is absolutely true. i barely remember writing this, as i was tripping out when i should have been doing calculus.

it is for real clearing up, and quickly.

make jessica white again!

jul 21, 2014

see, this is why i gave up on physics. well, not exactly this, but basically this. there's a certain strain of analytic thought going back to descartes that suggests that photons are massless and move in a straight line, but i can't fathom how any atheist could stand on a podium in 2014 and declare a photon massless. the mass may be very, very, very small, but it defies all reason to suggest it doesn't exist at all. and, when the mass is experimentally verified as non-zero, physics is going to face an incredible crisis.

the unfortunate nature of relativity is that it's axiomatic. einstein was operating at precisely the moment that mathematicians were beginning to reject axiomatic systems as facile and naive. ironically, einstein had to reject the most praised axiomatic system of them all - euclid's - in order to get to where he got to. it's bizarre that he upheld the process, given what he knew. and, one has to wonder how different relativity would have been had godel got his ideas out before einstein did.

in the end, the religious have an absolutely valid point in claiming science is another religion. it's not because that's what science always is, or what science should be, or what science wants to be, it's just because it's all science can be once we get beyond the basic abstraction of what we can see and feel and otherwise experience directly. axiomatic systems are axiomatic systems, whether they're labeled with an S or an R.

i was skeptical about the lhc, too. but, i think it should be stressed a bit more loudly that it didn't provide that missing link the way the popular press has suggested. nor would it matter much if it did because we already know the standard theory is wrong, anyways. but, if you want to talk simple naivete? it doesn't get more simple or naive (or quasi-theological) than symmetry. and the lhc results have finally thrown symmetry in the trash can where it belongs....

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

(reply deleted before it could be archived)

jessica
"It always travels at the maximum velocity it can irrespective of how much energy it is carrying, which is a clear as day indication that a photon has... how much mass?"

that's an empirical question. however, modern physics treats it as an assumption. that is, there is no empirical evidence that what you're saying about light is actually true.

you kind of have to get into the philosophy of it. kant had this idea that "synthetic a priori" systems (he used euclidean geometry as his sacred example) are the most pristine type of knowledge. but, as kant was writing his epistemological treatises, various mathematicians were realizing that a geometry that negates the third postulate is potentially consistent with itself. the whole idea that space may be curved actually comes from that realization in geometry, which more or less throws kant's epistemology out the window. yet, einstein based his theory on a "synthetic a priori" axiomatic system, nonetheless, potentially carrying in the same kinds of problems that make euclidean geometry obsolete in all but the historical sense (or in a practical engineering sense).

the thing about light not having a mass (and moving in a straight line) actually comes from the history on the philosophical side of physics. and, if you follow the argument, it's actually theological.

now, i'm not saying that light must have mass. i'm saying it's an empirical question. currently, the best we can do is provide a bound for it. however, there would be a very simple test to demonstrate that light does indeed have mass: find a tachyon.

i don't pretend to understand the nature of light perfectly. i don't think anybody claiming such a thing would be speaking honestly. but, we know that light displays both particle and wave behaviour. that particle behaviour, in my opinion, provides strong evidence for a non-zero rest mass. it's not a scientific proof, but if it really had no mass then how could it actually display particle behaviour? see, this is where the thing defies reason at a really basic, intuitive level. we hold the massless photon as such a basic assumption due to so many years and such tradition in doing so that we don't really think that through carefully. high school teachers laugh at the student that suggests otherwise. but, that was exactly the case with the parallel postulate, as well.

it's not an assumption i was able to take seriously, and i had a hard time taking the theories built on it seriously as a result of it.

"As for the standard model being wrong. Uhm."

relativity and quantum theory are incompatible with each other (they can't both be right; it depends on the nature of space, another empirical question that is very difficult to understand how to experiment for), and the general way to dealing with this is in fact to contemplate physics "beyond the standard model". the lhc was supposed to help in sorting this out. i haven't heard anybody come out and say it yet, it's maybe a little too unsettling, but the fact that the lhc results agree so perfectly with the standard model actually merely indicates that its far more wrong than anybody could ever imagine.

"Making mathematical models is fun and all but without empiricism it's called making random shit up in a fantasy land."

that's right. that's why i switched from physics into math. i figured if i was going to be working in lala land, it would be more worthwhile to do so as a mathematician, rather than as a magician.

most of what passes as modern physics (from string theory to relativity itself) doesn't pass any meaningful definition of science. almost none of it is falsifiable, and there's virtually no experimental data underlying any of it. almost all of it is legitimately just mathematics. and, when you take into account what i said about euclid up there, that makes a lot of it more or less useless. they use all kinds of geometry in their models without having any kind of empirical basis as to the validity of the geometry itself.

worse, you get prominent scientists (like stephen hawking) taking outlandish positivist positions that declare that the model creates the reality. i've literally choked listening to these people talk, in absolute awe.

then, they confuse themselves misapplying godel. hawking actually published a paper a while back declaring that godel's math implies a theory of everything is impossible. that only makes sense under the assumption that the model and the reality are inseparable from each other.

so, yeah. you're right. and that's the exact reason i gave up on physics.

"Something tells me proving photons have non-zero rest mass is going to be a tricky one, however even if it were proven to be so it would be such a tiny tiny mass as to be negligible."

i couldn't see how to do it, other than finding a tachyon. but, i think the implications are more profound than you're realizing.

sahil
Present a hypothesis that backs up your claims. how does a photon with rest mass = 0 cause calamities for physics.? Photons are light quanta which travel at speed of light. A stationary photon does not exist. A lot of things may be feel wrong but until you present the mathematics backing up your feeling, we have to work with the theoretical framework that predicts the greatest number of things with the highest accuracy. You have a different opinion? Bring out the mathematics. You can be skeptical about the lhc and as for what they did find, how about you read the scientific publications instead of the media to find out what you are being skeptical about...

 jessica 
well, i'm not skeptical about the lhc results. and, my argument is purely rational. it's really so simple that you wouldn't expect it would even be controversial, once you think it through. i'd direct you to my previous response.

light does indeed travel at the speed of light, that's tautological. but, does the speed of light actually provide a speed limit?

i'm going to try not to take on your claims about mathematics too directly, other than to point out that the way you're thinking about this is actually the root of the problem in the way that physicists think, and it comes out of these philosophical treatises written in the previous centuries. something we've learned over the last century is that what we call mathematics is itself merely a model to try to understand numbers. despite hawking's sad and comical attempt to grapple with it (those are strong words, and i don't state them lightly), i don't feel that modern physics has really come to terms with godel's work and it's not going to get anywhere further until it does. i guess hawking gets credit for actually realizing there's a problem, there.

there are a number of geometric issues in mathematics that cannot be resolved by starting with a set of axioms and deducing things. these are empirical issues. and, until they're worked out, we're going to have to deal with a lot of nonsense in geometry like the banach–tarski paradox that reduces both fields to idle speculation.

mathematics is not the language of nature. i know physicists like to think that, but that thinking is obsolete. mathematics is merely another model, and it has some really serious problems in it.


stated another way, a lot of what mathematics models is not the reality we live in. you can't split a ball into two equal balls in reality. it defies conservation laws. when physicists take that mathematics and try to use it to develop physical theories, their results consequently do not apply to reality, either.

but, as for light? it has a particle nature. as far as i'm concerned, that implies it has a mass.

(a second reply was deleted before it could be archived, by the same poster as before)

jessica
well, i'm not going to stand here and argue that all physics is wrong, and i'm sorry if you got the impression that this is what i was saying. this computer i'm typing on, and the method used to communicate with you over a network, would belie such an outlandish statement. and, yes, science is a work in progress, and that's what makes it science. nor do i have anything to counter any of the points you just made. all these things are true enough.

it was more the epistemological basis that turned me off. and, the more i learned about math, the more dissatisfied i became with the whole hurrah. i didn't feel i was actually learning anything of any value, i was just following through on a lot of assumptions that i couldn't really swallow as accurate. so, i play guitar now.

i could pull the copenhagen consensus out as another head-scratcher. basically, it's this:

"we, the pre-eminent german scientists of the world, cannot figure this out. therefore, let it be decreed across the world that nobody shall ever figure this out for all of time eternal."

that is something i can sympathize with einstein on.

(a third reply was deleted....)

jessica 
yeah, i've seen that explanation before, but i believe it's just an interpretation. i don't think the duality is really settled in any authoritative way.

i haven't seen the matter-antimatter argument before, but allow me to be skeptical in pointing out that if the mass is small enough it will wash out in the error.

(a fourth reply was deleted...)

jessica 
well, the funny thing is i gave up on math when i came to the conclusion that it ought to be empirical, and everybody realized it, and nobody wanted to do anything about it, or seemed to even really care.

Atwa Jesper
Sorry if I'm intruding but I wanted to interject very quickly and bring up the fact that some 'debaters' get lost in the heat of the arguments and usually and unintentionally digress from the main topic. 

We could spend days throwing theories and studies on the table that at the moment seem to be contradicting each other but the God discussion and Science, have not much to do with "what seems logic to me" or with the typical "it doesn't make sense". The universe doesn't care for what seems plausible or not, reality is reality and if a phenomenon behaves in a certain way, well, we test it and prove it with evidence and that's it. How many things that nowadays work and seem to make perfect sense, didn't seem logic or natural when they were being developed by those 'crazy thinkers'. Big masses of Metal are able to float on water and carry a lot a things, or we could have also leave the Skies to the birds but we still made it. With today's knowledge all of that seems normal because we know how it's done but again, those ideas didn't seem to be any logical.

Anyways, it seems I'm digressing myself. Regardless of the limited understanding that we have today of the natural world, we shouldn't fall again in the fallacies of "arguments from ignorance" or "the God of the gaps". The fact that many things are still unknown to humanity and Quantum physics doesn't seem to make much sense, doesn't mean therefore God.

The massless protons and other topics must be resolved for science advancement purposes, not to prove that any God does or does Not exist.

Btw, the ones making the assertion that a God exists are the ones obliged to prove it. The burden of proof is on the ones making the assertion, not the other way around.

jessica 
that's all very true, but it doesn't really have anything to do with what i posted.

the value of science in my view is twofold: falsifiability and repeatability. but, when you look at the bulk of modern theoretical physics, very little of it meets either criteria.

that in no way implies a god must exist, and again, i'm sorry if you thought that's what i suggested. but it does place the two fields on a roughly equal footing. in my mind, that doesn't give religion more credibility, but it does give parts of modern physics less credibility.

in religion's defence, it's a bit of a strawman to argue it's rooted solely in faith. i'm simply not aware of analogues in other religions, but christianity has libraries and libraries worth of material that attempts to deduce aspects of morality using reason. we think of the "natural law" that defines what is roughly thought of as "secular humanism" as a modern, liberal idea but it in reality traces back to christian theologians like augustine and aquinas. it's use in the english legal tradition actually has more than a little bit to do with the feudal system. when the english scholars of centuries past deduced that natural law ought to be supreme to legislated law, what they really meant was that the church's law is supreme to the king's law, and for the precise reason that the king was still viewed as subservient to the pope, at least in moral purposes if no longer in political ones. it may have earlier roots in aristotle, but the reality is that secular humanism is the philosophical continuation of a branch of christian theology. both systems appeal to reason to determine moral value, rather than the dictates of human beings. the difference is merely that the christian theologians thought god acted through reason, and modern humanists tend to consider that to be a question that is not worth asking.

yes, you have to work in ideas like infallibility of the pope into the equation, and write them off as ridiculous on their face. however, it's not really fair to blame that on the religion itself - it's more of a consequence of human politics and the tendency of power to act as a corrupting influence. in christianity's further defence, it must be pointed out that the pope has never existed without theological opposition of some sort, and that the reformation is a historical event that actually did happen.

i'm losing a bit of focus. biology is quite different because it is far more empirical than modern physics - a situation that is the reverse of what it was 100 years ago and that i think most people haven't really come to terms with yet.

i was simply responding to a comment krauss makes at the beginning of the video about physics not being "just another story" because it makes testable predictions. but, this is largely untrue. physics does make some testable predictions, but it makes far more untestable claims by deducing things from a set of first principles, just as aquinas did. it follows that when the religionists argue that physics is mostly just another story, they are making a valid point.

but, no, that doesn't mean a god must therefore exist.

jessica 
just throw an epsilon in there and see what happens. publish it if you want, i don't care, my aspirations are all in music.

(noting, of course, the conceptual change that light could be at rest in the first place.)


ok, i know physicists like to think in terms of consequences. it bugs me, but i'll go with it. it may actually make a few things make more sense.

consider the idea of determining the relativistic mass of a photon. you know the formula (hopefully), with the big M equal to the little m over the square root of one minus v/c squared. if you actually plug zeros into there, you get the lovely 0/0, so you take a limit. but think about what you're doing when you take a limit - you're setting them both to non-zero. if you were actually setting them to zero, you'd set them to zero. when you're taking a limit, you're getting as close to zero as you possibly can, without actually getting to zero. that is, you're assuming a non-zero rest mass.

mathematically speaking, you would actually formally even plug an epsilon into the m, and c-delta into the v. that is because m (epsilon) is approaching zero and v is approaching c (or delta is approaching 0). but, then you go and set it all to zero. that's really not consistent with itself.

now, on a graph, you might plug in an imaginary point to make the thing continuous, if you want it to be continuous. but it would be crazy to do that in the realm of physics. that's forcing reality to obey something that isn't even an arbitrary convention, but a pure fantasy that mathematicians create purely for the fun of it. plotting that point is carrying out magic. it's a magic point...

what the formula actually states is that light can never reach the speed of light. this is tautologically false.

if you just plugged a non-zero epsilon in there in the first place, set v equal to the speed of light and set a new speed limit of pure energy at "c+delta" (and you could maybe even come up with delta in terms of epsilon some other way, but be careful that you're not being circular) you'd get the same mathematical idea, but in a way that actually makes mathematical sense.

and i actually hope that example further demonstrates some of the problems in the way physicists use mathematics.


rr
Well, with respect, physics seems to have done very well so far. Sure, it is all model dependant, no one claims it as absolute truth do they. Yes you seem to know your stuff, mostly on the maths side. But I think I will put my confidence in the current prevailing views rather than a random Youtuber who looks like they have smoked enough weed to embarrass the biomass of the Amazon rainforest.  Call me some sort of utilitarian if you wish, but these flawed theories you critique have done a great job of explaining many things. In any case, c is just the speed of a massless particle in a vacuum. Being called the speed of light is just a historical artifact. So even if it turns out a photon does have an incredibly small mass, I don't see how it breaks the theory. But most importantly, what the fuck's your problem with koalas?

jessica 
the idea that nothing can move faster than pure quantized energy (massless particle strikes me as an undefined concept) strikes me as pretty rational, and not something i'm going to argue against. but, if we accept that light does have a mass, it opens up a lot of questions as to what that means, exactly. is it even defined? is it an imaginary limit, in the sense that nothing actually achieves it? is the difference between the speed light and the speed limit large or small? if it's large, what effects does that have on things like time dilation? space travel? as i mentioned before, i don't think you're really thinking through the possible ramifications. mathematically, it may only be a set of minor fixes. but this could have very large results, depending on the nature of those fixes.

july 17, 2014

they're going to need all the help they can get.

http://us2.campaign-archive1.com/?u=d6dff6e4ce6ea2ad881224abf&id=91b6e8147c&e=5f5e2b367a

i recognize that aboriginal communities are in bad shape in canada, but i don't support the idea that ethnic groups can or should own land and i'm flat out violently opposed to reasserting traditional societies and all the social and religious implications it implies. i cannot reconcile my scientific, atheistic anarcho-communism with support for traditional, conservative societies. to me, these groups aren't allies in the world i want to build - they're really quite active opponents.

and few people may be willing to state that, but i know a lot of people agree with me. and, i know the indigenous groups themselves are always apprehensive about these groups of white university students that think they're dealing with some cartoonish archetype of tonto (or, worse, something out of a fictitious engels text) rather than anything that approaches reality.

it just makes it difficult. i want to support the environmental aspect, but i can't organize with groups that want to force people into strict gender roles and think that trees have spirits. i want to organize with scientists, atheists and socialists that want to build high tech renewable systems.

you go to one of these things, and you have to endure all kinds of indigenous religious nonsense, and you walk out smelling like you bathed in sage - which is every bit as bad as patchouli. it's hard to sit through without snickering, or storming off.

like, if i wanted to hang out in a fucking church, i wouldn't be an anarchist, y'know? i'd just go be a christian...

more than anything else, that's what needs to be cut out of the process. but, you can't convince an indigenous leader that there ought to be a separation between religion and politics, because, to them, it's a holistic whole.

and that should frighten people. i'm always confused when it doesn't. but, do you want to know why it doesn't, really? because they're not perceived as a serious threat.

you get white people talking like that, and they're instant targets. think of ann coulter. but the natives don't get the same reaction because all the propaganda has them pegged as inferior "noble savages" that could never set up that kind of society.

but if these white "allies" had taken an afternoon to read up on it, rather than relying on 60s folk songs, they'd realize that it's EXACTLY what they want to set up.

the thinking seems to be that we have to bend on this and deal with the mumbo jumbo or they won't organize with us, but i really think it needs to be other way around.

i'd like to organize with people of all backgrounds, races, genders, orientations and whatever else - just so long as they leave their beliefs at home, where they belong. and the focus should be on kicking out the people that want to force their religious beliefs on others.

for now? there's no way this gets to critical mass so long as the religion and nationalism remains intertwined with the environmental politics. it's a humongous stretch to move from one to the other. and what it actually does is chase off the left and bring in the right.

people will talk about relativism and colonialism and whatnot, and it's not that i'm ignoring or discounting any of that, it's just that it's placing the solidarity in the wrong place. i'm never going to be able to place any solidarity with any group that wants to set up any kind of hierarchical, oppressive system. my solidarity lies with the individuals that could potentially be told they can't do something - a woman who is told she can't do something because she is a woman - and not with the tribal system.

and, there's not any way to synthesize this. cultural relativism works when you're talking about things like diet. i can't eat caterpillars, but, hey, that's how some people get their protein. it doesn't work when you're talking about individual rights. that's where the solidarity needs to be at all times.

and, i'm even mostly on the side of "letting" (that's a colonial idea, but you get the point) cultures work out their own solutions. that's democracy, right? but, it's one thing to stand back and let them work their shit out, and it's another to actively work towards putting oppressive systems in place.

i again need to point out that the white allies (or, more generally, non-indigenous allies) just mostly don't understand what they're actually supporting. but, i do, and my conscience will not allow me to support the underlying aims of nationalism, tribalism and exclusion.

this pipeline is not likely to be stopped. and this focus on traditional ways of thinking is going to be one of the primary reasons.

the organizers need to change their approach and start focusing more on getting scientists and technologists out on the front lines.

i've tried to bring up these concerns, but i haven't been successful in convincing anybody.

and i fully understand i'm moving against the grain of post-leftist thinking.

so, it's like...it's not that there were a few cops. it's that they were ALL cops. and to the point where it seemed like it was organized by the cops, as a data run.

i want to be clear about occupy because i've said this more than twice, now.

i was aware pretty early on that the place was infested with undercover cops. but, here's the twist: i was scoping them out as much as they were scoping me out. i wanted to understand what they were doing, for future reference...

there were a few really dead giveaways.

1) if they refused the pass. this is the oldest approach, and i know a lot of people find it distasteful, but it's starkly accurate. i mean, we didn't have any renowned academics or anything...there's not a lot of logic in the refusal. but, accepting the pass doesn't mean you're not a cop. there was one guy that claimed he lived on disability, but seemed to smoke through way more than he could possibly afford, and i'm pretty sure he was a cop.
2) if the uniformed cops always arrested them. there was one guy that got arrested at every protest. he was obviously a cop.
3) if they tried to organize distraction protests. this is hard to explain unless you know it.
4) if they were insistent that people go to their house, rather than somewhere else.
5) if they incited violence. one person really badly outed herself by trying to get people to key up a car. she was already obvious (i figured out that she was 24, after she claimed to be in second year), but that really, really gave her away.
6) if they were in really, really great shape - as though they seemed to train, but never went to the gym.

i want to be crystal clear about how bad it was. there were situations where i was in a room of ten or so people and almost certain i was the only person that wasn't a cop. i even think i went to a few semi-official officer parties....

out of all of the people i met, there was really only one that i was pretty certain about not being a cop because we had mutual friends going back a good ways.

July 15, 2014

so, i've got my border pass interview on thursday and i have to admit i don't know how i'm going to get over that bridge to the enrollment centre. i've been sending out emails and calling people all month, and nobody has a good answer for me.

the thing is that the bridge is closed to pedestrian traffic. somehow, the bridge became privately owned, which makes the owner liable. there were some suicides in the 70s from jumpers, and the owner had to pay out, and it's been closed to pedestrians and bicyclists ever since. i'm going to avoid ranting about property rights, other than to note that none of the governments in the region at any of the levels have had anything but problems with the guy. i mean, he has a monopoly on cross-border traffic that can't fit through the tunnel, which is virtually all trucks amongst other things, and he hasn't really been responsible about it....

so, they're building a publicly owned bridge in reaction, but it won't be done until like 2020. i should be able to take my bike on that one, but it's also way out of the way. you'd have to think the operator will make some changes when he gets some competition. until then, i simply can't walk over the bridge.

the tunnel is also closed to pedestrians and cyclists because it doesn't have a sufficient walkway, which is a court case i'd probably win if i bothered, but it's a lot of effort i don't really have to expend. it does have tunnel bus service, which is what i'd have to use to get across the river when i want to. most of the places i'd want to get to are then within walking distance up woodward avenue, but i may want to go to pontiac from time to time and i'd have to take the bus for that. if i find myself doing that often, i'll probably get a worthless bicycle and lock it somewhere near the tunnel in detroit. i mean, they won't let bikes on the bus either, unless they're disassembled into a bag, which is really outrageous. i'd probably want to take one of the tires with me back and forth...

so, the problem is that i'm going to show up at the border crossing on thursday morning and not know how to get across. i'm HOPING the border guards will just drive me over, but i'd like to get some verification of that. if i can't, my plan is going to be as follows...

1) i'll show up to the earliest tunnel shuttle across and hope the border people either let me walk to the enrollment centre or escort me there. hopefully, that's worked out before 6:00 am.
2) if i get sent back, i'll have to walk to the bridge and ask them to get me over there somehow.

the instructions that the center provides just assume i'll have a car. in fact, the primary purpose of this exercise seems to be to get my plates on film.

July 16, 2014

grargh. i still can't get a hold of anybody on the other side of the border. and it turns out booking a taxi is a process of trial and error - most taxi drivers can't or won't drive across the bridge. after all, that's what the tunnel bus is for. and it's going to cost like $40....

catch-22s. gotta love 'em.

i'm just going to show up at the tunnel really early and see what happens. i'm hoping that if they don't let me walk they'll escort me, and if they don't do that they'll let me call the center from detroit, where it's not long distance.

i tried calling two of those numbers from a pay phone.

one was a full mailbox, the other was an automated system. i can't be dropping $5 on dead ends over and over. that $10 is waste enough.

july 16, 2014


i think i'm just going to spend the night listening and analyzing. i've gotta leave early in the morning to go on what will no doubt be a surreal, kafkaesque journey of a nightmare...

see, in order to get across the border, i need a nexus card. but, in order to get the nexus card, i need to get across the border. it would be a simple exercise if the enrolment centre was in an accessible location, but it's located directly underneath a bridge that i cannot cross. (that sounds poetic, but i can't cross because i don't have a vehicle, and they do not allow pedestrian crossing, and there's no public transportation, and it's almost impossible to find a taxi cab driver both willing and able to cross). so, the only option i can conceive of is to try and cross somewhere else, and hope they let me walk, or escort me to the centre and back. but i'm not really hopeful either is a possibility...

i will say that when i get to the border, i'm certain that i'll understand what my actual options are. i'm just a little fearful that none of them are going to be realistic.

but, logically, is there really much of a difference between letting me drive over a bridge to the center and letting me walk over? i'm clearing customs and being allowed to move from customs to the centre on my own either way, right? i may be freaking out over a perception of the location of the office to the bridge, rather than anything rational that the border guards can actually interpret, one way or the other.

if my plan *does* work, i'm basically going to be walking through detroit at 6:00 am. well, i'm going to end up doing that relatively frequently anyways. my experience with walking through unsafe neighbourhoods has mostly been that thugs go after thugs and so long as one does not project wealth (meaning, it's not a good idea to pull out a roll of hundred dollar bills....as though i have any, right...), there's really little risk in these supposed high risk neighbourhoods.

and, for me, in the end, i'm on their side. i've had my share of conversations with thugs that are probably thinking some nasty shit in the back of their mind, but i tend to convince 'em i'm cool - and not any better off than they are. despite being white and well spoken....

the only other thing i can think of is trying to hitch over the bridge. if that's my only option, that's my only option. i'll find out.

i don't want to come off some drug war narc, i'm really not, but i know that the big problem is not poverty but drugs.

and not any drugs. it's the nasty ones. coke. meth. there's no discussion there, no attempt to size me up - it's just a possible income source to exploit to get high.

i know to stay on the main roads.

and 6:00-7:00 am is not 3:00 am, either.

i'll be fine...

like, i've never seen or heard of a fight in any place in any city in any downtown that wasn't ultimately about cocaine. even when it's about sex, it's really about cocaine...

so...

hey, kids.

i'm not going to tell you not to do drugs. drugs can be fun, sometimes!

but cocaine is baaaaaaad.

baaaaaaaad.

baaaaa.

it IS though. don't do coke...

july 17, 2014

so, i took a google tour up fort street, which is where i'm headed this morning.

it's pretty run down, but it's an industrial area so i'm not really walking through the 'hood. and there's only been one shooting in the vicinity this year.

there's been two on my block in windsor. yeah. well, it's perspective.

i'll be fine...

i'll point out i *am* wearing $5 shoes and a stained white tshirt.

it's less about wanting to keep the shoes and more about not projecting wealth.

not that i have any wealth, of course. but shit is relative.

July 17, 2014

well, that was indeed a kafkaesque mess but i got my expedited border clearance. hey, all those years of avoiding a criminal record came in handy. i'm squeaky clean. i get to use the special line...

but, that doesn't mean this wasn't a pain in the ass. i've ranted about this here quite a bit over the last year. it's only fitting that the last section of it was off the wall ridiculous...

getting across the actual border was not a problem. i just showed them my letter, and he let me through. but, he chuckled and wished me luck. he knew what was coming...

the walk up fort street at around 7 am was purposefully brisk; i was admittedly a little uncomfortable. but, the more i walked, the more it just reminded me of montreal. yes: detroit is full of decaying bridges, falling apart buildings, abandoned industrial centres, smoldering sewers and people sleeping on the street. but, i didn't feel threatened so much as i felt a level of empathy. how'd it get that bad, anyways?

the other thing that made me relax a little was a friendly retriever that ran over across a field to say good morning. it's funny how goldens are basically the universal stress reliever.

it was about twenty minutes to the bridge, which is a short walk for me.

once i got there, though, i wasn't sure how to proceed. i tried going under the bridge first. this is the first point that the smog got to me: i nearly heaved, and had to sit down. first attempt at directions was a hotel that looked like something out of a stephen king movie...

"do you know if i can get in some kind of plaza around the bridge?"

no.

"does that pay phone work?"

*laughs* no.

"do you know if there's a phone around here?"

there's no gas stations for a good ways in either direction.

"well, thanks, then."

so, i went back under the bridge again...

there was a side street running along the complex (and it was a complex. it looked like a prison.) that i decided to take a walk up, and it took me into a nicer street full of very old churches and quaint, if dilapidated houses. three houses in a row had angry, barking, unchained rottweilers that could have easily hopped their four foot tall enclosures should they have decided to. it's a problem in windsor, too. cheaper than a security system, i guess.

and apparently very necessary.

i bumped into a border cop on his way to work and flagged him down...

"how do i get in here?"

do you have a car?

"no."

well, why do you want to get into here?

"i have a nexus interview."

why do you want a nexus card if you don't have a car?

"so i can get across the border. i'm from canada..."

you're from canada? how did you get across the border?

"the tunnel."

and how did you get here?

"i walked."

*awkward pause*

"well, you can't get in here without a car. you're going to have to call a cab."

ok, so here's the thing: i can see the enrollment centre through the fence. it's a few hundred yards, at most. and, yet i need to call a cab to transport me those few hundred yards? yes, i do: this is what the cop is trying to tell me. but, i'm not about to call a cab, so i keep walking.

eventually, i get to a cross street with a big sign

MICHIGAN WELCOME CENTER* --->

*note yankee spelling.

well, that sounds like a good thing to try.

hours:
9 am - 4 pm

it's like 7:30...

so, i look up the road and notice it runs into customs. i'm thinking "maybe there's a phone in there". customer service is closed, and there's no barriers so i just keep walking, until a border cop yells at me:

WOAH. WOAH. YOU CAN'T BE IN HERE. WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU'RE GOING?

"well, i'm looking for a phone. is there one in that building?"

PLEASE STEP TO THE SIDE AND EMPTY YOUR POCKETS.

"ok."

so, i pull out some pieces of paper, keys, a few dollars...

who do you want to phone?

"i'm trying to get in contact with the nexus office."

how did you get in here?

"i just walked in. there's no barriers or anything."

do you have a car?

"no."

why do you want a nexus card if you don't have a car?

"well, i'm from canada and..."

you're from canada? how did you get across the border without a car?

"i took the tunnel."

what? how did you get here?

"i walked"

*awkward pause*

another officer walks over....

this person just strolled in here, can you believe that.

where are you going?
 
"i'm looking for nexus."

do you have a car?

"no."

why do you want a nexus card if you don't have a car?

i laughed out loud at this point.

"because i'm from canada and..."

wait. how did you get across the border?

"i took the tunnel."

and they let you in without documents?

"well, i have this nexus document. i'm here for a defined purpose."

pfft. anybody could print that off. do you have any drugs on you?

"what? no..."

yeah. right. step into the office, please

so, i walk into the office...

he takes my id and starts running it through the system, asks me all kinds of absurd questions, accuses me repeatedly of living in collingwood and having a record of escaping the custody of an officer, visibly shatters a blood vessel in his forehead when i provide "jessica" as an alternate name and eventually gives up.

go back to the michigan welcome center and call a cab from there.

again with the cab. they were really serious about this.

i did walk back to the welcome center, but i was planning on calling the enrollment centre, not the cab. it's now barely 8:00, so i have an hour to wait, and wait an hour i did.

the cop drives by about 8:30...

"listen, i knew this was going to be a problem, but i'm pretty sure the person i initially talked to said they'd give me a lift. the thing is i think they meant from canada, and i couldn't get a hold of anybody to provide instructions, so here i am."

he seems to have softened up a bit, after realizing i'm both harmless and frustrated. the absurdity of the situation actually seems to have become clear to him. but...

i'd drive you down there myself, but then i have to pat you down, which means i need a female officer present and there aren't any.

"i can't waive that?"

(i don't care what gender my doctor is, and i don't care what gender the cop patting me down is)

no. plus, i'd have to do all kinds of paperwork, and i just don't want to.

ah, yes. a lazy cop. gee, whudda thunk that possible, huh?

but, i'll call you a cab if you want.

there's no irony in any of this.

i refuse the offer, and suggest i'll call the place when the welcome center opens.

this is where i got a break, and i have to say it's every bit as surreal as the rest of this. the place opens at 9:00, i use the bathroom, and then ask if there's a pay phone...

there isn't, but he offers the office phone, depending on who i'm calling.

i'm calling nexus, because i'm on foot and need to find out how i'm going to get in there.

apparently, this kind fellow has been working at the michigan welcome center for years and years, and given out instructions on how to get into the nexus office hundreds of times, but has never been in there himself. he's been wondering the whole time if his directions are even accurate, and he wants to know what it looks like inside the complex.

so, he offers to drive me in.

and i graciously accept.

he takes me back along the side street i came in at, past the entrance the first border cop went in, back under the bridge and around through a gated area. i am now finally at the nexus enrollment area. i thank the kind fellow and that is that.

but, the border guards are concerned about how i'm going to exit the complex.

"i guess i'll call a cab."

nobody else got the sarcasm. i was actually planning on asking somebody for a lift to the other side of the fence.

so, the interview goes well. the interviewer was a little older, and i seemed to convince him i'm a good kid. which is what i needed to do.

i got the marijuana question, i was honest, and he overlooked it. they can be very strict about that. but, the thing should get here in 7-10 days.

at the end of it, he asks me if i have a phone. i don't carry a phone. so, he picks up the phone and starts dialing the number for a cab for me...

"listen. if you call me a cab, i'm just going to ask that they drop me on the other side of the fence and walk back to the tunnel. so, why don't you just let me ask somebody for a lift out?"

and, finally, i got some fucking logic from somebody.

no. we'll just escort you out.

a few minutes later, a truck pulls up with a border cop in it.

"are you here to escort me out?"

yes.

so, i reach for the door....

no. i'm not driving you. you're going to walk.

at first, he tries to lead me to the exit to the ambassador bridge.

canada is that way, but where's your car?

"i don't have a car."

why do you want a nexus card if you don't have a car?

i was on the brink of being a smartass, but managed to restrain myself.

"so i can get across under the tunnel. i just need to get to fort street."

well, how are you going to get over the bridge?

"no, i want to walk to the tunnel."

walk...to...the....tunnel?

at this point, i understand that every single one of the awkward pauses was shock that i'd walk that far. remarkable.

"yeah."

well, follow the truck around the building and meet me at the crossing.

i did this, and we walked to the gate that first border cop went through. then i was out the side street and back up fort towards the tunnel...

without having to call a cab.

this is your tax dollars at work, protecting you from terrorism.

(edit: fwiw, i recognized the collingwood question. now i know why it was asked of me by a specific occupier - and confirmed my suspicion that he was a cop.)

cm:
Good music should never be popular.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOld-kvQYm0

jessica
good music can't become popular. in order to become popular, it must reflect the status quo and cease to be good. now, there's a grey area where it can be quasi-good and manage to sell. and you can manage to sell quite a few records without becoming popular. but, it's ultimately a contradiction in terms.

fm
that's not true man. There's plenty great bands in the underground that are popular in their own ways. Sometimes we get so Into the whole idea of things staying under ground that we kinda in.a way never want them to get popular but through the years they do. Look at the Jesus lizard for example... a d they're still Indy...

jessica
we're defining "popular" rather differently - you're talking about bulk album sales and picking some arbitrary number, while i'm talking about tapping into the public consciousness in a way that represents mainstream attitudes. the truth is that you can sell hundreds of thousands of records without ever tapping into the mainstream and becoming "popular".

a good example of that is ministry. they play stadiums. they're not popular.

cm-2
good music ought to be popular. because if everyone were in to good music of all genres, we'd get far more exposure to that quality of content than we do in our lesser numbers. i believe in the right to ones personal view. opinion is freedom. but when you go left or right, id say crack a window. allow possibilities an opportunity to expand u. not to get so fucking deep, but we can all agree that existence is in infinite motion. "ever changing," 'cause if something moves, its not at its former place. consider a world where every person had the opinion that music is a standard, and speaks volumes about the individual. the latter is fact. or is it? manson enjoyed the beatles.. lol embrace the maybes', like i just did, mid sentence. we can all be wrong and right, depending on where we're positioned. original thought was simply: a world full of dope music would surround you with the shit. imagine an existence where every song you heard was impactful, so much so that it constantly opened you up. ah, such a place is a dream. thusly, in my "opinion" (just another assclown on this tele tube, to someone, hopefully!) i beg to differ with you, and those who can't see the possibilities. if all the good fucking music (there is INFINITY of it...) was POPULAR, we wouldn't form the jaded views you have. friend, you have validity. but you are disenchanted because popular music sucks lengthy, sturdy, pulsing-... i'll stop there. ~_~ <3 peace, bruhskee.

cm
If it's popular, it starts to suck. If it needs lengthy explanation, it starts to suck. Ya dig?

jr
so what are you implying that the general population has bad taste in music.

cm
No I'm stating my opinion. But yes the general population does have bad taste in music or Nickleback would not exist.

jessica
it's a statistical necessity. the exceptional cannot be the mainstream, or it ceases to be exceptional. it should follow a bell curve, with most people interested in stuff that's unoffensive and bland and minorities into the extremes of talent and garbage.

it doesn't really matter what metrics you're using. creativity cannot be the norm, or it ceases to be creative. technical proficiency cannot be the norm, or it ceases to be such. exceptional taste cannot be the norm, or it loses it's exceptional nature.

that's why critics have no choice but to rail against the fashions. otherwise, they wouldn't be critics.

jr
so the people the listen to it will continue to be labeled hipsters or edgy

jessica
but, by the same logic, that's driven by their conformity - and that upholds the status quo that rejects innovation.

attitudes change over time. that which was labeled as "hipster" becomes interpreted as "visionary". sometimes the artists are lucky enough to live long enough to see that shift and get acknowledgement; often, they're not.

we don't have to be silly and talk about beethoven. syd barrett was kicked out of pink floyd because they thought he was killing their marketability. examples are endless.

la
Im not a music expert or less, but, have you ever thought thats a very subjective matter? Whats supossed to be "good music" and "the message behind the music that lesser intuitive generations cant get"?

cm
I don't want to see lesser generations turn the music and bands I like and consider good, Into fashion statements. There is no message to get anymore! anytime music tries to make a point its lost in the fray of popularity. Popular music sucks because it's made for mass consumption. Designed to suite a wide variety of people but ends up only alienating the people who loved them for what they were to begin with. So fuck the lesser generation, If they cant find interest unless MTV tells them it's cool. Just fuck em!

jr
 I'm into this type of music. And I'm from the 90s generation

jessica
activists tend to look at music through a marxist filter of propaganda of the deed and agitprop - this idea that music can play a role in pushing social awareness and changing the status quo. but, i think it's worth looking at what socrates had to say: he said that when you see musicians start to gather, you know a change has already happened. it reverses the causality. it suggests that art is not a driver of change, but a reaction to it.

what you're getting at is probably correct. man or astroman are aesthetically a punk band, but they're not a political one. but, when you do look at political music that has built a following in the post-war era, what you see is the following pattern:

1) a community begins to develop that expresses a certain kind of ideals. this was true of the beatniks, the hippies, the punks, the ravers, hip-hop, etc.

2) as that community grows, people with status quo ideas enter into it.

3) they slowly begin to ostracize the people that held the ideals, as they co-opt the aesthetic qualities of the music into the status quo.

4) business people take notice and market the aesthetic qualities of the music, completely stripped of the ideals that initially generated the community.

5) the idealists scatter, and have to rebuild.

it happens consistently. and, it's not a function of corporatism, or capitalism or any kind of financial motives - those only come in at the last stage. it's just a function of norms asserting themselves. it's an entirely social phenomenon.

as i stated: it's virtually an impossibility. it's so unusual, that the rare really good band that builds a mainstream audience becomes elevated to the status of icon, which in large part misses the point [kurt cobain would be disgusted at the cottage industry built up around him]. even when future generations look back on these movements, they tend to overlook the founding principles. the textbooks will remember vivienne westwood, not jello biafra or crass - that will be left to specialized scholarship.

bking87
Yes, because as we all know, the Beatles turn to absolute sh*t after they appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show... NOTHING of cultural significance came from them after that. Pink Floyd was TERRIBLE after they released Saucerful of Secrets... I can't think of a single song that I've liked since. Rolling Stones has to be the worst bunch of sell-outs ever... except for maybe Led Zeppelin. Bob Marley bringing reggae to the attention of the world population is akin to audible genocide and all of his albums should be burned. Beethoven has gone down in history as the worst sell-out based on his popularity back in the day.

Good music speaks to the individual and the state of mind that they are in at the time they are listening to it. Should it grab the attention of more than a handful of people and gain exposure to the general populace, it doesn't suddenly lose authenticity. Rage Against the Machine is an example of this (although there are those who do take the whole "they don't live in a van down by the river, so they're sell-outs!" approach to them).

Popular music isn't always good (and I will admit has grown increasingly bad in recent years), and in many cases where they are studio-driven, it is indeed very bad, but flipping that statement around to "good music can't be popular" doesn't doesn't fit as a logical conclusion.

Personally, I take a song/singer/musician and say "if they looked more like Mama Cass or Jerry Garcia but still had the equal talent that they have right now, would they remain equally popular?" If the answer is "sure", then their music is judged on their talent, but if the answer is "no", then their popularity is based more on physical attractiveness and advertising and indeed, THAT music is sh*t.

jessica
that's all counter-culture, though. even late beatles. some of it might have sold, but none of it was popular.

bking87
and just for giggles, go ahead and do an internet search for "top selling bands of all time" and look at the various lists that you'll find. Sure, there will be some in there that will make you gag (for me Celine Dion comes to mind), but if you're going to say that these bands as a group don't make "good music", then you are just a hater, and haters don't hate others... haters hate themselves because they're jealous of the success of others.

jessica
even with a best-selling bands of all time list, you need to be careful. the beatles wouldn't be on that list if it wasn't for their early success; you can't start talking about them as an artistic force until revolver, and it's very unlikely that their later material would have sold nearly as well if it wasn't for the beatlemania that preceded it. it's hard to analyze them on that level. then you have a collection of mostly 70s stuff like queen, zeppelin, floyd, the who, the rolling stones, genesis - this was never really mainstream, it was just representative of a large counter-culture. you also have to factor in format conversion for everything released in the lp era - and the fact that these acts stand out and others don't speaks more to their ability to transcend short term fashion trends than it does for their popularity in their own periods (excepting the beatles, where the issue is beyond question). there's then a collection of 80s and 90s bands (u2, rem, chili peppers, nirvana) that were a different counter-culture - still not mainstream. and, there's not much left, after that.

we've never really exited a singles culture. if you take any of these bands that have sold a lot of records over multiple generations, few of them will have ever dominated any kind of singles charts for any length of time. what is popular tends to not persevere, though, because popularity is fashion.

one example is to compare the saturday night fever soundtrack to the dark side of the moon. at the time of it's release, the saturday night fever soundtrack quickly became the greatest selling record of all time. but, dark side has outsold it by more than a factor of 10 since 1980. it actually snuck back into the billboard 100 a few years ago, amazingly, almost forty years after it's release. it's now sold far, far more units. and, in fact, it's been outselling thriller as well for years, by a good margin, and could very well catch it in the upcoming years. but it's longevity doesn't imply it's popularity. it implies it's status as a counter-cultural milestone, and it's ability to appeal to generation after generation of people outside of the mainstream. if waters lives long enough, he could see this happen.

again: you can sell huge amounts of records without being popular because there's a giant space to exist within outside of the norm. and, as time goes on, what is less popular often catches up in terms of sales. nobody would argue that radiohead were more popular than britney spears. but, 50 years from now, they may very well have more units moved.

cm
Everything your saying is nonsense. It sounds like your just regurgitating things you learned from Wikipedia. 5 year olds know every band you listed here because they all are or were at some time popular. Or just plain sucked like U2. Listen, My statement was that good bands should not be popular or they get watered down. I'm not saying good bands haven't been popular. But when a good band starts to draw a watered down crowd, I wash my hands of them. You can spout crap about the Beatles or Led Zeppelin until you pass out, There before my time and I have no opinion on them say that I don't like either of them. Underground music is what I'm about. While these bands your on about were considered counter culture, That doesn't make them good in my book.  I like metal, but I don't like Metallica. I like jazz and blues, But I don't like Pink Floyed. The bands and musicians I'm into don't fall under any of the categories you have laid out here, because they were against the norm from the get go and never changed. I'll give you one example, and only one. The Dickies are a great band that you would have trouble putting in a category because they are unique. They aren't trying to start a trend, and you'll be hard pressed to find to many people who listen to them. Not because they suck or because they don't play radio friendly music. But because they live and breath for the music. They don't have an agenda to make more money or to gain more popularity. They simply are. I hate going on like this.

jessica
i don't really care what you're saying. i care what i'm saying. i'm saying this is impossible - good music cannot be the mainstream, by definition.

and, go ahead and ask even a twenty-five year old nowadays what they know about pink floyd or led zeppelin or, yes, even the beatles. they might know a bit more about queen due to the special interest story around freddie mercury's sexuality. these people grew up in an entirely different reality, with an entirely different counter-culture. it's ancient history, to them. they know nothing of this.

let's focus on zeppelin - but it's as applicable to the rest of them (excluding the beatles, and to a lesser extent floyd). zeppelin never had a hit single. they had a large following of hippies and outcasts, and it often put their albums at the top of the charts at the time of their releases, but they were never mainstream, never popular. and, you can cut their album sales in at least half due to the fact that they sold everything two or three times to the same people. they also released several records over a long period. a moderately sized, dedicated counter-cultural audience can add up over twenty records (including compilations and live discs) when you sell it to them multiple times. ((140/20))/2 = 3.5. that's an average, so it's a little lower than a few and a little higher than a few others. but, in contemporary terms, that puts them on par with a successful alternative rock band. the white stripes. green day. or, of the aforementioned bands, only zeppelin could be compared to the foofighters. that's a long ways away from the kind of mainstream popularity that actual pop music enjoys - it is not popular, nor is it mainstream.

i don't like zeppelin, either. but i realize it has greater value than the pop of the period. and that is the reason people bought those discs on cd.

but, looking at the list all these years later badly skews the reality of it.

jr
it can't because radio won't ever play it.

bking87
So what happens if The Dickies suddenly gain enough popularity that you hear one of their songs on a Kia commercial (and don't think that will never happen as I'm sure any Ramons fan from back in the day would say the same thing)... does their work, or that particular song that you love today magically and immediately become rubbish? And if any listing sounds like something from Wikipedia, it's because it's a list of good bands that 5 year olds have heard of because they are/were popular.

Sorry, but your original statement was "good music should never be popular", not "man, it sucks that some bands lose their vision and focus once they start gaining some monetary success. I'm happy that Man or Astro-Man? never became one of those bands." And then you double-downed with a statement about how poverty improves talent or something to that effect, which is completely insane. Will I suggest that success doesn't change people... of course not and there's a myriad of examples of this out there. But I also won't make a blanket statement that all musicians lose their creative vision once they are in a space of relative comfort.

The issue for me with folks that carry this feeling is that it creates a Catch-22 scenario for the artist because all musicians change over time. If they don't, if they produce the same thing, the same sound, over and over and over again, they are labelled as stale. If their music shifts, they are selling out. There is no winning. The fact of the matter is that, in order to support yourself as an artist, you must be able to make a living with your art. This doesn't necessarily mean selling out and indeed, if you purposely change your artistic focus to meet the needs of a record company, that's selling out. But if you ARE successful and you are producing music for 10, 20, 30, 40 years, well, as is the case with ALL artistic avenues out there, your sound, your voice, your direction will take on new directions. Picasso didn't have just one phase... do we call him a sell-out because he moved past his "blue stage"? The written word of Hunter S Thompson definitely took shifts from his earlier to later works, but I don't think many people question his integrity as a writer. So why can't a musician grow as their life experiences grow?

I realize it's another "before your time" reference, but 50 years ago, Bob Dylan walked onto stage and plugged in his guitar, practically inciting a riot amongst the counter-culture people of the day... there was a LOT of "sell out" chants and gnashing-of-teeth from the underground movement at the time, but it turned out to be one of the most important moments in rock-n-roll history. What you're basically saying is that you'd be on of those in the crowd demanding his head for "turning his back to the cause" and history would be looking back at you and just shaking it's head.

Is there a LOT of sh*t music out there that is corporate driven? You betcha. Are there people who sell their musical integrity in the name of fame and money? Happens all the time. Are there people who are able to reach a cord in the general public and become popular without sacrificing their artistic integrity... yup, and that's why I challenged the original statement.

And to deathtokoalas, indeed, your points are all valid and I'm not trying to suggest that any of the bands that I listed (other than the Beatles) were the top performer in their day... I'm sure any search for "Top Billboard" in any particular year back then will reveal a lot of "who the f*ck are THEY!?!" results. They might not have been the "most popular", but they were popular and selling out stadiums wherever they went and their sustained popularity all these decades later can demonstrate how quality isn't necessarily diminished by cultural acceptance.

cm
If the Dickies sell out, I stop listening to them, because I no longer identify with them. Maybe I should clarify. In my opinion, because there is no way I can speak for anyone but myself. Good music, What I consider good music should never be popular. I'm not saying they shouldn't make money or have fans. I'm not saying that good bands that started underground haven't become popular. When a band begins to get to big I, Me, Myself loose interest. And when they become a product of Hollywood like so many of the bands you have listed I loose interest completely. I don't like the underground because of its exclusivity or its ability to keep trendies out. I like it because that's often the purest message you'll get from the artist, Un tainted by to much fame or fan base. They're often still grounded. you don't get songs or ideas tailored for the vast majority. Like all the movies that have come out over the last 10 years. Made for everybody but satisfies only the most watered down. I wouldn't even say all popular bands are bad, I just wont call myself a fan of theirs. I don't want to see the music that inspired me to play, be turned into the next generations Hot Topic fashion trend. There are still some bands out there who are great and haven't become to big. Man or Astro-man is one of them, and for that I am thankful.

jessica
you know that the dickies suck, right?

cm
I'm glad you think so.

jessica
utterly vapid. and, intentionally so. seems like a very strange band to hold up as an example of holding their credibility. they're basically doing a clown routine.

cm
lol, ok kid. You must know allot about music. I guess I'll just go enjoy my vapid clown show. Way to look up a few vids on YouTube to prove nothing.

jessica
i'm a lot older than i look. i still get carded. the kid upstairs seems to think i'm his age; i don't have the heart to tell him i'm probably literally twice it. but, hey, you don't deny this. i just think it's somewhat comical.

"i consider the absolute high point of art music to be goatwhore."

cm
Manny, Moe and Jack
Pretty Please Me
Toxic Avenger
Caligula
Road Kill
All great songs. Most of which pre date you, I'm willing to bet. Unless your 40. I can't tell from your pic.

cm
No, I believe your allot older then I think.

jessica
i'm not 40.

it's silly, fluffy pop music. i have no objection to you enjoying that. but i would expect a certain ironic distance, as in "i like this because it sucks!". it has to be in the guilty pleasure pile, or not listened to at all.

cm
I've seen Goatwhore open for Gwar maybe 3 times. There the band everyone stands real still for, right?

jessica
i really don't know much about goatwhore, their name is just particularly well suited for punchlines.

lucidloon
So what's your opinion on Motown? The Temptations and such. That was very much pop music, but I would argue it's damn good too.

jessica
to be frank, i have very little opinion of it. i haven't heard much of it. it's something that peaked 20 years before i was born and has little cultural connection or relevance to the things i'm interested in.

i have somewhat of an opinion on what you could call 60s girl groups, but it's from a feminist perspective and is broadly negative.

i've recently moved to the canadian side of detroit, so i might be expected to. but, i really don't.

and, i guess if i were to take a walk through dearborn and randomly ask around about opinions on stockhausen, i wouldn't get much of a response, either. that's understandable. it's just not culturally relevant.

most of the shows i've been to since i've been here are broadly categorized as punk shows, so the audience is broadly white. but, i mean, i'm white. a little native, a little jewish, a little italian, but white. that's not that weird, really.

i'd like to hit a good jazz show, but i haven't come across one yet. the billy cobham show a while back was a bit steep, price wise. i'd be more interested in the fusion of the period.

and, if i could trace motown forwards to something i could connect with, i'd have more interest in it. but, my understanding is that motown became disco, which became hip-hop. and it's just not a lineage i've delved into.

so, when i say i don't have an opinion, i really mean that: i'm approaching it largely from a point of ignorance, brought on by the fact that it really has no relevance to me, culturally.

but, regarding the girl groups, specifically?

i find most of it is coming from a very repressed place. the lyrics are broadly horrible. it's all upholding demure stereotypes of women. a lot of it was written by men, and most of the profits went to men. i find it really offsetting on that level, and don't see a lot of value in it.

i think that does tie in to what i'm saying, because it was upholding a concept of femininity that the counter-culture was railing against pretty hard at the time.

lucidloon
I was thinking more in terms of musicality than the social impact of lyrical content to be perfectly honest. I think that's two different conversations.

jessica
see, i can't honestly have this discussion; i'm not well enough informed.

lucidloon
Fair enough!