Thursday, April 29, 2010
Country music part 1 of (wishing for an ASCII infinity symbol for the trillionth time)
I was listening to some country music I was exposed to when I was young and I thought I should share this particular song. Kathy Mattea's "Lawrence Jones" is an example of the music that cuts through the divide between labor and conservative. A working knowledge of Harlan County Kentucky and it's relevance to the labor movement is helpful in putting this song and album in context.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Age part 1
We have to talk about age. and I don't have the time to get into my long term post with both paramedic school and US census job taking up 18 hours of my day. But this weekend I will post in length 3 parts to art of age, everything from getting old to our own minds outlook on such. My Grandmother turned 97 today, and I could not fathom a life where every day could be your last, and in such a case what do you do? Just live your life? Reach out to family, get your status in order? Or my other grandmother who is 74 talking about replacing her kitchen, at what point do we not give a damn about the trivial parts of life? And again, when do we turn from counting how old we are...to how many years we have left? My own father stated when you turn 50 the change takes place, but that was only because in a football game, he knew exactly where I was running and knew he could stop me, but for some reason that never happened before, his body couldn't reach me. It was new to him, and it was new to his mind, which was even more profound to himself. I am only turning 30 this October but I can say that I've noticed that jumping from high distances I can't land as gracefully as I once did. Not a lot to bi*ch about given how old my father or grandparents are, but it is very interesting, I would suggest everyone on the blog, before I post in very much 3 part depth about age and life, to just picture yourself at 50 with your own child, knowing that you probably only have 20 or so Christmas holidays left, instead of saying your 49 years old. You start to cling to what life you have left, and it would make sense that 70 percent of men that go through midlife crisis go through such between the ages of 50-54 as such study backed by the university of Oxford in England will tell you of 2007. Try to picture yourself knowing as young as all of us on this blog are, of not counting your age, but counting how many Christmas's you have left...or worse, being 74, and in good health, knowing you may have 10 or 15 years left..at that point do you stop giving a damn about a clean home.... obviously family holidays or achievements mean alot, but in your own life, would you give a damn about a slightly unclean bathroom or not doing the dishes every week as we do now...or the unthinkable.... being 97...knowing every day could be your last, and actually hoping that you don't reach another birthday because of pain, or not getting around, ego, or such else. We don't think about that much at our age, and our children very well could live the age to be 12o years old average before they go, but one thing remains the same, when you turn 60, you will still act, feel, and look like you are 60. Im 30 as of october, and I can say one thing at least, the last 10 years from going 19 to 29 have gone very fast, and every year that goes by is faster than the last, and after talking to random strangers, family, family friends, an unbelievable 98 percent of 40 people I have talked to, over the age of 48 have told me that every year they live, is slower than the next, every year is faster than the last, it truely is in our mind, because we are not going the speed of light, we are not moving faster than we would the year before, so it deals not with the relativity of Einstein's work or such, but the fact that we are the only animals other than perhaps elephants or dolphins that know we will die, and every year closer to the end is faster than that last. This will be a 3 part blog mainly on my own findings and experiences from my own family ,but my father hit me most of all when he said it's always when you turn 50 that you start to count backwards, or think of falling down the mountain not climbing up it. We will all die, and we will all cease to exist, it will be very much like before we were born. And I find it such an interesting topic to talk about because unlike some things, this will be something hopefully unless an accident see's fit, that we will all suffer from.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Ever considered galactic sterilization?
This is a story from slashdot.
Megaport writes
"Promoting his new series on the Discovery channel, Stephen Hawking has given an interview to the Times in which 'he has suggested that extraterrestrials are almost certain to exist but that instead of seeking them out, humanity should be doing all that it can to avoid any contact.' He says, 'I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach. ... If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn't turn out very well for the Native Americans.' Personally, I've always thought that the indigenous people of the world really had no chance to avoid contact here on such a small planet, but is hiding under our collective bed an option for humanity in the wider galaxy?"
This was a comment to that story by Dr. Spork
I come to the same conclusion as Hawking - that we should try to be a quiet civilization - but not for the same reasons.
The fact that we haven't detected advanced life in all of our SETI searching, and the fact that our solar system has not been visited by an alien probe (see Fermi Paradox) is some evidence that our galaxy has a "sterilizer civilization" - which is a pretty straightforward concept.
If two civilizations begin interstellar colonization in our galaxy, their spheres of expansion are bound to intersect in the future. As they will largely be competing for the same resources (sources of energy differential), some sort of conflict is inevitable. But a conflict at this scale would be so horrible that any reasonable civilization would want to avoid it at all costs. This reasoning makes me think that any suitably advanced, reasonable civilization will be a sterilizer civilization: For the moral purpose of preventing great suffering, they will sterilize any technological civilization before they begin their interstellar colonization. Being rational, they will do this in the most efficient way possible: They will send a robotic probe which will duplicate itself in our solar system, and this autonomous army will wipe out all technological life and monitor our system to make sure that none re-emerges. Since sending even a small payload at great interstellar distances requires great energy, the rational sterilizer civilization will choose a speed for the probe that will bring it to its target safely before their interstellar colonization phase begins, but not much earlier. It is quite possible that such a probe is on its way to us right now, but won't arrive for another thousand years.
On the very unlikely scenario that we are somehow the first technological civilization in our galaxy, I think that we have an ethical obligation to become a sterilizer civilization ourselves. Everyone now wishes that somebody killed Hitler when he was a baby. It would have prevented great suffering. Like Hawking, I think it's inevitable that if contact is allowed to occur between two colonizing civilizations, the result will be catastrophic on a scale that will make the casualty count of a nuclear war seem like a rounding error. So of course there are ethical downsides of sterilizing a budding, intelligent civilization, just like there are downsides to killing the still-innocent baby Hitler. But I think the refusal to do this would be far more monstrous. The costs could be mitigated by meticulously recording all information about the culture and biology of the extinguished life, or perhaps even saving some specimens who will be safely contained in some sort of a galactic zoo.
So how should we react if there is a sterilizing probe on its way to get us? We have to begin our interstellar colonization before the probe gets here. I don't think it makes much sense to try to raise up a defense, because we can't even guess at the mechanism of such a probe. One thing it might do is to create a tiny black hole and drop it into the sun. (Or perhaps the probe just is a small black hole set to collide with the sun in a thousand years or so.) At this point, we are still a very vulnerable civilization, and will remain so until we have covered a substantial part of the galaxy. Also, we should be working hard on the technology for an effective sterilizer probe, just in case SETI does eventually reveal an alien civilization. I know it's "no fun" to kill aliens before we ever meet them, but I think the ethical costs of not doing so are unacceptable.
Megaport writes
"Promoting his new series on the Discovery channel, Stephen Hawking has given an interview to the Times in which 'he has suggested that extraterrestrials are almost certain to exist but that instead of seeking them out, humanity should be doing all that it can to avoid any contact.' He says, 'I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach. ... If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn't turn out very well for the Native Americans.' Personally, I've always thought that the indigenous people of the world really had no chance to avoid contact here on such a small planet, but is hiding under our collective bed an option for humanity in the wider galaxy?"
This was a comment to that story by Dr. Spork
I come to the same conclusion as Hawking - that we should try to be a quiet civilization - but not for the same reasons.
The fact that we haven't detected advanced life in all of our SETI searching, and the fact that our solar system has not been visited by an alien probe (see Fermi Paradox) is some evidence that our galaxy has a "sterilizer civilization" - which is a pretty straightforward concept.
If two civilizations begin interstellar colonization in our galaxy, their spheres of expansion are bound to intersect in the future. As they will largely be competing for the same resources (sources of energy differential), some sort of conflict is inevitable. But a conflict at this scale would be so horrible that any reasonable civilization would want to avoid it at all costs. This reasoning makes me think that any suitably advanced, reasonable civilization will be a sterilizer civilization: For the moral purpose of preventing great suffering, they will sterilize any technological civilization before they begin their interstellar colonization. Being rational, they will do this in the most efficient way possible: They will send a robotic probe which will duplicate itself in our solar system, and this autonomous army will wipe out all technological life and monitor our system to make sure that none re-emerges. Since sending even a small payload at great interstellar distances requires great energy, the rational sterilizer civilization will choose a speed for the probe that will bring it to its target safely before their interstellar colonization phase begins, but not much earlier. It is quite possible that such a probe is on its way to us right now, but won't arrive for another thousand years.
On the very unlikely scenario that we are somehow the first technological civilization in our galaxy, I think that we have an ethical obligation to become a sterilizer civilization ourselves. Everyone now wishes that somebody killed Hitler when he was a baby. It would have prevented great suffering. Like Hawking, I think it's inevitable that if contact is allowed to occur between two colonizing civilizations, the result will be catastrophic on a scale that will make the casualty count of a nuclear war seem like a rounding error. So of course there are ethical downsides of sterilizing a budding, intelligent civilization, just like there are downsides to killing the still-innocent baby Hitler. But I think the refusal to do this would be far more monstrous. The costs could be mitigated by meticulously recording all information about the culture and biology of the extinguished life, or perhaps even saving some specimens who will be safely contained in some sort of a galactic zoo.
So how should we react if there is a sterilizing probe on its way to get us? We have to begin our interstellar colonization before the probe gets here. I don't think it makes much sense to try to raise up a defense, because we can't even guess at the mechanism of such a probe. One thing it might do is to create a tiny black hole and drop it into the sun. (Or perhaps the probe just is a small black hole set to collide with the sun in a thousand years or so.) At this point, we are still a very vulnerable civilization, and will remain so until we have covered a substantial part of the galaxy. Also, we should be working hard on the technology for an effective sterilizer probe, just in case SETI does eventually reveal an alien civilization. I know it's "no fun" to kill aliens before we ever meet them, but I think the ethical costs of not doing so are unacceptable.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Necro releases "asBESTos", first track on DIE!
It's pretty good.
http://www.audibletreats.com/pr/necro_pr1.html
MP3: Necro - "asBESTos" 04.22.2010
Necro Unleashes First Track From Forthcoming Album DIE!
The Song:
Those familiar with Necro, the Brooklyn bred rapper/producer/label-owner know that he single handedly re-defined the term "hardcore" while gaining an enormous cult following behind his flourishing indie rap empire. "asBESTos," the first leak from his forthcoming sixth album, DIE!, finds Necro taking listeners on another ride through the darkest side of hip-hop's rugged terrain where drum hits and calculated flows brutally assault the ears to mind-numbingly pleasant results. Connoisseurs can't help but listen to Necro and reminisce about the days when an emcee's worth was only as good as his words. Necro describes the track as "a go for the throat, brutal and epic" record. This is no understatement, as the Brooklyn anti-hero manages to morph flows effortlessly, bobbing and weaving through piano stabs and the threat of soaring strings. This is not hip-hop for the faint of heart.
Coming off of his 2009 production credits on the critically acclaimed Only Built For Cuban Linx II album from Wu-Tang swordsman Raekwon, quite a few folks have wondered what Necro had hidden up his sleeve. Now we know: A scorcher that reasonably predicts yet another outstanding forthcoming album, in DIE!, for Necro.
Necro's latest album, DIE!, will be released May 18th through Necro's own Psycho+Logical-Records / RBC / Fontana.
Check out "asBESTos": http://media.audibletreats.com/Necro-asBESTos.mp3
The Background:
Necro creates the most extreme brand of hardcore hip-hop available. It's violent, explicit, insane and at times, pornographic. The music is mental (psychological) but also insane (psycho) and intelligent (logical), hence Psycho+Logical-Records. Launching his label in Nov. 1999 with five albums - I Need Drugs, Gory Days, The Pre-Fix For Death, The Sexorcist and Death Rap - it is rap at its most brutal. With DIE!, that is exactly what fans will get and more. Slated for release May 18th via Psycho+Logical-Records / RBC / Fontana, Necro's 6th solo album is the ultimate in his self-made genre of hardcore hip-hop.
http://www.audibletreats.com/pr/necro_pr1.html
MP3: Necro - "asBESTos" 04.22.2010
Necro Unleashes First Track From Forthcoming Album DIE!
The Song:
Those familiar with Necro, the Brooklyn bred rapper/producer/label-owner know that he single handedly re-defined the term "hardcore" while gaining an enormous cult following behind his flourishing indie rap empire. "asBESTos," the first leak from his forthcoming sixth album, DIE!, finds Necro taking listeners on another ride through the darkest side of hip-hop's rugged terrain where drum hits and calculated flows brutally assault the ears to mind-numbingly pleasant results. Connoisseurs can't help but listen to Necro and reminisce about the days when an emcee's worth was only as good as his words. Necro describes the track as "a go for the throat, brutal and epic" record. This is no understatement, as the Brooklyn anti-hero manages to morph flows effortlessly, bobbing and weaving through piano stabs and the threat of soaring strings. This is not hip-hop for the faint of heart.
Coming off of his 2009 production credits on the critically acclaimed Only Built For Cuban Linx II album from Wu-Tang swordsman Raekwon, quite a few folks have wondered what Necro had hidden up his sleeve. Now we know: A scorcher that reasonably predicts yet another outstanding forthcoming album, in DIE!, for Necro.
Necro's latest album, DIE!, will be released May 18th through Necro's own Psycho+Logical-Records / RBC / Fontana.
Check out "asBESTos": http://media.audibletreats.com/Necro-asBESTos.mp3
The Background:
Necro creates the most extreme brand of hardcore hip-hop available. It's violent, explicit, insane and at times, pornographic. The music is mental (psychological) but also insane (psycho) and intelligent (logical), hence Psycho+Logical-Records. Launching his label in Nov. 1999 with five albums - I Need Drugs, Gory Days, The Pre-Fix For Death, The Sexorcist and Death Rap - it is rap at its most brutal. With DIE!, that is exactly what fans will get and more. Slated for release May 18th via Psycho+Logical-Records / RBC / Fontana, Necro's 6th solo album is the ultimate in his self-made genre of hardcore hip-hop.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Picture dump
Had to get something off my chest.
I told Andy I was no longer going to do this sort of thing with videos anymore. When I dump large amounts of content at once I don't give anyone a chance to discuss any of it. Also I'm pretty sure many videos go unwatched because of this. It takes me only a few seconds to embed videos, but it takes everyone a lot of time to watch them all.
Pictures are another story though.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Monday, April 19, 2010
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Friday, April 16, 2010
DIE
OFFICIAL DIE! TRACKLISTING - IN STORES MAY 18TH!
1 asBESTos
2 Pit
3 Thugcore Cowboy
4 DIE!
5 Set It
6 Brutalized
7 Serpent's Bite
8 The Kink Panther
9 Hey Now
10 The Asshole Anthem
11 Sorcerer of Death's Construction
12 First Blood
13 Thin Line Between Love & Hate
14 Bedbugs
15 Viva Necro
16 F.U.B.A.R.
17 The Human Traffic King (White Slavery Pt. 2)
I'm kind of dissapointed that thriller2010 isn't on this list.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Great song!
** UPDATE **
This version of the song is the original Arthur Godfrey version, which I consider the best. It has been extensively covered.
Try to imagine a large polka dance when listening to this song. Maybe that was the 1947 version of a night club.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Barry Cooper on This American Life
Here is the episode of This American Life with Barry Cooper. Pretty heavy story. Definitely worth listening to.
The first part of the episode is also really good as well as they teamed up with one of my favorite news sources, Propublica to do a report on the financial crisis in more depth.
Here is the download link: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/sites/all/download.php?ep=405
The first part of the episode is also really good as well as they teamed up with one of my favorite news sources, Propublica to do a report on the financial crisis in more depth.
Here is the download link: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/sites/all/download.php?ep=405
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Friday, April 9, 2010
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Band Teacher Loses his Shit!!
Also, a side note. having spent some seven or eight years in school band, I can attest that this guy's class is rather unruly. He obviously doesn't enforce discipline very well. There wasn't any talking between playing in my classes. I'm surprised anything gets done at all in such an atmosphere.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Online Etymology Dictionary
'Conservative, n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.' Ambrose Bierce"
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