Here is some brain candy:
Levitated: Daily Source
Praystation
Tao: A Software Package for Sound Synthesis with Physical Models
Image Analogies

Statistic of the day: Over 40,000 people die every year from automobile accidents. That works out to approximately 1 WTC disaster a month.

"Waking Life" (the movie) was amazing. Philosophical, surreal, beautiful. My brain felt like it was floating in a puddle of goo afterwards. Highly recommended!

New Eno Music Gets 'Generative'

Brian Eno, the electronic and ambient music pioneer, thinks today's computer-crafted tunes are lame.

With software like Acid, Logic, Cubase and ProTools, musicians now have on the desktop a seemingly limitless ability to cut up, affect, loop and rearrange sounds. Altering the tempo, pitch and feel of a beat has become almost as easy as changing the font in this sentence. But that's not necessarily a good thing, Eno said.

These programs lead musicians to "attend to details at an infinitely fine level whilst ignoring the macro," said Eno... "Looking back in 20 years, it'll be very obvious that computer music had a particular flavor, just like music of the 1960s with the wah-wah pedal," he continued. It will have the sound of its technology: "unfunky, overfussy and dead as stone."

The New War Against Terror by Noam Chomsky (Audio)

'Brutality smeared in peanut butter': Why America must stop the war now by Arundhati Roy

Sock Monkey!

(via Boing Boing)

UN set to appeal for halt in the bombing

The United Nations is set to issue an unprecedented appeal to the United States and its coalition allies to halt the war on Afghanistan and allow time for a huge relief operation.

UN sources in Pakistan said growing concern over the deteriorating humanitarian situation in the country - in part, they say, caused by the relentless bombing campaign - has forced them to take the radical step. Aid officials estimate that up to 7.5 million Afghans might be threatened with starvation.

'The situation is completely untenable inside Afghanistan. We really need to get our point across here and have to be very bold in doing it. Unless the [US air] strikes stop, there will be a huge number of deaths,' one UN source said.

Pentagon Proposed Pretexts for Cuba Invasion in 1962

In his new exposé of the National Security Agency entitled Body of Secrets, author James Bamford highlights a set of proposals on Cuba by the Joint Chiefs of Staff codenamed OPERATION NORTHWOODS. This document, titled “Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba” was provided by the JCS to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on March 13, 1962, as the key component of Northwoods. Written in response to a request from the Chief of the Cuba Project, Col. Edward Lansdale, the Top Secret memorandum describes U.S. plans to covertly engineer various pretexts that would justify a U.S. invasion of Cuba. These proposals - part of a secret anti-Castro program known as Operation Mongoose - included staging the assassinations of Cubans living in the United States, developing a fake “Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington,” including “sink[ing] a boatload of Cuban refugees (real or simulated),” faking a Cuban airforce attack on a civilian jetliner, and concocting a “Remember the Maine” incident by blowing up a U.S. ship in Cuban waters and then blaming the incident on Cuban sabotage. Bamford himself writes that Operation Northwoods “may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government.”

I love dle. I found these there today:

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.
--Charles Mingus

One day as I was about to step on a dry leaf, I saw the leaf in the ultimate dimension. I saw that it was not really dead, but that it was merging with the moist soil in order to appear on the tree the following spring in another form. I smiled at the leaf and said, "You are pretending." Everything is pretending to be born and pretending to die, including that leaf.
--Thich Nhat Hanh

..and now for something on a lighter note.

This makes me smile every time I see it. :)

UPDATE: Click on the links below the photo (with the dates) as well. There are a lot of, um, variations. This one is sooo cute!

ANOTHER UPDATE: This page explains the whole thing (in English).

No Glory in Unjust War on the Weak by Barbara Kingsolver

Condemnation Without Absolutes by Stanley Fish

During the interval between the terrorist attacks and the United States response, a reporter called to ask me if the events of Sept. 11 meant the end of postmodernist relativism. It seemed bizarre that events so serious would be linked causally with a rarefied form of academic talk. But in the days that followed, a growing number of commentators played serious variations on the same theme: that the ideas foisted upon us by postmodern intellectuals have weakened the country's resolve. The problem, according to the critics, is that since postmodernists deny the possibility of describing matters of fact objectively, they leave us with no firm basis for either condemning the terrorist attacks or fighting back.

Not so. Postmodernism maintains only that there can be no independent standard for determining which of many rival interpretations of an event is the true one. The only thing postmodern thought argues against is the hope of justifying our response to the attacks in universal terms that would be persuasive to everyone, including our enemies. Invoking the abstract notions of justice and truth to support our cause wouldn't be effective anyway because our adversaries lay claim to the same language. (No one declares himself to be an apostle of injustice.)

Listen to the children.

Check the music page. There's something new.

Some insightful reader feedback from one Adam Przywecki:

About your comments on middle east; I totally agree with you concerning US foreign policy. But you must keep in mind that, it would be nice if the US gets out of the middle east (the region gets bombed each time an oil guy runs America), but energy prices would go up. It would be even nicer if US gets out of Africa too (people who can barely feed themselves but they all have machine guns? something not right there), but raw material prices go up. And to top it off, it'd be the nicest if the US got out of Asia, but labour costs go up. I'm not sure most people living in North America realize how many have to suffer for us to live the way we do. I think you have to change people's mindsets first, before you do any of the above. Just imagine the chaos that would ensue if average Joe went to the gas station and had to pay 4 times as much for gas, then went to buy a t-shirt only to find that it costs $50, and then find no diamonds in jewelry store.

After reading this article from the BBC, something struck me. First, it seems clear that the terrorist attacks will only intensify in retaliation for the bombing campaign: "Spokesman Sulaiman Abu Ghaith said there would be strikes in retaliation for the military action being taken against Afghanistan by US and British forces."

Secondly, contrary to what we are being told, Bin Laden and the al-Qaeda did not attack the United States for no apparent reason. They are making very specific demands in their announcements: "The storm will not calm as long as you [the United States and Britain] do not end your support for the Jews in Palestine, lift your embargo from around the Iraqi people, and have left the Arabian peninsula."

Why can't the United States meet these demands? Isn't this a very small price to pay for the American people to live peace? What good does it do the American people to continue to meddle in the affairs of the middle east? If we can end this now, with no more loss of life on either side, why don't we?

Perhaps this is why the United States is censoring al-Qaeda broadcasts. Perhaps they don't want the American people to understand this... because they don't want to compromise their foreign policy in the Middle East.

Update 10/14/2001:

Some possible responses and my replies:

1. "Wouldn’t we then be letting the terrorists get away with what they did?"

Perhaps, but what is more important? Living in peace or exacting revenge? Do we want the cycle of violence to continue? It will inevitably come back around to us. Even if we were able to track down Osama bin Laden and most of al-Qaeda, the cycle will not end because the underlying situation has not changed. New leaders will rise up to take their place. We are attacking the symptoms instead of going after the cause.

2. "What about the horrible human rights situation in Afghanistan under rule of the Taliban? Are we just going to let that continue?"

The situation is terrible, but bombing them is not the answer. There are other ways to bring about change.

3. "Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda are extremist religious fanatics. They hate the United States because they consider us infidels. Simply giving in to their demands will not stop them."

I disagree. I believe that they are using the cover of religion as a way to rally up support and to give credibility to their actions. These are obviously not truly religious people.

(Keep in mind that this is mostly a way for me to work out these issues in my own mind. I am not trying to preach here. I welcome your feedback.)

The Guardian has a great interview with Richard D. James.

Been caught up in my own little world as of late. Saw a talk by Howard Zinn in which he discussed the role of the artist in social change. Been reading Charles Bukowski. Saw Fridge play at the Middle East. Working on some new music, etc...

Ok, I know I'm a bit late with this, but better late than never:

Columbus Day is nothing to celebrate by Debra Utacia Krol

"What does music look like? The Shape of Song is an attempt to answer this seemingly paradoxical question. The custom software in this work draws musical patterns in the form of translucent arches, allowing viewers to see--literally--the shape of any composition available on the Web. The resulting images reflect the full range of musical forms, from the deep structure of Bach to the crystalline beauty of Philip Glass."

Around the World of Ideas: A Conversation with Jaron Lanier

There’s something for everyone in this conversation with Jaron Lanier, computer scientist, inventor of virtual reality, accomplished composer and musician. Jaron’s insights range from tele-immersion to the end of oil, from psychomedication to civil liberties, from the roots of poverty to expanding the circle of empathy…and beyond.

Naming Normal by Rebecca Blood

"Why of course the people don't want war ... But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship ...Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger."
--Hermann Goering at the Nuremberg Trials

(via ethel)

Did the White House Give the Taliban $43 Million? by Dan Kennedy

According to commentators of all ideological stripes -- from the Nation's Christopher Hitchens on the left to the New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg in the center to the Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly on the right -- the US gave $43 million to Afghanistan's Taliban government as a reward for its efforts to stamp out opium-poppy cultivation. That would have been a shockingly inappropriate gift to a government that had been sanctioned by the United Nations for its refusal to hand over international terrorist Osama bin Laden.

Would have been, that is, if it had really happened. It didn't.

Wow. New Bjork video for "Pagan Poetry". Intense.

"It is interesting that Hindus, when they speak of the creation of the universe, do not call it the work of God, they call it the play of God, the Vishnu-lila, lila meaning 'play.' And they look upon the whole manifestation of all the universes as a play, as a sport, as a kind of dance--lila perhaps being somewhat related to our word lilt."
--Alan Watts

I love Art Nouveau. Absolutely beautiful.

Another new track is now availble for download. I'm calling this one Lila. It's a nice combination of my more recent organic/techy style with my old school straightforward uplifting "Asoka" type stuff. Enjoy.

Archives: 2001: Sep Aug Jul Jun May Apr Mar Feb

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