he's not in kansas anymore...

Unfortunately in the heartland Obama is going to be typified with National Enquirer biographies, his name calls out for them. Barack Hussein Obama is not an American name and one person it was reported on the msnbc.com website claimed he was born “…in Africa, is a possibly gay Muslim racist who refuses to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.”
Absurd as this may sound, there is resonance. For a long time he did not wear a flag tie pin and Reverend Wright didn’t give him much credence with White Christians, and, one thing that has not come up much is that one of the people he organized with in Chicago and befriended had been a member of the Weathermen. He has a lot of skeletons in his closet.

photo by andovercookiemama

maybe the two party system deserves a lethal injection...

Never let it be forgotten that during a Presidential Campaign Bill Clinton flew back to Arkansas to oversee the execution of someone who was mentally challenged and that Barrack Obama is campaigning against the Supreme Court decision that rejected the Death Penalty in Louisiana for the extremely violent rape of a small child especially given the conservative bent of the Court. Maybe it is better to vote for Ralph Nader after all.

photo by paperdovepress

too little too late...

There is a televised recording of Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday party on right now; I have decided to not watch it even though it should be entertaining. There will be a crowd of 40,000 people with an all-star lineup of entertainers. His saintly image has been tarnished beyond repair. Like the African National Congress that he once led he has only spoken out against the rule of Mugabe in Zimbabwe since the barbarity of his regime reached such a scale that even China condemned it. Although he hasn’t said I’m sure the reason is that Mugabe was a liberator and to speak against him would seem to support the imperialists he brought down.

photo by Kristlynn

for the amount they catch they must have to eat a lot of fish...

The Supreme Court upheld a British Columbia ruling that non-native fishers were not treated prejudicially under the Charter because natives were allowed to fish a day early and that there protest by fishing at the same time as the natives was illegal. I have always had a problem because the natives are stretching the meaning of the law. They are granted the right to fish for their: own use, a food fishery, but they are in fact commercial fisherman. I think a spokesman for the fishermen whose comment is reported on cbc.ca makes a valid argument when he says, "The proper way to do this if they wanted to increase aboriginal participation would have been what they have been doing in recent years … buy licences and vessels for aboriginal bands, issue them to aboriginal bands and let them fish in the same fishery that I do … We all fish together under the same rules and regulations,"

photo by Ms D Meanor

bush more than a little flushed...

“According to the IHT, “…a group going by the regal-sounding name of the Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco is planning to ask voters here to change the name of a prize-winning water-treatment plant on the shoreline to the George W. Bush Sewage Plant.
The plan - hatched, naturally, in a bar - would place a vote on the November ballot to provide "an appropriate honor for a truly unique president."
Regardless of the outcome there will be a ceremonial flush probably of hundreds of thousands of toilets as the new President takes the Oath of Office.

photo by view-askew

flip flops are great for the summer but are a little bit cold for november...

Obama should just sit on his seven point lead and not pander to the right. Campaign financing, gun laws the death penalty for rape are all flip flops which will alienate his base, that won't matter they'll still vote for him anyway but for me it shows lack of self-respect, "He ran to the left to get nominated, and he is running back to the centre in the general election," said Larry Sabato, a politics expert at the University of Virginia, according to the Guardian.com.

photo by leasepicks

it makes sense unless you can kind of murder someone...

Even for those who support the Death Penalty, the recent Supreme Court decision on the case of a brutal child rape in Louisiana is the right one. One of the reasons that murder and treason are the only offences allowable is that there are no degrees of murder the victim is either dead or alive. This is not the case with rape, this is why “…Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that "the death penalty is not a proportional punishment for the rape of a child," despite the horrendous nature of the crime.” Attorney-Generals throughout the US are making political hay by proposing legislation that goes against the decision, but the Court has spoken and that’s all it is: political hay.
Source cnn.com

photo by dbking

why are we always the shock troops?

According to a Pakistani commentator interviewed on cbc.ca, Canada has the highest rate of casualties per capita of any other country fighting in Afghanistan. We have borne the brunt for too long other NATO forces need to put themselves in harm’s way.

photo by Sirknight#4

islam, now or later...

Obama has been criticized for shunning Muslims. Up until now he has not been to a mosque and two women wearing head scarves who were standing behind him at a campaign rally were asked to move. Roger Cohen feels he should visit a mosque and put Islam on the same footing as other religions in a pluralistic society. I disagree. Certainly once he is in the White House he should even embrace his Muslim heritage. His middle name did not come about by accident. But with 5% of Americans believing he is a Muslim and with Islam and 911 etched into many voters minds as is the reverse racism of the Black Muslims, it is best that he keeps the faith at arm’s length. Right now the right thing is to get elected without having to compromise too many of his core values. That’s the name of the game.

damned if you do damned if you don't...

There seems to be not a good thing to be said about high oil prices except it is leading to people making greener choices, but if oil prices collapse we may be in worse shape. It may be that speculators have driven the price up to an artificial high creating a bubble like the dot.com bubble and that if it bursts the economy will suffer even more than it is doing now with high prices. Other argue there is no comparison with the dot.com bust because oil is material where internet startups were just ideas and that what is fueling high oil prices is increased demand and limited supply.

photo by brajeshwar

compassionate conservative...

According to the cbc.ca website, Alberta Premier Stelmach says if Stephen Dion’s carbon tax were implemented his greatest fear “...is for those on fixed income, because your heating costs will go up. Just visiting your grandkids, you know, the fuel for the car will go up."
Always looking out for the little guy, the Oil Companies extracting oil from the Oil sands can take the hit but it’s the old age pensioner who will really suffer.

photo by David Parody

how can a film be a blockbuster when film goers are motivated by fluff?

I have a question: why are ticket sales for the first weekend of a movie’s release so important? They speak to promotion and motivate movie goers choices the following week but what of word of mouth and the fact that the film that has the most spent promoting it may be a turkey? Shouldn’t the second weekend be a better indicator?

photo by siggito

what's in a name?

Part of Wikipedia’s article on the Polynesian nation of Tuvalu reads “…. (formerly known as the Ellice Islands, is a Polynesian island nation located in the Pacific Ocean midway between Hawaii and Australia. Its nearest neighbours are Kiribati, Samoa and Fiji. Comprising four reef islands and five true atolls with a gross land area of just 26 square kilometers (10 sq mi) it is the third-least populated independent country in the world, with only Vatican City and Nauru having fewer inhabitants.”
One unforeseen consequence of its name is its ex-domain name (.tv) which they have sold to media companies for millions of dollars. Domain names have been limited up until now but the organization which administers them is about to open the flood gates and make any designation fair game.


Source IHT

photo by rosewithan

global warming evidence a little to pat...

Let me indulge in my penchant for conspiracy theories. Global warming brought about by man seems a foregone conclusion. What is not made clear is that cataclysmic climate change may be the rule rather than exception. But global warming’s effects will be all but imperceptible so I wonder about the timing of making the theory public. There have been periods of extreme weather events during the last thousand years. There was a mini-Ice Age in the Middle Ages. What if climatologists predicted the extreme weather events that are occurring now and chose to reveal that global warming was a fact when in fact the weather we are experiencing now is an anomaly rather than proof of Global Warming.

photo by Sorbyrock

self-destruction as a fine art...

In an earlier post it was reported that Amy Winehouse's father has written her eulogy fearing she will not last much longer. Well she seems to be right on schedule according to AP, "Soul diva Amy Winehouse has damaged her lungs by smoking crack cocaine and cigarettes, her father said in an interview published Sunday.
The Sunday Mirror quoted Mitch Winehouse as saying that Amy has an early stage emphysema and an irregular heartbeat, and has been warned that she will have to wear an oxygen mask unless she stops smoking drugs.
"The doctors have told her if she goes back to smoking drugs, it won't just ruin her voice, it will kill her," Mitch Winehouse was quoted as saying.
"There are nodules around the chest and dark marks. She has 70 percent lung capacity."

photo by James W Bell

what does epa stand for? i can't remember...

Thomas Friedman in an Op-ed piece in the NYTs looks with disgust at Bush’s new Energy Bill and at his energy policy throughout his terms. Bush started not only against the Kyoto Accord but as a global warming denier as well. He emasculated the EPA so much “…that the head of the E.P.A. today seems to be in a witness-protection program. I bet there aren’t 12 readers of this newspaper who could tell you his name or identify him in a police lineup.”

photo by K98nights

israelis not so rapturous about messianic jews...

There is a major disconnect between Evangelical Zionists in America and Jewish Zionist in Israel. The former are major backers of the Jewish state and the Israelis don’t seem to mind, but when it comes to the two ideologies actually coming into contact then the whole thing blows up. Evangelicals believe the Messiah will only return when everyone in the world has heard “The Word”. Missionary work has had the side effect of educating much of the world’s population but that isn’t its ultimate goal.
In the case of the Jews all must convert before Jesus returns. There has always been a move to make this happen, but rather than a simple convert they call themselves messianic Jews much to the horror of Orthodox Jews who see the messiah’s coming as something beyond their control. For this reason messianic Jews are persecuted not only by Orthodox Jews but by other’s who remember how they have been treated by Christians. Even the Mormons, who have a college in the country, do not proselytize realizing the delicacy of the situation. This does not stop Israel from having a favourable relationship with Evangelicals, which seems a little hypocritical.

source msnbc

photo by marcn

is punch drunk offensive to alcoholics?

According to CNN, there is a body in England that oversees local authorities. It is trying to banish certain words and phrases for being too vague or just the latest catch phrase. Some examples are "empowerment;" "coterminosity” “synergies” and “revenue streams”. An official questions, "Why do we have to have 'coterminous, stakeholder engagement' when we could just 'talk to people' instead?"
But the ultimate in a absurdity is one council has replaced brainstorm with “thought shower” worrying that the former may be offensive to epileptics.

photo by fuffer

a hybrid hemi?

In a story on the CBC website about the closure of an auto plant in Oshawa we learn the auto workers will work for one more year on a hybrid pickup truck. What’s next a hybrid muscle car?

photo by Sunset Classics

it's all the tree huggers fault...

What’s up with McCain’s call for exploration and drilling on the Continental Shelf and protected areas of the Arctic? With gas prices so high it seems a practical measure and should gain him support. Bush always implied that it was tree huggers who were keeping Americans from energy self-sufficiency. According to Paul Krugman of the NYTs calling for this kind of exploration is just pandering to everybody faced with through-the-roof gasoline prices. Even if these areas are exploited and Krugman says even the Oil Companies aren’t interested in the Arctic, the effects wouldn’t be felt until the 2020s and even then would not appreciably decrease dependency on foreign oil. So just like his and Hillary’s gas holiday, McCain is a fear-monger cashing in on the current crisis when his solution will do nothing to remedy it

photo by vphill

i don't care where it comes from it still ain't right...

Obama, in a switch, has decided to solicit funds privately for his campaign taking advantage of all the donations that are pledged online rather than accepting public financing. He may be a populist and this is reflected in his fund raising and can use the excuse that he is not enlisting lobbyists or big business, but I think it sets a poor example because it sets the stage for a candidate who would solicit from these sources. Campaign reform was a big issue that got bi-partisan support so why is Obama choosing to ignore it?

were the minutemen terrorists?

It’s absurd but Nelson Mandela, who is about to turn 80 is on the terrorist’s list because the ANC used terrorist tactics in the 1960s. This illustrates the bankruptcy of the so-called War on Terror. What it means is only nations can indulge in aggressive actions if popular movements do, no matter how noble their cause, they are terrorists. This gives, what should be a focused police action against some Islamic fundamentalists, the War on Terror, a global perspective not seen since the Cold War.

photo by Andrew Teman

obama in the tar pit...

Michele Obama appeared on The View this morning in part to assuage comments from the Right that she was too radical or dismissive given her horrible gaffe earlier in the campaign when she said, "for the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country ..."
According to Ed Pilkinton in the Guardian,
"Unfazed by questions about race relations and issues within the African-American community posed by Whoopi Goldberg, she echoed her husband's belief that accountability and personal responsibility, alongside government initiatives, play a role in uplifting the black community - a point of view considered conservative by those who prefer to point on systematic racism.”
This mirrored Obama’s comments on Father’s day about black deadbeat dads needing to be more responsible. Personal responsibility seems to trump systemic racism and that the fact that Obama’s father who was black was a deadbeat dad. Obama’s candidacy may symbolize a new era in race relationship but to ignore the gross inequities that still occur and postulating change in psychological terms he does his brothers and sisters a disservice. This isn’t fair but I wonder how close to being an Uncle Tom he has to become to get elected

photo by Newleaf

an asshole by any other name...

Amanda Robb on CNN described how she reacted to a girl friend losing her job. She was blasé saying things like: you’ll really have something to talk about when we go out tonight, you were always complaining about it and your folks have plenty of money and then wondering why her friend did not come out of her room for three days. She didn’t think she had done anything wrong. She writes, “Psychologist Douglas LaBier, Ph.D., director and founder of the Center for Adult Development in Washington, D.C., disagrees. He explained to me that my dearest friend was humiliated by receiving a pink slip, feared she might be incompetent at everything she tried, and, because of me, felt utterly alone. I was, LaBier tells me, "catastrophically unempathetic" to Lisa....At least my lack of empathy was not unusual. Having practiced as a psychotherapist for 35 years, LaBier believes that what he calls empathy deficit disorder (EDD) is rampant among Americans.”
Most EDD sufferers should really be diagnosed as ASSHOLES.

photo by The Joy of Mundane

they might not like mccain but they do hate gay marriage...

California’s blessing of Gay marriage may have unforeseen consequences. There will be an initiative on the ballot in November against it. Even though Obama opposes it and favours civil unions getting anti-gay marriage initiatives on the ballot of other states (California seems safe) may bring out social conservative voters who may not have come out otherwise: it worked for Bush in 2004. Michael Tomasky in the Guardian does not think it should come into play but that it still may be a variable to be reckoned with.

sirens sweetly singing...

"...ipod of your kidneys...

Lisa Margonelli in the NYTs writes of the obsession with bottled water and how it has been marketed. Marketing that results in the average American drinking 27 gallons of it a week and says,
“But marketing swings both ways. As quickly as bottled water became a symbol of healthy hyperindividualism — sort of an iPod for your kidneys — a backlash turned it into the devil’s drink. In 2006, the National Coalition of American Nuns came out against bottled water for the moral reason that life’s essential resource should not be privatized.”

This might seem frivilous but water is being privatized on a grander scale according to a CBC report, "In the past ten years, three giant global corporations have quietly assumed control over the water supplied to almost 300 million people in every continent of the world."

terry, terry, quite contrary...

I have been contrary about plug in cars. Well I just watched the Chairman of British Columbia Hydro, a Crown Corporation here responsible for the generation and distribution of electricity. He was positive about plug in cars. He drives a hybrid and expects in a few years to be able to plug it in and with the power that is generated and then stored while he is on the road he could conceivably put power back into the grid. So, here I go again, I have to eat crow.

did any one really overcome some day, even though obama may believe deep in his heart...

According to CNN there are thirty countries with longer longevity rates than the US which comes in at 78 years but I suppose what isn’t so startling is that black men come in at only 70 years.

photo by mikez.costumesupercenter

since when was shyness a disease?

I suffer from a chronic mental illness and a few years ago the diagnosis of Social Anxiety Disorder was tacked on. I believe it has become the illness of the day in psychiatry. It is the third most diagnosed mental illness in the US and is defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (psychiatry’s bible) as fear that the individual may behave in a manner that will be humiliating or embarrassing. Everyone at sometime has behaved in this way such as meeting a girl friend’s father, etc. and there are those who exhibits these behaviours often, but where does the disorder stop and simple shyness begin. For as Christopher Lane writes in the IHT, the next DSM will come out in 2012 and he hopes that the diagnostic threshold for this disorder is pushed back “so that it's possible once more to distinguish between the chronically ill and the worried well. “

If Social Anxiety is misdiagnosised then the dread that people will equate your shyness with mental illness will be debilitating enough to gain you the label you were misdiagnosed with.

photo by surrealist

they don't bear the mark of cain as some would wish...

The IHT reports on some of the restrictions China will impose on visitors to the Beijing Olympic games,

“Religious or political banners or slogans are banned. So are rallies, demonstrations and marches - unless approved by authorities in advance. It also says that visitors with mental illnesses and sexually transmitted diseases will be barred from the country.”

All well and good but how do you tell who has an STD or a mental illness?

photo by Vox Massive

not a good time to sell the suv...

High gas prices are having the desirable effect of motivating drivers into abandoning their gas guzzlers and buying more fuel efficient cars as they did during the Oil Crisis of the ‘70s. But in many cases it doesn’t make sense to the owner as there is now a glut on the market and resale values are plummeting. Oil prices may also be artificially inflated by speculators who invest in futures as a hedge against the weak dollar. There is, however, the intractable problem of increased demand and diminishing supply and this will only get worse as Indian and Chinese economies boom.

bush's broken record...

If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard Bush use the words freedom and democracy in relation to foreign policy I would be a very wealthy man, but they often have no relation to reality in the Third World and if nothing show insensitivity to the status quo. It need not be the case that lack of these two abstractions are necessarily the root cause of oppression, nor do they mean the same thing in different contexts. It is hard to know, but I believe China’s government is popular and just because it muzzles dissent does not mean otherwise. Take Egypt, where according to the IHT,

“Magdy Mohammed, 22, an engineering student, was hanging around a coffee shop in Tahrir Square recently when he reflected on democracy. "If democracy brings us food we can afford, and a government that really cares about its people, then this is what we want."

photo by Boazimages

final solution?

all that mandela stands for down the drain...

Christopher Hitchens wonders why Nelson Mandella hasn't spoken out about Mugabe's oppressive regime in Zimbawe. A spokesman claims he is too feeble to stand in the spotlight again. Unless he is non compes mentis a simple statement would suffice. He may buy into the current presidents logic that to not support Muagabe is to support old style imperialism. Hitchens writes, "It is the silence of Mandela, much more than anything else, that bruises the soul. It appears to make a mockery of all the brave talk about international standards for human rights, about the need for internationalist solidarity and the brotherhood of man, and all that. There is perhaps only one person in the world who symbolizes that spirit, and he has chosen to betray it. Or is it possible, before the grisly travesty of the runoff of June 27, that the old lion will summon one last powerful growl?"

photo by kristallynn

just a wee bit morbid...

Amy Winehouse has worked herself into such a pickle, that according to the Guardian, “Her father, Mitch Winehouse, has said he was so concerned about his daughter that he wrote a eulogy he expected to deliver at her funeral.”

photo by vulnerableeyes

but what about monkeys on typewriters?

The US military has developed a super computer that is twice as fast as its top predecessor. It can process 1.026 quadrillion calculations per second. According to the IHT, “To put the performance of the machine in perspective, Thomas D'Agostino, the administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, said that if all six billion people on earth used hand calculators and performed calculations 24 hours a day and seven days a week, it would take them 46 years to do what the Roadrunner can in one day.”
For those who look at computer gaming as time wasted it is worthy of comment that the computer was assembled from components designed for gaming.

photo by John Irvine

will evangelicals shoot themselves in the foot?

McCain since the start of his campaign has faced a rocky road when it came to bringing social conservatives into the fold. According to the IHT,
"In a sign of the lingering distrust, McCain finished last out of nine Republican candidates in a straw poll last year at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, a gathering for socially conservative activists."
This was the constituency that helped Bush win. This is great news for Obama, but given the statements of Reverend Wright and, face it, the fact that he is black, may bring them out in droves. For he may appear to be the anti-Christ.

photo by MichaelTO

only five months to go...

rekindling ebooks..

I at first thought the following apocryphal: Nasa was having trouble writing in space so they for a couple of million dollars invented a pen that could write in zero-gravity. The Russians had a better idea they used a pencil. It is not an urban legend. A friend saw the actual pen in NASA's Museum in Houston.
ebooks have never taken off. Books are compact and portable and need no digital aptitude to operate. This has changed. Amazon has released Kindle a page size wireless source for everything from books to magazines to newspapers. You can download content independent of laptops, pcs or cell phones and you can read War and Peace and not have to charge the battery.
The weight of a book adds substance. One can store all one reads on Kindle, but one thing books offer is they can be stacked on shelves and what den or office would be the same without bookshelves

photo by kindle.amazon

is it in the stars?

The NYTs reports that, Using a model used by astrophysicists pollsters can predict who might win the next Presidential Election if you keep Clinton in the mix. The last time they applied the model to this kind of election they predicted every state except Hawaii. At this point Obama would lose to McCain where Hillary would win. Her claim that she could take the swing states rings true and I think she stayed around in hopes that the super-delegates would go against the primary results but obviously this didn’t happen, perhaps with dire results.

photo by mc_white

he ain't no jackie robinson...

Who knows what kind of effect race will have in the election of a President. But Iowa set a poor starting example: a white state voted overwhelmingly for black man. Why? Because he was non-threatening and the living incarnation of the American Dream, now the stark truth is racism is still very strong in America and there is not a level playing field. Many blacks are bitter and if you look at inner cities things are much worse off than they were when Lyndon Johnson proclaimed The Great Society, but Obama’s nomination seems to imply an end to racism that if he can become President then any black can, with determination do what he wants. According to THT he is playing right into the anti-affirmative action troglodytes, Marcus Mabry uses the example of Ward Connerly,"…[f]or example…, he,…a conservative crusader against affirmative action - policies that favor specific groups - and chairman of the American Civil Rights Institute, watched a replay of the announcement of Obama's victory on Fox News early Wednesday "and I choked up," he said. "He did it by his own achievement. Nobody gave it to him."
Connerly expressed hope that Obama's rise would help his own efforts to end affirmative action on the basis of race. "The entire argument for race preferences is that society is institutionally racist and institutionally sexist, and you need affirmative action to level the playing field," Connerly said. "The historic success of Senator Obama, as well as Senator Clinton, dismantles that argument."
Obama is playing this card and it is paying dividends with upper middle class and the young, but not only does it not resonate with disenfranchised blacks but what about those who bang their heads against the class ceiling in parts of America where all the jobs are gone. There just aren’t that many Barrack Oboma’s or John Edwards around to make a case for upper ward mobility for all.

maybe the leafs uniform will be changed to orange and green...

If you think the move to not renew Ron McLean’s contract was a blunder, think of the possibility of dropping the Hockey Night in Canada theme. That very well could happen according to a post on the CBC website. I would expect the resulting uproar over dropping Canada’s most recognizable tune will quash the attempt to drop it.

photo by Julian Dolce

brain pain...

Often I question the MRI as a psychological research tool. It is a little too simple. Basic experiments are developed that support the theory of the day and then the scan is done and everybody waits to see which parts of the brain lights up. Great progress has been made but an illusion is being created that the roots of consciousness can be inferred from brains structure and chemistry as we now know it. I believe studying behavior and theorizing about the nature of consciousness are still the best approaches which a long way down the line may be given credence by examining the structure of the brain

photo by champignons

does the fleur de lis signify terrorism in quebec?

The designer of Rachel Ray’s scarf which caused Dunkin’ Donuts to pull ads is outraged. She grants that the kaffiyeh has been a nationalist symbol for Palestinians since the ’39-’39 uprising against the British and remains so today, but to associate it exclusively with terrorism does the Palestinian people an injustice.
She says, “The only thing I can possibly liken to this is if someone were to say that anyone who wears a sombrero is a supporter of illegal immigration," she said. "It's ridiculous."

photo by Mary Hockenberry

there i defended cheney, my blogging days are over...

AP’s reports on the National Press Club Dinner and Dick Cheney’s bit, “Talking about his family roots and how he's distantly related to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, the vice president noted that he had Cheneys on both sides of his family.
"And we don't even live in West Virginia," Cheney quipped.”
There was an uproar about impugning West Virginia’s good name. Come on, it’s funny.

photo by Lauren Victoria Burke

pol pot and robert mugabe in the same breathe..

Julian Bolger reports that Robert Mugabe dropped in at the world food summit in Rome. Mugabe has turned what used to be a bead basket into a land where people are malnourished or out rightly starving. The title says it all: 'This is like inviting Pol Pot to a human rights conference'

photo by babasteve

neil's eletric dinosaur...

Neil Young has converted his 1959 Lincoln to electricity to try and lead the way with this technology. Does it not seems strange that the aim is to save energy and curb global warming that he would choose one of the largest cars produced in living memory to do it with? It’s the same old story people think power comes from a plug in the wall. Petroleum based fuels are not about to be supplanted soon and the real need now is to use these efficiently. Some experts think we should use smaller vehicles and fuel them with clean diesel as they do in Europe. Makes sense to me, more sense than electric dinosaurs.

photo by Morven

cher worked a fevered pitch...

Sasha Frere-Jones in The New Yorker, looks at a recording industry technique known as Auto-Tune, which was initially used to imperceptibly correct flat or sharp notes, but was then applied as an effect in its one right. A classic example of this was Cher’s hit Believe where the heavy warble it produced made it hard to understand the lyrics.
Some find this manipulation too contrived but Frere-Jones points out that the any kind of recording is contrived.
Frere-Jones speaks of an email he received from Sir George Martin regarding John Lennon who had “...one of the most famously processed voices in pop history. “It’s true that John was never satisfied with the sound of his voice,” Martin explained. “He failed to realize that what he heard came through the bones of his body and was not his true sound. He was always looking for perfection, and in his imagination his voice was always superior to the sound of anything on tape.” To paraphrase, what we hear on Beatles records is Lennon’s imagination.

photo by Robson Cassmiro Santo

maybe the priest who delivered the sermon in Obama's ex-Church was right after all...

is bill gates a closet neocon?

Here is a delicious bit of home cooked conspiracy theory. Is the evil empire that is Microsoft out to attack Obama? If you type his name into Word a red line signifies you have misspelled it and when you are given an alternative it comes up Osama! Wasn’t that easy? I wonder what I could concoct if I really was paranoid?

she just can't say goodbye...

When Hillary was the presumptive candidate I was a fan and remained so until there was only a glimmer of hope and then I was just sad, but now I’m angry. There was no need for the party to air its dirty laundry regarding the seating of delegates for Florida and Michigan. She should have thrown in the towel long before it came to that. Even if the race was closer and there was a slight chance she might pull it off I think she should have called it quits. Thank God Obama is now campaigning against McCain and is ignoring Clinton accept to be gracious and congratulate her on her victory in Puerto Rico. One question lingers, however, why are so many super-delegates sitting on the fence? They could end it right now, why haven’t they? Obviously only Clinton wants it to go to the convention. The Democratic Party should stop the infighting, the race was good in that it blooded Obama but it was over a long time ago. Come on Hillary, it’s time to bow out.

who in china really cares about Tiananmen Square?

In the 60’s and 70’s radicals spoke of the middle and working class being co-opted by capitalism in west, now in an ironic twist, China’s middle class is being co-opted by the Communist Party who still control much of the “means of production”. Those who prophesied that the free market system and greater wealth and influence wielded by the middle class would lead to democratization were sadly mistaken. The Communist Party is as strong as ever and membership is a mark of distinction and offers members greater influence. Focusing on the pro-democracy movement and human rights violation creates the illusion that the regimes repressive and authoritarian base will turn the newly affluent on their leaders. Democracy is not inevitable anywhere as pro-western zealots claim.

photo by pony apprehension