7.31.2

Osama bin Laden: is he is or is he ain't?

"the suspected terrorist mastermind will appear in a taped recording . . . they also said bin Laden was well."
Today's Daily Briefing -- The Heritage Foundation

"Sources believe that if the bodyguards were captured away from bin Laden, it is likely the most-wanted man in the world is dead."
CNN.com - Sources: No bodyguards, no bin Laden - July 30, 2002

7.30.2

an old one.

7.29.2

Breaking this law--even if it's to share music by your own garage band--could land you in prison for up to five years. And that's not counting the civil penalties of up to $25,000 per offense.
from
Pirate this, go to jail - Tech News - CNET.com

7.29.2

"WASHINGTON--Congress is about to consider an entertainment industry proposal that would authorize copyright holders to disable PCs used for illicit file trading."

read this. i don't think it has a chance in hell of becoming law at this point, but in a few years or less?

7.28.2

friend ninian dropped by with lots of banjo's, fresh from a musical learning week at warren wilson.

it was so hot so long we stayed indoors, visited, played some, listened to tape of dylan playing winston-salem last march.

i demoed my latest hobby horse, mp3s made with opcode oms, vision DSP and Vision Pro, also using soundedit 16 and SndSampler, quicktime voices and some editing in quicktime audio, lots of VST filters, a good mike with line outout adapter for mike in on G3, and midi keyboard Roland D20. all this stuff is at least a generation behind today, but i find it strangely fascinating to make this stuff work together. and it can do so much more than the last time i played with this stuff, 10+ years ago.

Later this week i'll put up about 5-10 pieces and you can judge for yourself. i consider these to be potential soundtracks and they are all works in progress.

meanwhile figuring out away to add small economical visuals to quicktime midi or movie files (audio).

lately haven't had the urge to ponificate. i don't know what to say. i am aghast not just at what is going on in the privilaged domain of the rich and powerful (R & P), but even worse, the so-far lack of any reaction to it from the pipple. there are at least 2 things that might be contributing to this lack.

one is business as usual, same old thying, began with reagun when the blue collar folks especially SE bought into the picture and from then on acted as if they were future candidates for this elevated standard. in theory. and it is still happening in a mutated way i guess.before this phase pipple wanted to be rock and roll stars.

or 2) the discomfort and unease of living in the whole picture, time, speed, confused identidies, loose numbers careening around the place, where does a trillion million go? where does it come from?

ninian opines that 9/11 in some way shook all this stuff loose. maybe. for sure it is affecting a whole lot more people than the early-adapters-misfits. i think more and more folks will be ruminating on how to get off the wheel of work. personal downsizing, part time employment, shared living expenses, it's a movement..and there is no one size fits-all solution.

if the latter is what is happening it will be cool - just very quietly folks slipping away.

and the war (now that i'm going i'll ride it down, i'll write it down). war against terrorists. war against drugs. war against cancer. these are not the recent 2-300 years of what war was; that was btween 2 institutions (flags, maps, uniforms, conscription, but civilians progressively incorporated into the show, wwii air marshall tedder began satuation bombing of german cities.).

war against the formless is a whole new thing and the ongoing shutdown of govt. procedures, plus the secrecy, is often part of the wars against the evil invisible.

7.28t00.2

one a day keeps the doctor away.

7.26.2

in the past, since WWII, the word "fascist" has usually been used in an overblown, over the top manner, especially when criticizing the US guvmnt. that's changing.

"Don't be alarmed by the word fascist. It's a term that is used for mindless respect for authority and uniforms, oppression, use of force, nationalism.

Whenever I'm in the USA, I see this all around me."
from
Plastic:

7.25.2

one a day keeps the doctor away

7.24.2

an interesting stop on the cyber byway.
Fresh Art Text

7.22.2

this is what i want to do when i grow up. amazing. let it do it's thing, have fun.
snarg

7.21.2

"He argues that the marketers do more than mirror the splits in the American social fabric, they accentuate them by designing media and advertisments that encourage contact between the narrow marketing segments and discourage those from outside the segment from coming in contact with the customized media using "signaling" and "branding" techniques."
from turow

7.21.2

i pruned my overwhelming number of bookmarks today and looked around to see what they were. a lot had disappeared into the cyber-ozone. Newcity was still around. check out the dick cheney piece:

"And for the first time, there were some faint signs the cows might be coming home to roost. Polls showed that the issue was beginning to stir the public, some of whom were starting to make vague connections between the corruption of Bush�s corporate pals and the fact that their nest eggs had been wiped out."

7.20.2

latest watercolor, finished yesterday
still don't have much to say about current war situation. massive reorganization of any institutional flow chart including federal govt. seems beside the point. the bizness metaphore that has invaded all aspects of our culture may be imploding, but the greed, dishonesty, and use of power to solve all problems has been around a long time, obvious to all, with no reaction from the populice except to ape the "biz" style and mode. the coming election will be interesting: my prediction: democrats lose, wheeler dealers, oligarchs, financial aristocrats win despite present unraveling.

a lot of my "ilk" have maintained an interest in ancient history during our short stay on the planet, despite it's disappearence as part of popular culture. this is a very full site you might want to bookmark and browse:
Ancient Classical History

7.19.2

a lot of nooks and crannies featuring various creative endeavors in various stages of completion and/or confusion. can you relate? i can.
artnetweb HOME

7.18.2

the FBI is checking out library patrons and what they have been reading. no information will come of this misguided and unamerican activity, only noise, thank god. more files somewhere. maybe some of them will wonder into the stacks and pick up a book or two. who knows?
Zara Gelsey: Who's Reading Over Your Shoulder?

you've got to logon to this site, but the breadth of the reportage and the detail of current inanities is mind-blowing, no matter how bad you think our current "situation" is, you ain't seen nothing yet.
kuro5hin.org || technology and culture, from the trenches

7.17.2

things i've learned in the past couple of days:

the army spent 10 days recently investigating an enlisted man who called our president "a joke" in a letter to the editor in a newspaper.

in the world of academia, there are courses taught with titles like "transpersonal psychology", "conciousness", and "introduction to tibetan buddhism". maybe some of the extra-curricular activities of 40 years ago had more of an effect than i realized. i thought the only result was the reagan revolution. i wonder what goes on in these classes; are there questions like "will that be on the test?"?

the culture is in denial about the changing climate.

the next 20 years will see the largest migration of peoples worldwide in history (and prehistory).

it's an open question whether the turn against bizzness will translate into realization that we are living in disney themepark. pay your money, stand in line, get thrilled/tittalatted/adrenalized, feel proud you did it.

systems cannot save the system. there is a feeling of dread in the air (not to mention tangible pollution in the smokey mountains), everyone feels it, nobody knows what to do about it.

"crypto-fascisism", an offhand phrase coined i believe by gore vidal, may enter the lexicon. but it will be spoken very quietly. "star-chamber" may creep in too.

people are alarmed by the invasion of privacy, but the demise of the inner concious life has not hit home yet. there is no privacy to invade where there is no inner life.

it's been a couple of days like that.

7.16.2

A collection of good-looking websites that are built with minimalism in mind. Spare, sparse, elegant. Fast-loading. Good idea:
Textbased.com - minimalist web design, theory and discussions

"New York and Milpitas, Calif.-based Nielsen//NetRatings also found Mac users are 58 percent more likely than the average surfer to build Web pages and 53 percent more likely to seek out product reviews.

"The Apple elite also have a higher propensity to purchase online than the average surfer, with the most popular purchases falling into the computer hardware, software and music categories.

"On the other hand, Mac owners are less likely to read horoscopes online or play any kind of online game."
enuf said. from
Mac Users Rule Says Study

7.15.2

haven't posted in a day or so, i must have taken a few bad turns. so here:

7.13.2

This is a book i did the cover for, newly published. it is also a good read about a time and place that have slipped away.

to buy the book send a check or money order for $14.00 ($12 plus $2.00 shipping and handling) to:

barbara scott
481 Turkey Ford Rd,
Dobson, NC 27017.

it will be available at select bookstores and a website soon. i'll post these when it happens.

7.12.2

i've spent a lot of time lately lost in the wilderness of digital audio production. here's my first MP3: give it a listen and have fun wondering what the hell i am doing.

7.11.2

a conversation the other night i had with richard about the nature of the workplace started me looking for an article i found many years ago in a short-lived magazine, don't remember the name. i found it and link is below. amazingly prescient for it's time, all i remember about the author is that he was not some kid, but worked in the technical field. this is my favorite article of all time, read it.

"Directly or indirectly, work will kill most of the people who read these words."
from
The Abolition of Work

starter went out on truck, delayed malfunction from a few months ago when i broke down in son eli's boondok house i think. meanwhile more flowers:

i've been so unverbal lately. politics, the economy, the corporate oligarchy, the changing mental-world (no, not mental-ward) that we inhabit, they all seem pretty distant. i've been painting flowers.

fat band people, poke around in this: the head-space project : v5

blogger is down, don't know when this will appear. BUT i had a very nice 4th, potluck at the reily's, thank you tom and cathy. plus when i got back no fireworks extravaganza at the grove park inn, thank you whomever.

at the library today, due to lack of funds they can't purchase "shaky", neil young bio i'll read one of these days.

about the corporate oligarchy we live in today: it's new, it's different, and it works because the public buys into it (literally) because they get something in return. like the 9th century serf who got something in return. "Feudal lords protect underlings in exchange for obedience and labor. The basis of feudal empires --power and glory" from A Shambhala Interview with Ken Wilber.

what we get today is the illusion or hope that we can be "our own boss", plus glitter, glitz, and adrenalin. in exchange for a world where there is "no room to be anybody" (bob dylan).

the 2 g. bushes and laura are on the cover of "the nation" this week wearing crowns.

early morning thunder outside, i guess i'll shut this thing down soon. here's is a noble weblog experiment i stumbled on, lot's of potential implications. i guess it's necessary but not sure why.
RAM otherwise known as Random Access Memory. lives up to it's title. could probably use a javascript button that randomly grabs and displays a content selection.

really frustrating day. working on a watercolor that is just not going anywhere, but i gotta go with it. then long hours twitching midi software, getting down to kinks and bizarre crashes, self-generated sequences combined with aliatory audio tracks. fascinating stuff but i think i better step away for a day or two. pleasant phone call from friend jim, the only voice i heard all day. until this evening when i got out of the house and attended a small discussion group concerning the work of ken wilber who nobody can understand. pleasant interesting bunch of folks, thanks richard.

if you are curious why noone understands wilber, try this. the interesting thing seems to be that somewhere in there he is articulating something many of us feel but have not figured out how to say - because we don't know what it is.

"Moreover, for the last several decades, the various Third World groups, factions, insurrectionists, and even terrorists have actually adopted the postmodernist lingo coming out of American universities in order to justify their actions. Green pluralism maintains, in its extreme--and most common--forms, that culturally there is no good or bad, no better or worse: there are no universal standards by which we may judge one culture to be better or worse than another. In fact, we cannot say anything about an Other that the Other would not say about itself. Period. To attempt to speak of the Other in terms other than those of the Other is to commit a horrible crime known as a 'metanarrative.' Rather, all cultural values are essentially equal..."

from
Ken Wilber Online: A Summary of Integral Psychology

"Great art suspends the reverted eye, the lamented past, the anticipated future; we enter it with the timeless present; we are with God today, perfect in our manner and mode, open to the riches and the glories of a realm that time forgot, but that great art reminds us of: not by it's content, but by what it does in us: suspends the desire to be elsewhere."

-- The Eye of Spirit, p. 135-136
The world of Ken Wilber