Bazookamatopoeia

For this reason I dislike it when someone is dismissed for being an "extreamist"

2009-07-19T13:01:00.001-07:00

http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=216

Magics Tricks

2009-07-05T05:53:00.001-07:00

Sometimes I go online and look up magic tricks. It is so fun: Play along with this first one. :)
oh and don't be to turned on by his hair.

Icky

2009-05-26T18:09:00.000-07:00

I keep having to tell myself that I did not come to school so that I could land a good job, so it doesn't matter if my transcript looks this:

Class	Credits
Chemistry for Everyone	2
Foundations of The Performing Arts	32
Academic Writing	4
Academic Writing: The Next Steps	4
The Power of Story	4
Juvenile Justice	4
Music and Dance	16
Multi-Track Audio Production	16
Adaptation: Evolutionary Science	8
Music, Math and Motion	32
Marx and Marxism’s	16
The Practice of Writing	4
New Media Studies: Hardware Hacking, Computer Programming, and Robotics	4
Digital Audio Production	8

I don't care that nobody will be hiring a composer with a side interest in physics, evolution, mythology, political economy and chemistry, and an emphasis on academic writing...who has dabbled a little in computer programing and robotics. I remember all of my classes and what I learned in them and how they changed my thinking. I will just keep alive as best I can.

...

*ten years in the future: Ben is working in a kitchen washing dishes as an extremely "interesting" 31 yr old*
Ben:"Hey guys! You know what we should do? We should arrange all these pots so that they can be played with these ladles! Then we can take this dishwasher apart and use the water pressure to power this robot to play them! Then I will write an academic paper about it! Then we will talk with our employer about involving us intellectually with our work and paying us for what we produce rather than wages! Come on it'll be SWEEEeeeeeeeee ee ee ....e t" *fade back to present*

... I am a 31 year old crazy guy who all the young kids have to tolerate at work.

Future of Food: dissatisfying

2009-05-15T14:17:00.000-07:00

Hannah recently posted a link to the documentary, The Future of Food, which I watched and which was infuriating. Our economic and governmental strategy results in the formation of very large businesses, the higher-ups of which are the people who end up having the funding to enter into the political sphere and then are allowed to regulate (by not regulating) their own businesses. Justice Clarence Thomas is a Monsanto’s Lawyer Regulatory Affairs. Supreme Court Justice Micky Kantor is on the Board of Directors for Monsanto. Linda Fisher was the Executive Vice President of Monsanto, then the EPA Deputy administer then was back at Monsanto, and now is back with the EPA again. Even Donald Rumsfeld was the president of Searle, which is a subsidiary of Monsanto. The list goes on.*

If history is any indicator, those with the most money pouring into their campaigns are the ones who are capable of reaching elected or appointed positions of power. When the country votes the barrage of misinformation coming form these companies makes the relative trickle of clear thinking look like a conspiracy theory by comparison. The opposition campaigns always reaching several orders of magnitude beyond what the non-corporations can put out. We do not have to be paranoid to realize we are sick.**

That we are sick, in the case of our food, is unfortunately literally true as well as figuratively. We are ingesting things that have not evolved along with our bodies - which is to say that we have not had millions of years to evolve adaptations for whatever it is they may do to our bodies – which is to say that we will likely be unprepared for their effects. To evidence for this is easily found. Transfat was an excellent idea for extending the shelf life of food, but ended up being toxic because our bodies were not evolved to deal with it. The new technique for hyper-saturating fats is also likely to suffer the same fate. HIV and bird flew are both suspected to bee deadly because they came to our spices from another without our species having a change to evolve a defense against them. Today, genetically altered corn and wheat is making its way into our food. We have not evolved with it, it has caused several allergic reactions, it is not well tested or regulated, and it is not required to be labeled “modified” in the grocery store.

How this was allowed to happen in food is intimately tied with the general problems of capitalism: Workers are exploited with increasing efficiency under a capitalist. Those who try and compete as small start up businesses cannot keep pace with the capitalist’s brutality or its incredible scale of and efficiency in production as it costs too much money. The working class is drawn more and more into a situation where they are both oppressed by a few large businesses - by being forced to work under terrible conditions as appendages of super-production techniques - and made dependent on these businesses because they are the only place to find employment and the only people to get products from.

In food, the super-business (Monsanto in this case) has the time and resources to go and buy up patents on seeds from seed banks, to lobby for and infiltrate government regulation, to throw frivolous and crippling lawsuits at small business to push out the competition, and to engineer plants that grow bigger and faster than small businesses can afford to compete with.*** The pressure of capitalism puts incentive to grow monocultures in order to produce the highest returning type of plant with the highest efficiency – though this makes them highly susceptible to disease, because one disease is adapted to destroy every plant if all plants are the same. Paradoxically, competition is systematically reduced by virtue of new competitors having to compete with current super-producers. It is a system that begs for continued growth and exploitation in order to avoid being pushed out by the company who is willing to grow and exploit a little more. In the long run, having diverse sources and types of plants will be a safer bet. However, the insane pressure of capitalism to invest in immediately higher profits and cheaper products puts people out of business who try and invest long term because they cannot compete in the short run.

Unfortunately, I find that I and many of my friends are tired of even the word "capitalism". It has come to serve as a cliché for all that is wrong with the world and because it is so ubiquitous it begins to feel like saying i'm against capitalism, is like saying i'm against murder- Sure you don't like it, but just saying so is almost silly because it says nothing about how to deal with it.

I have also tried to identify this problem purely in terms of scale. In our politics, an individual only has power if they can get 100,000 other people to feel the same way - which is another way of saying that as an individual, they don't have power. The "spread it like wildfire!" approach makes my part, or someone else's part important only because it makes 10, or 20 or a million other people think the same way - which, as someone who is not a million people, is discouraging. At one point I was excited about the possibility of participatory democracy, because it is based on consensus and reasoned discussion rather than gathering the largest group to your side. However, it seems that any group that might form with a strategy of participation would still be held by the rules of the adversary system (i.e. our group of participatory democrats would have to have at least 100,000 people in it to have any political power).

The police and the army are under the control of people who have decided that they own the plants of the earth whether I bought them from their company or weather they grew there by themselves. I do not want to have patents in my life. Invention is a collaborative effort. If I deserve credit than so too does everyone who talked with me, who invented before me, who fed me that day, who built the home and tools I used and who made other things that inspired me to make, because without them I would not have made what I made. Instead we have Monsanto asking for money for seeds it pulled out of a seed bank and stuck a patent on.

I don't want the question: 'But what can we do?' to become a rhetorical one. Unfortunately saying that doesn't seem to make a strategy any clearer not making the question legitimate doesn't seem to help. I went and talked to Arun the other day he said his strategy is to be a teacher he makes people dissatisfied with the way things are going. His plan worked on me.

I am dissatisfied with this.

* Rest if the list

Lidia Watrud

Biotech Researcher, Monstanto

Environmental Protection Agency

Anne Keneman

Board of Directors, Calgene purchased by Monsanto

Secretary of Agriculture

William Ruckleshaus

Monsanto board member

Chief Administrator, EPA

Micheal Friedman

Senior VP, GD Searle division of Monsanto

Acting Commissoner FDA

**I think Marx might have said this

***they grow ‘better’ despite the fact that they are possibly toxic and are prone to catastrophic collapse due to monoculture farming

Mind Your Manners

2009-05-11T14:18:00.000-07:00

A few days ago:
I'm sitting in the back of the bus on the ride home from school and I'm tired and spacing off. I'm in the midst of my spacing when I realize that I have coincidentally met eyes with this guy walking up the stairs towards the upper level of the bus, who I realize a second later has just finished saying: "What the f*** are you starring at you motherf***in' c**t!"
At this point I am not really interested in trying to talk to this guy so I just smile at him and drift my head over to the window. He goes and sits down and his friend sits down with him. They talk about some different parties they are going to attend, and in a about 3 or 4 minutes I am at my and it's time to get off.

Today I am thinking about this - because I replay all awkward moments from my life at least a hundred times each - and I am wondering why this guy was so mad about my unbecoming manners. I mean, I know it's not polite to stare but at what point do you just let the half asleep guy with silly hair just be a little weird and zoned out.
Also, I noticed that if you take all the other things I noticed about this guy in our 3 minutes of knowing eachother, he sounds just like an old-thyme aristocrat. Which was funny to me.

Attends lots of Parties

Conspicuous Jewelry

Carefully Refined Stride

Carefully Groomed Hair

Guy on Bus

Yes

Aristocrats

Yes

I am gonna have to find him again to collect more data.

Flying Penguins Via Hack-a-Day

2009-04-26T23:27:00.000-07:00

make sure you watch until at least 1:10, that's when I got really happy.

Snugglesaurus

2009-04-23T21:45:00.001-07:00

Wooden N64 Controller Project

2009-04-14T01:11:00.000-07:00

I have been working away at this little project for a couple of weeks and now I'm done:
A functioning N64 controller (sans RB and D-Pas and Start Button) made in arcade style and primarily of wood.

Ingredients:
N64 controller from Goodwill $4
Wooden Dowels and Knobs from craft store $2
Small Wooden Box with Hinges $4Loose Wire

$.02
Tools:

Soldering Iron
Hot Glue Gun
Drill with a few different bit

Wire Cutters

Other:

Several Hours but not days

I have a video of it in action but it is hard for me to get it up loaded and really it just looks exactly like you would imagine.

*I like this second picture. It looks so 70's

World War I as Re-enacted by Dogs

2009-04-12T22:13:00.000-07:00

I speant the afternoon....

2009-04-12T00:04:00.000-07:00

...writing back to a letter FWD from a friend of mine. It claimed to be from a college professor named Tim Woods. In it Woods explained that, if history was any indicator, we were headed for a big change. He claimed that the financial world was melting down, that people were protesting a ban on gay marriage, and that Obama has a "mandatory civilian defense force" that no one has heard of because the media is so complacent, and then finally moved to compare the rise of power of Hitler to that of Obama.

I won’t bother you with the sections regarding economic melt down, gay marriage and the “mandatory civilian defense force” because the first two don’t lead anywhere as arguments and the last is not cited and was impossible for me to find on the internet. However, the “Hitler is like Obama” argument really deserves its own space:

"In those times, the savior was a former smooth-talking rabble-rouser from the streets, about whom the average German knew next to nothing. What they did know was that he was associated with groups that shouted, shoved, and pushed around people with whom they disagreed. He edged his way onto the political stage through great oratory and promises. Economic times were tough, people were losing jobs, and he was a great speaker. And he smiled and waved a lot. And people, even newspapers, were afraid to speak out for fear that his “brown shirts” would bully them into submission. And then, he was duly elected to office as full-throttled economic crisis was at hand [the Great Depression]. Slowly but surely he seized the controls of government power, department-by-department, person-by-person, bureaucracy-by-bureaucracy. The kids joined a Youth Movement in his name, where they were taught what to think. How did he get the people on his side? He did it promising jobs to the jobless, money to the moneyless, and goodies for the military-industrial complex. He did it by indoctrinating the children, advocating gun control, health care for
all, better wages, better jobs, and promising to re-instill pride (in their nation)"

I have a hard time letting this stuff slide. Particularly when the letter ends, "'Some people scoff at me, others laugh, or think I am foolish, naive, or both. Perhaps I am. But I have never been afraid to look people in the eye and tell them exactly what I believe...." Because then if I just laugh at it, I am completely dismissible as one of those people, who "didn't listen when he had the chance".

So, I spend the afternoon checking facts and writing back to the thing. The first parts were kind of inconsequential so I wont bother you with it but I did managed to boil down the Hitler Obama argument to the passage below and, as you can see, when stated plainly it is almost amusing:

1.) Media was compliant to Hitler

Media is compliant to the current president

Ben: I can’t find anything about this “mandatory civilian defense force” other than this
letter. Do you have any idea where the author’s information on this comes from?

2.) The economy is bad

Hitler’s economy was bad

3.) No one knows anything about the current president

No one knew a lot about Hitler

Ben: Since what this author would like to know that they can’t find out is never stated and since there is tons of information about Obama, including two books, and months and months of interviews and media coverage, it seems silly to claim we know nothing without a specific thing that wants to be known.*

4.) Current president told people he would bring them: gun control, health care, better wages, better jobs, and pride once again in their country.

Hitler told people he would bring them: gun control, health care, better wages, better jobs, and pride once again in their country(... and that they were the master race…and that a semi-specific group was the cause of their problems : the terrorist…I mean the Jews. )

5.) Current president smiles and waves a lot

Hitler smiled and waved a lot

Ben: As for the “brown shirts” and “the seizure of government control” I don’t think there is a basis for comparison with our current president and none is suggested by the author.

As it turns out, the letter I received is not actually written by Tim Woods, and his name had just been attached to the essay. It was actually written by some person with the alias “TPS”. It was a pretty bizarre afternoon. I hope the other 25 or so people that my friend forwarded the message to had time to look at what was being said and write back too. I especially hope they don’t see Hitler every time a stranger smiles and waves to them. After all, the economy is bad, and if that stranger has a desire to have health care, a better job, to be safe from guns, and have pride in their country, and if the media doesn’t cover them, then you basically have all the key factors.

* this point is mentioned in a part I didn't include the quote for.

Superb Sheep Heard

2009-03-24T00:07:00.000-07:00

You have already probably seen this but if you haven't then please do.

Salon

2009-03-20T02:39:00.000-07:00

My mom and I are organizing a get together at our home in Spokane where Kevin Long and I will be showing some of our work and then talking about it afterward. Kevin is planing to perform about four songs for acoustic guitar and voice and I am very much looking forward to hearing him because he is an excellent song writer. I also have a number of songs for guitar and voice I could play but I've been trying to think of as many other types of things that I could show instead. Not that I don't like my guitar songs, just that it might be nice to have a bit of a wider range of variety.

I have a neat computer music piece I made this quarter that I can play but other than that nothing really comes to mind. So I think I will need to write or find something to practice to show at the event.

If I am going to write something I need to first figure out what it is that I want the people there to be thinking about and helping me with or what I would like to show them that I already feel I understand. I am trying to work hard at this because I want everyone to have a really excellent time so that they will want it to happen again. Finding a place where people are listening to what you are performing and willing to ask questions is difficult and I want this thing to be one of those places.

Perhaps I could call around and see if someone would like to come and read some poetry...

okay, well it is late. Much love.

This was interesting to me

2009-03-16T17:43:00.001-07:00

The Uptick Rule from Marketplace on Vimeo.

Our Prayers Have Been Answered

2009-03-07T15:20:00.000-08:00

HUMAN SIZE HAMSTER BALLS!
Unfortunately this video only shows kids on the water but I think it is an important step toward the human-in-ball future we all so desire.

Song 2

2009-03-04T00:03:00.000-08:00

I have not recorded all the stuff I've been working on for my "one song a week project" but I did have a chance to at least get a rough copy of this song done.
The guitar part for this song is in 7/8 the vocal part is in 4/4. When you play something in 7 against something in 4 they don't repeat their original relationship for a several repetitions.
(e.g: 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 etc...)
The melody in 4 riding on top of a slowly shifting and for me slightly unsettling guitar in 7. I wrote the song as a lullaby because I thought it would be neat to capture the situation where you sing to your child something that is simple and soothing, as a way to combat what ever disruptive thing is happening - or in the song, you sing something in 4 against something unfamiliar in 7.

Talks:

2009-03-02T02:14:00.000-08:00

Over the last couple of days I have enjoyed these talks.
Neil deGrasse Tyson is funny but I think I would hate to hang out with him. On the other hand i am fairly sure I could go camping with Richard Dawkins.
For some reason this talk is called "an atheist's call to arms". It's actual title is "queerer then we suppose" and is about the ability of our brain to understand things on levels of magnitude on the atomic scale and on the universal scale. It is very nice.

This one is just nice because it is quick and rational.

What I have been interested in is that despite these arguments these ideas still stick around. It is very interesting.

ICANHAZDR.WHO?

2009-02-21T11:14:00.001-08:00

2009-02-09T13:24:00.000-08:00

Remote Controlled Beetle

I found something strange on Hack a Day this morning.
It is a video of a real live beetle with a microchip attached
to his nerves to make him fly, stop flying, go left, right, up
and down. The first half the video I was excited but the
longer it went on the more sad and weird it was.

Here is the video

Un-canon Canons

2009-02-07T01:48:00.000-08:00

have been

working on trying

to write canons or rounds*

that are harmonically complex and maybe

that even change key. I got the idea from my faculty

Arun C. who also suggested I try to make a cannon that changes it's length

after each repetition. I haven't had much luck with either of these two tasks yet but

hopefully this weekend I will have something to post. # Give it a try it is real fun to try and figure out.

image credit: tasosk

*row row row your boat

#brian, you know you want to try itdfpo

Nick Cave

2009-02-04T13:05:00.000-08:00

I found this guys stuff via http://foundcorn.blogspot.com/ currently titled "Art school".
I really want to put this thing on and run around the house.

you can see some little pictures of his other work here.

Song Writing Project

2009-02-01T01:34:00.000-08:00

I am trying to write one song a week, good or bad, and post it. Hopefully they will slowly improve.
Song 1:

The assignment I gave myself for this one was to write a song that is entirely setting.

Five Finger Composition Assignment

2009-01-23T02:11:00.001-08:00

Today Arun asked us to make a composition for five fingers. He said the focus of the assignment was not to have the fingers play piano, or tap out a rhythm but rather for us to look at and try and organize five fingers in terms of movements, poses and behaviors aka compose them just as fingers. It can be a little hard to conceptualize but it is actually really fun. Just remember to focus on composing what the fingers are actually doing, not on composing what the result will be. For example don't compose a song of tapping sounds or shadow puppets or movements that will afterwords be placed in front of a guitar or on a piano to play a song.

Here's a video of my take on it. We only had the evening to work on it so don't expect socks to be blown off. I will be seeing about twenty-five other finger compositions tomorrow so maybe I can get a couple more up here to give some idea of what else could be done. If you are going to try it yourself you may not want to watch what I did first.

Neat

2008-12-05T17:39:00.000-08:00

Found this via Thingiverse.com

The site has instructions for making it if you are interested. I think I might make one.

Things - Adam Mayer Digitally Designed Geared Business Cards from Bre Pettis on Vimeo.

If...

2008-11-26T23:38:00.000-08:00

...you watch this without sound, then it is extremely sad. If you watch it with it then it is just silly.

Star might like this

2008-11-24T13:33:00.000-08:00

http://allthatiscute.wordpress.com/

I think the section on squirrels is particularly nice.

Fail

2008-11-22T16:49:00.000-08:00

Hava showed me this site. It make me laugh so I will share it with you.

http://failblog.org/

Do you think they would search these?

2008-11-17T02:58:00.000-08:00

I found this on boingboing today and thought I would share.
I like that they are made but I'm not sure I would be brave enough to use one.
If you want to check out the rest of the makers site, here is the link.

Moon Landing

2008-11-14T17:41:00.000-08:00

So occasionally the "we faked the moon landing" theory crops up around me and I just wanted to take an opportunity to let the Myth Busters weigh in on it.
(spoiler: it wasn't faked.)

and so then...

they further stated...

and also

and not to mention...

Accordian and Guitar Duo's Aplenty

2008-11-10T13:06:00.000-08:00

Apparently I am a big fan of accordion and guitar duo's. This is Lou and Peter Berryman. They are adorable and charming song writers.
Mr. and Mrs. Noah

Orange Coca Cake

Oh...no.....oh no.

2008-11-06T15:51:00.000-08:00

I found this on Hack a Day . com

Coin slot detector
posted Oct 24th 2008 10:48pm by Eliot Phillips
filed under: daily, security hacks, wearable hacks

"Wow, how quickly the wearable electronics world has slid into the gutter. They’re now resigned to watching our nations finest natural resource, the butt crack. This project by [semiotech] uses a LilyPad Arduino to monitor the exposure of the wearer’s coin slot. It detects the presence of light with a photoresistor and alerts the user with the vibrations of a pager motor. This breakthrough in coin slot technology will prevent dryness and certainly reduce our exposure to domestic terrorism. We see plenty of room for future development; the Arduino is already capable of logging exactly how often your coin slot is exposed. Even if you feel this is more protection than your coin slot needs, we recommend Neutrogena’s Coin Slot Cream for general upkeep."

If I see one of those I am going to pee my pants laughing.

2008-11-05T23:01:00.000-08:00

It's Not Alright by The Prince Myshkins

2008-11-04T01:27:00.000-08:00

I really like this song.

Insalubrious

2008-10-19T11:56:00.000-07:00

Pronounced: in-sə-ˈlü-brē-əs
Adjective
Etymology:Latin insalubris, from in- + salubris healthful
Definition: not conducive to health : unwholesome
Related word: insalubrity
"His manor insalubrious made me feel lugubrious. "

Music Composition Assignment

2008-10-16T20:44:00.000-07:00

It can be difficult to get started on writing music especially without an assignment. To help with this problem I am posting assignments I have found useful and hopefully coming up with a few assignments on my own. So instead of waiting for inspiration to strike, wrestle it down from the clouds by doing the following.
In the past, music has been used for a lot of different purposes and the songs resulting from each task have notable consistencies. Look at the list below and pick two things from the list and write a piece of music that represents the key features of that genera *for lack of a better word*. Try something new and shoot for about 3 minutes.

>Romance: to create erotic feelings
>Healing: to cure disease, relax stress
>Magic: to please or give thanks to a deity(I am including rain dances, black magick etc...)
>Epic: to convey the glory of a hero or event
>Lullaby: to sooth someone to sleep
>Mourning: To ease the pain of death or celebrate someones life
>Celebration: good harvest, social gathering,
>Dancing: Get your groove on

I will write up more categories as I think of them.

Jingoism

2008-10-15T22:24:00.000-07:00

Jingoism is extreme patriotism in the form of aggressive foreign policy. In practice, it is the use of threats or actual force against other countries in order to get what the country wants.

Palimpsest

2008-10-13T20:08:00.000-07:00

A palimpsest is a page that has been written on, scraped off, and used again. The word "palimpsest" comes through Greek and Latin, a two part word meaning ("again" + "I scrape"), which meant scraped (clean and used) again. It is has also been used to describe a layering of many messages with in one object or transmission. (eg. the book/movie Contact by Carl Sagan.)