Albatross Hour Bloggination Device

22nd Blues for the Apocalypse

2011-06-06T23:02:00.004-05:00

It has been noted elsewhere that all of Herschel’s writings on the apocalypse have been written in verse. Some may be found in the Book of Irony proper, and others are scattered throughout a variety of marginalia[1]. Here is a representative sample, the 22nd Blues for the Apocalypse.

Just as the summer shall envy the winter,

Just as the sweet shall envy the bitter,

All suicides must, in the end, reconsider the dead.[2]

Just as the losers shall one day be winners,

The ones who are heavy shall one day be thinner;

The ones who stay fat shall be eaten for dinner instead.

So too the social shall envy the lonesome

As the one who owns nothing must envy who owns some,

And the father of wisdom shall not know what’s grown from his head.[3]

In those days the just shall envy the wicked,

the towering redwood shall envy the thicket,

The passenger pigeons shall turn in their tickets,

And the mightiest city shall fold like a rickety shed.

[1]As none of the primary writings of Herschel have ever been conclusively discovered, one might wonder how the later transcriptions came to occupy the margins of other works. In this case, Herschel appears to have been the favored writer of monks who were supposed to have been transcribing other works, primarily Latin and Greek agricultural texts.[4] More problematic are Herschel’s persistent appearances in typed marginalia.

[2]This verse is sometimes interpreted as an indication that the end-times will be accompanied by the mass-resurrection of suicides. It is correspondingly speculated that the end-times will feature the mass-demise of non-suicides, a claim which is considerably less controversial. The precise timing and degree of overlap between these events is in dispute.

[3]A reference to Zeus, or in some interpretations, Adlai Stevenson.

[4]It may be relied upon that the writing in these texts is not Herschel’s, as throughout his works Herschel displays an almost singular incapacity with even the rudiments of agriculture.

The 101 Elementary Forms of Betrayal

2011-03-05T16:08:00.002-06:00

As has been explained previously, 101 Elementary Forms of Betrayal is by far the most famous of the prophet Herschel’s obscure texts, and of his lost works, it is by far the most complete. The most lost of Herschel’s complete works is also his only foray into musical composition, the Situational Hymnal for Ordinary Time0.

0Other scholars would suggest Herschel’s primary political work, a moderately lengthy tract entitled Hitting People is the New Non-Violence.

While the context and purpose of Elementary Forms is hotly debated, much of the list itself has survived, although Herschel’s original ordering, if any, has not. Among the more commonly cited betrayals:

Promising to do something, and then not doing it.
Promising not to do something, and then doing it anyway.
Making a promise which cannot plausibly be expected to be fulfilled, and then fulfilling it, to the consternation and discomfort of those to whom it was promised.1
Not performing an action that one has been habitually expected to perform, though no promise has explicitly been made.
Dropping a piano from a great height onto a person that one normally would greet in a cordial fashion.
Urinating in an unexpected location and/or container.

1 As may be seen, to a greater or lesser extent, among the European powers in the summer of 1914. Additionally, see below:

Failing to withdraw from a game of “chicken.”
Withdrawing from a game of “chicken.”
Castanets2

2 No further explanation of this item has been recovered, but Herschel’s contemporaries (if any) seem to have generally accepted it without complaint. A mistranslation from the original Urdu is strongly suspected, if there is in fact an original, and if it was indeed written in Urdu. If the text was not originally written in Urdu, the translation from Urdu was undoubtedly an even greater source of problems.

Achieving greater wealth, professional success, or critical acclaim than a friend who is, by all accounts, more talented and harder-working.
Compromise.
Failure to compromise.
Making a slight mistake in the execution of an elaborate and infrequent social ritual.
Ear poison
Praising only one of two people with similar attributes while the other is present.3

3 It has been suggested that many of Herschel’s Forms are not really betrayals so much as things which cause people to feel betrayed. These concerns, however have been rendered relatively moot by the present church’s adoption of descriptivist ethics, i.e. “The right thing to do is the thing that people generally do when they say they are doing the right thing.” Some claim this stance may be directly associated with recent revelations about the disorderliness of church finances, but church officials maintain that, as non-members taking an interest in church business, these critics (and law-enforcement officials) are insufficiently disinterested to form an objective viewpoint. On this matter, the church claims to be wholly disinterested in its own existence, and therefore most qualified. In light of this disinterest, it is considered unlikely that the church would have been maintaining any funds in the first place, and the whole controversy must be seen as something of a curiosity. One administrator, when pressed for interview, refused on grounds of reverse solipsism... Carrying on with Herschel’s Forms:4

Inventing a lie which, though a lie has been expected and is socially decorous to deliver, is sufficiently implausible that the listener is required to take offence.
Delivering the truth when a socially-decorous lie would produce better consequences.
Standing idly by while an elevator door closes in front of an approaching person.
Revealing something which must necessarily have been concealed for an extended period, even if it is not, technically speaking, really anyone’s business.
Violence.
The letter of the law.
The spirit of the law.
Constructing a mechanism by which one’s eventual betrayal will be seen as morally justified, denying one’s victim even the satisfaction of being betrayed.5
Failing to betray a second party in accordance with the expectations of a third, thereby allowing the second to carry out an intended betrayal of the third (betrayal by reverse proxy).
Betraying a second party who intended to betray a third, which second had the intention of preventing betrayal of the fourth by the third, thereby ultimately betraying the fourth as well as the second (double betrayal, once removed).
The old switcheroo.

The preceding 26 Forms are the most commonly referenced, and presumably also the most canonical. Many of the other recovered Forms are mentioned only in passing, or dismissed as theoretically possible but too esoteric for practical treachery. Whether the betrayal of theory by practice should be counted among the Forms is fiercely disputed among reputable6 scholars.

4The practice of placing footnotes immediately after their referents in the text is not customary nor, many might argue, remotely productive. The author apologizes for any confusion.

5The satisfaction of being betrayed recently polled as the 5th most common form of satisfaction among Americans by Harper’s Weekly. It has moved up rapidly since the previous survey in 2006, having edged out “the satisfaction of a job well done” (6th), and having jumped by several places the satisfaction of home-ownership (formerly 3rd, now 12th).

6This term is not strictly accurate.

2010's top 7

2010-12-30T00:20:00.004-06:00

So the year's almost over, which means all bloggers are contractually obligated to start posting lists of things. Let's face it, nobody's happy about this, but I'm not trying to lose my job. That said, here's the top 7 mixtape releases of 2010. Why seven? Because it's a lucky number and easier than 10. What's a mixtape? For my definitional purposes, it's a body of music released under a single title, free of charge, and unavailable for purchase in stores, on iTunes/Amazon, etc. Projects that almost made this list include: Smoke DZA's George Kush Da Button, which certainly wins the award for best title, and Kanye's G.O.O.D. Fridays effort, which I'm omitting because it wasn't really a mixtape. Kind of a progressive mixtape maybe, but he's gonna win album of the year anyway, so he can sit this one out. To the batlist!

7. The Marathon - Nipsey Hussle

One of two tapes Nipsey let loose this year, this one actually sounds like more than leftover tracks. Unlike the other tapes on this list, the production is not 100% original. He recycled Ye's "Runaway" beat and raps over an MGMT track, but the tape still has a cohesive sound, and the West Coast prodigy sounds focused and ready to proceed after an all too common label snafu.

Download Mixtape | Free Mixtapes Provided by DatPiff.com

6. Friday Night Lights - J Cole

The latest offering from the Roc nation kid. Like a number of his fellow list residents, he still hasn't released an official album, but the mixtapes have been impressive, especially when you consider that he's making all the beats himself, too. Thoughtful raps and some catchy hooks make this one a winner

Download Mixtape | Free Mixtapes Provided by DatPiff.com

5. Str8 Killa No Filla - Freddie Gibbs

Gangsta Gibbs keeps building momentum. While I didn't enjoy this tape quite as much as last years', it did more than enough to satiate his fans, and the Str8 Killa EP tie-in actually gave the young Gary native a product for people to purchase on iTunes/Amazon. I know I did.

Download Mixtape | Free Mixtapes Provided by DatPiff.com

4. K.R.I.T. wuz here - Big K.R.I.T.

Big K.R.I.T. just came out of nowhere (also known as Mississippi). If he keeps puttin out projects like this, no one's gonna complain that he arrived unannounced. He presented this as an album, and it certainly sounds like one, but it was only released as a free download, so I'm calling it a mixtape. So there. Also, all original production by Krit himself. Listen and enjoy.

Download Mixtape | Free Mixtapes Provided by DatPiff.com

3. Trunk Muzik - Yelawolf

If you're crusin, I got that trunk muzik. This came out in the frozen wastelands of last January, but 'bama's favorite white boy warmed up the rest of the country with his best effort to date. The tape proved so popular that it was flipped into an album last month. This guy has a serious buzz going right now, and although some people hate his voice, he's certainly making original sounds. I'm lookin forward to whatever the next project is.

Download Mixtape | Free Mixtapes Provided by DatPiff.com

2. More About Nothing - Wale

D.C.'s favorite MC returns from an album that everyone arbitrarily hated on to provide a tape that may have trumped his entire body of work up to this point. This thing is jam-packed with great song after great song, and, in my opinion, the Seinfeld samples are even better interwoven than they were on the original Mixtape About Nothing. Original topics, clever lyricism, and very strong production for the win.

Download Mixtape | Free Mixtapes Provided by DatPiff.com

1. Kush & Orange Juice - Wiz Khalifa

This sucker dominated my iTunes playcounts, though I wasn't even expecting it to. It came out early in the year and never outwore its welcome in the rotation. It's party music and chill music all at once. The overall sound is so cohesive and purely relaxing, it's like getting a contact buzz without even passing the j, though sometimes you'll swear you can smell the smoke. Kush & OJ plays start to finish without a single jarring moment and is likely to please a variety of audiences- men, women, hip-hoppers, and non hip-hoppers alike. It's little wonder that Wiz's popularity has basically exploded after this tape. Here's to the upcoming album. Black & Yellow, people.

Download Mixtape | Free Mixtapes Provided by DatPiff.com

Tradeoffs

2010-12-05T18:48:00.001-06:00

The Book of Irony has been accused of encouraging venality, hypocrisy, intellectual dishonesty, petty vindictiveness in the guise of high-minded idealism, shameless opportunism in the guise of pragmatic realism, a preoccupation with the minor flaws of others, pretentiousness, and sodomy. In the face of these criticisms, church officials have maintained that if a holy text is to be of any impact whatsoever, it must speak to the interests of its readers.

2010-12-03T11:17:00.000-06:00

Best color commentary ever.

2010-12-03T11:07:00.001-06:00

serving time with a purpose

2010-11-04T23:02:00.002-05:00

I disagree with the blanket statement that imprisonment can only harm a rap career
________________________________________
I feel ya bruh but your argument aint that strong though

===========

all i need is one counter-example to refute a blanket-statement, right? so, wayne. i think it’s accurate. between the celebrity visits, the fan-letters, the grainy phone verses, this guy’s prison stint has definitely added to his mystique. not in a way that boosts his street cred necessarily (does anyone actually care about that anymore?), but in an anticipatory way. lots of people are expecting (or maybe just hoping for) some deeper, more focused material once he gets out.

whether he’ll actually come through with such material remains to be seen. but i don’t think the eventual outcome changes the fact that prison did not hurt, and may have even helped, his career. consider the alternative. had wayne been free for the past year, he would have had his usual level of exposure–one that some people were certainly getting tired of, and one that definitely would not be as interesting/discussion-worthy as seeing his prison i.d. card (wayne’s a catholic?) and hearing about how he got thrown in the hole.

basically, jail prevented (or at least delayed) wayne’s career from quickly becoming same old same old.

but that’s really an exception to a rule. t.i.p. and gucci are in a bad place, and boosie’s pretty much fucked.

Re: Hind Swaraj

2010-10-03T23:18:00.003-05:00

It seems as though many people have voiced criticisms of Hind Swaraj, and I'm sure there will be more to come. In many ways, Gandhi's tract makes an easy target for

dismantling. Railroads are evil, you say? It's little

wonder Gokhale laughed

the whole thing off, expecting Gandhi to change his views after seeing India.

Yet Gandhi stuck by everything he wrote, and I think for good reason. In my opinion, what he has said is correct, yet that does not mean I agree with his ultimate goal. I believe he has put forth a collection of accurate critiques of modern civilization. I think we can all agree, however, that his solution of eschewing modernity altogether is impossible, now more than ever.

I think the truths of Hind Swaraj become more apparent if you consider Gandhi critiques in a contemporary context. Looking at the main problems Gandhi outlines--lawyers, doctors, parliamentary government, and machinery--are these not all still broken systems in some way? (No disrespect intended to any doctors, lawyers, MPs, or machines present.)

The entire globe is becoming more litigious, yet the problems that plague our justice systems comprise a lengthy list.

Modern medicine is reaching more corners of the globe than ever before, yet the pharmaceutical industry has wrecked havoc on the dispensation of medicine, and even medical advice. Pills all around! And some more pills for the side-effects that those pills gave you.

Is not our own parliamentary-esque political system too often paralyzed by the same sort of bipartisan dithering and inconsistency that Gandhi identifies with British government?

And finally, for all the wonders that machines have brought, if their use is unchecked, they will certainly bring about the end of our species, most likely through the destruction of our habitat.

So was Gandhi all that wrong? I think the only area in which Hind Swaraj fails to hold water is in his solution to these problems. The sort of pre-modern Eden Gandhi may have dreamt of is not achievable, nor is it necessarily a good idea. If we disposed of all machinery now, billions would perish from starvation and disease--certainly something that would not ring true with ahimsa. My general view is that our homo-sapien brains and machines got us into this mess, so they'll have to get us out in the end. The solutions remain inchoate. The problems are very real, and have been since Mahatmas walked the earth.

It's like that sometime, man. Ridiculous. Life can be so ridiculous.

2010-09-26T00:00:00.006-05:00

Blogs are funny things. We had a resurgance for a while there. Looks like the stats show a spike in 2009. I checked in more when abroad/trapped in a minnesotan iceburg. I had more time then. Boston life is busy. Meanwhile, Maciej's had a turd tableau going on for a month.

It is my hope that the collective C~o~I teachings will be published in pamphlet or tract form in the near future.

In case you're wondering, the 2010 Mr. Olympia winners are:

dexter jackson - 4

branch warren - 3

phil heath - 2

jay cutler - 1

Cutler's a boring choice in my opinion, but I think they're trying to make him into a legend. Heath was definitely good enough to take it.

It's funny to look back at old music choices. Hip Hop changes so much, and i find my tastes often shift along with it. It's a nice journal of my thoughts, though. I've been reading a lot of Gandhi lately, so I'm into that shit.

Here goes, with honorable mentions to Jay-Z, who, though on his game in recent features, has really transcended the genre by becoming an actual legendary person. He wouldn't be fair to include. And a shout out to Yelawolf (We'll talk after the album next month.) and CyHi da Prynce.

Current Best Rappers Alive:

5. Lil Wayne

Let's face it. This man's intelligent. All the stories from jail have him sounding quite wizened. He's low on this list due to lack of activity, but his next album I Am Not A Human Being drops on the 27th. Of course it's a bunch of leftover material, so some of it's a little too Rebirthy. What I'm really interested in is the music this man will record when he gets out.da.bing. (no homo)

4. Wiz Khalifa

This guy's not wizened, though his name's Wiz. His last name is the word for the deputy/devotee of a Sufi saint. He raps about women, weed, and airplane metaphors. He's the biggest name associated with the City of Pittsburg. Everyone loves him. He makes pleasant sounding music. Kush & Orange Juice was really something special.

3. Freddie Gibbs

This guy's the coldest dude since Miles Davis. His interview are charmingly gangster. He smokes 20+ blunts a day. He's from Gary Indiana. And he fraternizes with Indie people. He's dropped a lot of music in the past couple years, the Latest being the EP Straight Killa. There was an accompanying mixtape. He raps about guns, bitches, drugs and that murda murda, but he's the best at it.

2. Kanye West

He can still be annoying. But overall he's been on point with the flowage, and generous with the music. His G.O.O.D. Friday tracks are to mainstream rap what Wale's Back To The Feature was for the underground gentry, and we should all be thankful for them, except when Swizz Beatz tries to rap. They're six and seven minutes, and it's usually cause there are so many verses crammed in there, but that's a good thing.

1. Wale

He sounds like no one before him. He might sound sloppy at times, but if you piece together what he says it's almost always concisely insightful about some topic. He's running the District of Columbia. More About Nothing the tape release of the year to this point. Ironically, or not, he and Kanye don't work together.

The Church of Irony & Questionable Apocrypha

2010-08-31T01:40:00.013-05:00

It will come as no surprise that many chapters of the Book of Irony are apocryphal, especially those sections involving the Prophet Herschel, who has long been a subject of unease among church leaders. Unfortunately for them, Herschel has proven to be almost as popular among editors as the church has been lax in its record-keeping.

This carelessness^[1] has frustrated later scholars to no end. Recently, it has come to light that several chapters, popularly attributed to Herschel, have never had their authorship formally questioned except in other disputed sections of the text, and are as such only apocryphally apocryphal.

While the aforementioned chapters are suspected of being dubious, prominent scholars remain doubtful as to whether these suspicions may be confirmed. Furthermore, past investigations have tended to increase the popularity of the chapters under scrutiny. These have been classified as “abundantly apocryphal.” Indeed, many of Herschel’s most famous quotations fall into this category, including such standbys as, “Let him who is without stones cast the first stone.” ^[3]

The most challenging field for aspiring Herschologists, however, is that of hypothetical apocrypha. Along with the many chapters that have deftly sidled their way into the Book of Irony over time, a great many have trickled out, especially during periods of elevated paper prices. Among these are the mythical Lost Books of Irony, the somewhat less mythical and somewhat rattier Discarded Books of Irony, and the Books of Irony That Aren’t Being Used Right Now But They’ve Been Put in a Box in Case We Need Them Later. None of these should be confused with the Book of Irony’s hastily assembled sequel, Bookin’ II: Eclectic Guru-Fu. ^[4]

In any case, there is no comprehensive record of Herschel’s writings. As such, it is not known with any certainty which of Herschel’s works have appeared in the Book of Irony, and of those that have, which were actually authored by Herschel, and of those works which may or may not have appeared in the Book as written by Herschel, which may or may not have been changed so drastically over time as to be unrecognizable to a reader of the original, should such an original have existed, presuming that it was read. Many such works exist only as passing references in contemporary commentaries on the Book and on Herschel -- and some of these, it is suspected, were ghost-written by Herschel as a platform for taking the piss. ^[5]

The most famous of these obscure texts is Herschel’s 101 Elementary Modes of Betrayal. First (presumably) published sometime in the late Cenozoic era, it has been a subject of controversy ever since (and possibly before). Much of the contemporary analysis disputes the composition of the list, but it is unclear whether it was intended to be exhaustive. In his letters, Pliny the Younger^[6] proposes that the 102nd mode of betrayal consists of “implicitly obscuring the existence of the 102nd mode of betrayal, so as to spring it upon one’s friends unawares.” Pliny the Elder, though also critical of Herschel’s work, refers to this notion as “bull-pucky.”

There is no clear indication as to the structure of the work, though several contemporaries snidely suggest that it is a “how-to” book.

[1] Many years, the church has elected to redirect its entire archival budget into the purchase of new vestments, based on “considerations of the ephemeral nature of truth.” ^[2]

[3] The church is divided on the exact significance of this statement, which makes it all the more versatile in conversation. It has been interpreted variously: as a paradoxical injunction against stoning; as an advisement that all executioners should be eunuchs; and as a paradoxical statement in favor of stoning, but only if one does so with restraint (i.e., if one initially has only a single stone, one may cast that stone and consequently be without stones, but the stockpiling of stones is considered a sign of bad faith). It is sometimes also seen as supporting another famous Herschel-ism: “To whom little is given, from him much will be taken away.”

[4] Released in 1977, it was promptly recaptured and returned to the solitary confinement wing of the National Archives.

[5] Piss-taking platforms were popular in Central Europe for much of the 17th century, but were ultimately abandoned as a threat to public health.

[6] This is by far the most difficult challenge for scholars believing Herschel to be from modern Milwaukee. Conversely, Herschel’s (alleged) response to Pliny the Younger was recently discovered in a spiral-ring notebook dated to 1988. The notebook itself was found in the innermost chamber of an Olmec burial site in the Yucatan, and was written in, according to forensic analysis, with a quill pen from the extinct Tahitian Sandpiper. At the time of this writing, all the leading theories on the Pliny-Herschel dialogue include both fraud and time travel.

[2] At least, in so far as one may trust the budgetary records, which have been historically dubious and serve chiefly as a conspicuously precise testament of the low wages paid to the church’s accountants.

The Book of Irony: Parable of the Cabbage

2010-04-08T20:28:00.005-05:00

Herschel was walking in the fields one day when a group of local farmers approached him. "O Herschel, the men of the bus station tell us you are a wise man, but all you say to us is nonsense. Are we not worthy of enlightenment? Why do you refuse us your wisdom?"

"But I have been telling you all that I know," said Herschel. He paused, and began again, "I tell you then that the truth is like a cabbage. If you have a cabbage, and one by one you peel away the leaves, when you remove the last leaf, what do you have?"

"Why, nothing!" answered one.

"No," replied Herschel. "You still have the very same cabbage. It is only arranged differently."

The farmers looked at one another, and gradually they nodded their assent.

"But," continued Herschel, "the truth is not like a cabbage in that way..."

Like most of the prophet Herschel's teachings, this passage is in dispute. For many years both the Herschel-as-Urdu scholars and the Herschel-as-from-Milwaukee scholars claimed this passage as the definitive proof for their interpretation. The Milwaukee-ists note that the cabbage was unknown in ancient central Asia. The Urdu-ists, though somewhat flummoxed on this point, counter that it is equally preposterous that the residents of Milwaukee would show any familiarity with vegetables. After much debate, the two sides have reached an uneasy truce on this issue; they have agreed that the cabbage is only a metaphor.

The Church of Irony and Missing Myths

2010-03-09T00:22:00.003-06:00

The Book of Irony contains a great many things, including recipes, advice columns, actuarial tables, and even a striking watercolor rendition of a kitchen sink. It is considered an exceptional source, especially, for polemics, philippics, jeremiads, tirades, diatribes, rants, reproach, incitement, indictment, and hortatory injunctions of all kinds -- not to mention manifestos. It is perhaps the single largest collection of manifestos ever assembled. This has been the natural result of the church's bylaws and tendency towards schism. According to article VII, section "flarf"¹, each of the church's (belligerent and numerous) subsects "shall be permitted, at the time of its departure, to contribute one (1) manifesto to scripture, making the case for the assumption of their views into orthodoxy, howsoever deviant they may be."²

¹ no relation.

² The origins of this peculiar convention are lost to the mists of time, as all records of the church's foundation have been mysteriously misplaced. It is widely assumed that the church's founders were shameless opportunists, ready to scatter at the first sign of trouble, but also eager for free publicity.

What the book does not contain, however, is a creation myth. This may be surprising to consumers of more conventional religious texts³, but they may rest assured that this exclusion was unintentional. Indeed, church officials were shocked to discover this when, in 1872, they finally sat down to read the whole thing straight through. This was a turbulent period for the church, as its leadership subsequently announced that the church was, in fact, against slavery, and had always been, but that they had been holding the relevant scriptures upside-down the whole time, and wasn't that the darnedest thing. At this point there is some discontinuity in the records, as the church hierarchy was shaken up by an equally-coincidental series of near-lynchings.

³ Convention is of course dependent on context. Readers raised in religions without creation myths will find the preceding perfectly conventional. Rest assured though, they will find the following^(a) highly unorthodox.

^(a) Notions of precedent and succession are also, unfortunately, dependent on context. The author regrets that his use of footnotes has made this post nondeterministic, and that it is no longer possible to be certain what the reader will find unorthodox.

However, rather than violate the integrity⁴ and spirit of the original, it was determined that the church's account of creation would be published as a companion piece and, as was the style at the time, in serial format. As a result, Creation Now! has been published continuously in tri-weekly installments for over a century, beginning with

In the beginning there was the beginning and so it began. Soon the beginning came to an end and at the end of the beginning there was a new beginning, and the beginning was before the beginning and the end shall follow after the end. In the beginning there was nothing, and what followed was quite similar. In the beginning there may have been quantum gravitational effects...

And so forth in that manner. Astute readers may have noticed that the above text is rather vague, and not particularly ironic. If you are such, your concerns have been addressed, and the various errata for Vol. I are available in Vols. XVII, XXXVIII, 0x47⁵, and C. It now reads

First there was nothing, but there was nowhere for nothing to be. And all that nothing with nowhere to go, that was really something.

⁴ This term is not strictly accurate

⁵ The church switched briefly to hexadecimal notation during the Second World War, for fear that Roman numerals were giving aid and comfort to the fascists.

Unfortunately, despite extravagant attention to detail, the publication has become increasingly difficult to sustain, as the church's mythography has remained roughly chronological. Despite efforts to the contrary, by 1937 the creation myth had absorbed the entire American Colonial period (during which process Henry Hudson was accidentally canonized) and appeared to be gaining speed. In a move that has been generally regarded as disastrous, the church kicked off 1981 with an in-depth summary of the 1980 election. Shortly thereafter it arrived at its current form, which is comprised largely of weather forecasts, horoscopes, and speculative fiction, though it also provides space for the still-plentiful corrections, scholarly clarifications, and wild-eyed jabbering regarding the extant myths.

In a 2009 bid to undercut the church's competitors, Creation Now! devoted an entire issue to eschatology, and proposed that the end times would arrive sometime in the Autumn of 2011, if not sooner. This produced a devastating decline in the publication's subscription rate, and the date of the apocalypse was quickly rescinded and placed "at least several several fiscal years from now."

The Church of Irony's Seven Deadliest Sins 2009

2010-02-23T00:45:00.003-06:00

In accordance with the provisional nature of truth, or perhaps due to a profound misunderstanding of the nature of sin*, the church of irony releases an annual list of what it deems to be the seven deadliest sins. The perennial favorite, taking the top spot in the 68 of the the past 97 years, has been "genocide,"** though in recent years "drunk driving" has also been a strong contender. Still, the criteria used are complex and multi-dimensional, which has led to such surprises as the 1948 victory for "talking in the theater", as well as a strong #3 finish for "mid-air adultery" in 1997. Less surprisingly, "Vodka shots on the job" jumped to the top of the list in 1986.

The theological implications of this list are somewhat sparse. The church faithful*** are cautioned to avoid sin, unless it will make for an interesting story later on. In so far as many of the top contenders have become clichéd, the church encourages turnover in the list (which is to say, the faithful are encouraged to sin originally). The official church teaching on sin is that there is no such thing as sin, which makes the whole affair somewhat perplexing.

Nonetheless, this year's list has been made available, for the benefit of all those who are both sinners and not yet dead.

7. Bear-baiting

6. Groundwater contamination

5. Auto-erotic asphyxiation ****

4. Fighting a land war in Asia

3. Presidential slash-fiction

2. Genocide

1. Hubris

In related news, the award for "Best Sin in a Cable Documentary" goes to Jersey Shore.

* The church holds that misunderstanding is the most profound form of understanding.

** There has been much debate whether the church's related "Seven Deadliest Sinners" list should be based on amortized rates, proportion of population, or raw totals.

*** This term is not strictly accurate.

**** Be aware that the church often blurs the line between "sin" and "clearly not a good idea."

The Church of Irony and the Afterlife

2010-02-09T21:51:00.004-06:00

The church of irony has no firm notions regarding the afterlife, save that only atheists will go to Heaven.* All others, it is proposed, will be subjected to a Hell of their own choosing. This is sometimes referred to as the miracle of irrational preferences.

Other factions within the church argue that this world is the afterlife. The meta-spectralites, for example, hold that most (but not all) people are ghosts, and on occasion will gather for an inverse seance to determine which among them are the living. Another sect maintains that this world is intended to be something called "The Hell of Small Objects," and that therefore the prosperity of the NBA represents a grave miscarriage of cosmic intent.** There is a firm consensus in the church that most things are grave miscarriages of cosmic intent. Another offshoot sect, the pan-sepulchralists, merely believe that most things are graves.*** The pan-sepulchralists, though, have nearly died out, owing to their rather strict commandments regarding the desecration of burial grounds.

* In the words of the prophet Herschel, "Heaven is full of awkward conversations."

** Their proposal is that the vast majority of us exist only to facilitate the continued discomfort and awkwardness of a few very tall individuals by, e.g. contructing low doorframes and designing airline seats with minimal leg room. The popularity of physical spectacle, however, has allowed many of these individuals to circumvent or at least compensate for such annoyances.

*** In the sense that for most locations on the planet, it is overwhelmingly likely that something has died there, this is literally true. The pan-sepulchralists, however, hold that memorial need not be bound by the limits of memory.

A Reading from the Book of Irony (#2)

2010-01-31T17:57:00.002-06:00

The prophet Herschel was out walking one day when his disciples came to him. "Oh great Herschel, we are concerned. The men who write newspaper columns have been saying you are full of shit."

Herschel replied, "Perhaps, but at first I was full of rich bread and fine cheese. Would it be better if I were a man of no substance whatsoever?"

This passage is among the more controversial attributed to the prophet Herschel. For one, the Herschel-as-Urdu scholars insist that "newspaper columns" should have been translated instead as "clay tablets", and that this would make things infinitely clearer. Other scholars contend that this would help not a jot.

Church leaders in general have been fairly ambivalent about the passage, which implies that all earthly wisdom is subject to gradual decay and putrefaction. In consequence, prominent officials have begun to speculate whether the prophet Herschel was not, in fact, a member of the church of irony at all, and have suggested that perhaps he slipped into the volume by way of a clever bit of copy-editing.

With regards to this, it should be noted that one of the prophet Herschel's few recorded prophecies was his prediction that the church would gradually disown all its prophets. Third-party theologians have gleefully observed that Herschel has got the church in a real pickle with that one.

A Reading from the Book of Irony

2010-01-13T23:04:00.004-06:00

A wise man once came to the prophet Herschel and said, "O Herschel, the men who mumble in the bus station say you are a great thinker. What is the meaning of the life of the spirit?"

The prophet replied, "One thousand years in the barrel of a gun."

The man thought a while. "Anticipation, yes, but everything depends on the condition of the gun."

Said the prophet, "Yes, but everything also depends on the one who pulls the trigger."

The man went away unsatisfied, but later the prophet Herschel received a lucrative television contract.

Church scholars remain divided on the provenance of this passage. Some date it as far back as the first century BC, blaming the obvious anachronisms on an overly loose translation from the original Urdu. This original has not yet been located, but the style, they claim, is distinctly Urdu. A majority of scholars, however, conclude that the passage was adapted from writings in a bathroom stall in a Milwaukee bus terminal, presumably placed there by the prophet himself, and was incorporated into the canonical Book of Irony sometime in late August of 1983.

The Church of Irony and Hipster Saints

2010-01-11T23:19:00.014-06:00

Now, it has been going around that I am a proponent of the church of irony, which is to say I am a believer. This is, of course, untrue. I am merely its messiah* — a title which holds no formal standing in the church. The church being what it is, doctrine holds that I am a false prophet and full of lies. Though given how I am the primary source of information on church of irony practices and beliefs, I can see how there has been some confusion. The church is a preposterous thing and I do not take it seriously in a religious sense. You might say I am very serious about the idea of the church**, and its use for illustrative purposes. Then again, it would be entirely appropriate if I were more serious about it than I let on. The nature of the project dictates that the church's beliefs reflect mine in a partial or distorted way. Consider it a funhouse mirror for the soul — neither wholly honest nor dishonest.

* Christ, they say, was Jewish.^ One might hazard that the existence of an honest freelance messiah is actually a rather inconvenient thing for an extant church hierarchy. Though even more so, it seems difficult to state that Christ could have faith at all, given His unique perspective on the whole God question.

^ Not that I am comparing myself to Jesus... or, technically I am, but not on any important level.

** But not so serious as to capitalize it. Consider this also my jab at Capitalized Concepts in general.

You could shave by means of such a mirror, if you had to, but only if you knew how it was bent. To know this, you must recognize your own face by its distorted image. It has been said that the church of irony is self-referential, and this is its downfall. Perhaps, but the whole history of philosophy is marked by self-recognition ("Know thyself" may ring a bell). And in a funhouse mirror, one may by chance percieve some features more clearly.*** To put it another way, absurdity necessarily contains some understanding of truth, or else it could not be recognized as absurdity.

*** Some features, in order of likelihood: the nose, the abdomen, and the sense of perpetual outrage.

[Absurd Digression]
By example: if I know that I am headed west, this is implicitly knowledge that I am not moving east. If I wish to head east, I need simply turn around. The truth/absurdity problem is presumably not be as easily resolved, though. Suppose I intend to scale Mt. Taranaki. It may be that I know with certainty that I am not at the top of Mt. Taranaki. Implicitly, I recognize some aspect of my current situation as inconsistent with my knowledge of Mt. Taranaki. Still, it cannot be overstated how difficult it is to reach the summit of Mt. Taranaki purely by empirical observation.

An illustration:

	vs.
Mt. Taranaki		Not Mt. Taranaki
	vs.
Also not Mt. Taranaki		Mt. Taranaki in Disguise

But what if, in my certainty, I turn out to be mistaken, and I actually am currently atop Mt. Taranaki? Well, I may be mistaken. I can always be mistaken. Possibly Mt. Taranaki has been socially constructed — which does not fully answer the question, either. I may tell you that a certain bridge has been constructed out of stone, but this will not enable you to build a new bridge. I may also tell you that the bridge was put in place by dropping it, all at once, from a very great height — but it is likely that I am mistaken. The problem of being mistaken is one of the things the church may yet manage to illuminate*. In the meantime, the author presently agitates for a more widespread understanding of statistics and probability.

(More clever skeptics may suggest that if, instead of Mt. Taranaki, I use Olympus Mons or Mount Doom, to illustrate that truth may be inaccesible or fictional, respectively, the analogy changes. It does! Interesting cases, both. But anyway...)

* More likely, a church representative will mistakenly arrive atop Mt. Taranaki, but believe he has scaled an undiscovered peak. Noting the excellent view and striking resemblance to Mt. Taranaki, he will found the Our Lady of Mt. New Taranaki Church, Daycare Center, and Wholesale Liquors.
[End Absurd Digression]

It may be helpful to elucidate some of the church's early and arguably core tenets. The church of irony was founded upon the proposal that the inherent purpose of the universe is to maximize the total amount of irony in the universe. Naturally, this requires that the universe contains beings capable of observing irony. By extension, it requires that these beings be capable of suffering, and for full measure that they be capable of suffering as a result of the observation of irony. This is a religious understanding; it is not falsifiable. With regards to scientific understanding, the church is wholly in favor of sincere scientific inquiry, on the premise that it would be ripping good fun if, in the distant future, at the very culmination of human civilization, earnest scientists discovered that the laws of physics were in fact a hoax all along. At this point, the laws of physics must arbitrarily change, and presumably the universe as we know it is destroyed.**** The church is very much in line with those Protestants who claim that dinosaur bones are a hoax, perpetrated by God and/or the Devil. Nonetheless the church also wishes they would shut up about it.

**** Or delicious chocolate ice cream rains from the sky; it's quite impossible to say. Be warned that, potentially, the ice cream is also an intelligent being capable of suffering.

Readers of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy will note the similarity of the church's stance to this passage:

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

Both theories are entirely in the spirit of the church, and the church is most likely (though it prefers not to admit it) in the spirit of the Guide. Perhaps it will reassure my concerned friends that the church of irony is a religion undertaken with an attitude of humorous science fiction, rather than humorous science fiction undertaken with an attitude of religion***** (which is to say, the Church of Scientology).

***** One breakaway sect of the church believes that verbal expressions have their own physical force, and that rhetorical reversals (such as the above) serve to drive a great piston engine that turns the clock of the universe and creates the sensation of time. This is of course impossible, but has led to extensive speculation as to what, precisely, it was that the Watchmaker said to the watch. The most popular candidate is currently, "It's about time!"

'09 was a fine time to rhyme lines

2010-01-07T21:02:00.036-06:00

So it's 2010, and Pat already has the honor of the first post, but I thought I'd throw in a couple pennies regarding the music of the past year. In the realm of Hip-Hop, there are albums and there are mixtapes. To sum up recent history, the latter has long been littered with second-tier material, but as the game changes, and as independent artists work to establish fan-bases without waiting for music labels to grow enough cohenes to press an LP for them, the mixtape is experiencing an evolution. We're now seeing tapes with extremely high production value and some truly stellar rapping being handed to the fans without charge. So I present to you the top 10 (officially-sanctioned-by-the-artist) mixtapes of 2009.

10. Back On My Buck Shit - Young Buck

Stayin alive. Buck comes through with a solid effort. He stays on-point with his beat selection and delivers what he does best--eloquent tough talk.

9. Cold War Series - Gucci Mane

So this is actually three mixtapes. Gucci's push to fame has been fueled on the Wayne philosophy of heavy saturation. It's largely worked. The main thing holding him back in my mind is the lack of charisma in his delivery. Sure he's got a cool-sounding voice, but his intonation becomes repetitive; and sometimes it sounds like he's downright mumbling. He is improving lyrically, however, and his album wasn't half bad. Gucci sets the standard for trunk bangers.

8. How Fly - Currency & Wiz Khalifa

I would normally classify these two lost souls as B-grade artists never destined to truly blow, but to their credit, they've put together something special here. Their voices compliment one another, and I find Khalifa interesting for the similarities his delivery shares with Wale's. I feel like their way of flowing is distinct and generationally unique. Listen to to The Planes.

7. Trappin Ain't Dead - Young Jeezy

The No DJ version of this banger didn't stay around the internet for long, though you should be able to find a torrent somewhere. What legal failed to care about is that the bleeding idiot DJ (u suck Folk) who mixed this thing with drops apparently thought it would be a good idea to run the songs through a tin can. What true audio shows is Jeezy at his best. So many homophones, you'll jump for joy. Here's to actually getting better with age.

6. Kool-aid, Kush, & Convertibles - Rich Boy

Rich Boy can still put together great tapes. This drawl fest has a cohesive sound to its stellar instrumentals, which, aside from being great summertime music, also shows the emergence of Supavillian as a nice cat behind those boards. It's great in a trunk, but I recommend tracking down the No DJ version first.

5. Back To The Feature - Wale

Alarming Folarin disarms with his charming vernacular. Bears up to repeated listenings well. There's a lot to unpack here. I only wish there were fewer features..

4. midwestganstaboxframecadiallacmusic - Freddie Gibbs

It's been a big year for Fred. Three mixtapes in '09. This baby here grabbed a lot of people's attention. gangsta gibbs should be able to count on a big payoff in the near future.

3. B.o.B. vs Bobby Ray - B.o.B

When I first downloaded this, I wasn't even sure I'd listen to the whole thing. After all, wasn't this guy just a Drake to T.I.'s Wayne? And wasn't it half singing? The playcount on this sucker wound up being through the roof. For one thing, the rap production--done almost exclusively by a chap named Fury--was revelatory. Excellent sampling of Three Dog Night, Curtis Mayfield, and The Soggy Bottom boys, along with others, make for some fuckin catchy tunes. The singing side was solid, as well. It's hard to place the genre, but there's a certain purity to it. Just Bob and his instruments.

-Download B.o.B vs Bobby Ray-

2. No Ceilings - Lil Wayne

Still the reigning heavyweight champion. The singing is over. The beats have been eaten.

1. So Far Gone - Drake

So Drake gets his name in the record books for this one. So Far Gone's incredible commercial success came from the humble beginnings of a free-released independent mixtape. A success story so timely that it doesn't even matter what's really on the tape anymore. It is good stuff though. Great production, great guest spots, great songs for the ladies. Drake's precocious introspects are fun to listen to

The Book of Irony: An Introduction

2010-01-05T00:30:00.006-06:00

The following is a rough guide to the holy text of the church of irony, sensibly called The Book of Irony, or sometimes Pilgrim's Pirouette. It is called many other things that will not be printed here today. Among the church's faithful it is widely considered to be outmoded, historically inaccurate, self-contradictory, and morally ambiguous -- in short, it is a flawless guide for modern living. It contains, among other things:

Opening aphorism: "One does not carry sand into the desert, nor coal to Newcastle. The sick man shall go to the hospital and the heavy man to the gymnasium. Why then do you go about blessing the blessed?"
Retroactive subway system proposals for ancient Sumer and Babylon.
Apologia for the existence of the preceding, founded upon comparative underworld mythologies.
A brief primer on the concept of anagnorisis, on which someone has drawn a spoon.
Pencil sketches of street performers.
Headlines from the Washington Times and New York Post, painstaking cut & rearranged into headlines from the New York Times and Washington Post.
An extensive refutation of the previous item, with a convincing argument for the reverse.
A crossword puzzle, in which every clue has been replaced with the phrase "SUCK IT."
A set of traditional Zen koans, each with the exclamation "How ironic!" tacked on at the end.
A chapter of self-referential parables, including "Consider the Mandelbrot Set".
The final section is a series of blank pages with the heading "Beatitudes". It has been left as an exercise for the reader.
In this section, on the last page, there is a handwritten Post-It note with the suggestion, "Blessed are the wicked."
On the inside back cover, an order form for other religious texts from the same publisher. Among them
- Putting the You Back in J-you-daism!
- Zen and the Art of Religious Posturing
- Mormon-y, More Problems
The back cover itself is, out of a somewhat belated sense of shame, disguised as the Audubon Society Guide to the Birds of North America.

Ethical Arithmetic, and a Matter of Opinion

2009-12-17T23:53:00.003-06:00

Lots of things to come back to, but first, an exercise in categorization. (Note: I imagine something like this has been done before, potentially by utilitarians, but it's been a while since I've read any.)

First, I propose that there is a quantitative and highly descriptive measure of one's ethics: The ratio S of the amount of suffering one will undergo to prevent similar suffering in others. The most fundamental example is the case of giving one's life to save that of another. Under egalitarian assumptions about the value of life, this is a ratio of exactly 1:1.

Some caveats: real-world ethical behavior is almost invariably more complicated than this. Firstly, there is the problem of quantitative measurements of suffering. There are as many valuations of suffering as there are people, but still, this is only a difficulty of measurement. For now, the individual is asked to rely on their own judgment of the relative merits of, say, long-term malnourishment vs. a swift kick to the testicles.

Secondly, there is the blanket term "others". In practice, people value the suffering of others at very different rates, depending on their relation to them. Alternatively, other humans represent a continuum of self-ness and other-ness. The exemplary case is the common willingness of parents to sacrifice for the well-being of their children. Note that under the alternate terminology, this suggests that these parents identify more with their children than with themselves. Conversely, someone may be generally considerate, but have a particular animosity for some foe, and delight in that person's every setback. For the purposes of this exercise, I will base the quantity S on perfect strangers.

Thirdly, there is the problem of agency. Most people, I would estimate, are more likely to allow suffering to occur than to actively create it. Most likely, this can be accounted for by the time, effort, and anxiety incurred by performing such an action, or by veering from one's ordinary course. In that case, this becomes a sub-problem of valuation.

Also related to valuation is the problem of the perception of suffering in others. People cannot take action to prevent suffering they are not aware of. Perceiving suffering requires the trait of empathy, and the ability to witness or imagine the suffering of others. In the interconnected modern world, most moral failures are failures of imagination.

Returning to the initial notion of S: S is the ratio of S_s, the amount of suffering undergone by the individual, to S_o, the amount of suffering prevented in the generic other. On a tentative basis, let's equate the creation of joy/pleasure with the prevention of suffering (though this is, I suspect, much more subjective than pain and suffering). Anyway, on to categorization:

S < 0: This is Sadism. Such a person goes out of their way to cause pain to others. They might, for example, work several days tarring roofs, in order to save up money for a pair of steel-toed boots, in order to more satisfyingly deliver a swift kick to your testicles. The problems of agency and empathy come up here in reverse -- such a person is more likely to enjoy their own actions than to be pleased, in the abstract, by starvation in distant countries. Also note that values of S less than -1 represent the radical case of someone who might, for example, break their own arm in order to make you late for the theater.

S = 0: At precisely 0, the person is said to be a Sociopath or Solipsist. For the solipsist, this might more fairly be called the case where S is undefined, since the true solipsist does not allow for an "other" to measure against. By my own reckoning, I consider the sociopath more dangerous than the sadist; if not recognized and prevented, a sociopath will take the most efficient route they can to their goals, whatever those may be, and potentially cause great harm along the way. It is expected that positions of prestige and power will be disproportionately occupied by talented sociopaths unless considerable safeguards are in place. Whether democratic elections, in various forms, effectively provide such safeguards is a matter of heated debate.

0 < S < 1: This represents, I presume, the spectrum of normal human behavior. let's call this Civility: people compromise, do small favors when asked, give charity to the less fortunate (since money is more useful for those who have less), and generally make some effort to avoid harming others. There is, of course, a wide variety here, from those who would risk near-certain death to save the life of another (e.g., a 95% chance of their own death against certainly preventing another's, which yields .95), to those who could hardly be bothered to get off the couch if someone were being crushed under it.

S = 1: This I will call Utilitarianism,"the greatest good for the greatest number." Obviously, a great many previous thinkers have also called this utilitarianism. In its purest form, this case is the most literally selfless, as it makes no distinction between the self and the other. In the ideal case of perfect perception, a society composed of utilitarians will be the happiest, as every action will maximally decrease the net suffering in the world.

S > 1: But wait, there's more! Here we enter the somewhat mystical territory of Altruism. While not selfless in the same way as utilitarianism, and in some sense sub-optimal, I find it hard to call this ethically inferior to the previous case. In a way, it mirrors the case of the sadist, in so far as there are obvious nonsensical scenarios. Few people would, for example, give Warren Buffet $100 as an expression of altruism -- the money could do more good elsewhere, and altruism need not be wholly irrational. What is far more intuitive, though, is a parent (as mentioned above) risking death for even a slim chance of saving their child (for a 75% chance of die-trying against a 25% chance of success, S is 3, and strictly non-utilitarian). Parents, as I said, are a special case, but the calculations are the same for total strangers, even if the attitude is rarer.

Note: This kind of calculation is not actually how people think, of course, especially in emergencies. People are notoriously bad at estimating probability, especially under duress. Rather, it represents how they might think of the situation when given time to reflect. In a crisis, parents are compelled to act by their emotional bond with their child. An equivalent altruist would need to feel the same bond with all humanity.

As long as one does not get to the point of self-destructive behavior, I'm inclined to say that utilitarianism versus altruism is a matter of personal choice, and neither can be said to be wholly superior. Given perfect information, utilitarianism is optimal, but no such thing exists. In practice, it may be perfectly useful to act as though there is more suffering than one can observe at any given time. Furthermore, given that society is not composed solely of utilitarians or altruists, there are almost always numerous opportunities for efficient (S < 1) prevention of suffering, and the difference will only come up in exceptional cases. Still, altruists with very high values of S must take care to avoid debilitating guilt over trivial matters.

Anyway, if you are still reading, congratulations. I feel as though I've only scratched the surface here, but a truly thorough treatment would probably require writing a book. On that note, acknowledgement goes to Rob, who got me thinking about the altruist/utilitarian divide during an unrelated religious hypothetical.

Me: So if we assume Heaven and Hell, then the most moral act is to give up your own salvation for that of another, but --
Rob: You mean, for two others...
*Tangential debate ensues*

On Free Will

2009-12-15T00:07:00.001-06:00

Quantum mechanics dictates that all things are possible -- literally, all arrangements of matter have non-zero probability. At any moment, I may become an eggplant. Whether I have willed myself to become an eggplant -- ah, here it becomes a question of mythology.

"I feel they praisin too much, oh now they don't praise enough."

2009-11-17T21:05:00.004-06:00

I suggest you buy this because it's a sonic experience.

Also, if you don't already have the following bonus track, be sure to toss it in the mix. It's a real stun gun.

Wale - Fly Away

The Best Rappers Alive, Part 2

2009-10-25T00:16:00.017-05:00

So, I was going to wait until the end of the year to update this list, but now seems as good a time as any. I'll do some sort of best of '09 for year's end.

1. Wale

The promise shown in Nike Boots has been fully realized. Wale's mixtapes, including the most recent Back to the Feature, has shown just how intellectual this guy can get, and everything he's leaked off Attention: Deficit has been fantastic. It's only a couple weeks away, folks. Witness the future.

2. Lil Wayne

Mr. Carter is headed to the bing for the better part of a year now. I wish him all the best, and would council him by pointing out the wonders this could do for his craft. That mind forced to sit behind a wall for a year might yield something truly great. It's no coincidence that he seems to be rapping better than ever at the moment. The No Ceiling mixtape proves that he hasn't lost anything. It would be another Da Drought 3 if not for all the Young Money features. Wayne has the best jokes.

3. Obie Trice

One doesn't hear from Obie too often, but when he decides to drop something, it's decidedly amazing. Still, unless he releases his long awaited album soon, and maybe a mixtape every once and a while, Obie is in danger of drifting into obscurity. Maybe that's what he wants, but I would hate to see a talent like this take himself out of the competition.

4. Mikkey Halsted

Mikkey has definitely put in hours since the last time this list was published. He's prolific with the leaked tracks, getting a more diverse range of production, and has been spreading his namesake by collaborating with just about every Chicago Hip-Hop artist you can imagine. His Uncrowned City label is really becoming a force in the city. The Photo Album remains unreleased, as anticipation builds.

5. Freddie Gibbs

Whoa. I thought this guy was solid before, and then he went and dropped midwestgangstaboxframecadillacmusic. Might be the drop of the year. The production.. The lyrics.. I posted his previous drop earlier this year, and he's got another tape coming in November. Mainstream criticism loves this dude.

Special mention goes to Young Buck, who still has one of the best ears for production and has huge potential on his next album drop. Also, Lupe seems to be coming out of hiding more, and there's always the question of what that Drake album is going to prove. Stay Tuned.

Two-Fisted Whimsy

2009-09-24T20:32:00.004-05:00

I suppose I'm on Twitter now, and I can't entirely justify it. Originally, I signed up and then didn't write a thing for months. then I had to use it to test some code for work, and I appear to be using it to comment on random things I observe in New York. So, yeah: my twoots. I will try not to let it become the traditional tedious stereotype. In fact, I'll try not to twut anything unless Oscar Wilde would be proud to have also twytted it first. That twink.

He had the time of his life

2009-09-15T18:28:00.004-05:00

Yeah Dirty Dancing was great. Ghost was nice. But I always felt he was most appropriately cast as the motivational speaker/kiddie porn kingpin from Donnie Darko. R.I.P.

Libertarian Socialists Unite!

2009-09-09T23:28:00.008-05:00

In my ideal America, the two most prominent parties are the Libertarians and the Socialists. I suspect this would solve a lot of our current problems with public discourse, especially since recent iterations of Republicanism strike me as libertarianism -- but without the ideas (in a similar vein I'd suggest that objectivism is a lot like libertarianism, but without the compassion).

Without going too far into that, I do think there is more concordance between libertarians and socialists than you would initially suspect. In practice, they tend to agree on social freedoms and disagree on economic policy. Fair enough, but why? Well, in practice again, there are assumptions made on both sides about economic results. Presumably much of this could be eliminated, but macroeconomics a science of very few trials and no control groups -- but who said it had to be easy? It seems, though, that there should be some core difference that prompts all this guesswork. I've been turning this over, and I put forward that both libertarianism and socialism can be extended from one root ethical proposition:

Libertarianism: A government is an object, the purpose of which is to guarantee certain rights to its citizens.
Socialism: A government is an object, the purpose of which is to promote the general welfare of its citizens.

You see? Now, very different things can arise from here depending on what rights you guarantee and how you define such a nebulous thing as "general welfare," but firstly we'll consider the point of agreement:

A government is an object.

It's easy to push right past this, but it's quite crucial when you stop to consider what else a government might be. In an authoritarian mindset, government is an absolute, and citizens are subordinate. Ethically the government becomes an end in itself, regardless of its actions. Alternately, one might simply state that government is a collection of people, which is almost always true in some sense, but as a starting principle drives towards an adversarial relationship -- especially when that collection of people begins the collection of taxes. Government as an object, however, is necessarily subordinate to its citizens (presuming we here agree to value people more greatly than objects, yes?). Any powers granted to such a government must be inherently necessary for its purpose. Any other powers are not legitimate powers of government -- any more than a bow-tie is part of a lawn mower.

Next Up: What if Peewee Herman mows your lawn? Also, I work on backing up some assertions.

Hitler Bingo, Books & Booze

2009-09-08T21:32:00.009-05:00

The ad bar is full of hip-hop links again, so I'd better post something. Though I'm glad Alex has kept things from going dead in my absence. Still, probably best not to ogle Teddy K down there for too long.

Firstly, I am chagrined to note that the argument "Hitler: not such a bad guy, really" has been taken up by noted nationalist Pat Buchanan. See Matt Yglesias for one of many possible refutations. But also consider this statement:

Because Hitler wanted to end the war in 1940, almost two years before the trains began to roll to the camps.

Here there is a vague and bewildering implication that the Holocaust could somehow have been avoided by leaving Hitler in power. There are no doubt hypothetical scenarios that might achieve this, but to blame Britain and France strikes me as bizarre. If war had been avoided (somehow), Hitler might have had less territory in which to build concentration camps, but it seems doubtful he would have been less genocidal in general.

Secondly, I was in DC this weekend, which was a good time but also provoked a serendipitous discovery: used books! Shortly before seeing Zach in a somewhat abridged Othello, I discovered the following at the preposterous price of 50 cents each:

Ulysses - James Joyce
A Connecticutt Yankee in King Arthur's Court - Mark Twain
The New American Bartender's Guide - John J. Poister
The Year's Best Science Fiction (1992) - Edited by Gardner Dozois

The first three should require little explanation, but the fourth has also been quite a boon so far. I must admit historical minutia sometimes intrigue me, so I was pleased to find the foreword as a comprehensive "State of the Union" overview of where the sci-fi industry was at the time (including prescient predictions as to the lousiness of the then-new SciFi Channel). I'm only a little way in, but so far "Dust" by Greg Egan is the standout -- a fascinating meditation on artificial consciousness and the perception of patterns. Of course, if sex-crazed Moon colonists and weird neurotoxins are more your style, "Griffin's Egg" by Michael Swanwick is also well-worth reading.

The whole book will be very helpful, I think. Science fiction is my native genre, but it's far too easy to stick to a few well-known names (Asimov, Vonnegut, Gibson, Stephenson, etc.) in an effort to avoid the dreck out there. This is the case with nearly everything, of course -- it's easy to stick with what you know. Probably it should have occurred to me sooner to find an anthology or two, but hey, it's easy to forget about short fiction.

Speaking of things I didn't know, turns out there's a drink called the "Doctor Funk":
Doctor Funk

½ lime
½ lemon juice
1 tsp. sugar syrup
dash grenadine
2-3 oz. dark Jamaica, Haitian, or Martinique rum
Club soda
½ tsp. Pernod or Herbsaint bitters

Clearly this needs to be made soon. I may have to share some of the other 2,199 recipes in this thing as well.

T-Money

2009-08-26T14:04:00.003-05:00

Mufasa!

Alle Zusammen!

2009-08-10T11:18:00.003-05:00

In the spirit of the forklift safety video, Germany continues to provide the best in public service announcement humor. Here are 10 drugs you shouldn't be on while driving. Ins Deutsch!

All Black Everything

2009-08-02T22:25:00.003-05:00

So, The Smoking Section put up some Jay-Z - Kanye verse analysis today. Comparing the two is really a silly exercise as they're nothing alike. But since the issue came up, I'll say that Kanye's awkward delivery moments will forever prevent his verses from reaching the transcendent nature of some of Jay's best. But I think Kanye's nice. I think he's actually getting better and better.

In fact, his much-talked about verse on Jay-Z's new single "Run This Town" may be one of his best ever. And the general consensus seems to be that Kanye murdered his Big Brother on the track.

Now don't get me wrong, Ye killed it. It was a dope verse and it builds as it goes. But I would still say that Jay's first verse on the track is the best one. Here you hear his voice and delivery become one with the music. (Which is masterfully provided by Yeezy and No I.D., a mentor-student partnership that I predict will allow 9/11's Blueprint 3 to finally live up to the original.)

Really, this song as a whole is probably the best thing out right now.

Biden Time

2009-07-28T00:34:00.005-05:00

I'm increasingly confused by criticism of Joe Biden, which seems to be primarily of the form "I agree, but..." The latest bombshell from Shoeless Joe? Russia has problems. Well, okay.

While tact and diplomacy have their place, I find it hard to dislike a guy whose chief vice is being too honest. Would that we had more such men in government.

Koolaide, Kush, And What Else?..

2009-07-23T23:02:00.002-05:00

..Old School Convertibles. Summer trunk music. If you own a car, it should play this whenever it is on.

Download Mixtape | Provided by DatPiff.com

What A Game

2009-07-23T22:57:00.001-05:00

Mark Buehrle is having the best career ever.

Hitler: Overrated?

2009-07-19T15:21:00.005-05:00

So, enough theory. Hitler: Overrated or Underrated? ...
Anyway, I've been trying out this weird little argument lately. It goes like this: aren't we lucky that Hitler was such a terrible artist?

I don't mean, "what if Hitler were accepted into the Vienna academy?" It's likely we would be better off if Hitler, lousy artist or not, had been able to pursue painting. But what if, after being rejected, after becoming Fuhrer, we looked back at his paintings and were forced to recognize genius? This is a "Hitler as van Gogh" hypothesis. Many artists aren't really appreciated until after their death, after all.

Of course, the first time I suggested this, someone asked me how I knew he was such a bad artist... and I had no idea. I was simply going on assumption. Fortunately I was able to find the pages here and here. The gist of it is that Hitler, while having some talent, was basically a hack. He supported himself by painting postcards (by necessity, these are fairly derivative), and while his architectural features are rendered in loving detail, living figures tend to be disproportionate and haphazard.

Third, notice the perspectives. Architectural perspectives are rendered with extreme precision, with almost loving attention to detail; however, people and animals are out of proportion, poorly articulated, and vastly out of scale with the backgrounds. Figures are rendered with wanton disregard for anatomy or accurate animation. This is the primary reason he was rejected by the Vienna School of Fine Arts: "Test drawing unsatisfactory."

So we can reassure ourselves that Hitler was nothing terribly interesting on the art front. What if he had been? I'm not sure how we would handle it. Hitler, in contemporary language, occupies a unique role: he is a historical individual with no redeeming qualities, the nadir of moral expression. And he occurred after the bulk of our moral and historical framework was in place -- Nero and Attila the Hun are less singularly alarming for that reason. What would we do without him? Probably substitute Stalin -- Stalin doesn't have a lot going for him, though he was smarter than Hitler. World War II would have gone quite differently, save for a number of monumentally poor strategic decisions by Hitler.

But switching to Stalin only reframes the question. We seem to need someone to think of as unequivocally bad. In contemporary debate, it's often easy to tar all Democrats or all Republicans, or Obama or Bush* with this brush. Mature positions, in my experience, have fewer and fewer individuals painted as pure black (but plenty of dark gray, certainly), but we can all, seemingly, agree on Hitler. So, in an extremely limited way, we're lucky that there's no particular reason to say "That Hitler guy? not as bad as he seems."

And yet, too many people are out there defending Hitler on wholly irrational grounds. Not many, thankfully, but still too many.

*Seemingly inept and authoritarian, but still no Hitler.

The Over/Under on Underrated Oeuvres

2009-07-19T01:43:00.004-05:00

While I am, as you may have noticed, a big fan of context, I also think that "overrated" and "underrated" are two of the less interesting concepts in criticism. Joe Posnanski adeptly demonstrates the problems with "underrated" as a long-term reputation.

Underrated is a Zen place to be. What I mean by that is you can only be underrated for as long as people do not notice that you are underrated. Once someone starts calling you underrated, you begin to lose your footing. When enough people start calling you underrated, you stop being underrated. And when you become known as the “most underrated anything,” well, the jig is up.

Overrated has slightly different problems. When you say something is overrated, there is a risk that what you are actually saying is that you object to other people enjoying it. It actually directs your point away from whatever it is you object to, and makes it an attack on the fans. Here's the thing: fans are easy targets. You can find idiots in favor of nearly anything; it's very easy, in any sort of public debate, for both sides to trot out opposing idiots as straw men.

The nice thing about this as a logical fallacy is that the designated idiot has no doubt committed all manner of extravagant crimes against logic in the first place, making yours look not so bad. Of course, what happens in the end is that both sides feel free to ignore each other, and you get a nice display of pomp and fury without the risk of any real communication occurring.

An example: Rush Limbaugh is not really worth paying attention to. Some would say he's a big fat idiot. That is perhaps not productive discourse, but I feel relatively comfortable saying that Limbaugh is not acting in good faith. But, for some reason, Limbaugh has been big news lately. He seems to have a certain amount of clout in the GOP, but it's hard to say for sure -- maybe he's just easier to spot nowadays due to the lack obvious leadership in the GOP. But anointing him leader of the GOP is actually an advantage for the Democrats, because it makes the Republicans look crazy. And the gist of the argument becomes, "Rush Limbaugh is overrated." While this is politically useful, it has the downside of focusing even more attention on Limbaugh. So he becomes a bigger deal, gets more coverage, and increasing the perception that he's overrated.

Along the same lines is the practice of reading about celebrities in order to feel outraged at how much coverage they receive. Some people are "famous for being famous," but even originally noteworthy people are sometimes swallowed up by their own fame. Arguably, I am contributing to the problem even now.

But back to my main point: while the mechanisms of these cultural feedback loops are interesting, the contents themselves rarely are. When you claim something is overrated, you're giving a large, nebulous group of people control of the context. While in some cases the overrating has its own significance -- Limbaugh being overrated translates into real political power, for example -- it's still peripheral to the core argument. Eventually, you have to get down the business of explaining why he's wrong (I am assuming, for the purpose of argument, that you can find something to disagree with Rush Limbaugh about).

EDIT: And after that, you have to get down to the real business of explaining why you're right.

Twissa Twis

2009-07-16T23:13:00.006-05:00

Twista can be real nice. His latest Category F5 album is one of those times when he is. The music is good, and I'm interested to see the kind of numbers this release will do. It was independent and I thought the marketing was done well. Twista got real tight with the most popular Chicago hip-hop blog and reaped the benefits with tons of relevant exposure. Furthermore, I think they designed the album to encourage single-track download sales, accomplishing this through a number of diverse and well-executed high-profile features. Fan of Kellz? Then you gotta have that "Yellow Light" track. Kanye nut? Then that"Alright" joint is a must. Gucci and OJ devotee? "Walking On Ice" bangs. Oh yeah, and there's that sweet Akon cut. Twista basically just packed an album together with songs he thought would be hits. Nice work.

If you got the official release, make sure to download this stunner with fellow fast-spitter Tech N9ne that leaked last week. It didn't make the album due to sample-clearance issues. The sample is a Jesus Christ Superstar song. The song is fantastic.

Twista - Problems (Feat. Tech N9ne)

A Case of Mistaken Identity

2009-07-15T02:52:00.004-05:00

The really fortunate thing, when one is playing Devil's Advocate, is that one is not tasked with proving Satan's innocence. Such as thing is by definition impossible. One need merely prove he is not Satan.

See also: A Tale of Two Santas

Whitey: Santa Claus, you stand accused of crimes against humanity. How do you plead?
Bender: Not Santa!
[Farnsworth stands up and points at Bender.]
Farnsworth: There he is again!
[He shoots Bender in the back.]

Conspicuous Signals

2009-07-13T21:27:00.008-05:00

While the Daily Dish is often fascinating, this post troubles me. There are a number of assumptions with troubling consequences. It is itself a response to Matt Yglesias, who regrets that reading a book on the Kindle does not have the same signaling capacity as reading it on paper. Conor Clarke objects to his concern on the basis that it is a desire for "conspicuous consumption." He refutes conspicuous consumption in this fashion:

First, the supply of status in a given society is fixed. If I go from being the 198,745,647th most popular person in the United States to the 198,745,644th most popular person, I must displace some others on the way up. In the game of status, not everyone can be a winner. Second, conspicuous consumption leads to an arms-race mentality that produces wasteful consumption. Every dollar or minute I spend pruning my outfit or adjusting my bookshelf is a dollar or minute that I will not be spending on something intrinsically enjoyable, like writing a blog post.

Firstly, the notion of "status" as a single, linear scale is demonstrably nonsense. Consider the case where the book is Das Kapital, and then consider Atlas Shrugged. Each book will signal something different to different observers, not a flat "+15 status points." The idea of a unified status scale only works if you conflate "status" with "wealth" -- which, to be sure, often occurs in normal cases of conspicuous consumption (indeed, since the Kindle is an expensive luxury, it fits the traditional definition better than any single book). There is a difference between signals which are intended to convey superiority and those which are intended to convey certain values or interests (they may be intertwined, however).

Actually, the question of intent to signal is rather interesting. Yglesias could, if he wished, still purchase the physical copy of the book. Why doesn't he? The Kindle copy is cheaper and more convenient, functionally superior. If he bought the physical book, that would be a wasteful display -- conspicuous consumption.

Secondly and relatedly, Clarke assumes that all outward signs ("outfit...bookshelf") are there only to serve as signs. He seems to discount the possibility that one has read (or even intends to read) the books on one's bookshelf. Now, if the books are there to serve as status symbols, then they are false signals, a representation with no reality -- a lie, if you will. I think we can all agree, without further ado, that we disapprove of liars and especially posers. But why? Well, for one, they are polluting a formerly useful channel of communication.

While everything about us is, to some degree, a signal, books are especially useful in that regard. Signals are often symbols -- they stand for something else, a community, an idea. Your mohawk, my leather jacket, a briefcase -- they suggest things. A book, simply enough, stands for the text between its pages, and all its attendant notions. A well-understood book is very concise in this way. Not to mention, for the book to be at it's most effective, you should be reading it. It requires action and continued effort to display, and this is fundamentally honest. To carry around a book with no intention of reading it -- how sad!

So, a representation with no reality is a lie. Then what is a reality with no representation? Isn't this also dishonest? If I wrap a romance novel in brown paper because I am ashamed of it, there is something amiss. In that case, though, the concealment is a deliberate action on my part. For Yglesias, it is simply the nature of the Kindle that causes the appearance to be separated from the contents. Obviously, the Kindle has many advantages, and I wouldn't judge him for using it, but it does lack a certain intrinsic honesty found in books.

As I mentioned, the problem with signals is that they can be faked. This is the disadvantage of brevity. Some things are easier to fake, however. It is easier to carry one book falsely than to arrange a whole fake bookshelf, and harder still to make sure all those book are well-worn and tastefully annotated (note: but not impossible). The lesson here, however, is not to say "all representations are false", throw up your hands and give up on communicating with other humans. It simply requires that you not take any one signal in isolation. CONTEXT MATTERS.

Now, this does produce something of an argument in favor of "conspicuous consumption," from the observer's point of view. If someone is willing to spend money on something, they must care about it to some degree -- or they care about appearing to care. Sometimes this is good enough. This is how I interpret the custom of wearing a suit to an interview: it doesn't really prove that you're "professional"; it proves that you realize they expect you to look "professional," which is a good first step.

As a final point, Clarke mentions that one can now use Facebook and Twitter to substitute for the "book cover effect" by creating virtual bookshelves and such. These are great (I use one) and have the advantage that you can keep note of books you've borrowed from the library and read (conspicuous non-consumption?). On they other hand, if you're concerned about false signals, they're much easier to fake because, after all, they're free. I concede, however, that free-ness removes the issue of wasteful spending. More importantly though, these programs aren't really a replacement, since they operate on the Internet. Much as I love the Internet, it still pales in comparison to the physical world as a medium for socialization.

In essence, I object to Conor Clarke on the grounds that not all visible activity is conspicuous consumption.

EDIT: The whole blogpile begins with this piece in Vanity Fair, which is interesting but pushes the status/conspicuous consumption angle much more heavily. Clarke is justified in using the term on those grounds, but it was not clear to me from his piece (see, folks? context). Derek Thompson's response to the VF piece is also worth looking at. Everything I argued above still holds, but I may have misrepresented Conor Clarke on the way. Hopefully I can tackle this whole "culture snobbery" thing from another angle soon.

Variation on a Theme

2009-07-09T23:47:00.006-05:00

A possible refinement of "power corrupts...":

Power that is felt to be undeserved engenders feelings of paranoia in the powerful. This paranoia naturally leads to abuse of power, which heightens the sense of guilt/inadequacy, leading to further paranoia, etc.

Only holds true for certain personality types, of course. The possibility of a neurotic, guilt-racked dictator is somewhat intriguing, though. Paranoia and the abuse of power go hand in hand, as in Stalin, Ahmadinejad, Joe McCarthy, and Bush/Cheney (obviously these represent varying levels of abuse).

EDIT: Inspiration for this actually comes from this here Joe Posnanski article on LeBron James/Nike.

Subjectivity

2009-07-06T23:15:00.003-05:00

I am always wracked by sentimentality, in large part because I demand to live in a context rich with emotional meaning. I invest everything around me with a narrative, or a place in a larger narrative, until everything is more or less humming with crucial purpose. You may be wondering, what does this have to do with Red Faction?

This piece on Penny Arcade touches on a number of things I've been going on about lately (or will be going on about shortly), mainly a certain kind of subjectivity in art. Video games are especially apt in this way, since the actions of the player change the content of the game in a much more recognizable way than, for example, how one approaches a painting.

Also, Tycho is an excellent writer, so touches on these things much more gracefully than I would. This, as my brother once said to me, is the problem of being a philosopher rather than a poet -- that a poet can say things more elegantly, more quickly than a philosopher can. On the other hand, as a philosopher one can explain things at greater depth. I have, I think, more ability with poetry, but in any case I find it difficult to be both at once.

Also, I will say Casey has more grace with philosophy than I do, and his blog is well worth reading.

R.I.P.

2009-07-05T08:16:00.001-05:00

"Love never die, but it can kill you." - Dwayne Carter

And he can't do this and he don't do that.

2009-06-30T11:08:00.005-05:00

I respect this man. Not so much as a rapper. But definitely behind the boards. Also, he's always seemed a bit unhinged and I hear he's into guns. Plus, look how nice those Jordans are.

This song here is just about one year old. It got some rotation in the fall, mostly at parties with lots of drunk girls. It came so quickly on the heels of Lollipop and had no better lyrics that I largely dismissed the track. But coming back to it now, I have found appreciation. Namely, that's a damn good sample of a song right there. You have taken the basic elements of Lollipop and reworked them into an entirely different sound. Also, I have no idea what kind of bass he's using here, but that shit knocks down walls. daviddaviddaviddaviddaviddavidbanner.

You can watch the video on YouTube, but I can't seem to embed it in this country. I can, however, give you the instrumental, just in case you need to get some sick flow off your chest this morning.

R.I.P.

2009-06-25T22:32:00.002-05:00

Shocking, to be sure.

At the risk of sounding terrible, I'm going to go on record as saying that it's a good thing he passed. Let's face it, the man's life was pretty much locked in downward spiral mode. Now we can remember him as he was, instead of as decrepit.

I Need You

2009-06-20T04:35:00.005-05:00

Ok. I'm just going to come out and say it again for everyone who didn't hear me last time. Obie Trice is the best rapper alive. To me, he takes all the best aspects of Biggie, Jay, and Wayne and adds something great of his own on top of that. Excellent use of alliteration, wordplay, and clustered rhymes make his verses some of the most interesting in the game. Plus, he's as real as they come and currently has a bullet in his brain. You want to tell him he's not the best?

He's looking for recognition in this latest drop. Talking about the complexities of taking his label private, Obie calls on his fans and internet supporters to spread the word about his greatness. Just doing my part.

Obie Trice - I Need You (Freestyle)

Victory Consistently

2009-06-16T23:57:00.006-05:00

Wayne's rock music is an odd thing. It doesn't really appeal to me. Some songs are kind of catchy, but I it isn't a genre I would find myself listening to very often. That said, I can see huge potential for this sound on teenybopping little white kids. This is important for two reasons: 1) these are pretty much the only people who control whether CDs go multi-platinum anymore because their parents buy them as presents. 2) wayne's rock would be a "pop" music with more musical drive and talent behind it than your Jonas Bros or Miley Cyrus holla at mes.

But I really came here today to share this track with you:

Lil Wayne - No Quitter, Go Getter

It is not a rock song.

The fact that Wayne is still capable of dropping flows like these makes the world a better place. Now, I am not the type of person who transcribes lyrics, but after listening to this song a few times, I just had to see the words in front of me. Verse one is here for the sake of brevity, but the whole track operates at this level.

i’m goin for the goal.

my heart is in control.

my mind is on succeed.

and i am in the lead.

don’t buy into the schemes,

the science or stratege.

just giant n.u.t.’s

bring triumph and belief.

i’m reliant, or redeem,

never tired or fatigued,

never defiant to my team,

never lyin on da thing,

until i’m lyin on da thing

hooked to wires and things.

imma die as a king.

if i don’t do it now,

i’m gonna try it again,

and when i do accomplish it,

i’m gonna try it again.

i’m a riot—insane.

i’m a lion, my mane

hangs

down to my strings,

and they’re tied to the game.

i stay dry when it rains.

i’m tired of the fame.

got everything to gain,

and i’m proud of the pain,

the bride in the plain,

the wise and the strange.

denied by the same.

besides, we’re the same.

who’s guiding the train?

who’s flying the plane?

who’s driving the lane?

who dies when it bang?

who fires when it bang?

who lies in the aim?

two lives in the drain.

who cries when he sang?

you hide, but you can’t.

you high, but you ain’t.

i advise you to think.

you’ll find what you can’t.

revive what you taint.

survive what you bring.

supersize what you shrank,

the fries and the drank.

admired as a saint,

defined by my rank,

combined with my strength,

my time and my length.

imma iron out the kinks.

yes i’m on a rink,

and in the eye of a wink,

imma retire in a bank.

The song is also dedicated to Michael Phelps, which is great stuff, because I approve wholeheartedly of all of Phelps' post-Olympic recreational activities. Did you know he's writing a children's book?

It's A Fiasco

2009-06-16T07:17:00.008-05:00

So Lupe seems to finally be doing what I always hoped he would--switch up his delivery a little. I always believed that the West Side native had the imagery and lyrical talent to do big things, and his overall musical sound and beat selection were on point. It was just that he kinda sounded the same on most of his songs. He sounded too much like he was reading. Yeah, he's fast, but it wasn't really an interesting fast--more of a drone. This 1st drop from his next full-length, though, this is the business. Plus he's dressing like a full-blown hipster now, which is an infinitely better look than his previous coach potato vibe.

Lupe Fiasco - Shining Down (Feat. Matthew Santos) - (No more link, folks. Lupe wants people to drop .99 on this one.)

No comment on the autotune. Or Matthew Santos, for that matter.

This song just came on in my itunes after. Considering the Young Jeezy post below, I thought I'd add it. This verse really illustrates Jeezy's improvement. Young Buck's is my favorite, though.

Also, Real Things

2009-06-16T01:18:00.002-05:00

Apparently Twitter is good for something. Powerful stuff.

While it may not mean much, the protesters in Iran have my deepest sympathy and admiration.

On Hostile Assumptions

2009-06-15T23:45:00.005-05:00

Not to callously take advantage of current events, but the current kerfuffle over Letterman's Palin joke precisely proves my point about hostile audiences. Letterman made a joke about Palin's daughter being knocked-up by A-Rod, without specifying which daughter. Palin's response refers to "sexually-perverted comments made by a 62-year-old male celebrity aimed at a 14-year-old girl."

This is only a reasonable response if one begins from the assumption "Dave Letterman is a pedophile," or at the very least "Dave Letterman is an enemy seeking to cause me harm." This sort of cultural paranoia is, I repeat and repeat, poisonous to real communication.

In short, hostility is not an appropriate response to ambiguity.

Letterman's apology is actually quite well-done, since he apologizes for poor execution of the joke rather than any real hostility (presumably there is none). When one is in entertainment, and speaking publicly, one takes on a responsibility to be understood, so this is fair. Of course, with a truly hostile audience, it's impossible to fulfill this responsibility. As such, Letterman's apology makes the charitable assumption that Palin's response was derived from confusion rather than malice.

So yeah, in these terms, Letterman has the moral high ground here.

Alcoholism + Productivity

2009-06-15T01:06:00.002-05:00

Er, so to speak. Over the course of the weekend, I put together the ingredients to make a 1-gallon batch of mead, based on these directions. This was somewhat harder than I anticipated. I went to four grocery stores in my neighborhood, and all had approximately the same set of baking supplies -- and no yeast. Bit of an obstacle. Today I took the subway down to Columbus Circle to find the Whole Foods, the closest thing to a real grocery store.

This is one of the maddening things about New York -- upper Manhattan anyway. The population density means it can support an immense number of businesses, but due to the limitations on space, each one of them is laughably small. Instead of the wide selection you see at a standard Chicago or (God help you) suburban supermarket, you get several copies of the same limited selection. Most businesses have an incentive to set themselves apart (restaurants, for example), but grocery stores don't seem to have that pressure on them.

Anyway, I went to the spacious, gleaming Whole Foods and contemplated the splendid nonsense of capitalism:
-On entry, I was nearly annihilated by the vast selection of smelly cheeses available from the deli. Potent indeed.
-There is less price variation between different qualities of food than there is between different qualities of cookware ($16 seems like a lot for a colander, even if it is square).
-Beer selection was good, more expensive than supermarket-price, but cheaper than bodega-price. Yuengling was an unexpected steal at $6 per 6-pack.

In the end, I walked out with both yeast and beer (Yuengling of course). Mead-making is successful so far: the yeast seems to have taken hold. This gives me three of four months to come up with terrible Viking-themed ideas for what to do with it. Skål!

Younger Than Ever

2009-06-12T10:10:00.005-05:00

I know Maciej has already expressed his love for Jeezy's The Recession album that came out at the end of 2008. He said that the trap star seemed to be improving lyrically. I agreed with that assessment, and I'm happy to say that things just keep getting better. This latest mixtape is pure fire all the way through. In fact, I think the title track might be the best verse Jeezy's ever laid.

My only complaint is with the mixing. There was a no DJ version of this floating around with significantly better sound quality and none of those annoying drops. I'm guessing DJ Folk got it pulled. But DJs should really get the point by now. Fans want the music, not your annoying voice shouting catch-phrases at twice the volume of the actual track. I know you want your name out there, but if you're really looking for respect: 1) don't sacrifice sound quality for your own jabbering. 2) make your drops sound good. And really, excessive rewinding does not demonstrate your mixing skill. It just makes me not listen to that track again. Anyway.

Download Mixtape | Provided by DatPiff.com

Gangsta Gibbs

2009-06-11T08:36:00.005-05:00

So I've gotten behind on some things I've wanted to post because apparently blogger didn't make it through the Great China Firewall. Back in Macau, though. Glad to see Pat held things down with baby seal jokes.

This tape right here, though. This should be your soundtrack for the summer. Light the sticky and bump it in the whip on a sunny day.

Gary's best kept secret.

Download Mixtape | Provided by DatPiff.com

Proposal on Conservativism

2009-06-10T00:34:00.002-05:00

As I understand, there are two major narratives which seem to mar conservative thinking in the present.

1) Individual vs. Government power: the individual should be preferred to the state, but the conservative narrative ignores the difference between the actual, human individual (the citizen) and the abstract, corporate "individual". Government is not the only method of concentrating power.

2) Cultural Unity vs. The Other: as I said previously, a narrow cultural identity is poisonous in a democracy. As far as conservatives recognize this, they seem intent on destroying other cultural identities through legislation. Again, this is counterproductive. If two cultures are really incapable of compromise, democracy is impossible and civil war must result. If some democratic compromise is possible, then the cultures share key values and it behooves us to recognize this.

On Authorship

2009-06-08T22:47:00.003-05:00

Any high school English student will try to tell you what the author meant.
Any college English student can tell you that this doesn't really matter.
Any author will tell you this is the most terrifying thing about writing.

(Use of the style of aphorism borrowed from Nietzsche by way of my brother.)

Humanism and Anti-Humanism

2009-06-04T20:47:00.004-05:00

A problem I've been working on:

As a humanist, I believe in the brotherhood of humanity. That is, the shared identity of being human is primary, and I have no intrinsic quarrel with any other person. But the humanist must be ready to deal with the anti-humanist, generally the chauvinist (who believes in the irrational superiority of his own group).

Now, irrationality does not suggest inferiority. Cultural identity is axiomatic to the chauvinist, just as human identity is to the humanist (I've been very concerned about cultural identities lately, for this reason). But at the most extreme, the chauvinist is prepared to treat the humanist as an enemy based on what the humanist takes to be a trivial detail. What is the appropriate response?

Ethically, the humanist is obliged to be reasonable for as long as possible; these things are rarely cut and dried, and many things that can be seen as conflict are merely failures to communicate. Again, in the most extreme case, rationality no longer plays a role -- we've entered into a sort of Hobbesian state of war between human and human. This may be obvious upon consideration, but peace and rationality rely on mutual consent -- there is no such thing as a unilateral peace.

At this breakdown, there are two choices. One gives primacy to self-defense; once the state of war is entered, one may take any action necessary to defend oneself or others from harm (harm to others must be considered harm to the humanist). This gives rise to the notion that the good are obliged to be dangerous.

The other option is pacifism, which rejects the state of war even at this point. And who is to say this is incorrect? I have mentioned the power of non-violence in discovering the humanity of the oppressor (the anti-humanist is still human at all times). A purely pacifist approach may be going even further, though.

Does the pacifist err in refusing to separate the just cause from the unjust? Or does he achieve something greater, by means of a leap of faith? I don't know that it can be determined. In practicality, one rarely deals with this momentous choice. Still, I think it is informative in how one identifies and deals with opposition of all stripes.

Some Jokes About Jokes

2009-06-03T02:22:00.003-05:00

Okay, so I've got this joke, and I think it's great, but I can't tell it to people. They just stare at me, most of them. It kills with the right crowd, though. Problem is, the right crowd is computational linguists. Still, humble as I am, I may have written the world's best Noam Chomsky joke. So let's talk about jokes.

Now, we're all familiar, I hope, with this old chestnut:

Two guys walk into a bar. One of them ducks.

At root, it's just a pun on the two meanings of bar. But it's also a joke about jokes, because it wouldn't be funny except for a heaping pile of even older chestnuts in which, you know, two guys walk into a bar. In a strange sort of parallelism, there's also a joke about a duck who walks into a bar. That one's not important, though.

My favorite joke is the one that starts like this:

A baby seal walks into a club...

Actually, it ends like that, too. You don't know awkward until you're standing in front of your co-workers at the holiday party, and the head of the company you just joined says, "Well, go on." That's the risk you run when all your jokes play on what the audience expects from a joke. That aside, it's a great joke: I've never seen another that combines brevity, meta-humor, and brutality towards adorable animals in quite the same way.

Now for Noam Chomsky. He's got this sentence about grammar:

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

Got that? Well, don't worry; it's meant to be a demonstration of how a sentence can be grammatically sound, but not have any semantic meaning. The parts of speech are correct, but green things can't be colorless, ideas don't have color nor do they sleep, and if they did they couldn't sleep furiously. Granted, if you work hard enough with figurative meanings, you can come up with something (there have been competitions), but let's just say it's meaningless.

And here's where I work my "magic":

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. One of them ducks.

I'm telling you, it kills with linguists... Hopefully that was funny, because now I'm going to explain it. As we all know, any joke properly explained ceases to be funny. So this is your last chance. Note that both the "joke" and "non-joke" versions are equally meaningless in an objective sense, but somehow one of them is a joke, and the other isn't. The first version is a bit of nonsense, while the second is two bits of nonsense grafted together, creating a joke, which you might say is just a different kind of nonsense. Of course, the crucial thing is that the audience knows the contexts of both halves of the joke, and the way that those clash creates the humor. You can analyze this joke on as many layers as you want, and I think that's funny too, given that the original statement is from someone looking into the minute details of how language works... I like this joke more than is strictly healthy, I think.

So I'll leave you with one more joke (not mine) that might be about linguistics. It's kind of hard to say:

How do you tell the difference between a duck?
One of its legs are both the same.

Political Correctness

2009-05-27T23:17:00.003-05:00

Thank goodness for sports. If it weren't for them, nationalism would be a much messier affair than it is these days. Have you noticed that there is not one really competent soccer team in the Middle East? Food for thought.

Anyway, I bring this up because Yahoo Sports columnist Mike Silver recently stepped into the "rename the Redskins" hornet's nest, and received the predictable backlash. I essentially agree with him, but I want to take a closer look at the oft-used pejorative "politically correct." For one thing, the history of the term is fascinating: it was mainly used as a term of self-deprecation among Leftists until the 90s, when it was seized by conservatives in order to... deprecate the Left. Charming, no?

What is accused in the label of "politically correct" is that the speaker is either too timid to risk giving offense (conversely, that someone using the term is being more forthright), or is deliberately attempting to undermine cultural (American, usually) values. The criticism directed at Silver hits both points, but since he obviously expected the topic to be controversial, the second criteria is more interesting. The problem is one of language. Among Redskins fans, the word "redskin" has quite positive connotations. They want Redskins to succeed and are proud to be associated with the word. Among Native Americans, and, frankly, most everyone else in the country, it's understood to be a racial slur directed at a historically-abused minority. Most moral failures have at their root failures of imagination. Although it must be said that what we've got here is failure to communicate.

Of course, there's a reason the name has stuck around for this long. We go to sports to sublimate our nationalism, after all. Sports and teams are deeply mythological and rely heavily on tradition, and most people are fans from a young age. Hence, the symbols involved are quite intransigent. People don't like to change what they see as their identity, no matter how outwardly nonsensical it may be. But then, why can't we all just accept that when they say "redskin," they mean something completely different? Well, we could, in theory, but the Redskins are a nationally visible team. The use of the term is not really private to Redskins fans. And all told, even the most fervent Redskin fan is probably not as culturally attached to it as Native Americans are to their ancestry.

As Americans (I presume), we basically all speak English. Or rather, the American dialect of English. Or a New York or Chicago or Tennessee dialect of English. Or New York Jewish English or New York Dominican English. And, let's face it, the finer connotations of words are going to vary from person to person. Hence, the goal of most "politically correct" language is to be publically correct -- to have a meaning which is roughly coherent across most possible listeners. There is an essential guiding principle in this case, which I recall from my college RA:

"In public, people can see and hear you."
-Jakob van Santen

Specifically, public speech is targeted to the widest possible audience, and in a culturally diverse setting there may be a very restrictive subset of the language that is useful. Language may be further constrained by the expected attitude of the listener. Laws and regulations must be worded with the utmost care, on the assumption that someone may try to distort or negate the intention of the law. And again, it must apply equally in all jurisdictions and even time periods. Laws often define their own terms for this reason. In this respect, the Bill of Rights contains our most poorly written laws. Going even further, our communication with computers, who as yet have no culture whatsoever, must ultimately be extremely precise. In the case where the listener assumes a hostile intent in every statement (for example, Slashdot commentators), constructive communication is basically impossible.

This is all well and good. The problem with "politically correct" as we know it, is when speakers try to apply this to real cultural incompatibilities -- gay marriage, let's say. When the concept itself has opposite connotations to two groups, there is no proper neutral term. Attempts to create one will dissolve into nonsense. Or I would say so, although the persistence of civil unions as the "let's do it but say we didn't" option would seem to belie this.

This is problematic, but it seems to me that certain critics aren't really against politically correct language so much as the lack of cultural unity that makes it necessary. The solution on the Right in recent decades has been an attempt to force a common culture legislatively (Paul Krugman corroborates). Of course, this actually serves only to drive the subcultures involved further apart, a destroy lines of communication. In the long term, this is poisonous to democratic governance (cf. Yugoslavia). To be fair though, this blind spot to subjectivity in language is not unknown on the Left either; it just hasn't been organized to the same extent.

Of course, my solution is that we should all think twice before assuming the worst of people. Bonkers, I know.

R.I.P. Dolla

2009-05-19T09:12:00.006-05:00

Can't say I saw this one coming. Who do you expect a lankey georgian drawling rapper/singer to have beef with? Poor kid got one in the head in Beverly Hills, waiting for the valet after a trip to the mall with a buddy, while he was in L.A. to record his debut album for Akon's Konvict label. Does it get any worse than that? Word is they tracked down the shooter, still armed, in L.A.X.

Last year Dolla put out a single called "Make A Toast." I originally discovered it on a bootleg Wayne mixtape, and ended up bumping it wherever I could for a good minute. It was one of those songs that comes to mean larger things for you and had a sound that seemed as mournful as it was celebratory. And there's this part before the last verse where Dolla starts singing. It's real delicate-like, but it gets me every time. Dude had potential.

Make A Toast - Dolla

bonus trivia side note: he was born in tha chi

R.I.P. Pimp C

2009-05-18T07:12:00.001-05:00

it better like this? i think so.

Download Mixtape | Provided by DatPiff.com

Non-Violence

2009-05-12T21:19:00.003-05:00

In non-violence, the method of the oppressed is to confront the oppressor with his own humanity. Whosoever strikes them down strikes down himself, and claims willingly the title of monster and enemy-of-humanity. That such a method can prove effective speaks firstly to the unfathomable courage of the oppressed, but also to the basic decency of the oppressor.

...

The above is a quick paragraph I wrote on the plane this weekend. I don't know that it says anything surprising, but it is my hope that it does so with some style and brevity. Interestingly, the below-mentioned Schmitt argues non-violence is madness and humanism is essentially meaningless.

Authoritarian Morals

2009-05-12T20:38:00.005-05:00

From The Concept of the Political, by Carl Schmitt, which (full disclosure) I have yet to finish:

The numerous modifications and variations of this anthropological distinction of good and evil are not reviewed here in detail. Evil may appear as corruption, weakness, cowardice, stupidity, or also as brutality, sensuality, vitality, irrationality, and so on. Goodness may appear in corresponding variations as reasonableness, perfectibility, the capacity of being manipulated, of being taught, peaceful, and so forth.

Italics mine. This quote is somewhat tangential to Schmitt's argument about "the political" as a sphere apart from morals, economics, etc., but some of these concepts seem to be under the wrong heading. Having weakness and vitality together seems fully incoherent, and perhaps Schmitt means to challenge the universality of morals. Nonetheless, given an authoritarian perspective, these make more sense; that "the capacity of being manipulated" is certainly desirable from the perspective of the powerful, and would make the existence of the unified state that Schmitt speaks of much easier.

Not surprisingly, Schmitt speaks of Nietzsche and Hobbes together as philosophers who believe men are "basically evil", despite the fact that their definitions of "good" and "evil" are not very compatible. Of course, Nietzsche speaks repeatedly of ranking and ordering and command. Having last read Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche becomes especially problematic, but The Genealogy of Morals, if I recall, provides better justification.

But while the varieties of "evil" offered are contradictory, the varieties of "good" all seem to deal with malleability or lack of power. Goodness and harmlessness are essentially the same thing, from Schmitt's perspective. I argue that this can only speak to a philosophy of living in terror of others. Essentially this is a more comprehensive way of saying that humanity is basically evil -- that anyone capable of doing harm will do so.

By my thinking, if evil exists, the good are obliged to be dangerous. Evil/selfishness/sociopathy are characteristics which intend the accumulation of power without regard for the means, and naturally must impose themselves on others through force and manipulation. Hence, the good are compelled to be capable of resistance on behalf of themselves and others. Said resistance may take organized form, depending on the nature of the threat, but to do so in a compulsory, authoritarian fashion is extremely problematic, if we take human life, freedom, and happiness as paramount. "Reasonability" here is a good because it allows for cooperation among peers and the recognition of a common threat -- rational thinking as a kind of lingua franca, not as purely self-interested "economic rationalism."

Nietzsche is Wasted on Nihilists

2009-04-27T20:10:00.003-05:00

Nietzsche suggests a love of versucher, the experimenter, the one who attempts. To love all that is in motion in man. "A dangerous going forward, a dangerous going back," says Nietzsche. To love the brave for their tendency to be destroyed, to love the free for their will to become lost. To love the incomplete that they are always in the moment of creation. To maintain fervently the right of refusal ("hardness!" cries Nietzsche, "severity! command!") because one must drink so deeply of all that is felt and heard and said. To leap in one fatal moment from the love of the incomplete to the love of the broken...
For me there is a constant temptation, passing under the city of New York, that I should stop and question one who is proclaiming damnation -- who spends his days under the earth. Some days there is the will to defy him, to match him madness for madness. But in the truest and most dangerous moments -- to sit and speak and understand him, out of a deep and somehow savage desire, to heal the wounded.

2009-04-25T01:30:00.001-05:00

obie's got the most talent. listen.

Download Mixtape | Provided by DatPiff.com

Offi ssah BAWWSE

2009-04-22T05:27:00.005-05:00

that's what i think rick ross should change his name to. i also think that his entire new album sounds like a 1970s James Bond movie . personally, i think that's fantastic work. too bad his career's a punchline.

Clever

2009-04-18T19:10:00.002-05:00

As I may have mentioned, I work at a hedge fund, and I work as a computer programmer. I don't say this to brag -- there's not much to brag about, really -- but there should be some fairly smart folks around me. That said, this is cleverest thing I saw all week:

As I was leaving yesterday, one of the building staff was standing near the elevators with carpet-cleaning equipment. I was about to step into the open elevator, but he told me "Don't take that one, it'll be slow. I pushed all the buttons." Why? "So it doesn't come back." He had been tasked with cleaning all the elevators, but had no special control over which elevator would come when he hit the call buttons. So he needed to make sure a clean elevator wouldn't show up again for a while. In a 22-story building, hitting all the buttons is a pretty good solution.

Dresden Codak

2009-04-16T20:47:00.003-05:00

You should look into it. It is pretty much the reason that I am intrigued by trans-humanism as a nascent philosophy. Also, very few webcomics tackle science, myth, and surreal comedy in quite the same way. It's probably not for everyone, but if you are fascinated by robots or think philosophy can be hilarious, especially when cast in terms of a role-playing game... it's probably your cup of tea.

Listing, Part 2

2009-04-13T11:05:00.011-05:00

As promised, I present to you the 5 Hottest Producers in the game right now. I say "hottest" to avoid any quibbles about "catalogue." Production's all about the now. So with apologies to DJ Premier and Dr. Dre (Dre, if you ever decide to drop Detox instead of phoning in beats for Em, we'll talk), let's begin.

1. Kanye West

Let's face it; he's always going to be remembered as a better producer than rapper, and he is. I've enjoyed every stage of Ye's production career so far, and so has the general public. Even those right-minded people who thought his singing on 808s & Heartbreak was pansy couldn't say the production wasn't on point. With no signs of stopping, looks like Yeezy's breaking the mold on this one, and anyone who complains that he samples too much needs to jump off something tall and try to land on their head. Tracklist:

-Love Lockdown

-Flashing Lights

-Let The Beat Build, Lil Wayne

-Swagga Like Us, Everyone

-I Poke Her Face, Kid Cudi

2. Dion Wilson - a.k.a. No I.D.

First the student, then the mentor. Rap godfather of the Chi, No I.D.'s best work has come recently, in my opinion. Namely, his yet fully public work with Mikkey Halsted. He has described it in interviews as his symphony and from what I've heard, it certainly sounds like nothing else and utterly fantastic. Props to dude for his recent mainstream acclaim on Jigga's last album and the rumors he helped Kanye with most of the upcoming The Blueprint 3. Tracklist:

-See You In My Nightmares, Kanye West

-Karma, Mikkey Halsted

-Put It On Ya, Plies

-Rebel To America, Mikkey Halsted

-Success, Jay-Z

3. Polow-Freache Jamal Fincher Jones - a.k.a. Polow da Don

So we all know Love In This Club was crazy, and I don't really care that he used GarageBand; that's what it's there for. You're just mad you didn't figure it out first. He's also got Rich Boy under his belt, which you might call his symphony. Yeah, maybe a lot of his production is geared toward singers, but face it, rappers love his beats. What do you think remixes are for? Tracklist:

-Let's Get This Paper, Rich Boy

-Love In This Club, Usher

-Role Models, Rich Boy

-Turnin Me On, Keri Hilson

-Forever, Chris Brown

4. Marcello Valenzano and Andre Christopher Lyon - a.k.a. Cool & Dre

These two have really had a magic touch of late and the work they've done down south has given them a whole bag full of hits. They're best when they're working with epic sounds, and the end result of most of their tracks are some wicked freestyle beats, hence the popularity of their group tracks. Listen. Tracklist:

-Brown Paper Bag, DJ Khaled and Friends

-My Life, The Game

-Hot Revolver, Lil Wayne

-Blown, Busta Rhymes

-All My Life, Jay Rock

5. Christopher Gholsen - a.k.a. Drumma Boy

This guy has a mad musical background and it really comes through in the production. You can tell he likes classical music. That synth crescendo you've been hearing at the beginning of your favorite tracks? Yep, that's your boy. He's making some of the most fun music out right now. Tracklist:

-Watch Dis, Plies

-I'm Da Man, Plies

-Put On, Young Jeezy

-My Life, Your Entertainment, T.I.

-Lost, Gorilla Zoe

Shout out to J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League. Y'all made Rick Ross' career; just got squeezed out here. Dem beats are buttery!

Sully'd Ethics

2009-04-07T20:48:00.004-05:00

Remember Captain Chesley Sullenberger, hero of New York?

Now, normally, you would expect this blog post to be about his recently discovered coke habit, or those prostitutes he murdered back in the 80s. Why bring up a hero again if not to tear him back down? Travesty can be so satisfying, as can backlash. Hence my misleading photoshop.

But instead I'm going to talk about ethics. Zach and I have discussed this a few times, and Zach's main theme has been that Sullenberger is not a hero -- or at least did not deserve the hyperbole of the time -- because he was "just doing his job."

This much is true. Sullenberger did no more than his duty. He gave up nothing, made no extraordinary sacrifice. Had circumstances required that Sullenberger die to save the lives of his passengers, there could be no question of his heroism. But there was no call for that. It's possible that Sullenberger landed the plane purely for his own survival, and we cannot speak to his motives with certainty. By becoming a pilot, he agreed to take responsibility for all those on the plane. It is only the difficult circumstances he was placed in that separate him from other pilots.

On the other hand, he did no less than his duty. When put to the test, he proved he was capable of fulfilling it. Certainly, no fault can be found with his behavior. And this, it seems clear, led in a large part to his media popularity. It is much easier to celebrate the conclusively, concretely proven than the abstract. It may well be that Sullenberger is not of exceptional skill -- but I think this plays a part as well. There is a certain hunger for reassurance in air travel, where the passenger has no control. The "Miracle on the Hudson" would seem to demonstrate that the faith we have in pilots is not misplaced, and they are all dedicated, courageous men and women. But we only have the one concrete example, who receives all the praise that is due to the anonymous pilot. My other suspicion is that, as a society, we find it easier to celebrate great skill than heroism in the altruistic sense. Note the profound warping of ethics around figures in sports -- and the feverish denunciations when they break some normally insignificant taboo.

And yet, Sullenberger deserves more ethical credit for "just doing his job" than does the average third-baseman. A commercial pilot does take responsibility for thousands of lives over the course of a year, and this should be respected. I don't mean to overly dramaticize this -- commercial aviation is extremely safe, and any of us takes up a similar duty when driving a car. The ethical significance is not really in the landing of the plane, but in the willingness to take up and the ability to carry out the duty. It is only a twist of fate that Sullenberger was put in situation to demonstrate this. Although from what we now know of him, he does seem to be especially knowledgeable and qualified -- top pilot in his class, master's degree, speaker for safety organizations. All this is not without merit, and it does give a certain unshakeable feeling that precidely the right person was called upon to save the day.

And in an almost-too-pat-to-be-believed coincidence, Sullenberger is reported to have lost a book on professional ethics when the plane went down -- which he then reported dutifully to the library from which he borrowed it. If you can wrap your brain around that one, it does speak rather highly of his conscientiousness.

And this is more or less a long-winded attempt to say that yes, he deserves praise, but probably not much more than any of a legion of less-easily-noticed heroes. Like they say, the squeaky wheel gets the parade. And sometimes the squeaky wheel is an indication that you won't be able to lower the landing gear, forcing a hair-raising, two-fisted belly landing. The metaphor gets a bit confused here, but my point stands.

On a slightly tangential point, I'm inclined to think that most really heroic figures can't conceive of it as anything other than "doing their job." If one is secure in one's morals, there is a strong sense that one has no choice to do otherwise. There is plenty of room for doubt and temptation, of course, but the rubber band always snap back. Obviously, I have a very obligation-centered view of ethics, and make no claims to heroism (and don't trust anyone who would), but that is my sense of how it ought to work.

Of course, the most ethical thing you can do now is to scroll down the page and read Alex's hip-hop post, if you haven't already -- Unless doing so would prevent you from saving that busload of third-graders from that tank of sharks. In that case, use your own best judgement.

Listing

2009-04-06T11:21:00.013-05:00

As far as I can tell, the only way one is allowed discuss Hip-Hop is through lists. Therefore, let's jump right into the meat of it. I give you the five best rappers alive. This is a fluid list; artists are always one bad career move or bus slam away from falling into obscurity and/or the grave. A quick note of criteria. To be the best alive you have to be:

1) alive.

2) prolific.

3) relevant.

4) talented.

1. Obie Trice

Detroit is filled with great rappers, but perhaps none have the raw talent of O. Trice. His flows are unparalleled and his wordplay never gets boring. A platinum-selling artist, the two albums he dropped on shady records are classics, especially Second Round's On Me. The mixtapes he did with DJ Whoo Kidd are equally impressive. Not to mention he's as real as they come. Now that he's free from Interscope's stifling bureaucracy, he can pursue his own projects, so hopefully we'll be getting a lot more product from him in the future. Look for his album Bottom's Up to drop on his new Worldwide Hustle label this year.

I put together a tape of some of his rarer tracks:

Download Mixtape | Provided by DatPiff.com

2. Eminem

Remember what I said about Detroit? The white boy always brings the pain, and is the closest thing the game has to a relevant legend since Jay-Z got bored and started watching movies. Em's production slowed to a faint trickle through all his rehab business, but the new album (Relapse, for those of you who live under rocks) is slated for May and with public anticipation bubbling over, the next rapper on this list is about to learn a thing or two about record sales. To prepare yourself for the new Em, check out some rare old Em--his first LP with some funky beats and a laid back flow that marks the time before he rapped about the occult:

Download Mixtape | Provided by DatPiff.com

3. Lil Wayne

People love to hate on this guy, which shows you just how big he's become. Y'all know his story by now. Personally I think he's a fascinating experiment--literally raised by the Hip-Hop industry. The formula worked after over a decade of solid grind, and Weezy went multi-plat despite a leaked album. Tha Carter 1 & 2 are classics and dude produces music at Makavelli speeds, showing no sign of slowing. I don't think people can deny it anymore; he's a game changer. The ante has been upped for every rapper operating in the age of the Internet. The latest to leak:

Download Mixtape | Provided by DatPiff.com

4. Mikkey Halsted

This list just keeps building on itself. Wayne cited this dude as one of his biggest influences--moreso than Gille The Kid, who claimed to have ghostwritten for Weezy. Mikkey's story is an interesting one. Kanye did his demo tape and they were both signed by Cash Money, but Yeezy dipped off to The Roc and fame at the last minute. Mikkey, meanwhile, who was slated to be Juvi's replacement, recorded a lot of tracks that got locked away in a vault by the much maligned Birdman. He's back, though, and is more poetic than anyone out there. He's more than buzzworthy in the Chi, and when his No ID-produced Chicago: The Photo Album sees release on a major label in the near future, dude's gonna blow up. Till then, check out his flawless mixtape:

Download Mixtape | Provided by DatPiff.com

5. Plies

If you think my list loses credibility by including this man, you can go curl up in your bed and cry about your favorite genre while you listen to Nas through expensive headphones. Plies is hot, he's getting some of the most interesting production around right now and he released three full-length studio albums in a year and a half (Definition of Real is my personal fav). Some chide him for his often monosyllabic rhyming, but I think he's really coming into his own. No one does charming, levelheaded vulgarity like this guy. His earliest records are bangers:

Download Mixtape | Provided by DatPiff.com

There's more to come. Production's next.

Wha?

2009-04-01T21:12:00.004-05:00

Well, this is a real kick in the teeth for my "businesses are sociopaths" theory.

Walgreen's to Treat the Unemployed and Uninsured for Free

Granted, it is fabulous marketing -- I didn't even know Walgreen's had in-store clinics -- and it doesn't cover everything, but this still boggles my mind. Actually, it's this and the fact that Pepsi literally clothed the huddled masses at the Obama inauguration, while the Boy Scouts handed out shoddy little flags. I don't have very high expectations of the Boy Scouts either, but still.

Obviously, there are exceptions to every rule, but even if Walgreen's is doing this for purely nefarious reasons, such as to build brand loyalty among those who can't afford care anyway, it's a very positive sign. If ethics are at such a premium with the public that companies find it advantageous to do this sort of thing, then it becomes much easier to avoid the whole corporate dystopian nightmare scenario. This is predicated on the public paying attention and being alert to trickery, though, and the jury is still out on that.

Nonetheless, bravo to Walgreen's.

Google is spying on you...

2009-03-29T21:13:00.003-05:00

And it's incredibly useful! I set up Google Analytics for this here blog last week. This was just in time to see a brief spike in readership. Apparently some lunatic decided we should be on Digg, which brought us up to all of twelve visitors that day.

There is some interesting (and statistically insignificant) data to be gathered here: congratulations to our single visitor using Safari with Windows. And at this sample size, I have pretty strong intuitions as to how we have five visits from Macau.

-- And I see we've picked up Ireland today. Greetings, Irish visitor! There is about a 40% chance you are somebody I know who is in Ireland! If so, I hope you are well. If not, good luck to you anyway.

Also, both our hits from Canada were for pictures of Emmitt the Enraged Marmot, via Google image search. Oh, those wacky, rodent-loving Canucks.

Er, anyway, back to our irregularly scheduled programming.

Drugs today

2009-03-26T22:00:00.004-05:00

phenylephrine: 20mg
guaifenesin: 800mg
caffeine: 2 cups coffee, 1 can Coke
ibuprofen: 400 mg
alcohol: 3 pints beer, Hoegaarden

Well, I guess it's not so bad. I just wish it weren't necessary. Aside from the beer. But that was good anyway.

New Poetry Blog

2009-03-22T20:50:00.003-05:00

I've moved the vast majority of my poetry over to a new blog, Trouble Crossing Water. Hopefully this will lead to more poetry, because updating my old archive was a bit of a pain. A couple of old poems are missing yet, but new stuff is posted and the site is basically presentable now.

You should continue coming here to Albatross Hour for all your social theory, hip hop, and whimsical narrative interlude needs.

2009-03-08T11:51:00.001-05:00

I think we should make this a hip-hop blog.

Four Approaches to Discontent

2009-02-24T19:27:00.008-06:00

So, let's say we've proven that now are the zombies of our discontent. What's an angry young radical to do? How does one cope with total dissatisfaction with the structure of society? There are four approaches:

Revolution: Vive la aformentioned, comrade! Revolution is a hoot. Everybody get worked up, or at least a significant force of guerillas, and things get overthrown... but then it's up to you to implement the whole thing at once, and this is very complicated, especially if you are merely a right-handed pitcher with an enthusiasm for cigars and rambling speeches. Also, even if you intend to primarily work through violence, you are going to need a sympathetic public. This requires some fairly specific conditions, and a revolutionary without popular support is just a terrorist. Of course, you can go the non-violent route. There are both practical and ethical reasons to do this. Plus, you need to do something to get people angry while you are waiting around for the proper historical dialectic. Of course, some folks would rather avoid all that mess, which leads them to...

Gradualism: Hey look, a system for enacting change! Assuming you live in a more-or-less constitutional republic, you may be fortunate enough to live in a society that can adapt to the will of the people before they pull out the torches and pitchforks. The election of Barack Obama has of course significantly bouyed this sentiment in the USA. After all, gradualism does require that "change for the better" be a plausible concept. "Listening to reason" is also a popular catchphrase. Gradualism requires a lot of compromise -- it helps if you do not shoot anyone -- and continued pressure from the public. For this reason, you need a public that is not overwhelmingly distracted by shiny objects... Gradualists tend to support education as well. Of course, when your plan for success involves raising the next generation to be more likely to support change, you are admitting that things do not look so hot in the near-term. That's gradualism.

Seperatism: Of course, you could just say fuck that and start your own society, with blackjack and hookers -- or bigamy. And that's why we have Nevada and Utah. Separatism covers everything from survivalist militias to hippie communes. But unlike the previous approaches, which require popular support, anybody and his five smelly friends can be separatist. Pure seperatism is difficult, as it requires total self-sufficiency, but as long as you're content to interact with a corrupt capitalist/carnivorous/Godless/one-corner-world system only sporadically, you have a lot of options. Perhaps you can even serve as an example to others, although then your ideas will need to scale to a real society. I mean, we can't all be bigamists, can we? The answer, surprisingly, is yes, but it involves some rather complicated social graphs. We can expect a real resurgence in separatism if we ever figure out how to cheaply colonize space (or even the oceans). It's the same "free land -> anarchy" equation I laid out for the Internet -- and frankly, life on a hydroponic Rastafarian space station doesn't sound all that bad. Still, be sure you can afford to import soap.

Apathy: On the other hand, you may not give a shit. Sometimes change doesn't seem that plausible, and you can't get yourself worked up enough to leave your family and friends for Mars or South Dakota (Mars is the red one). Well, apathy is for you, my friend, no matter how upset it's going to make George Orwell. He will not be coming to your birthday party. Or maybe there's no hope for change and you have no means of separation -- but this is pretty rare, and you should maybe go check on your broke, oppressed neighbors and see if they don't really want to go for option #1. Unless of course you're in a police state and can't trust them not to turn you in. In this case, it is probably best to feign apathy and keep one eye on the nearest source of asylum at all times. Apathy is only really viable when things are really, tremendously shite, or when they aren't that bad at all. But it is an option, so I've included it.

Unexpected Chart Comic

2009-02-20T20:16:00.003-06:00

Yeah, it needs a little editing.

Democracy is Not the Issue Here, Part 2

2009-02-13T22:26:00.006-06:00

Continuing our nascent foray into social theory blogging... with another ridiculous wall of text:

I concluded my first post by claiming that "money buys noise". But first, let's take a closer look at Digg and other aggregators, and then onto "long-tail" theory and its supposed rebuttals.

Digg, unlike many sites, is straightforwardly democratic: users vote various pages up or down. For popular items there is a feedback loop: items with more positive votes are displayed more prominently, and thus have a greater opportunity to receive votes. It's negative voting that presents the most problems, however, as it allows controversial items to be denied significant consideration. As a result, we would expect the average successful item to have a broad base of appeal be quickly digestible (no Digg item that takes more than one sitting to process will have any success). I have no extensive experience with Digg, so I'll leave the final analysis to others. The governmental analog is a kind of collectivized democracy, a cross between classical Athens and Soviet Russia... with a nod to the immediacy and frivolity of the 24-hour news cycle.

As an adjunct to anarchy, Digg is not terribly troublesome; as long as there exist Diggers who are exploring the Internet in depth, uncommon items will have at least have an opportunity to rise. As a content aggregator, Digg is supposed to make interesting content easier to find; the complexity of the interlinked web is reduced to a single, linear space. The argument against this is that it reduces an infinite homesteader-style prairie into a crowded tenement (with a penthouse on top). It certainly does make things easier-to-find, though... Ah, there it is. If you like what comes to the top, Digg improves the signal-to-noise ratio of the Internet. But if the things on Digg are so common that you've already seen them, you aren't going to stick around (or do you? and do you vote them up or down?). If the aggressive explorers abandon the site, this should produce a vicious cycle of ever-more-limited content and ever-less-intrepid content locators.

Of course, it should not surprise anyone that popular things are more popular than unpopular things, but there has been a great deal of sturm and drang over just what the coefficients should be in this equation. Chris Anderson of Wired is credited with coining the term "long-tail" theory, to describe the phenomenon where, on the web, it is possible to profit from selling a large number of unpopular works. For example, let's look at this counterpoint from the Wall Street Journal, that constant friend to egalitarian theories:

"By Mr. Anderson's calculation, 25% of Amazon's sales are from its tail, as they involve books you can't find at a traditional retailer. But using another analysis of those numbers -- an analysis that Mr. Anderson argues isn't meaningful -- you can show that 2.7% of Amazon's titles produce a whopping 75% of its revenues. Not quite as impressive."

I hope what you're taking away from this is that the glass is clearly half-empty, and that Amazon sell a lot of books -- millions of titles in fact. Amazon sells over 25 million different titles, 2.7% of which is about 675,000. Quick, how many books fit in the average bookstore? This is not exactly the New York Times best-seller list. And it fails to consider the most important question: how did these books become part of the privileged 2.7%? How many of them were at one point part of the tail? And, and one more thing... Are they any good?

Back to that in a minute. I have someone to be angry at, the writer of this Slate article :

But according to Elberse, that sort of anecdote is the exception. The reason? We're not very adventurous. Elberse examined the rental habits of customers at Quickflix, a Netflix-like service in Australia. She found that no group of customers exhibited "a particular taste for the obscure." Sure, a small number of customers regularly rented films from deep in the catalog—but they tended to be people who watched a lot of movies generally and so had much more "capacity" for venturing into the Long Tail. And still they chose a lot of hits: The most widely traveling Quickflix customers picked only 8 percent of their rentals from the least popular of available titles and 34 percent from among blockbusters.

Science journalism is doomed. We aren't given anything to tie those percentages to. We're given a lot of arbitrary mosts and leasts. But let me pull a Wall Street Journal here: there is some portion of Australian mail-service film-renters, for whom two-thirds of the movies they watch are not "blockbusters." And of course, that's ignoring that such a service appeals to people who watch a lot of films (because it is monthly), and encourages them to watch films indiscriminately (because they can get as many as they want). But let's just look at that "particular taste for the obscure" line. Of course there won't be such a group... if I take the sum of all people who watched a film of (let's say) 92% obscurity, I am actually taking the average of several different obscure tastes. Where do I end up? the center! magic! Whereas if I take the group of all people who have watched rented no "blockbusters," clearly, I have such a group. Furthermore, movies are probably the most homogenized major media.

You want a long tail success story? Talk to someone whose business model didn't exist fifteen years ago. Talk to a guy selling T-shirts for a living, while providing content for free. Talk to some guys who can raise millions of dollars because they make funny pictures about video games. Yes, webcomics are our cultural standard-bearers. God bless 'em.

Wait, actually, let's look at films... why are there films that everyone has seen? Because people are only aware of movies that are showing in theaters, which are large, expensive buldings to establish and maintain. Theaters want to be assured that the movies they show will attract an audience. They want a professional movie. This requires cameras, technicians, stagehands, extras, and a whole infrastructure that simply is not required to write Finnegan's Wake. They want professional actors, preferably famous, so that you don't need to spend any effort convincing people you have good actors. They want a professional marketing campaign, so that no matter how lousy the movie is, people will see it before word-of-mouth sinks it. By the way, did I mention money buys noise?

The businesses of advertising is almost wholly based on this. Word of mouth is the gold-standard form of buzz, because by definition it comes from known, trusted sources. The hyperlink structure of the web is modeled on academic citation, which is just a more rigorous version of word of mouth. In recent years, as advertising audiences have become more sophisticated, cynical, or perhaps just overstimulated, advertisers have gone to greater and greater lengths to inspire trust (hint: you should not trust them). Of course, people know you shouldn't trust advertisers, which has inspired disguised advertisements or "guerrilla marketing," the goal of which is to inject advertisement into a normally trusted or at least independent source -- paid bloggers, press releases disguised as journalism. This tactic is also favored by spammers and computer viruses, e.g., sending the virus to everyone in your e-mail address book. The citizens of the Athenian democracy knew it as the "Trojan horse" tactic. Taken to its logical conclusion, "guerrilla marketing" eventually produces the total breakdown of society as we know it -- by gradually voiding every source of information beyond your immediate social circle. Hooray?

Okay, that's a little far-fetched, because we have things like the Better Business Bureau and people are still furious when you violate their trust. And maybe I'm being a little hasty in autamatically categorizing advertising as "noise" (shameless falsehood, if you prefer). Advertising can contain information: the name of the product, various facts about it. You may be interested in the product. But you probably aren't -- and you can't trust those facts without independent verification (information that is part-right wastes far more time than bald-faced lies). At least you shouldn't trust them, because businesses are sociopaths.

Not that I think the average businessperson is a sociopath -- possibly a greater percentage than the human average, due to selection bias -- but large, publicly-owned companies (the kind best positioned to put money into advertising) are large, complicated entities with highly abstracted chains of responsibility. Most include in their charter a clause which promises to "maximize shareholder value." This encourages company executives to put stock price above all other concerns, for fear they may be sued otherwise. If a corporation is to be considered legally a person, it must be conceded that rarely is anyone in position to act as a conscience. Now, corporations are not evil: they are very specifically sociopaths -- for my purposes, this means having no empathy but stil having ability to feign empathy if it provides advantage. In a system that does not actively prevent it, sociopathic businesses will be the most successful, as they have no moral restrictions to their actions.

Now, suppose you are a sociopath in a position of power, and that your products occupy a dominant position in the marketplace. Will you focus on providing accurate information to consumers? Rationally, you should attempt to build arbitrary brand loyalty and discourage the use or even awareness of your competitors. You do this by, respectively, exaggerating differences in your product (to prevent commodification) and disparaging all attributes of your competitor. Both of these are noisy. In fact, it is in your interest to generally increase the amount of noise in all channels. As the established player, you are in favor of the status quo, so any free flow of accurate information has potentially negative consequences on your market share. So, for example, by taking control of one channel of information and spreading doubt and uncertainty about other channels, you can easily make it far too difficult for people to bother.

As examples, which just occurred to me in force, I present to you A) the demonization of bloggers by the mainstream media, and B) the demonization of the mainstream media by Republican talk radio types.

Epiphanies aside, this should demonstrate that long-tail theory is not necessarily a fact of human existence -- it's a fact of a capitalist economy with significant information inefficiencies. At the very least, this should have a severe effect on the rate of change in the "hump" of the popularity curve, which in turn would flatten the long-term shape of the curve.

Democratic systems on the Internet are almost certainly more homogeneous than anarchical/networked systems, but we can't say by how much unless we have a way to remove external stabilizing/noise-creating forces from the system.

One more quick thought: for the general benefit, it is necessary to construct systems of laws that do not advantage sociopaths. To the extent that a system allows money to be accumulated by sociopaths, and moreso to the extent that the system allows money to be converted into power, that system is primed for failure (not collapse, necessarily, but failure to "promote the general welfare," as the Constitution puts it). This suggests, at minimum, that all political campaigns should be publicly financed and that there should be strict oversight of political advertisement. On the more general point of "noise-pollution" in information channels, the solution is more difficult, but should involve tighter truth-in-advertising laws, a rigorous and even-handed fourth estate, and most importantly a cultural movement towards intellectual curiosity, critical thinking, and the absolute refusal to tolerate being lied to.

Democracy is Not the Issue Here

2009-02-09T18:33:00.004-06:00

As my colleague Ethan has been kind enough to supply me with a starting point, I will attempt to refute him.

He correctly points out the problems of unabridged democracy, but he fails to consider the defining factors of the internet. Let's take two of the primary missions of government: protecting its citizens and maintaining an orderly distribution of resources.

Firstly, individuals on the Internet are incapable of harming each other in any serious fashion*. To the extent that the Internet mirrors the Athenian forum, each of us is maneuvering across it in a little bullet-proof Pope-mobile, which is also blessed with the power of teleportation. The potential for tyranny of the majority here is rather limited.

Governments also concern themselves with the distribution of various limited resources. And from the territorial perspective, the Internet is without bounds. Land is cheap and the construction of any edifice is limited purely by time and the skill of the architect. Anyone** can have a website, and even more so a blog, MySpace profile, Facebook account, Youtube videos. These are all proprietary services, of course, but they are all products of the cheap-space economy. So if communities can't control what you own, where you are, or what you do, what do you have to fear from government?

Well, alright, it is possible to restrict movement on the internet, as the government of China is happy to demonstrate -- you just need to control or have leverage on the entire infrastructure. This, of course, is the reason for net-neutrality advocacy -- to pressure actual governments into preserving the Internet as a level playing field with a low entry cost. ISPs, Governments, and backbone providers all have the ability to change the "laws" of the internet, but from the internal perspective these are more like physical laws.

But really, what I am trying to get across is that the Internet isn't a democracy, it's an anarchy -- at least for the individual consumer. From the view of a business, it is far more of a democracy. That's the beauty of advertising revenues -- everyone's eyeballs are assumed to be equally valuable (They aren't, especially if you want to get statistical, but it's close enough). A retailer or content provider may very well consider itself at risk of being voted out of existence if no one uses their site. But this is just capitalism layered on top of anarchy. A slightly different mechanism holds for sites dependent upon community acceptance or involvement, such as Wikipedia. Although in raw form, Wiki editing is fairly anarchical as well -- it's only when you zoom out to an extended time frame that the results look democratic.

So if your options are unlimited and no one can tell you what to do, where's the catch? In a word: noise. The currency of the Internet is information. You can go anywhere, but you need to know how to get there, and you need to derive some utility from what you find there. Utility here is anything from lower prices on bulk sorghum to intellectual debate to pictures of cats -- assuming you wanted pictures of cats. If you wanted pictures of cats and I give you hardcore pornography, your interests are not being served. Because of this, search engines are the biggest enablers of the Internet as we know it.

The search engine is an inherently meritocratic idea; your position is determined by your relevance to the question at hand. As a website owner, you don't need to do anything beyond create the site. Just be relevant, and Google or Yahoo or MSN will come find you and tell people you've got what they want -- and these people will tell their friends, and link you on their blogs or Facebooks or what-have-you. Even better, these days, most engines (Google most notably) will account for this word-of-mouth support by increasing your relevance score. At least in theory. Now back to that bit about noise.

Noise is anything bad (subjectively) that gets mixed in with what you want (the signal). If your information is noisy, it costs you more time to pick out the signal. If you can't effectively search for what you want, you just aren't going to bother. This is why no one tries to get a date by flipping through the phone book. Actually, that one is noisy both ways -- you probably wouldn't want to date someone who cold-called you from the phone book (which makes you less likely to try). It's also why no one is reading this essay by this point. And this is why advertising is the most dangerous thing for the egalitarian internet. Money buys noise.

I'm going to stop there before this becomes completely unwieldy, and expand on this in another post. Suffice to say, I don't see democracy as the problem. "Of course not," you may say, "Dumb people are the problem." Nope, not even them. Part 2 coming soon, I hope. Christ! Why is analyzing society from the ground up so complicated?

*Identity theft and fraud being the exceptions -- and this will play into my larger point.

**Above a fairly low economic threshold, at least in the developed world.

Zombie Apocalypse, Significance Thereof

2009-01-24T18:36:00.003-06:00

I suspect that more of our culture than is immediately apparent is apocalyptic, or based on either an anticipation or desire for change. Even with the extremely cathartic election of Barack Obama, there is a sense that we are about to hit the trough of an economic "long wave", which have tended to occur every fifty to sixty years. The Great Depression was the last such trough, although a case can be made for the late seventies (oil crises, stagflation, and the end of the post-war boom). President Obama brought up the idea of American decline rather early in his inaugural address (at 5 minutes here), though he of course wishes to prevent it.

In any case, the past few decades have already seen communication and entertainment democratized and changed drastically by the Internet and the ubiquity of cellular phones. Technology appears to grow exponentially, which leads to the scenario of technological singularity, in which we create computers that invent smarter computer ad infinitum. While this is not necessarily apocalyptic in the negative sense, it is likely that society would need to be radically altered. Much of Asimov's robot fiction can be seen as dealing with the tipping point of the singularity: the point where robots/computers are competitive with humans, but not completely superior. WALL-E is probably the best recent depiction of post-scarcity humans -- fat and complacent through the simple fact of not having anything useful to do.

Because of this, a straightforward projection of the present system is not particularly comforting, even for those of us inclined -- sometimes feverishly so -- to the creation of "true" artificial intelligence. This of course leaves aside many valid reasons for discontent with society in the present tense. But it does seem that dystopian fiction -- wherein society is projected forward to an appalling but recognizable state -- has fallen out of favor since a peak in the 80s. Blade Runner is the seminal work of film here, and Neuromancer the literary touchstone.

What we have seen recently is the revival of zombie horror, and zombie survivalism as a topic of speculation among young intellectuals. The revival of zombies (as a cultural rather than physical phenomenon) has been especially strong in video games, where zombies provide an inherent atmosphere and an opponent whose physical durability and mental shortcomings have obvious explanations. Post-apocalypticism also traces much of its popularity to the 80s of course, Terminator and Road Warrior being the prime examples. It must be noted, however, that Kevin Costner almost single-handedly killed the genre in the mid-90s with Waterworld and The Postman. Zombies in and of themselves have also been present in American culture since the 60s, most notably in the works of George Romero. Dawn of the Dead is probably the first movie to address the concept of the "zombie apocalypse," though it does so with considerably more pessimism than the current trend, which has synthesized zombies and post-apocalypticism with zeal.

More substantial analyses can be made of zombies and apocalypticism in literature and film, but my immediate goal here has been simply to demonstrate that the downfall of society as we know it is the subject of heavy speculation in some circles. This suggests that a total collapse of the present socio-economic order is seen as either likely or desirable. But consider that in the present trend the agent of destruction is zombies, which are in principle non-existent and fantastical (setting aside "zombie realism", most notably the virus hypothesis and 28 Days Later). In the 80s, the culturally-anticipated apocalypse was the very real threat of nuclear war. Whether such a war was ever likely is dubious, but anyone looking possible causes of the downfall of humanity did not need to look very far. And while singular nuclear weapons remain alarming (see the nuking of Los Angeles in 24), large-scale nuclear war is no longer plausible. Ergo, zombie apocalypticism originates from a sense of discontent with the current course of society, or at least one's place therein.

...This was originally just going to be a lead-in for a post about discontent, but it got a little out of hand, so I'm going to do that another time.

Please comment if you find this interesting and/or think I am full of shit on this.

Joie de Vivre

2009-01-12T20:13:00.002-06:00

At 6:30am, on a Monday morning, there is Latin music blasting from the apartment next door. Several people are shouting along with the music. Dancing is implied. Since I spent much of my weekend in Brooklyn, I cannot guarantee that this party is contiguous with the one that began Friday evening, but I am beginning to suspect. While I admire their audacity, this is perhaps going too far.

In these circumstances, I began to ponder my own mortality, and whether or not I should have spent the entire weekend drinking Sparks (may perpetual light shine upon it).

Post-Apocrypha

2008-12-29T22:19:00.003-06:00

On Friday, I left work and headed directly to LaGuardia, so I could get home for pseudo-Christmas (Saturday) and get drunk for pseudo-Christmas Eve. Fortunately, my flight was delayed only 20 minutes, up to the point where the plane circled above O'Hare for an hour, and we made an unplanned stopover in Dayton to refuel. Despite an extended stay on the tarmac, we were not able to leave the plane. After some apparent difficulties (Pilot: "as you can see out the left, the fuel truck is right over there, [not refuelling us for some reason, those shitheads] -- it was pretty clear from his tone), we set out again for O'Hare, a mere four hours late. The reason: unseasonably warm weather. No, really, melting snow, light rain, and a fortuitous dewpoint had rendered Chicago and impenetrable gray mass.

I slept through the last leg of the trip, and when I awoke found we were maneuvering aimlessly across the taxiways of O'Hare. At least, I presumed it was O'Hare -- There were no landmarks to speak of. There was still snow on the ground, frozen in windblown drift and emitting streams of vapor, which mixed into the ambient fog. The ony visible objects were bright but hazy blue lights, and meaningless letters and numerals, which emerged inconsistently from the ground. We steered right and left among the roadways tangled roadways, with no sound but the steady thrum of the idling jets. The landscape, as far as could be determined, was achingly flat and endless, bordered in the far distance by glaring orange and yellow fuzzes of light. As this went on, I began to believe we had entered not an airport but a stange, endless, ensorcelled country, doomed to wander an eternity among snow and wind and fog, seeing just far enough to feel the vastness of the terrain.

Movin' On Up

2008-12-17T21:25:00.002-06:00

I've been promoted, sort of. From Front-Office-Support-Understudy to Back-Office-Support-Understudy. This is an upgrade because it involves more databases and fewer quizzes about economic terms. Also more programming. Yesterday I successfully added a feature to one of the in-house programs, which ferries information between the market data feed and our trading platform. My mission: to add an error pop-ups when the program lost a connection. My mission after first contact with the code: to add the ability to detect a lost connection. Despite the resulting vast increase in scope, I was eventually successful.

A note on support: The people who make ORC (our trading platform) have certain flaws, but they have achieved one great triumph: naming the ORC administration tool "SAURON". Both of these are acronyms, of course.

A note on living: While today's shift to something more like useful work is heartening, I am still living my life at someone else's behest. This seems like an inherently unstable situation. Ideally, of course, someone would hand me a large some of money with the instructions, "Go do something you enjoy." Unreasonable though this is, it leaves open the options of research, start-up company, and music. Paul Graham is especially convincing on the startup front, and also has several essays on programming.

Also I bought a book on Erlang, a functional programming language which specializes in concurrent programming. The trend toward multicore processors makes this more important than ever -- unless specifically designed for it, a program can only run on one processor. Going to Borders convinces me I am unusual; there are plenty of books of C++ for Dummies, Beginning PHP, Java for Transorbital Lobotomy Patients, The Bipedal Lizard's Guide to SQL. My secret hope is to discover a book of Perl for Unscrupulous Lunatics or Javascript for the Dangerously Intelligent. Those books will get my money in an instant. I settled for Programming Erlang, with the knowledge that it was written by one of the language's designers (Joe Armstrong).

Also, if you are not familiar with FLCL/Furi Kuri/Fooly Cooly, well, you should be. It has been greatly enhancing my week. It is an anime about puberty, guitars, robots, and mostly about surrealism.

Unearthly

2008-12-03T19:51:00.003-06:00

As I waited for the A-train, two men set up steel drums and began playing arrangements of Christmas carols. Slightly further down, there was a man playing a large, stringed, African instrument I do not no the name of. It was high-pitched and ringing, plucked in rapid arpeggios, and probably not tuned in a Western scale. He paused when the steel drummers began, and glanced over. Then he resumed, and began playing harmony, intentionally or not -- given the instruments, they have been bound to sync up on some perceived tempo and harmonic. The effect was poly-rhythmic, with orchestral level of harmony; all three instruments echoed off the tunnel walls as well. Hauntingly strange -- and all colliding over, for example, "Silent Night."

I had already seen the man with the African instrument yesterday. It's lovely on its own as well. I have a rule, actually, that if I have never seen an instrument before, I am required to give the musician money. Unique things should be rewarded.

Terror from the Deep

2008-11-28T22:53:00.003-06:00

Remember that scene in Independence Day where the alien breaks loose in the lab and controls the dead scientist with his tentacles?

Your nightmares have arrived.

In Which the Chinese will Destroy Us All

2008-11-26T20:17:00.006-06:00

I took this picture with the most ridiculously lousy camera I have ever seen, and I include my cell phone. It is 2-1/2" x 1-3/4" x 3/4" and it cost me $9.99. I did not expect much, but all the same I had to buy it, just to reconcile the concept of "10-dollar digital camera" with my reality. With a maximum resolution of 352x288 (and many of these pixels are dead), it is just over 30% as resolute as my free-with-contract phone.

On the other hand, Verizon charges $0.25 per picture I take off my phone.

And even more ridiculously, the thing is also a fully functional webcam, a function for which it is somewhat less embarassing, especially for 10 bucks.

To put some perspective on this, try to guess how long ago this shit would have been state-of-the-art spy hardware. "Agent Slaptyback, take this camera: it fits in the palm of your hand, doesn't use film, and can provide a live video feed once you've planted it."

And it's a keychain!

Insult to Injury

2008-11-25T19:25:00.003-06:00

I was watching last Thursday's Daily Show on Hulu, which features a segment on the failing American auto industry. It was brought to me, per Hulu standards, by a single sponsor: Nissan.

No Manhattan is an Island

2008-11-24T18:54:00.002-06:00

...Actually it's quite a nice island.

I live near the highest point of an island made of solid rock. This is a very strange notion. I discovered this evening that a mere quarter-mile east of me is quite a stunning overlook, consisting of massive, irregular pieces of jutting bedrock. The view is perhaps less stunning than the overlook, but it offers the Harlem River, high-rise across the way in the Bronx, and some very large bridges to the South -- all lit up bright as day, of course.

A quarter-mile can get you quite out of the way, relatively speaking. I haven't been that way before, as my block is bounded by Broadway and St. Nicholas, both major streets (Broadway, you might have guessed) that supply pretty much anything you can think of, and I have been preoccupied with exploring these for food and supplies. The side streets along the... side... of the island are quite deserted at 8 PM, and rather spooky, with empty playgrounds and basketball courts in the park just down the slope.

I imagine it is quite pleasant and pretty in the daytime (especially when it isn't winter), in much the same way as the lakefront in Chicago (though a bit steeper). It's surprisingly easy to gain a sense of stillness and isolation, even in such a busy area.

Tragedies

2008-11-23T21:27:00.003-06:00

-That I cannot find a useful sports bar within walking distance of my apartment. Lacking anyone to see the Bears game with, I inquired with Google Maps. The suggested bar did not exist, although another may be "coming soon" to replace it. I then wandered randomly southeast, and chanced upon another supposed "sports bar" ... which was also closed. Highly mysterious.

-That I don't get a chance to wander about the neighborhood more often. The latter sports bar was along Harlem River Drive, which supplies a scenic overlook of the river and the Bronx. Manhattan is really quite pretty around the edges. I live at more or less the highest point on the island (also near the proudly-labeled "Highest Laundromat") . The structure of my work day (~7:30-5:30) prevents me from doing much during daylight during the week.

-That I don't own a camera. It's on my short list of things to acquire, after which this blog will become much more visual.

Non-Tragedy:
I have successfully acquired a couch from the furniture store down the street. Additionally, it folds down into a bed. Surprisingly, it is a better bed as a couch than as a bed. C'est la vie.

The Long Road Back to Civilization

2008-11-17T18:29:00.002-06:00

Today I bought a toaster, and a bottle opener, and a pot in which to cook pasta. Perhaps tomorrow I will buy pasta. The unfurnished life presents challenges; On arrival, my parents and I were forced to open beer with a slot-jaw wrench, because they had gotten me a 155-piece tool set, but no bottle opener. I have been using the box cutter to make curtains, as mentioned Wednesday.

Perhaps someday soon I shall own a couch.

I go now to drink El Presidente, a Dominican beer in a Czech style (Pilsener). It is pretty good, actually.

Water Hazard

2008-11-12T21:49:00.002-06:00

In the shower, the "C" knob should be understood to mean "Caliente." The "H" indicates "Hola, tengo agua fria." The can lead to confusion.

Strangely enough, this was the case in my last apartment as well. Credit for the "caliente" line goes to this fellow, who is on the run from the law in Nicaragua.

One Day in New York City, Baby...

2008-11-12T21:13:00.005-06:00

-Actually, it's been five days, but Neutral Milk Hotel ("Ghost") is still stuck in my head. I arrived Friday afternoon with my parents, and proceded to haul various of my belongings up to the fourth floor of a pre-war building in Washington Heights, a neighborhood less than half a mile wide, due to the difficulty of building on the East and Hudson Rivers.

-Yes, I have an apartment. All by me onesies, as they say here -- actually, that may be London, I 'll get back to you. I have begun decorating, mainly by recasting dollar-store shower curtains as non-shower curtains (thrift is the new irony).

-And by God, there are a lot of dollar stores, but there's one in my neighborhood that actually means it. Anything without a label is 99 cents. So technically it is a 99-cent store, and is labeled as such.

-One of the distinguishing features of New York is that most things are bigger, and those which are not are comically small. There are 20 Manhattan blocks per mile, yet each contains at least one each of grocery, pharmacy, laundromat, 99-cent store, Chinese restaurant, deli, and liquor store. The average "supermarket" is under 12 feet wide.

-Also, the average liquor store does not sell beer, but is strictly "wine and liquors." The silver lining here is that the pharmacy will sell you beer. Aren't liquor laws wacky?

-As an aside, I do not recommend Leinenkugel's "Sunset Wheat". Normally I am enthused about beers involving wheat. However, this is because most such beers do not taste alarmingly of Fruity Pebbles. A little heavy on the "natural flavors" added, guys.

-I have seen the face of evil and it is IKEA. Specifically, the IKEA on Red Hook, which is a tremendously unhelpful series of labyrinths for anyone who does not intend to build a new house and fill it entirely with IKEA furniture. This would not be so bad, except that getting onto Red Hook is impossible via surface roads. It took us quite a while to learn this. The advantage of Red Hook is that the IKEA store actually has its own dock and cranes. Yes, on the ocean. Did I mention it's rather large? On the upside, I have gained, for very reasonable prices, two tables, two chairs, and a bookcase. Hooray sitting!

-Hooray free internet. I have yet to register for internet service or any utilities. Also, I sleep on an air mattress. Were it not for the obscenity that is my rent, I could be squatting.

-I tried to get a sofa-bed at IKEA, but the cheap one was sold out. Unlike every other sold-out item, it was not labeled as such (I repeat, face of evil).

COMING SOON: 10-hour workdays: Also the face of evil?

r.i.p. studs

2008-11-03T09:33:00.002-06:00

Experiments in XML

2008-11-03T00:40:00.003-06:00

Blogger has changed the operation of it's templates again. I am told I can use a plethora of "widgets" and a graphical interface. I am seeing how much of that I can bypass by parsing this new template and just working with text.

Also, I figured how to add goddamn titles to our posts.

2008-10-27T23:03:00.003-05:00

Note to Self: Become Airship Privateer

You probably didn't know that the Goodyear blimp Resolute was a privateer during WWII. When I thought that the United States hadn't issued a letter of marque (which authorizes privateering or other hostile actions by civilian parties) since the War of 1812, well, my goal of being a pirate just didn't seem viable. But now that I know that there have been licensed American sky pirates, a world of possibilities has opened up.

Who wants in?

Now, you may ask, how on Earth would we get a letter of marque these days? You can vote for Ron Paul, that's how. Yes, Ron Paul, Republican congressman and noted coot, thinks the U.S. should encourage anti-terrorist privateering. Really, the only question is what to name our lighter-than-air death-dealing machine. I propose the USS Howard Taft. Or possibly Lighter Than Bombs.

(Paid for by the Alliance of Privateers and Sky Pirates for Ron Paul)

2008-09-14T00:36:00.001-05:00

Did you know there was a new maciej-powered blog afoot? Now you do.

Yes More Drama

2008-09-11T08:38:00.007-05:00

In Defense of Auto-Tune

Anyone who keep at least half an ear turned towards the state of pop music today knows what Auto-Tune is. And even if someone can’t identify it by that name, chances are if you say, “you know, the T-Pain effect,” they’ll catch on quickly. Indeed, T-Pain has made truckloads of money off the simple vocal modulation software, turning his otherwise mundane voice into a hectic, delirious hook machine. By using this newfound voice to storm the Billboard charts, T-Pain brought Auto-Tune to the attention of many other hip-hop and pop artists. An interesting article published this summer in the New Yorker includes an interview with T-Pain, and details the history of the software, which dates back to 1997 and a Cher hit single. Now, as more and more high profile artists (e.g. Lil Wayne and Kanye West) begin to employ Auto-Tune, more and more music critics and fans are clamoring for its destruction, claiming that it’s been played out and is standing in the way of artistic expression. In my opinion, they couldn’t be more wrong.

It’s important to remember that this type of vocal modulation did not enter the hip-hop realm yesterday. Let us not forget the late Roger Troutman’s classic hook (recorded using Auto-Tune’s grandfather—the vococorder) on 2pac’s smash hit “California Love.” Has the phrase “city of Compton” even been pronounced as fantastically? Of course, vocal modulation in this instance was limited to the chorus, and perhaps a few more eyebrows would have been raised if Pac himself had started distorting his own voice. But let us not make the same mistake as those who refuse to admit that the genre has any relevance since the demise of Pac and Biggie. Like any healthy genre, it has evolved, tried new things, and become something that is both different and the same. I propose that the increasing use of Auto-Tune is simply another hip-hop experiment. It may remain, it may die out relatively quickly, but while it’s here, why not embrace its artistic potential?

Consider the following examples. Lil Wayne, long claiming to be the best rapper alive, only scored his first number one hit after running his rasp through Auto-Tune. So, there’s no doubt that this shit sells records. But, there’s more to Lil Wayne’s use of the technology than a simple money grab. I would argue that it allows him to put even more inflection into an already ridiculously expressive voice. Take his track “Rider,” recorded over a revamped version of Pac’s “Ambitionz Az A Ridah” beat. Created early-on in Wayne’s experimentation with the Auto-Tune effect, it lends his voice a positively tortured quality, which couldn’t be more appropriate considering he is rapping and singing about an almost uncontrollable love for a woman. “You only like her, I’m trying to wife her,” he plaintively croons. And at about 2:19 into the song, the effect crescendos as Wayne repeats the chorus: “I won’t deny her, shawty is a ridah…” It’s hard to imagine this song working at all without Auto-Tune, but it remains one of the most interesting and passionate pieces that Wayne has recorded.

To draw from slightly more recent material (in an effort to prove that Auto-Tune has not yet exhausted its possibilities), consider the song “My Life” off The Game’s new album LAX and featuring Lil Wayne. The song takes a serious tone, as Wayne’s chorus conveys both the exhaustion of a hustler’s life, as well as the survivor’s guilt that one may feel from seeing their friends fall to violence, drugs, and the legal system. Heady stuff. The additional emotional impetus that Auto-Tune affords Wayne cannot be discounted, especially on words like “grinding,” “tired,” “lawd,” and “eyes wide.” It’s impressive stuff, it continuously sends chills across my skin, and I’m glad it exists. I can’t say it would be possible without Auto-Tune.

Finally, consider Kanye West. Featured on the song “Put On,” the first single off Young Jeezy’s new album The Recession, Kanye employs the Auto-Tune effect in his verse. Now, while the effect has been used primarily in choruses, artists like Lil Wayne have not been afraid to rap entire songs using it. “Rider” is one example, “Lollipop” another (though the lyrics to that particular track are so ridiculously puerile that we won’t take it into serious consideration). The result of spitting an Auto-Tune verse is a rap that is remarkably melodic. I’ve always considered the naturally melodic nature of Wayne’s voice one of his greatest assets as an emcee. Now artists like Kanye, whose voice can be about as melodic as a dead fish at times, can record something like his “Put On” verse—a rap that I sometimes catch myself whistling as I’m riding in elevators. Touching on the loss of his mother and the lonely nature of superstardom, Yeezy’s verse is packed with emotion, and it’s all vamped up to a higher level with Auto-Tune. His voice itself seems like it’s crying as he laments the fact that he has little in his life to find solace in anymore. The amount of anguish conveyed is stunning. It blows me away every time.

I write this because of the recent news that has leaked out about Kanye’s upcoming album. Apparently, he plans to use a whole heap of Auto-Tune and sing a lot. If true, it would be a wild direction to take, but, considering what this guy has had on his mind lately, could be a fantastic artistic endeavor. And, if his Auto-Tune work on “Put On” is any indication, this could work out extremely well. Yet, as I was reading the comments below the news story, I was surprised by how many people were furious with this possibility, griping about how Kanye has sold out, fallen in line with the rest of the crowd, etc. Please, people, let’s not damn the man and the entire Auto-Tune effect just because you’re tired of T-Pain. Auto-Tune will not change who a person is nor alter their innate artistic genius, it will simply provide a new and colorful palate with which to express themselves. Even with Auto-Tune, Kanye will still be Kanye, just as Lil Wayne is still Lil Wayne. They will not become T-Pain. T-Pain is T-Pain.

2008-08-28T20:19:00.002-05:00

There shall be rejoicing and dancing in the streets, for the evil one has finally left our fair city.

Read Roger Ebert's parting shot to Jay Mariotti.

2008-08-10T20:49:00.001-05:00

I'm glad I read xkcd. (xkcd)

This post brought to you by the Annoy Carl Wheeler Foundation for Annoying Carl Wheeler. (Carl Wheeler)