It's The Only Thing That's Fair

So I have over the years proposed a solution to a social problem that has generally been met with a response of total dismissal. I'm kind of curious as to why this idea just seems to bounce off of peoples minds.

The problem is, to foster gender equality:

1. What surname should a woman take when she marries?
2. How should the children be named?

The answer to part 1 is easy. Assuming the husband's name is obviously patriarchal, so the woman should keep her own surname.

So then how do you name the kids? The hypenated name thing obviously is bad tech and doesn't work -- just in the 3rd generation you'd have 7 hyphens in your last name. So my universally rejected proposal is, have the male offspring take the father's last name and the female offspring take the mother's last name. So you kind of have male and female lines. Males born without a known father would take the mother's surname, as they do now. Genderly challenged would be allowed to choose when they turn 18, maybe?

You might say, well, that puts children in the same family with different last names. Yes, it does, but that is not uncommon now when people are on their 2nd and 3rd marriages.

So my daughters would all be Grieve's or Sohan's, looking back as far as I know in their grandmothers. It would actually give a purpose to genealogy, which I generally find to be pretty much uninteresting.

So why is this idea so universally dismissed? It's The Only Thing That's Fair.

No biking today, roads were wet, took a nice long walk instead.

Reelin' and Rockin' -- or is that Rockin' and Reelin'

Whew, just got back back from Lynagh's. My wife (mother?) is working 3rd shift (now) so I get to stay out as late as I want, woo-hoo. 1st 3 songs went fine, then later sang backup for 3 different people, then did 3 more. "Who do you love" is so great to play, if you have anyone decent up there with you, you can vary the dynamics and tonality and get a Grateful Dead thing going that really rocks.

The real reason for this post:

http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSKUA54703320070725

This is truly shocking to me. WWN is an american institution. I bought my friend David a subscription to it at Renlar, it was great, it would come in Friday afternoon, we would read about exploding pigs, opera-singing pigs, flying pigs (the best issues always featured a pig) -- and decide, enough work for the week, it's Friday, let's get the hell out of here. I can't believe it's gone.

But, we did quit subscribing after 3 years because we realized they were recycling all the stories that we had read 3 years earlier ...

Biked 37.9 miles in 2h54m, 1 stop last Saturday. Temperature in the low 80's, man does that make a difference. Going to High Bridge Park this weekend, 40 miles.

Had a great cookout / going away party last Sunday with Ben Lacy playing. Gained major street cred when the cops showed up at 9:51 re a complaint on the loud music ?!?!?

Didn't have a drink Monday or Tuesday, didn't particularly notice any withdrawal symptoms, so I don't think I'm an alcoholic. I'm wondering tho, are there lab tests that can be run that say, yes, you are an alcoholic?

Naprosyn continues to gnaw at my belly but it does help the osteo-arthritis in my left thumb.

Quel Dumbass

Well, I was so proud of my folk ontologies, I sent it to my hero Charlie Stross, then a couple of days ago ran across folksonomy, like taxonomy -- web 2.0 pundits already all over my Original Idea. I am such a Loser, sigh :-(.

Biked 37 miles Saturday morning, 2h55m, 1 stop. I would say heat index was at least 10 degrees cooler than the week before, much easier.

Currently listening to Man Man "The Man in a Blue Turban with a Face" (2004). This will also gain the coveted Unclassifiable rating that "Six Demon Bag" received. Deliciously odd music.

My wife and I saw and enjoyed "La Vie on Rose", the Edith Piaf movie. So then spent my 30 emusic downloads for the month downloading Edith Piaf. Interesting, the bio on eMusic is more complete than the one on Wikipedia. Annoyingly, once again, I now have 30 songs from the 30s to the 60s whose dates are 2005 and 2006. So now must locate a good discography and correct all the dates. No, I'm not obcom, but I do feel it helps in the understanding and the classification of the music to accurately know when it was from.

Politically Incorrect

A new tag!

The tagging exercise definitely made me aware of the meta-levels of the blog, its themes, what it distills out to. I realized today just a while ago that political incorrectness is definitely a theme that deserves to be tagged. That last sentence reminds me of the most recent post in Charles Stross' blog, re, how long would take you to build up the context of something even more abstract and 21th century than that last sentence to explain it to, say, someone from the 17th century like Isaac Newton.

Anyway, my friend David sent me this link to Pamela Anderson and PETA's campaign against KFC: http://www.kentuckyfriedcruelty.com/.

I replied to him with recollections from my childhood:

Like most people of my generation (mid-50's) in the midwest/south, I grew up with ties to a farm. When I was, say 8-13 years old, I would spend a week or two on my maternal grandparents 150 acres just west of Lagrange, KY (now $.5M homes). I would do farm chores: tend chickens and cattle, and help Pop maintain fences and barns. Also fish in the ponds, wade in the creek, build obstacle courses in the hayloft, and otherwise goof-off. My impressions from those years:

1. Chickens are dumb as bricks; have no personalities; and deserve to be eaten (I have no clue where PETA gets their allegation that chickens are as smart as cats or dogs ?!?!?).
2. Likewise for cows.

One of those things, when theory departs from experience and practice in the real world, bullshit quotient has a way of going up, up, up -- not surprising in the least.

Other recent e-mails:

• My baby sister sends a typically dumbass christian site, LOL in her opinion.
• My friend Patricks sends the address for signing up for the Bob Parks newsletter from the University of Maryland, apparently a skeptic/rational scientist.
• Patrick also sends a way-cool post-modern game of some sort.

Currently listening to The Time Jumpers 2 disc live CD "Jumpin' Time". 11 piece Texas Swing band composed of Nashville studio musicians, unbelievable pedal steel guitar player John Hughey. This will be mostly 4 stars.

And The Winner Is ...

Science Fiction, tagged in 54/106 blog posts. A close second was Music, with 49 references. A sizeable drop to a tie for 3rd/4th: antitheism and cognitive science with 34. Rounding out the top 5: evolution with 29.

So as was doing the tagging, I was reminded of the project I had my boys working on in 2000, as the .com bubble was bursting and we had no paying projects: an intelligent online diary. It would parse your entries into "thoughts" and create a knowledge base of them. A product called I thought "Thought-Tracker" was doing some of it, googling it now gives hits to something that looks completely different, an open-source project more web-based. One of those guys wound up later getting a job at BBN based on references to natural language processing (NLP) in his resume which were from his work on this project. The same guy was responsible for the entry UI, and thinks he is totally fucking hilarious when he gives me a demonstration of Personal Information Management Program (PIMP).

Anyway, thoughts on what I would like blogger to be able to do re tagging:

• Music was way ahead until I finished tagging the real old entries. So a graph of # of tag references per time period would be interesting. It would let one know how their interests had changed over the life of the blog?
• Seemed like certain topics came in clusters. It would be nice to be able to generate correlation coefficients for all pairs of tags and report on those that are indeed correlated.
• It would be nice if it would auto-tag all proper nouns.
• And, upon 1st reference to a proper noun, say Charles Stross, it could google for it and present a list of links, such that all references use that link, say to Charles' web site.
• Or, it could always check wikipedia (or your profile-specified choice) for the proper noun and make the default link.
• Maybe have two levels of tags, abstract (what I entered) and concrete (for the proper nouns)?

Biked 31 miles today in 2h40m, 2 breaks, from 9:40a to 12:20. Walked yesterday morning from 9:30a to 10:30. Temperature was only mid-80's both times, but I guess it was the humidity making it brutally muggy.

HuhHuhHuhHuh ...

Quoting my friend Patrick, who sent me this totally semiotically ambiguous piece of (I think) antitheism.

Last weekend we had a cousins' reunion in Louisvile, 18/20 of us (my mother's side of the family) represented. My baby sister, who reads this blog, mentioned how mean I sound sometimes, when in person, I am of course a sweetie-pie. Well, I still think celebrating the deaths' of conservative reactionary assholes is not inappropriate. I probably wouldn't do it in person tho. I am sure their families love them despite their inhumanity.

Meanwhile, in response to an e-mail I received re the last post, I believe we can begin to formulate "The Dumbass's Rules of Internet Etiquette":

1. Drinking and online shopping is a Bad Idea.
2. Drinking and blogging, on the other hand, is A-OK!

The Les Paul came Saturday (we were in Louisville, Fedex left it on the front porch ?!?!?), and is absolutely beautiful -- I've decided to name it "Black Beauty" -- antique black with gold trim and all the hardware gold -- way too pimp to take out in public.

Here's a picture (and you can Click toZoom).

It's been a real bummer for the last month or so tho. I'm getting arthritis in all the big toe/thumb joints (started ~ 1 year ago), and my left thumb has been killing me lately -- both joints swollen and hurting, playing guitar ascerbates. Getting into a doctor soon. I'm hoping it's gout (too much rich food and drinking), they have drugs for that. Meanwhile, I've decided I will take this opportunity to learn to finally play slide decently -- you don't use your left thumb there. In the past, I've tried to play slide for 2-3 minutes and sucked so bad I've given up. I've played slide a few times lately, stuck with it, getting better. Lots of sustain on the tube screamer helps. I was playing last weekend with my 14 YO nephew who's just started, but who I think has the touch to be a good guitarist -- he plays with fuzz all the time. Rule of thumb for beginners (including me on slide): fuzz-tone good.

I played downtown yesterday (4th of July) with G.Busy for 3 songs. My playing sucked, from lack of practice due to the fucking thumb. But singing and band-leading were OK, and of course I had fun.

New music:

1. Amy Winehouse, "Back to Black" -- from my youngest daughter, who didn't like Joss Stone, but likes this. This comes across as a totally late 60's motown record. So, with Joss Stone and Jamie Lidell, another Brit making totally kick-ass retro R&B music. 4 stars.
2. The Kinks, "Preservation Act I" -- playing now, goddamn Ray Davies could write songs. I think that I am going to be forced to give this 4 stars, despite the degree of stiltedness that comes from this being a concept album.

Finished reading "River of Gods" by Ian McDonald. Subtitle "August 15, 2047 - Happy Birthday, India". 4 stars, but -- it kept bugging me, this novel is basically "Neuromancer" on steroids, in India 2047. AI's trying to free themselves, with Krishna Cops instead of the Turing Police. Plus, it violated my heuristic of 100 pages per narrative thread -- 600 pages for 9 narrative threads. But, they started merging with maybe 200 pages to go, so not horrible, but it left some threads hanging at the end. Still, a real page turner, very enjoyable.

Biked 25 miles in 2 hours last Sunday, no cool birds.

Yeah!

So, Liquidity Event Fairy visited my checking account last night, life is good. My "friend" David made me go to music123.com and order a brand new Gibson Les Paul classic custom. But, life is good.

So, sitting here somethat inebriated, listening to Joss Stone, and waiting for my wife to return from bonding with her siblings in Louisville, I'm ~60% done with my "tagging the blog" project -- which I will discuss when complete -- when I come across a 4/25/5 entry:

unmitigated, evil assholes such as Jerry Falwell

So, when I read a few weeks ago that the asshole had died, my reaction was "Yes!!!".

The one good thing about reactionary assholes is that they tend to be old. I was so glad the fucking catholics elected Pope Benny, whose pushing 80. He'll die soon, good fucking riddance.

To be Fair and Balanced, I will state for the record that, despite being the proud owner of a "Liberal" t-shirt, I am still An Old Person, and as such, I am sure, I am instinctively reactionary at many levels -- but I am happy to cede my memetic slot to a more advanced modern liberal model as soon as it is appropriate.

$25 well spent

I splurged and spent $25 (2 @ 9.95 + 5.10 S&H) on ...

2 Flying Spaghetti Monster car emblems!!! Woo-hoo! One for my Prius, that I'm supposed to get back from my wife in the next few months, and one for the young coworker who first introduced me to the joy that is Pastafarianism. I think we've had reference to FSM in this forum before; regardless, when the idiocy gets you down and you need a good belly-laugh, it is available here: http://www.venganza.org

When my 4 kids were in high school we had a Darwin-fish emblem on one of the junkers they drove to school. I really think FSM is more appropriate. After all, Darwin was real .. (posted to KASES Forum earler today).

No biking today, radar threatened rain so I took a long walk instead. Got spit on a little.

Music-wise, some very good stuff lately:

• Bjork's latest, "Volta". I believe Ms. Gutmunsdottir is currently the world's greatest living composer. This kind of goes back to her techno roots, but keeps the heartbreaking melodies and odd textures she has consistently created lately. Another wonderful effort, 4 stars.
• At the recommendation of one of T.D.'s backup singers who was a Corinne Bailey Rae fan, got Joss Stone, "Introducing Joss Stone". Reminded me of Jamie Lidell, another white Brit deciding to do great R&B. 4 stars from me, but my youngest doesn't like it.
• Found out that eMusic.com has old Kinks stuff on it. Got "Muswell Hillbillies" (1971), which I also have on vinyl, 4 stars. Seems like most stuff I have on vinyl winds up at 4 stars when I reacquire it on a digital medium -- must be burned into the brain pretty good.
• Also got the Kinks "Preservation Act I" (1973). I had never heard before, I think part of 2 concept albums. 3 stars.
• Got Little Feat "Waiting for Columbus" (1979), an apparently legendary 2 disc live album. The 1st disc I was surprised at how many of the songs I recognized, mostly 4 stars here. The 2nd disc, not so many except for "Willin'", mostly 3 stars. Looked up Lowell George, guiding light of Little Feat. I thought these guys had been around well into the late '80s, and had backed up Bonnie Raitt, but George was apparently a real rocker and died in 1979 at age 34. He played with Zappa in the Mothers of Invention for a while ?!?!?

Haven't read much lately: two Black Widow graphic novels (multiple comic books repackaged) written by Richard K. Morgan, whose 4 recent novels have been very positively reviewed earlier in this blog. I guess they were good -- oh no, surely I'm not finally too old for comic books? Say it ain't so! One thing really comes across in these -- a nice level of British disgust for our current moronic president and his criminal foreign policies.

I never did get the other links into this new format. I may try that now. I am also, for fun, going to go back and tag all the posts. Be interesting to see what the breakdown is.

Birdwatching

Oh boy, a new tag!

Forgot to mention, when I was biking on 6/8/7, on Paul's Mill Rd, just south of Troy, KY, I had been thinking how I hadn't seen any interesting birds lately -- when a pileated woodpecker swooped in front of me! Way cool, 15" tall, wingspan at least 2 feet. The only other time I have seen one of these was on vacation in Traverse City, MI in the summer of 1995. Checked my bird book, it said these are actually found all the way down to the gulf states, and have gone from being deep-woods only to being found around cities -- but that they're very good at staying hidden ?!?!? Ninja birds???

Biked today 33.1 miles in 2h37m, with only one break. Felt pretty good. Saw a thrush.

Music reviews pending, but, got to go look at ... furniture!!! Argh!

Oops -- I Did It Again

Well, after months of being good and not bothering the members of KASES, I snapped and posted another call-to-arms. The Creation Museum in Northern Kentucky pushes all the wrong buttons. Here's the post:

I would like to personally thank Blenster for the anti-museum activities. The Lexington Herald-Leader coverage showed photos of the protesters, all the signs were great, altho I only remember "You evolved too -- just not enough".

I slide-showed the Flikr museum tour today. LOL like 4-5 times. That got me thinking... I hate to give these people $14.95, but, maybe with funding, how about maybe 2-4 times a day, have someone go through the "museum" and laugh, real loud, throughout? Target laugh would be, the deep belly guffaw. If/when a laugher is thrown out, I would suggest loud, laughing protestation, possibly per a prepared script, but nothing that could get anyone arrested.

I missed the talk last night re "God -- the Failed Hypothesis" (a drummer friend of mine needed a guitarist -- sorry, music over antitheism). I wanted to meet some of my fellow skeptics. I also wanted to raise my concerns re: appealing to rationality as an approach ain't going to cut it here.

The only one of the recent antitheist books I have read is the Dennett, "Breaking the Spell". I think I reviewed that book at this forum. I found Dennett's "please thing logically, Mr. Religious Fanatic" approach to be totally laughable.

We are dealing with one of, if not the, stongest memeplex that the human memesphere has developed in its 100,000 year history. Logic will do nothing against the "this makes me feel secure, when by all rights I have no business doing so" comfort that religion (and mindless patriotism, another of the very old and strong memeplexes) provide.

So, I think the only way to oppose this kind if thinking is via memetic warfare (apologies to the pacifists amongst us for my use of a militaristic term). I don't believe that memetic warfare is a discipline in which one can be certified at this time, but my gut level feel is that laughter is one of the strongest tools in the memetic warriors toolbox at this time. Some really catchy tunes would help too.

One of my major motivations for wanting to fix this, aside from "a mind is a terrible thing to waste", is my non-mindless patriotism. In "Darwin's Dangerous Idea", Dennett quotes the biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky (1973): "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." Raising our children on feel-good fairy tales instead of the scientific method is an express ticket to our country becoming second-rate.

Sorry for the rant. It's my birthday, this is my present to myself ?!?!?

But, then, actually got an e-mail from a forum member who said he really liked it. Also, a mandolin/guitar/bass player, so maybe another musical contact.

Since I worked full days last Saturday and Sunday on a last-minute enhancement, I took Friday off -- my birthday. Biked from 9:20 to 12:00, did 30.25 miles, my 1st time biking on a weekday, the roads in Jessamine and southern Woodford county were about as lightly traveled as when I bike on Sunday morning. A little much for 3rd time out, and it was ~88 degrees and humid.

I was going out again this morning, but too sore. Spent 3.5 hours yesterday cleaning up the damage (leaves) from the hailstorm we had last Wednesday. I filled 6 big leaf bags, after my wife had filled our herbie-curbie a few days before. The hailstorm was weird, we had pea-to-marble sized hail up to 2 inches deep at places in our yard. The trees were shredded. It was really strange walking around right after it, the air smelled like an evergreen air-freshener is supposed to smell, from the shredded leaves -- very, very pleasant smell. But, hail in June instead of April, weather screwy, global warming, global warming ... ;->

Had a great fine dining experience for my birthday at Azur. They have an elk rack that is totally delicious, but pricey enough that I save it for special occasions. Then last night grilled out with another couple, 1st time, the husband is a jazz guitarist, plays an electrified classical (?!?!?), plays wonderful stuff -- really hard to play -- but he's not really much of a jammer. Still, I learned 3-4 licks from him in the short time we played together last night. I'd love to be able to play more of that style of music.

Grilled sweet tater fries (2 more converts), asparagus, portabellos, and swordfish (yum!). The wife brought a very nice salad, artichoke and palm hearts. My wife made ruby relaxers:

In a 16 glass with (crushed) ice, combine 1 jigger peach schnappes; 1 jigger cocoanut run; 1 jigger vodka; fill with pineapple juice, add a spash of cranberry juice.

Very tasty, a very nice fruity drink.

So today I'm loafing and recuperating, might have to break out the hammock. Tonight, I think I'm just going to BBQ a chicken, grill some veggie, and make some red beans & rice.

Living to eat or eating to live? Moot point, I think. At my age, biologically I'm not supposed to be here anyway.

More later on reading and music.

Folk Ontology

Meant to mention in the last post, re web 2.0 and tagging, that the tagging process seems to be creating "folk ontologies", similar to folk psychology, folk physics, etc. It seems to me that there are three levels here:

1. Formal ontology creation using OWL/RDF by a domain expert -- this is how Sir Tim's Semantic Web is supposed to be built.
2. Structured organization of knowledge by semi-pro experts, as in Wikipedia.
3. Tag heirarchies created by everyone and their brother, as in del.icio.us.

I had the thought recently that you should be able to generate in an automated manner, the top level, formal OWL/RDF ontologies, from the lowest level, tag heirarchies. It seemed intuitively obvious to me that this was doable -- but I started to think about how and went, hmmm ...

• Do you have to have some seed ontologies to start with?
• Ontologies are primarily IsA (UML Generalization) and HasA (UML Composition) networks -- surely those can be generated from the tags?

Hey hey, I may have found my open source retirement project -- if no one has done this in the next 10 years -- pretty unlikely.

Donating Cycles to the Group Mind

Too bad I already had this title picked out, because, according to Blogger, this is post #100 to "Portrait of the Dumbass". First post was May 4, 2003, that is ~ 1500 days ago -- so I've averaged 2/month. Not enough, no wonder I have so few fans.

So I noticed, blogger now has a place to enter labels. I am entering them, good practice at tagging / classification / taxonomification. The whole web 2.0 tagging stuff like del.icio.us got me wondering tho. The wisdom of the group mind is at the bottom of google's ranking scheme, has created wikipedia, and in general surprises me with its ability to produce good results. The question is, how many cycles are you willing to donate to the group mind?

For me, the answer is, not a lot. I really don't have the time. Funny tho, some of the science fiction classics where the group mind takes over or tries to take over, like Swanwick's "Vacuum Flowers" blogged earlier or the Meme Wars from John Barnes "Kaleidoscope Century", the group mind makes you An Offer You Can't Refuse. Don't see that happening anytime soon, but it seems funny that it is a voluntary activity instead.

Recently have read two by Elizabeth Bear: a novel "Hammered", 1st of a trilogy, and a short story collection "The Chains That You Refuse". I liked one of her stories in the year's best, but neither the novel nor the short stories really work well. The novel is going for a noir feel, but, I think it's main problem is that the heroine just isn't enough of a badass. I will read the two others tho, see if it gets any better.

Also read two by Larry Niven. I remember in the late 70's some of the guys I worked with at DEC thought that Ringworld was The Greatest Thing Ever. So, read "Ringworld's Children", was kind of surprised when it kind of came to a conclusion -- one of those that just kind of meander pointlessly for a while. Also read "The Draco Tavern", a short story collection that had some cute stories. Still, no links for either.

My daughter the graphic designer has applied an appropriate style sheet to this blog, it looks much nicer, thanks Erica. Also has a links area, I can think of 2 appropriate links in addition to the family ones that Erica initialized it with, I'll see if I can add them.

What Global Warming?

So last weekend the wif and I left Thursday am for a trip to Charleston, SC, followed by a visit to our son and daughter-in-law (and my baby sister and her family) in Morrisville, NC. So at around 4:30 p, 5/17/7, we are about 30 miles northwest of Charleston when we start noticing haze/fog/smoke? It gets worse as we get into Charleston. Crossing Charleston Bay (the Prius' GPS was seriously surprised that the bridge it knew about was no longer there), you couldn't see a mile. We get to the place we're staying and get out you can clearly smell cypress in the smoke. Ask around, it's from the fires in Florida, ~ 300 miles away. And I'm thinking, increased temperature, increased O2 in the atmosphere, both global warming side effects, both give more and longer fires ...

Then a couple hours later, walking along a marina there on Charleston Bay, we see a manatee feeding -- way cool, 2 ft wide by 9-10 long, looked like he weighted at least a half ton, bright white propeller scan on his back. And I'm thinking, I thought these guys stayed down in Florida? And three people I ask all say, I thought they stayed in Florida. And I'm thinking, species moving north, global warming, global warming ...

But, the next day, someone told me that manatees weren't uncommon there, and when I got home, wikipedia said that they have been seen as far north as Cape Cod (they like to hang out by power plants, always warm there).

So, maybe it's not The End Days of Global Warming. But, at this point, it is pretty much an accepted scientific fact. Al Gore's movie is very entertaining, but also very scary. My wife was telling me about a coworker, a pharmacist, former military, dedicated republican/bushite, expounding on how there is no global warming, that data has been misinterpreted and misrepresented by people with green agendas. If that is not a case of projection, I don't know what is. Scientists who misrepresent data lose their credibility and their jobs. The only thing I have heard of re misrepresentation of data is that of the many documented cases of republican political hack appointees who have edited scientific reports and removed anything that did not fit in with their political views/goals.

It's kind of funny tho. I feel fairly confident that there is no "green cabal" in the scientific community. Too many scientists (basically 100%) believe that the data supports human-generated global warming for it to be a cabal. But, (the funny tho part), I have no trouble believing that the neocon republican leadership is a cabal working to their own agenda, one of the top items of which is protecting big oil. So who's the paranoid?

Biked this morning, much better, 25 miles in 2h0m. Still, I was dying at about the 50 minute mark and took a 10 minute break. I think the problem may be, that since I have quit smoking, I have gone from 0-4 oz of alcohol a day to around 3-6, and I think that I have quit paying attention to my hydration when drinking. I used to pretty much always drink 3-4 oz water (in addition to mixers) for each oz of alcohol. I think I need to get back to serious hydration. In another month or two, when more of my "want a smoke" routines have timed out and been put into mental hibernation (hopefully), I will cut back on the drinking.

Until then, as Albert Collins says:

I don't care what other people thinkin'
I'm not drunk, I'm just drinkin'.

Odometer Reading (2)

So finally went biking this year 5/13/7. Did 11 miles in 1h5m, I totally sucked. Also got odometer reading: 961. Reading 4/23/6 was (per my external memory, this selfsame blog) 657. So last summer only biked 304 miles compared to 647 the year before. Ouch. Getting fat and old, give up, give up ...

I like Charlie Stross's term, from "Accelerando", for our increasing "external memory", like this blog -- the exocortex. I now know pretty much no one's phone number -- but my cell phone does a great job for me.

Where The Hell's The Continuity?

So, reading thru the recently tres spotty blog, I know that all Inquiring Minds would Want To Know that:

I got my 1961 Gibson Les Paul Jr (Ur-SG) back from RS GuitarWorks about a month ago. They did an amazing job for $200. You cannot tell there was ever any problem with the head. There is some black on the back of the head/neck junction, very professionally blended, that didn't used to be there. But, RS got the guitar through Blackrider Guitars, my local guitar shop, who told them (incorrectly) to minimize cost. I think that the Blackrider guys told them that because we had a Pricing Contention incident. They had been charged with getting my ~50 year-old Multikord 6-string ghetto pedal steel back into working condition, which primarily involved replacing a dead pickup. They had quoted me what I thought was a Fixed Price. But they put in a normal guitar pickup, whose screws did not line up with the pedal steel strings, because the neck is wider, leaving me with a somewhat dead high E string (the ghetto pedal steel I tune to an open E chord). So after replacing the normal guitar pickup with a bar pickup, which greatly helped the "somethat dead high E string" problem, I refused to pay The Amount Invoiced, based on the fact that I thought I had been given a Fixed Price Quotation for a solution.

In the interim, while waiting for my SG, I bought from Lindsay Olive, the alpha guitarist of the Lynagh's "We're Here For The Party Band" crowd, a 1978 blond Fender Telecaster. In ~ 1967 I had a chance to buy a blond Tele for $100 -- but I didn't have $100 then, and ever since, I have always wanted a blond Tele to go with my cherry Gibson. So I now have one. Odd tho, for a few years there, Fender was making these from virgin-growth Canadian ash, and the guitar's heavier than I would like, but, great Tele tone.

I have also convinced my wife that my guitar buying has been greatly suppressed from what it should have been for the last 20-30 years. So, I now need to buy, I think maybe every year or two:

• a Fender Stratocaster, not sure what color;
• a Gibson Les Paul, sunburst I think;
• a Gibson ES-335 (semi-hollow thin, like B.B. King plays). Richard Zvonar, founder of Salamander, played one of these, cherry;
• a Parker, like T.D. plays ("fly" model?);
• a Gretch; Blackrider has a bunch of Chet Atkins just in; that or a Tennessean or a Country Gentleman;
• maybe a Gibson Firebird; I have twice played in bands where the other guitarist played one of these;
• maybe a Paul Reed Smith; these are pretty guitars;

Also, POI, I have not had a cigarette since 4/23/7 at 7:30 am. Today is the 1st day I haven't worked since then and by far the worst day. It's like, relaxing, chillin', goddamn, I want a smoke!!! I've been drinking heavily in the evenings -- drinking you can't start til the evenings, smoking you can do anytime -- I started a little early today (5:30), hopefully will pass out soon, then back to work tomorrow, easy to ignore urge to smoke there ...

Consciousness is Not a Power Moonroof

Douglas Hofstadter said I should (could) quote him on that. The Good Book I was reading was Hosftadter's "I Am A Strange Loop", just published. This is a very good and easy (except for some chapters on Godel) read, just under 400 pages. The intro is kind of: one of the main points of his 1980 pulitzer-prize winning classic "Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid"(GEB) was missed by most readers/reviewers because the book was just so cool. That point was, that the human mind/soul/consciousness is a strange loop: self-referential with no limit on the complexity of the symbolic reference heirarchy. This is analogous to Godel's finding that all formal mathematical systems must be incomplete because you cannot stop self-reference from creeping in.

It's kind of refreshing, the simplicity of Hofstadter's arguments -- that we are "mirages that perceive themselves". But, it can't be any other way. The reality of our minds is neurons, neurotransmitters, etc -- but this is not what matters. Just as we can deal with a gas based on pressure, volume and temperature without worrying about individual molecules, so it is the emergent layers of mind that matter -- whether they are illusory or not. It kind of answers the question I posted to this blog May 14, 2003 -- oops was going to put a link, but apparently my archives are down, since switching to the new blogger -- argh, more work!?!?!

I like too that Hofstadter appropriates the word "soul" to mean, the illusory "I" that is what we have, rather than the "elan vital" or "eternal magic stuff" that we don't have. Some of his best arguments in the book are when he assumes that the "magic stuff" exists and then gets reductio-ad-absurdem contradiction after contradiction.

He talks a fair amount about the "narrative I" that over the course of our lives spends all its time telling each of us the story of "me", and convincing itself that it exists. "Narrative I" I believe I first saw in Julian Jaynes "TOOCITBOTBM", but no props in the bibliography.

Also very interesting was his discussion of how much we can put our patterns (minds) into other peoples heads. His wife died abruptly at age 43, when their children were 2 and 5, which must have been a horrible shock. He wonders about his feelings that, particularly given that his wife and he were "of the same mind" about many things, particularly about raising their children, to what extent his wife's mind was running in his brain after her death?

This reminded me a lot of the point I was making at my dad's memorial service. I was talking about how I got the superpower of having an ear for the hook (catchy tunes) from my dad, and apparently had passed it on to some of my children. The subtext was that, there is no life after death, but here is how we really live on: in our descendants who have various genetic pieces of us, and in other people who lives we have influenced who have memetic pieces of us.

I'm Back???

Apparently I haven't been much of a blogging mood lately. I have been sick or injured for >~= 1 month, this shit is getting old.

So, went on the company President's Club outing, which was a 4 day cruise, Miami-Key West-Cozumel-Miami March 15-19. The high point of the trip was the last day, where we spent about 4 hours singing harmony and backup with Brian Lavelle (we were the Lavellettes). Started off with a coworker who's a bass player/singer, with our wifes also harmonizing, wound up with about 40-50 of our crowd singing along. Early evening, we had 5 part harmony on "Take It Easy" with everybody right on their notes, very nice.

So, off the boat at around 8:45 am, bus from Miami to Ft Lauderdale, flew to Cincinatti, drove to Louisville to get our dog, then home, arriving at about 9:00 pm -- no problems. Soon as I come in the house, landsickness -- for 2 weeks, woo-ha!

So that finally goes away, the next Sunday I spend 7 hours cutting and bundling branches from 3 ash trees in our back yard that my wife Paulette Bunyan and her crew had cut down. My hams and quads killed for the next 5 days.

So, a couple of good days -- then the temperature drops from 80 to 40, with 20's at night and I caught a nice cold -- which of course brought back the landsickness. Just about over both now, praise jebus.

I've only played at Lynagh's once in the last 6 weeks or so: the week before last, when all that was wrong was sore legs. Had a great night: played 4 and sang 3, then later played 4 more and sang one, after which T.D.'s band played, woo-hoo! T.D is a guitarist who owns a (black) nightclub at 2nd and Elm Tree in Lexington. His band is him, bass, drums, keyboards, and 1-4 singers. They play blues, jazz and R&B, all most excellently. T.D. plays a Parker guitar (I gotta get me one of those) and is a great guitarist. King William, who is one of the Lynagh's regulars (and Robin to my Batman -- he plays a white Stratocaster), took me to T.D.'s one Monday, which is their live music night -- it was the best live music I have ever heard in Lexington in my 26 years here.

So, that Wednesday at Lynagh's was a pretty good night.

While on the cruise, I read Dan Simmons latest "The Terror". It was some great cognitive dissonance, reading about 2 1850's British ships trapped in the ice for 2 years trying to find the northwest passage, while on a Caribbean cruise. Pretty good read as Simmons always is, 4 stars.

Music-wise, http://www.emusic.com/ seems to have some potential. At 1st I thought I was only going to be able to get old stuff from there. I downloaded some old Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson, and a bunch of Django Reinhardt (the greatest jazz guitarist of the '30s, with his sidekick violinist Stephane Grapelli). But, after buying the new Arcade Fire and Andrew Bird at iTunes, they showed up on eMusic about a week later -- and they had the new Bloc Party right away. So, definitely need to defer any iTunes indy purchases.

My youngest has been having a Real Life Adventure student teaching in Capetown, South Africa since mid-January. She gets home May 5 and graduates UK with her elementary ed degree on May 6. Celebratory cookout may feature the internationally renowned guitarist, the inimitable Ben Lacy.

Here's her blog.

Here's her pictures.

I've had a steady stream of new music:

• Bloc Party, "A Weekend in the City" -- still unrated, probably 3 stars.
• Django Reinhardt, "Anthology 1934-1937" -- some great stuff, recorded at the Club Hot in Paris. His quintet was bass, violin, and 3 guitars -- no drums. Apparently Django is credited with inventing the concept of rhythm guitar.
• Arcade Fire, "Neon Bible" -- not as good as "Funeral", maybe 3.5 stars.
• Air (french band), "Pocket Symphony" -- 3 stars.
• Rickie Lee Jones, "It's Like This" -- covers of various 50's - 70's tunes -- Steely Dan, Traffic -- some odd stuff, still unrated, probably 3 stars.
• Modest Mouse, "We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank" -- not as good as their previous, maybe 3.5 stars.
• Andrew Bird, "Armchair Apocrypha" -- not as good as his previous, 3 stars.
• Rickie Lee Jones, "Sermon on Exposition Boulevard" -- 2007, very raw stuff, kind of reminds me of Lou Reed -- still unrated.
• Clap Your Hands Say Yeah "Some Loud Thunder" -- really wierd engineering, trying for an authentic garage sound?
• Tracey Thorn, "Out of the Woods" -- a step down from EBTG, needs some more listens.
• Django Reinhards, "Jazz in Paris: Nuages" -- one of his last recordings (1953), with a standard jazz quartet (bass, drums, piano, Django), with Django playing an electric. An interesting contrast to the crazy stuff from the 30's.

The '50s Django is in my iTunes as Jazz, the '30s is Early Jazz. The dividing line is WW2 -- when the crazy energetic small band jazz of the '20s and '30s got morphed into big band -- which then became the execrable pop of the 50's.

I'm reading a Good Book now, hopefully blog it before too long. Still working a bunch, but The Magical New Product is going well.

'Nuf said.

Shameless Commercial Shilling

My oldest daughter wanted me to link to the most excellent site that she designed and project managed. It's about fashion advice and shopping help. Liveperson.com, FTW! OK, done. All my many readers are invited, nay, they are commanded, to visit and use this most excellent site.

Happy New Year?!?!?

Thought I had posted this year, apparently not. Too much work, I guess. Our 1st 2 customers have the new product now, but still much to do.

So we got into St. Martin on Saturday 2/10/7 late afternoon. Had some pina coladas, walked the beach, nice dinner at the Sunset Cafe. Signed up for my wife to waterski Monday and Thursday.

Then Sunday, got a message from my desk that my family was trying to reach me. Called my baby sister, my dad died Sunday 2/11/7 at ~1:45 am. His health, particularly mental, had been steadily declining for the last few years. The decline accelerated a few months ago, and a couple days before his death he quit eating. My middle sister was there when he died, and "felt his last breath in her hand".

My wife waterskied Monday and Tuesday mornings, was again a goddess on ski, with her new ski handle she skied with the rope behind her neck. We flew home Tuesday, visitation was Wednesday, funeral Thursday. Service was very nice, my immediately older and younger brothers both spoke, and I spoke and sang an old (1936) dad song "Twilight on the Trail". Saw a bunch of my cousins I haven't seen in years, and neighbors and friends of my brothers from my early childhood.

Kind of bummed/depressed this week. With both parents dead, it's definitely "we're next". My dad was 80, that would give me another 25. I guess living til 2031 would be pretty cool (but my dad never smoked). But, the reminder of mortality seems to make you question your life, to wonder if you should change paths. I am pretty much stuck where I am so those thought processes are pretty well repressed -- but, I am Living the Dream, and every day is Another Day in Paradise.

Was hoping for a good night at Lynagh's Wednesday, instead got a drunk 1st timer whose singing was OK but whose guitar leads were awful, and who didn't realize that when you call the song, you have to lead the band. His two songs were officially pronounced as Train Wrecks by the keyboard player Bob Hopps. Oh well.

Read a fair amount during this period. Finally slogged through Marvin Minsky's "The Emotion Machine". Not much new there, terminology change from "agents" to "resources" for the many pieces that make up a mind. He defines 6 architectural layers, ranging from instincts at the bottom to self-conscious reflection at the top, and, in doing so, surprisingly gives some props to Freud's id, ego and superego.

Read the 2nd John Scalzi novel "The Ghost Brigades". I read his 1st "Old Man's War" in paperback, so was waiting for this one to come out on paperback -- but found it in the library. Very enjoyable read, 4 stars.

Also slogged through volumes 4 and 5 of Kevin J. Anderson's "The Saga of Seven Suns". Sophomoric writing, and ***spoiler alert***, at the end of vol 5, when the major conflicts have been pretty much wrapped up, and I'm thinking "I'm finally done with this turkey", a new plot element comes in from left field, and we're still going ... Anderson and Frank Herbert's son have out now a new book, following in the main Dune sequence. Argh, it will be as bad as the rest of this stuff, but I know I will read it. I guess I should remember that I like comic books.

Music-wise, signed up for http://www.emusic.com/ on my oldest daughter's recommendation. 30 songs/month for $10. So far I have only downloaded old Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson stuff. Supposed to be a good place for indie stuff.

Also have in my iTunes:

• Wilco, "A Ghost is Born". Ok stuff, apparently they used to be country, still unrated, I think it will wind up at around 3.3 stars.
• Allen Toussaint and Elvis Costello, "The River in Reverse". I think a New Orleans benefit CD, nothing too catchy, 3 stars.
• Los Lonely Boys, "Live at the Fillmore". Weird, my wife and I were out at Outback Steakhouse and this song came on. I'd heard it before, nice tune, real catchy guitar lick. I didn't recognize the band or any of the lyrics. So I asked the waiter if he knew the name of the song. He said "How Far is Heaven". So, between google and iTunes I found out there was a version on this CD, which had gotten from a coworker and loaded a few days before and hadn't listened to all of (it's the last track). Neat! So, I've worked it up, may try it at the jam. Overall, CD is 3.5 stars.
• New Norah Jones, "Not Too Late". Not doing too much for me at all, still unrated, probably wind up 3 stars.
• The Cardigans, "First Band on the Moon" (1996). After hearing "LoveFool" in Burger King, tracked this down. Very nice album, catchy (Swedish) europop, I think 4 stars. I think I will be mining their other 3 CDs from the 90's. The tracks I listened to from their comeback(?) in 2005 and later seem a lot duller.
• Tony DeSare, "Last First Kiss". My wife listens to NPR on her drive home, they were interviewing this guy and pushing this. Totally mediocre, 1 star.

Whur U B?

Once more into the breach ...

November 17 was a bad day. I caught a nasty cold that lasted over 3 weeks. I only worked 12 hours the week of thanksgiving. I had to quit smoking for a few days to get rid of the background smoker's cough. Finally seem to be mostly well, everywhere you went people were hacking and coughing.

But the real Bad Day thing came when my youngest took my classical guitar off of the 3-way stand to play me a new song she had written (yay!). 5 seconds later, stand fell over onto the guitar still on it -- my 1961 Gibson Les Paul Jr. The nut hit the floor and the head shattered. The head had been broken off in the middle in 1969 (a frat brother sat on it) and I'd epoxied it -- and put a bolt through it. I had not done a lot of carpentry at that point of my life, so I did not know the love that wood has for glue, the bolt was a bad idea. Still, the guitar played well for 35 years after that.

Anyway, it is now at RS GuitarWorks, where by all accounts it will be restored to be better than new. Still, a definite blow to the psyche. I have owned the guitar since I was 14. I found out a couple of months that 1961 was the first year that Gibson made the SG body -- so this was an ur-SG. It was unbelievable how dry the wood in the head was -- but, 45 years old, not exactly inexplicable.

Did get my pedal steel back shortly after that, so I've been playing that a lot. It sounds pretty decent. I took it out to the Hideaway Lounge last Tuesday. Not sure how that went. My musical patroness Patty Butcher seems to be somewhat disenamoured of me.

Also 2 weeks ago bought a 1978 blond Telecaster. I had a chance to buy a blond telecaster in 1967 for $100 and didn't have the $100. I've always wanted one, so now I finally have one. Heavier than I would like (canadian 1st-growth ash body), but great sound.

The time I was sick, I kind of got television watching. I was surprised that I wasn't just tired, achy, etc, but that it also seemed like my will to do much of anything was totally sapped. So, watch old movies, veg, seemed about right.

But I did read a lot, and did not make it onto the non-fiction stack. RSN. The stuff I read seemed to have a real magical realism theme to it.

• "Three Days to Never" by Tim Powers. Einstein's great-grandchildren vs mossad vs a secret mystical society vying for control of Einstein's time machine. Powers really has a way of making this stuff work. 4 stars.
• "Strange Iteneraries", a collection of Tim Powers sparse short fiction. Nice reading, 4 stars.
• "Eternity Road", by Jack McDevitt. Instead of astroarcheology of lost alien civilations, we have a post-apocalyptic treasure hunt on earth. Never quite sucked me in for some reason, 3 stars.
• "Anansi Boys", by Neal Gaiman. An OK read, but didn't do much for me. Give me Tim Powers for magical realism any time. And, unlike "American Gods", this one did not have Odin and Loki in it. 3 stars.
• "Enchantment", by Orson Scott Card (1999), which had been on my shelf for a while. Very pleasant read, "my mom is sleeping beauty", 3 stars.
• "A Feast of Crows", by George R.R. Martin, the 4th of this series. Not nearly as lively as the prior 3 -- 300-400 pages in before anyone is killed. He may have exceeded the allowable thread limit. 1100 pages and you feel like not much really happened??? 3 stars.
• "The Jennifer Morgue", by Charles Stross. The first story in this world by Stross was "The Atrocity Archives", which was Dilbert meets H.P.Lovecraft. This one is Dilbert meets H.P.Lovecraft meets James Bond. LOL in several places, and, weird, the middle half is set on St. Martin (6 weeks off). Stross now has 4 separate worlds running for his stories, go Charles! 4 stars.

Much new music as well:

• Beck, "The Information". Good tunes, except for 10 odd minutes at the end 3 stars.
• Ben Folds, "supersunnyspeedygraphic". The reigning smartass of pop music. 4 stars.
• The inimitable Ben Lacy, "One Track Mind". Finally got a paypal account, so I bought Ben's CD. 3.5 stars.
• "The Runners Four", by Deerhoof. Very odd stuff, very interesting, I almost reclassified from "Alternative & Punk" to "Unclassifiable". 3.5 stars.
• "Music for Our Lady Queen of the Angels", by Garth Hudson. Airy, orchestral stuff by The Band's musical genius, won't get too many listens 2.5 stars.
• Three CDs by Harmonica Red. I've played with Red a few times, he's an unbelievable harp player. The 1st CD, "Harmonica Red Vol I" (1987) I liked best, very listenable. 3 stars overall.
• "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard", Paul McCartney. My youngest wanted me to get this. A few of the type of tunes that remind you that Paul was half of one of the greatest songwriting duos of the 20th century. 3 stars.
• "The Eraser", Thom Yorke (Radiohead). Nice solo effort, 4 stars.
• "Fever to Tell", the Yeah-Yeah-Yeahs. A couple of real nice tunes, my kids tell me they're mostly a live band. 3 stars.

Funny to me lately is the fact that the most fun I've been having is at work. Writing lots of fun stuff on our paradigm-shifting new product. What a geek, oh well. Been off this week, sleeping late, all four kids were back home (plus the lovely daughter-in-law), visited with my sibs Wed and Thurs, very relaxing. But, oh boy, back to the code next week.

The Democratic success in the elections and the seeming disgust that the entire US seems to be pretty much developing for W seem to have turned off my antitheism ranting and raving valve. Seem to be loathe to get back onto the non-fiction stack, though I think I will read Minsky's new book soon. Maybe finally giving up on messianism, my (ever-growing) gut is telling me, too old, time to just relax and enjoy what's left of my life. Thinking about teminating this exercise as well. But, no, I'll keep it up, worthwhile for everyone I think to have a medium to capture some of their thoughts.

Rat Bastard Traitor

Cover article of the latest Wired is "The New Atheism". Extensive interviews with Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris, who I hadn't heard of, whose main idea seems to be that religion is too dangerous to continue to coddle; plus sidebars. The rat bastard traitor author (Gary Wolf) totally cops out at the end: "the fact that no matter how confident we are in our beliefs, there's always a chance we cold turn out to be wrong". What's this, the atheist converting on his deathbed, "just in case"? What crap. If I die and wind up before an angry jehobah (the child-killer) who sentences me to eternity in hell (or on Jupiter's moon Io, pretty damn hell-like), I would gladly accept the sentence and spent eternity plotting how to turn the tables on the genocidal mother-fucker and give him his well-deserved comeuppance.

But, the guy is right in some of his points. It is so easy to become bitter, harsh, shrill over the idiocy of religious beliefs. But, part of it is that I do miss the community that a church provides. It is a nice size between the family and the city/town. Churches are a great networking tool. I was sorry my children grew up without this social safety net, but the church of soccer provided a fairly acceptable substitute. But, still, I would like the community without the crap.

Speaking of which, my friend Patrick has started a Google group, The Antitheist League", in part I think to give me a place to rant away from the mild-mannered KASESforum teachers. So, I will now rant there as well as here, and limit posts to KASES to evolutionary biology/psychology or other science. One of the KASES guys has posted there, and I will use it as the repository of The World's Greatest Religious Jokes.

I was mentioning to my wife how I had read that some wealthy republicans had sponsored the candidacy of a Green party candidate in a tight Northeast race (I think). She immediately came out with, "The democrats should do that." And I thought, she's right. We need to get some wealthy democrats to pour money into conservative christian parties/candidates. Nader's Green candidacy in 2000 probably cost Democrat Gore the election, maybe some nice fundamentalist candidates could return the favor. And I don't think this is a "dirty trick". Creating more political parties that accurately reflect the beliefs and hot buttons of their constituents would be a good thing for America. For sure the current two party thing totally sucks. I would like to vote Green, as I do think that helping the world survive the coming ecocaust of the next 40-50 years should be the top priority of the human race, but I can't, because in doing so, I help fucking republicans win.

Read "The Year's Best Science Fiction" 23rd edition, edited by Gardner Dozois. Great reading as always, but no real standouts like Charles Stross, Robert Reed, and Octavia Butler in years past. A couple of good 1st timers who will bear watching: Hannu Rajaniemi (Finnish) and Dominic Green (Brit). Then tore through the magazine stack (my wife's working 3rd shift), and am now starting the new Tim Powers. Then something from the non-fiction stack, I swear.

Music-wise, right now listening to "The Runners Four" by Deerhoof, given to me by my youngest daughter. I have been tempted to give it the coveted "Unclassifiable" genre, but have settled for "Alternative & Punk". Very odd stuff, but lots of nice hooks, and 20 tracks. 3.5 stars. Also have the new Beck "The Information", nice, 3 stars; the new Paul McCartney (bought at the behest of my youngest) "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard" -- it's OK (my youngest really likes it???), 3 stars. Also have Thom Yorke (Radiohead)'s "The Eraser", 3 stars. Needed 5 dollars for free shipping on amazon so bought Quicksilver Messenger Service eponymous. I had totally forgotten about their version of "Who Do You Love", octaves in the lead, and "What About Me" and "Fresh Air". Still mostly 2 stars, those 3 maybe 3 stars. Finally, got "Fever To Tell" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, who my youngest saw in Austin TX recently. Somewhat disappointing, may wind up at 2 stars (doesn't go to the iPod.)

Had a good week playing last week. Tuesday night went to Around the Corner, a black club on the northside. G-busy, a harp player/singer/front man, had a gig there, and the standard crew, Lindsay on guitar, Matt on bass, Bob on keys, and Sheri on drums, were there. I started playing with them, with my Blues Jr amp, on the 3rd song, and wound up playing from around 8:45 to 11:45, with 2 breaks. Only sang 1, "Who Do You Love", but played pretty well the whole time. I was somewhat punchy at work the next day, but still went out to Lynagh's Wednesday. Left after my wife left for work (8:10), was fourth on the list to play guitar, didn't get up til around 10. 1st did The Band's "Up On Cripple Creek", 1st time I'd tried it, and it worked pretty well, Bob Hopps and the guitarist Gary both singing harmony on the chorus. I only remembered the words to the 1st, 4th and 5th verses, I'll get 2 and 3 the next time. Then did "Everybody's Got To Change Sometime", and finally "Wine". Wine came off I think the best it ever had. The last chorus, did a full stop, the whole band it sounded like sang the last line "Pass that bottle to me", then a single snare pop, then the elvis ending, 2-5-1 at half time. I was still kind of punchy and wasn't singing real well, but all three came off OK. I think I'm going to try Around the Corner again this week.

STFU

The KASES forum has had some discussion of Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion" and Dawkins' contention that we should quit appeasing the religious. I responded with a "call to arms" for atheism. One guy kind of responded, but overall response has been negative. My friend Patrick has accused me of militarism. Then I looked at the forum description, which ends:

'God OR evolution'is a false dichotomy. There is much conflict between science and religious fundamentalism, but there is no NECESSARY conflict between science and religion."

Appeasement all the way. Traitors. Heretics. PUT THEM ALL TO THE SWORD!!! (Just kidding ;->)

Meanwhile, two more republican "joke" forwards, the 2nd of which implies that Hillary Clinton is a lesbian.

Probably I should just pull a Nero and fiddle while Rome burns. Jam tonight was very good, we got into some really nice grooves, I played pretty well. My pedal steel is going back in the shop tomorrow, I have concluded that the only thing that could be wrong with the high E string is that the pickup is bad -- so, we'll see if a bar pickup fixes the problem. I have been having fun playing the pedal steel, if I can get the high E fixed, I'm taking it out in public.

The Republicans Suborn The Mission

Grrr. The elections are, what, a couple of weeks away, so what do I get over the weekend?

1. Two jokes from my conservative older brother, in separate forwards, one on how many prominent Democrats were born 9 months after roswell, the other on people donating gasoline rather than money to terrorists threatening to burn up prominent Democrats if a ransom is not paid.
2. A "Halloween" web site with an animated short of a bat hanging from a lamppost and flashing pedestrians, who are disgusted, upset and knocked out -- by the Hilary for President poster being flashed.

Any doubt that the creation and initial distribution of these was paid for by Republicans? They clearly understand viral marketing and memetic warfare.

Grrr. What is going to take to get some liberal policical leadership who can reverse this endless butt-kicking?

Jebus Was Gay

While we are in such a jolly blasphemous mood/mode:

For years I have told a story about one of the kids whom I coached in U8 soccer. He was on my oldest daughter's (27 YO) team. U8 soccer was still 11-on-a-side then, which made it easier for this boy to employ his special soccer talent -- which was to never be involved in the play at all. If the ball would start his way, he would magically melt away to somewhere else. He had a totally sweet nature, but, as a U8 soccer coach a big part of my job was to try to make these 6-7 year olds aggressive. Several times with this boy, I had the thought: "What am I doing? Here is this sweet, christ-like child and I'm trying to turn him into an agressive animal like the rest of them." Whenever I have told this story, I have always referred to the child as christ-like.

So, a couple of Sundays ago, there was an interview with this boy in the paper. He is a member/founder of Scissor Sisters, a glam pop group doing very well in the UK, and starting to get some traction in the US. In the article, it was mentioned that he was gay.

So, I got to thinking. Turn the other cheek, love those that oppress you, do these sound like anything that would come out of the mouth of your standard, heterosexual male (asshole)? Not very likely. A gay man tho -- it makes a lot more sense.

There you have it, QED. And I didn't even have to bring up the 12 "apostles" jebus hung out with all the time.

Technical Difficulties and a Status Report

Work, work, work. I was working Saturday and made the same logic error three times and took 15 minutes of debugging to find it each time -- pretty lame. Getting tired, I've written so much code in the last few months I think that I am in a cache overflow situation, and it's definitely slowing me down. The worst should be over soon.

Re technical difficulties, I have had a report from one of my devoted readers -- devoted because he always calls me by my honorific, "Dumbass" -- that the archives are unavailable. I have found out this is true then you access the blog via the Atom feed. I sent an e-mail to support@blogspot.com with this info, to have it returned as undeliverable 4 days later. So, for now, please access the archives by going to the main blog link: http://portraitofthedumbass.blogspot.com/ -- they are accessible from there.

I received an outpouring of support for The Mission. Many submissions of God humor.

First from my brother the author:

1. Did you hear about the dyslexic agnostic? He didn't understand all the fuss about whether or not dog really exists.

Q. Why isn't God circumcised?
A. Because he doesn't have a dick.

Very nice. And, from his daughter, also a writer:

Q. What do you call God's crap?
A. Holy shit!

A good first effort! From my baby sister:

God, Santa, and the Easter Bunny walk into a bar ...

This is very promising. I have a background job running to finish this one.

From my friend Patrick, a line of t-shirts:

One idea I had was to do a series of t-shirts, black with white letters with funny anti-religious statements, sort of vaguely based on that ole fuckwitted billboard:

We need to talk.
-- God

So along those lines, something like:

God?
Is that the best you can come up with?

God?
Just ignore Him; He'll go away.

God?
You've gotta be fucking kidding me.

We need to talk.
-- Nietzsche

And so forth. I think they would be sorta funny t-shirts, if "God?" or whatever was printed in big letters, and the "punch line" were printed a little smaller. And a t-shirt from his lovely, intelligent and charming wife:

Got Jesus?
They make a pill for that now.

Patrick also sends a link to George Carlin on God. Carlin has had some great rants here, clearly a good source for The Mission.

Finally, a reader points out:

Unfortunately, the world's funniest joke has already been created, and it does more than purge religion -- it's fatal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IysnS5wO60g

Once again thanks to all for the tremendous support for The Mission. I still need to find a static web site at which to distill The Work.

Finally off the magazine stack. Reading the new The Year's Best Science Fiction, woo-haa!

I Have A Mission

So, I've been thinking about religion, in light of the topics of Vernor Vinge's "Rainbow's End", blogged earlier. The next 40 or so years could be a critical period for the human race. Biotech and nanotech will be available on home computers. Roadside bombs are like mosquito bites compared to what terrorists could to with these.

*** Slight Spoiler Alert ***

The bad guy in "Rainbow's End" is having these thoughts and decides to take the facist route of protecting the race from itself by developing YGBM (You Gotta Believe Me) technology -- mind control by genetically engineered brain proteins.

Well, he is the bad guy, but he does have a point. These years could be critical, and could decide if civilization will continue to advance, or if maybe a large percentage of us get wiped out.

In this context, we could eliminate, what, 95% of terrorism if we could eliminate religion. Yes, I know religion is a source of comfort and strength to lots of people, but it's also a source of inspiration to a large percentage of the world's wackos, giving them a "get out of jail free = go directly to heaven" card which allows them to perform acts which any rational ethics would immediately identify as abhorrent.

So, how to get rid of religion? It is a powerful, powerful memeplex. It is a mental parasite with which a majority of well-meaning parents infect their children repeatedly and emphatically as part of their upbringing. Empirical evidence would say that the vast majority of people cannot shake the infection off on their own. So, how do we help?

We're talking memetic warfare here, so we have to choose a delivery mechanism for our counter-meme. I can think of only two possibilities here -- and it seems to me like this is major wishful thinking, to think one could develop a meme to combat years of religious brainwashing. But, what the hell, rational people have got to try something. So, the two delivery mechanisms are:

1. Unbelievably catchy tune.
2. The world's funniest joke.

The 1st one seems too hard. There are too many flavors of music, and it is normally not particularly cross-cultural. But, maybe this could be a distributed project. Come up with the pop version, then translate it into hard rock, country, hip-hop, opera, ska, middle-eastern, etc.

The 2nd one seems more promising. The idea is to come up with a joke or jokes which perform a total reductio ad absurdem on the existence of God. (Note, I will use capitalized God, which I normal avoid, to show that I am referring to the omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent creator of the universe Jehovah/Allah worshipped by Christians, Jews and Moslems.)

I have a personal problem here, in that I am not a joke person. I am a spontaneously witty (smartass) person, I have always had problems remembering jokes. So I will need help here. Here's my first efforts:

Q. Why did God cross the road?
A. God can't cross a road, He's already on both sides.

Q. How may Gods does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A. God doesn't use lightbulbs, He can see in the dark.

Q. If God can see in the dark, why did He create light?
A. Nobody knows.

Q. What do you get if you cross God with a human being?
A. God.

Q. What do you get if you cross God with the Devil?
A. God.

Q. What do you get if you cross God with a chimpanzee?
A. God.

The last three suggest God Math, which appears to be pretty much useless:

God + God = God
God - God = God
God * God = God
God / God = God
God + n = God
God * 0 = God (a miracle!)

I told my younger brother these, he liked the first few. My wife and youngest daughter found them stupid and unfunny. Oh well, clearly my work is cut out for me.

If you google "god jokes", there's a lot out there, some with promise. But more than half are actually "atheist in a foxhole" jokes, the opposite of what we need.

So, this is a targetted final product. I need to get a website for the work-in-progress of my Theory of God, which will show how ridulous the concept is. I was going to go to myspace.com, but then I thought, fuck a bunch of Rupert Murdoch and Fox News. I'll e-mail my son, he can probably point me to where google can give me a permanent website.

I have a mission ...

Forum Post (mortem?)

I have been really somewhat befuddled, there has been some exchanges on the KASE forum re being very active in debunking Halloween "spiritualism". I posted:

I have been somethat puzzled by the enthusiam for Halloween debunking on this forum. I have always had a fond spot for Halloween as it is the only pagan holiday. Pagan polytheism is still theism, but I think it's a little more pluralistic and forgiving than the monotheistic memes that have mostly won out ("worship my god or die").

In Kentucky, we have (guestimates):

• >90% of people believe in god;
• >90% of people believe in the soul;
• >90% of people believe in life after death;
• >70% of people believe that jebus was the only son of jehobah and their personal savior;
• >40% of people believe that the rapture is coming Real Soon Now.

Given this, expending energy to debunk Halloween ghost stories seems ludicrous to me. Low hanging fruit?

Plus, debunking Halloween they won't piss off the christians ...

Way Cool Picture

Quick hitter, here is a great picture from NASA's "Astronomy Picture of the Day", the most excellent site that my most excellent baby sister pointed me at, that I check daily. This shows the aftermath of one cluster of galaxies, the smaller one on the right, punching through the center of the larger cluster on the left. The magenta is X-ray imaging from the Chandra X-ray telescope -- clusters of galaxies are the primary extragalactic objects you see in X-ray. The cone on the right is the shock wave of the smaller cluster's passage -- unbelievable, a sonic boom in intracluster gas.

The blue is artificial, the cluster "dark matter" as inferred from gravitational lensing of background galaxies. This has gotten a fair amount of press as the first proof of the existence of dark matter, and shows that it is weakly bound by gravity, as it is not being affected like the gas (magenta) is.

There are cool animations of the collision here.

A Trip to the Windy City

Drove (the prius) up to Chicago the Friday before Labor Day, came back Monday. Went with 2 other couples. Stayed at the Hilton on Michigan Ave, great downtown location, lots of walking. Ate the 1st night at a french place Marche, most excellent. Night 2, Smith & Wollensky steak house, OK. Night 3, Chicago pizza at Lou Malnati's -- it didn't agree with either my wife or I.

1st day, took an architecture cruise on the Chicago River -- very nice, very interesting. Day 2, went to King Tut at the Field museum -- what a marketing job. Somewhat interesting, but nothing special, and the place was packed. "Reconstruction of what the face of the boy king looked like ..." -- who cares? Day 3, the aquarium. Featured exhibit, a komodo dragon. Well, it moved some. But, the signs said, max weight 150 pounds -- alligators can get over a ton (wikipedia), they would clearly kick this thing's ass.

The high point of the trip was definitely The Great Water-Spouting Gods of Millennium Park. Lots of LOL at the kids squealing in anticipation, waiting for the purifying and mystical water. I'd been talking to one of the other guys earlier, about what art was, and this was definitely art. I think art will be becoming increasingly participatory in the years to come.

No notable new music acquisitions. Reading-wise, still on the magazine stack, trying to get caught up. Jam wise, trying Buffalo & Dad's rather than Lynagh's -- Lynagh's is getting too successful, playing time is going down. I did bike the last 2 weekends after around a 6 week layoff -- 25 and 30 miles.

What fun, the pope decides to mix it up with the moslems. Moslems react to his reference to islam being a violent religion with violence -- as my friend David says, irony seems to be lost in modern times. I just hope that Pope Benny isn't working with the fundamentalist millenialists to encourage a nice mid-eastern meltdown so that we can get on with the rapture, 2nd coming, etc.

We Now Return to the Rant in Progress

Anyway, August issue of Scientific American had a very good article, "The Real Life of Pseudogenes". Seemingly they are a sizable part of our "junk" DNA. Points of interest:

• Genes have a couple of ways of making copies of themselves in the genome, and probably happy to get away with it -- it's all about replication, yes? Various copies undergo bad mutations (imperfect replication) to where they can no longer produce their protein. But, they stay in the genome, happily replicating themselves.
• One gene has 140 bad copies of itself in the genome. I guess it took the "intelligent designer" a few tries to get that one right.
• Most mammals have about 1000 genes that produce receptors for different smells. Smell perception is very much lock and key, one gene per receptor per smell. Primates (including us) have only about 500 of these still working -- the rest are still there as broken pseudogenes. Apparently as we were making our transition to the highly vision oriented perception we use now (90% of our bitrate), there was no loss in survivability from the loss of the smell receptors. Crazy, with genetic engineering you could probably change just a few base pairs and get this back.
• Most mammals can synthesize vitamin C. Around 40 million years ago, primates had a mutation that turned a gene required to make a protein in one of the last steps in the synthesis into an inoperative pseudogene. Again, apparently our ancestors were eating a lot of citrus fruits at the time for this not to have affected survivability.
• Both these last two seem to suggest to me that we have definitely come through some narrow evolutionary windows. I guess like in the Stephen Baxter book "Evolution" blogged earlier, throughout most of our evolutionary history there was one individual who wound up being the parent of us all -- that's really counterintuitive to me.

I have noticed I have a definite hot button -- that is, questioning science. To me, science is the only system of knowledge in the history of our race that has proven to be able to produce describable, consistently reproducable results. I loved the junior year physics lab at MIT. For two semesters, we made the equipment (I remember turning pipe on a lathe to make a vacuum chamber) and performed some of the great experiments of physics: the Michelson-Morley experiment that shows that there's no luminiferous ether (no prefered frame of reference in the universe); the Milliken oil drop experiment that shows the quantization of charge; the Rutherford scattering experiment that shows the existence of atomic nuclei.

It is hard to choose favorites, but "The Republican War on Science" is yet another reason to despise the neocons. You wonder how many of these guys, in between attending prayer meetings, got modern liberal educations and were taught by fucking deconstructionists that science is "just a paternalistic, destructive way of looking at the world", no more valid than shamanism say. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Like the proposal to let non-evolution-believing people have their TB treated with the antibiotics of 40 years ago, which modern evolved (oops) TB bacilli eat like candy. Or like taking your car to a faith-healing mechanic. An airplane designed and flown by a shaman might be an interesting flight, but I don't think it would get you from New York to Paris.

I have recently flamed a sibling and a friend re their reports of Michael Crighton's latest novel where he "debunks" global warming. 15 years ago there was contention in the scientific ranks on global warming, it's been gone for around 10 years. But, I'm sure Crighton's data is as good as the Republicans -- i.e., nonexistant. How in the fuck did we wind up getting governed by Peter Pan and Tinkerbell -- "think happy thoughts, Iraqis will embrace democracy and global warming will go away"????

Last months Technology Review had an excellent article about "the most respected climate scientist in the world" and the Bush administration's attempts to muzzle him. He's been saying "global warming" since 1988. Note particularly the chart on p2, "C02 and the 'Ornery Climate Beast,'" PDF, 631 KB). The chart shows CO2 levels, ocean levels and global temperatures going pretty much in lockstep for the last 400,000 years. When I looked at it in the magazine, I thought, well, looks like we're at a natural maximum -- but then when I looked at the PDF online and blew it up, I noticed that the current CO2 level of 377 ppm is off the top of the chart (300 ppm). Pretty damn scary.

Now for some levity. My friend Patrick posted this hilarious link to the KASE forum:

http://www.armorofgodpjs.com

Tinfoil Hat of Credulity sold separately.

He had a nice aphorism too:

"Give a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a night. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life."

Nice ...

Two More Books

I think I'll alternate between snappy and boring titles??

Forgot two books I had read last time. I think I will have to go back to leaving them on my desk until I blog them.

Read Charles Stross's latest "Glasshouse". Nothing much new from the rest of his latest stuff, but still a good read, 3 stars. It says a lot about the quality of Stross's writing that a novel this good was somewhat disappointing.

Better was

ARRGH-- after 1/2 hour of editing this entry, Firefox froze when I went to add a link to a site. Now getting to reenter, ARRGH! What a pain -- so much for Web 2.0.

Better was "Rainbow's End", by Vernor Vinge. A near future novel, Vinge definitely knows his computer science, which he should as he was/is a CS prof at UC San Diego. 4 stars. Seems nicely setup for a good sequel.

Well, I had a great discussion of an article on pseudogenes in August Scientific American, and a great rant on science, neocons, deconstructionism, and global warming -- but, I totally don't feel like reconstructing it now. So, hopefully this week.

Hot Blog

Damn, it's been hot here, as I guess it is in most of the US. Finally cooled off a little Friday. I haven't biked in 3 weeks (slept til 11:15 last Sunday ?!?!?), did take a walk with my wife this morning.

Worked 11-6:30 yesterday (Saturday). Entering one of those periods generating a new product where I will be really cranking for the next few months. New product is pretty exciting stuff, could be slightly revolutionary.

Music goes well. My playing and singing are pretty good, and I am really surprised at how my ear is improving. I can hear songs in or out of my head and figure out the chords without a guitar a lot of the time now -- I never used to be able to do that. My youngest has sung 3 times now, generally well received. She did two of the Corinne Bailey Rae songs, "Like a Star" and "Another Rainy Day". The former worked better than the latter -- the 6/8 time there threw the drummer off. I think I am about full of the Corinne Bailey Rae album, I have been really preaching it for weeks now.

I did play downtown with "The Patty Butcher 4th of July Blues All-Stars" on the 4th. 3 guitars, sang lead on "Killing Floor", played 1.5 hours before getting rained out. Here's the proof:

I wore the "Liberal" t-shirt to offset the USA/flag hat that I had been wearing. The other guitarists are the most excellent Dale Dickens to my right, and Max Corona with the "B92" t-shirt on (he's a DJ there).

Also played a private party with "The Patty Butcher Blues Review" on 7/22. 4 sets from 8:30 to 1:00a. Went pretty well, I only hit 2 bad notes all night, got to sleep by 3:00, wasn't particularly a zombie the next day. Two paying gigs, who'da thunk it? I'm official now ...

Read a very good SF by a new author, John Scalzi's "Old Man's War". 70 year olds join the interplanetary marines in exchange for new, manufactured super bodies. As an aging baby boomer, I can definitely identify with that. I'm on to the magazine stack now, hoping to clear it this week before we vacate through New York, Maine, Boston, Connecticut, and NYC.

Music

The music seems to be taking over. I'm practicing pretty much every day now. My playing and singing continue to improve. I'm supposed to play downtown with Patty Butcher on July 4th, 4-6. Woo-haa!

My youngest daughter came out to the Wednesday night jam, now at Lynagh's Pub, and did one of her songs, "Saturday", and Jefferson Airplane "Somebody to Love". I was very unsure how the 2nd would come out, but I focused on the chucka-chucka rhythm guitar and the drummer Steve did a great job and it came out very nice. I somehow pooched the easy harmony on the chorus, oh well, I'll get it right next time. Everyone loved having Christie up there, definitely a nice addition to the normally all male ensemble. It was her first time playing with a band, she really enjoyed it. Hard not to, there is really an infectious fun playing with a decent band.

But, with the music, I'm reading, exercising and blogging less. Seems like playing in a blues/rock band is really not the best hobby for the twilight years, but what the hell, it's lots of fun. I had gotten up to about 35 miles biking, that last 2 weeks I only did 26 and 28.4. Somehow don't feel like killing myself anymore.

Got another new album from a Brit I really like, the first from Corinne Bailey Rae, eponymous, 4 stars. Not a bad tune on it -- seems like anytime a song is a little dull, suddenly a totally tasty rif or chord change shows up. Anymore I have to listen to a lot of new music 3-4 times before I can get a feel for if I will like it. This one, the first listen, I was going, holy shit, I am really going to like all of these after I get them burned in. Kind of like Norah Jones, but goes bluesy where Norah Jones would go country.

Read the third book in Charles Stross' Merchant Princes series, "The Clan Corporate". Seems to be one of those mid-series books where a change in direction was needed and pretty much everything goes to shit. 3 stars.

Also ready the 4th Orson Scott Card Ender/Bean book "Shadow of the Giant". A good read, I guess. How much longer is Card going to mine this?

I have been posting to the Kentucky Association of Science Educators (and Skeptics) occasionally. The guys seem like nice, mild mannered teachers, who I am trying to stir up to get mad and kick ass vs the ID fundamentalist dumbasses, without much luck. I'm sure they're thinking, who is this asshole? Here's my post there re Ann Coulters apparently excrable book "Godless":

Re ID vs evolution, there is no sense, logic, rhyme, or reason to be dealt with here.

Occasionally when talking to the religious, I try to do a quick survey to find out what they do and don't believe. It generally doesn't go far. The bottom line is, it's not about thinking. It's about running the jebus program, and having your "thinking" spoon-fed to you. My (raised atheist) children often commented that when talking to religious friends , if the topic turned to things outside their religious beliefs, their analytic minds (these were MSTC magnets at Lexington Dunbar) would just shut down and refuse to go there.

It is no wonder, that people whose level of fear, insecurity, loneliness, etc. are such that they need to run a strong religious program to get through the day, are readily influenced by the strident neocon demagogues.

Organized religion is probably the strongest mental program (memeplex) that the human mind has developed. The neocons, in their seemingly limitless cynicism, have become expert at hitting the limbic brain buttons, many of which are reinforced by religion: fear; desire for security (the 50's illusion version); and tribalism, in mindless patriotism, flag-worship, and gay-bashing.

Anymore I try not to think about it. But, sometimes there seems to be a level of naivete in these discussions, as if we were dealing with fellow rational beings of good will. We are not. The neocons most cherished value is to win at any cost. Who really knows how many of them are christian rapturists who can hardly wait for the world to end and jebus to return? As I said when I tried to orchestrate an intelligent discussion of evolution in the HL letters to the editor, as long as we don't realize the rules of the game (none), we are going to continue to get our asses kicked.

Where are the brain implants and mandatory software upgrades when we need them? Until then, we are facing a totally uphill struggle ...

Death to Jehovah

Doing some barroom philosophizing last night, I got onto Jehovah. I blogged before Richard Dawkins' characterization of Jehovah as "one of the most evil characters in all of fiction". I was expanding on that theme. Jehovah was a wholescale murderer of children. He didn't evacuate the children before trashing Sodom and Gomorrah; at one point he ordered the heads smashed of children born of the rape of Hebrew women by another tribe? Worst is the Feast of Passover, celebrated by Jews every year, where Jehovah ordered the deaths of an entire generation of children over a political squabble. I have proposed in the past renaming Passover to "the Feast of the Murdered Children".

My final conclusion was that we're lucky that Jehovah doesn't exist, because if he did, it would be our duty as moral beings to try to figure out how to track the sumbitch down and kill him. That didn't go over very well (duh). But, it's true.

Finally read the 2004 "Year's Best Science Fiction", edited by Gardner Dozois. Somehow I missed it when it came out. It started out with some great stories, particularly one about some nasty post-humans living in a totally trashed and toxic world that they are fine with because they can eat anything, regrow limbs, etc -- then they find a dog. But, some of the stories towards the end were kind of weak. Still, an annual must-read.

I seem to go through spells of music drought vs plenty. Definitely in a plenty period now. 164 songs in my unrated folder in iTunes. I'm thinking, surely all these can't be 3 stars (but I think that's where they will wind up):

• Andrew Bird "& the Mysterious Production of Eggs" -- maybe 4 stars, very nice;
• Flaming Lips "At War with the Mystics" -- unbelievable, a cover of "Bohemian Rhapsody" that works;
• Massive Attack "Collected" -- overlaps with "Mezzanine";
• "Four Brothers Soundtrack" -- good Motown;
• The Killers "Hot Fuss";
• Dr. John "In the Right Place" -- his breakout 1973 album, I bought after seeing him do "Such a Night" in "The Last Waltz". BTW, I can't seem to google the lyrics for that song;
• Donald Fagen "Morph the Cat" -- mostly not as sickly sweet as his 2 earlier solo albums;
• Les Nubians "One Step Forward" -- not as good as their 1st;
• "Les Nubians Presents: Echos - Chapter One: Nubian Voyager". Lots of poetry set to music (does that make it rap?), some of it is kind of interesting. Definitely conceptual tho;
• Modest Mouse "The Moon and Antarctica" -- only glimpses of what became the 4 star "Good News for People who Like Bad News".

I have also been buying more singles of songs I want to work up, mostly old blues and rock: "Who Do You Love", "I'm Ready".

I did get the album from last week's iTunes free song: "Multiply", by Jamie Lidell -- apparently a Brit techno guy who decided to make a Motown R&B album. Some really nice tunes, I think most of this will get 4 stars.

This past Wednesday at the High Life Lounge Blues Jam, I sang a couple and did OK, but my playing sucked. I need do less working up songs and more practicing my lead licks.

High point of my reborn music "career" was on 5/10/6. There is a woman named Patty Butcher who has apparently been singing blues in Lexington for 20 years. She is really good, great voice and fantastic stage presence. She was 1st there 4/26/6 and I wound up playing rhythm guitar on the 3-4 numbers she did. She offered me a solo and I took a good one, nice expression. So on 5/10/6, she asked for me for her numbers, I sang some harmony, played some good rhythm and leads. As I was leaving that night, her manager/boyfriend/fiancee/SO told me she had a lot of gigs coming up and asked me for my phone number in case they needed me to play any of them!!! Woo-haa, I doubt anything will come of it, but, great to be asked.

2 Books

I know, boring title, not too snappy -- but it is in Prince-speak, at least. I'm listening to "Kiss" as I write. I printed out the lyrics, so now I am committed to working it up ... OK, picked up the classical, it's in E. And the most excellent Wendy solo is an E9 with a G and then an F# played on top. OK, on to the books.

Finished "The Resurrected Man"(2005), by Sean Williams (Australian), a couple of weeks ago. There was a sophomoric quality to the writing that just wasn't working. I think that appendices of Acronyms and Foreign Slang are red flags. The way the suspense was held and the mystery's resolution both were not just up to paar. Where's Greg Egan (or Richard K. Morgan) when you need them? 3 stars.

Finished "A History of the Mind: Evolution and the Birth of Consciousness"(1999), by Nicholas Humphrey, a few days ago. I have read some of his stuff before, very well-written and insightful. He's somewhat of a protege of Dennett, hopefully that won't hold him back too much. A very nice read, written in the style of a natural philosopher, 228 pages. Some references to Oliver Sacks, skin vision, blindsight, and phantom limbs, otherwise straightforward reasoning from 1st principles. The basic contention is that consciousness arises from sensation, which is modal, not from perception, which is modeless -- medium neutral representation of concepts. The characteristics of sensation are (review p 192):

1. they belong to the subject;
2. they are tied to a particular site in the body;
3. they are modality specific (pain is pain; smell is smell);
4. they are present tense;
5. they are self-characterizing in all these respects.

He contends that from an amoeba up, sensations are processed to produce reactions. Then, once there's enough of a brain, rather than just being simple feedback, the sensations are mirrored in a body image in the brain. There's a very unintuitive argument that, based on this feedback, sensations are a form of subjective mental activity. This feedback loop becomes disconnected from the sensations to form mental images and the mental narrative "I" (our inner voice), which are two of the main pieces that our consciousness are made of. The time delay involved also produces the "conscious present", (time 50-200 milliseconds?), in which we convince ourselves that we are conscious.

He introduces the terminology that this process produces "sentiments" that we process through the activity of sensing, "sentition". "I feel, therefore I am."

Two things I was disappointed he did not get into, that would seem to be germane to his arguments:

• Sensory deprivation experiments. I would have thought there was a lot of info on this. If we are what we feel, what happpens when we don't feel anything?
• Synestheasia. We read "Mind of a Mnemomist: A Little Book about a Vast Memory", by A.R. Luria (1960?) in a psychology class I took in college. The subject of the book's total recall seemed to be based on his having synestheasia, where all the senses are mixed, sights are smelt and felt, etc. Again, if we are what we feel, this would surely seem relevant (I 1st wrote "feel relevant").

I just decided, as above, to put year published in my book references. It do make a difference. One annoyance I have with iTunes is that they put the dates of when something is put on iTunes as the date of the music, rather than when it was created. I downloaded "Fresh Cream (remastered)" and "Disraeli Gears (remastered)" a couple of weekends ago and they came down with a date of 1998. Easy to fix, discographies google easily and give the proper years (1966 and 1967), but still, annoying.

Re Letters to the Editor, I sent an e-mail of encouragement to a professor at Lindsey Wilson College, a babtist school here in KY, re an article he had published in "Free Inquiry" on teaching evolution to babtists. He invited me to join the Kentucky Association of Science Educators/Skeptics forum, which I did. After the letter was printed, along with another rational letter on an Intelligent Design debate, someone posted to the forum, how nice is was to have letters that didn't require a reply. I responded:

Au contraire, I think my letter espousing neo-Darwinism does demand a response. It ignores Lynn Margulis' endosymbiotic theory, that eukaryotic cells, the basis of all more complex life, came about from the symbiotic union of primitive prokaryotic cells (paste from Wikipedia). It doesn't mention prions, which seem to have figured out how to turn other proteins into prions without DNA based replication. It greatly oversimplified a complex and dynamic field of research -- tsk, tsk.

Somebody posted back, "What a wonderful world it would be if those were the arguments turning up on the letters-to-the-editor page."

I posted:

That is my idea exactly. I had figured I would pay attention to the letters for the next week or so and see what bible quotations would be thrown out as counter arguments, and give me a chance to reply with some more science. Wouldn't it indeed be better if instead there was a reply like the one below. Come on, can I get a shill?

But, no shills forthcoming. Too bad, we're fighting the republicans here, who have perfected "win at any cost". Surely an orchestrated intelligent discussion in the letters-to-the-editor would be preferable to the normal bible-quoting dumbasses?