Month: December 2007

Judging by the recent comments of Senator and fine upstanding American patriot Kit Bond I now declare that the debate about waterboarding and torture has gotten officially Ridiculous. There's nothing the Beltway and the media do better than conducting loud, asinine, and irrelevant Red Herring moral debates. "Oh, the morality! Is it right? Is it wrong? What if it can save millions of lives?" Let's leave morality off the table for a minute. Let's pretend that torture is entirely moral, endorsed by a committee of the Pope,** Walter Cronkite, and Miss America. OK? Once you've immersed yourself in the scenario, answer one very simple yet completely overlooked question for me:

Does torture work?

Better yet, has anyone bothered asking? It's classic American Media c.2007 horseshit – throw the mouthbreathers a shiny colored ball in the form of an overwrought moral dilemma (ooh, look at the debate! look at the screaming pundits! this sure is contentious!) while completely ignoring the fact that torture doesn't actually work. It's all hand-wringing, moral puffery, and feigned pensiveness. Is it asking too much to have one Pundit Debate begin with "Well, is this actually accomplishing anything beyond making us look like neanderthals?" Because it would be swell to think that something so horrible is at least, you know, working.

In typical Beltway Bobblehead fashion the debate proceeds from the assumption that the farthest-right position is a obviously correct (and all the "realistic" "liberals" like David Brooks agree, noting that only the Lunatic Fringe Left disagrees). I dare – beg, actually – anyone to cite a single documented instance of a life being saved thanks to torture. No, Our Leader's utterly non-sequitur, no-supporting-evidence-provided statements that waterboarding "disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks" do not constitute a documented instance. I guess we'll just take your word for it, George!

I further beg someone to support an argument that torture increases the value or amount of human intelligence obtained. The Army's own findings indicate that they obtained almost half again as much information by switching from "coercive" to "rapport-based" techniques. To quote Nice Guy Eddie (Chris Penn, may his coke-addled soul rest in peace) in Reservoir Dogs, "Listen, if you beat this prick long enough he'll tell he started the goddamn Chicago Fire. Now that don't neccessarily make it fucking so! Come on!"

Physical torture is an excellent way to get people to make some shit up so you will stop torturing them. It is not an excellent way of getting valid, actionable intelligence. It's only an effective technique in the minds of lard-assed suburban white guys glued to the couch while Jack Bauer fantasies of "ticking time bomb" scenarios do for them what Cialis can't.

**Fun morality fact: 74% of Catholics support the use of torture compared to only 45% of godless heathen atheists. Man, I wonder why so many people no longer see traditional religious values as relevant?

No politics today, and yes I know what day it is.

To preface this post, my band has just wrapped up the recording of a new album. Bob Weston from Shellac is going to master it – not because we're cool, but because we're paying him. His website provided me with a wealth of information about the technical side of music production. While I'm not entirely certain that any of this will interest you in the slightest, if you have any sort of fondness for audio, engineering, or the music industry (broadly construed) you may find this as fascinating as I do.

Americans like their iPods. I assume most of the people who would be reading a website like this one are clutching an mp3 player of some sort these days. If so, you're familiar with an irritating inconvenience: when your player is on Random, there's a change in volume – often a dramatic one – when leaping back and forth among tracks from different albums.

It's especially apparent when moving from modern music to pre-1990 recordings. Do you ever wonder why that is? I do. If you're unconvinced, try it with some CDs in your collection. Don't touch the volume knob, and switch between a 1980 recording and one from 2005.

Pretty obvious, no?

I suggest you take a few minutes to read Weston's extended caveat on "loudness" and the mastering process. Like any presentation involving specialized knowledge, the visual aids are tremendously helpful in making the point to rabble like us. Essentially, he argues that the race to be the LOUDEST TRACK ON YOUR PLAYLIST has significant effects on sound quality. While you're at it, you can read more 'How the sausage is made' type stuff about music in What Happens to My Recording when it's Played on the Radio? by audio engineer Frank Foti (a little technical to say the least) or the much more accessible Guardian piece How CDs are Remastering the Art of Noise about the withering loudness of most major label music and the overuse of shitty electronic effects to compensate for the loss of fidelity.

I don't actually get a kick out of being a music snob (really. honestly.) but it's hard to avoid taking on that role when pointing out just how painfully god-awful most new music sounds.

That is independent of the songwriting or musicianship. Those are matters of taste. But the actual sound that gets blared over the radio these days is enough to make blood squirt out of my ears. Leave aside how you feel about their music – try actually listening to an album from something like Fall Out Boy. It's one of the most painfully overprocessed, compressed, harsh, and unnatural sounding things you could imagine. Technology like that could make 1971 era Led Zeppelin sound like shit.

Or you can flip over to the Top 40 or Country, where abominations like AutoTune (which makes your dance hits sound strangely like Stephen Hawking is doing the vocals) are all but ubiquitous.

Does it really help a track to stand out on your iPod in shuffle mode if it sounds that terrible? Talk about pyrrhic victories.

PS: Here's a sample of a raw (unmastered) mega-hit from our upcoming album. It's called "Right Now Your Low Self-Esteem is just Good Common Sense" and it's #2 on the pop charts in Belgium. Be warned that the sound is not going to appeal to you unless you like early Jesus Lizard, mid-career Trenchmouth, and getting punched in the head.

I spent the majority of this weekend in the studio (Russian Recording of Nashville, Indiana) once again. It was a tremendously rewarding and frustrating experience. Much was learned. The final product, if I may say so, is the balls. I'm ridiculously proud of it. I'll post some tracks, which you will all hate, soon.
buy symbicort online buy symbicort no prescription

That is my way of apologizing for the lack of research in today's entry.

Inspired by a conversation I had on Saturday evening with someone I had not previously met: why does anyone give a shit about George Orwell? Why do people think 1984 is a good book? And why in the flying hell do people bring it up as an analogy when they're discussing politics? I honestly cannot think of anything less persuasive.

1984 is, in my opinion, a three hundred page straw man. Sure, it probably seemed like a plausible nightmare scenario back in the days of Cold War indoctrination, but in the modern context I can't think of a less relevant social metaphor. I'm hardly the first or best person to compare the two, but Brave New World runs circles around 1984 in terms of relevance as a political metaphor. Where 1984 tries to scare the kiddies with images of book banning, Huxley talks about a world in which the books ban themselves because no one wants to read. Orwell gives us juvenile tales of an all-powerful government that hides information from us; Huxley talks about a world in which the truth is freely available but lost in an ocean of misinformation, spin, and irrelevant bullshit masquerading as news. Orwell told us that a totalitarian state would make social and political change impossible. Huxley drew up a world in which people were too busy being distracted by nonsense to want to change anything.

In short, as a skeptical person with an interest in politics, 1984 is supposed to appeal to me. Too bad it reads as if written by a 16 year-old.
online pharmacy trazodone best drugstore for you

buy zovirax online buy zovirax no prescription

It's a ham-handed boogeyman tale that completely misses any point outside of the context of anti-Communist hysteria. When educated adults actually bring it up in conversation, I immediately knock about 40 points off their IQ.
online pharmacy amitriptyline best drugstore for you

It's the sort of thing that allows really stupid people to convince themselves that we have a terrific system in place – our government doesn't look like 1984, so we must have a healthy, vibrant democracy! I'll take Brave New World and conversation with someone who understands that the people who want to control you will come with smiles and soothing voices, not an iron fist wielded by cartoonish jackbooted thugs.

On the Forbes list of the worst jobs on Earth, I think "George Bush Era Military Recruiter" would be one step behind Assistant Crack Whore for the top (or is it bottom?) spot. I feel bad for them. I do. Honestly. In peacetime the job must be pretty easy – just target poor areas loaded to the gunwales with young men lacking any respectable career opportunities and voila. Now, on the other hand….

How do you sell it under these circumstances? "The Army: Join today, be in Fallujah in 10 weeks (or your money back)!" There's no way to varnish reality, even when pitching enlistment to the bottom 10% of last year's high school seniors: sign up, and you're going to Iraq. Soon. Some people are probably really excited about that, either because they are idealists eager to make a difference or because they want to shoot a brown person in a consequence-free environment. But the numbers indicate that neither of these "selling points" are enough. Time to get creative.

If you've seen a film in theaters anytime in the last couple of years, then I don't need to tell you about the phenomenon of the Five Minute Army Promo Video Masquerading as a Trailer. You know, people decked out in neat-o looking toys (armor! guns! techno doo-dads!) jumping out of other neat-o looking toys (helicopters! tanks! bigger techno doo-dads!) to either shoot or help people (depending on the setting) to the strains of Godsmack. As time passes, the films look increasingly like video games and they have a mysterious tendency to never depict or mention Iraq. Let's go ahead and assume those are not accidents.

I usually don't pay much attention (other than to be a smart ass and yell something like "How's that war working out?" at the end) but when last I visited Ye Old Movies I was literally stunned by what I saw: a National Guard-sponsored music video by 3 Doors Down called "Citizen Soldier." Follow the link to watch it – empty stomach recommended. It's also on YouTube. I actually felt like leaving the theater. Or at least projectile vomiting.

Words don't usually fail me, but…words fail me. Where do I start? The horrendous, generic, "Let's compress it in Pro Tools a few more times" music? The historical inaccuracies? The lyrics, which read like they were written by the hit songwriting team of General Petraeus and Brit Hume? No, let's overlook all of that for a second and focus on the shameless deception involved. Focus on exciting Hollywood films about the Revolution or WWII! Focus on helping people after earthquakes! Do not focus on the fact that you are going directly to Iraq. There, to paraphrase mnftiu, you can help the fuck out of some people.

Does this shit actually work? Let me re-phrase that; do we want a military composed of individuals to whom this would be persuasive? Call me an idealist, but in a more perfect world I don't think people should make the very serious choice to enlist because some horseshit radio rock and people jumping out of helicopters seemed cool. As embarassing as it is that we have Army-sponsored video games and music videos essentially targeting children, I suppose we can take some comfort in the hard truth provided by the numbers – it's still not working. If it was, we wouldn't see the Army relaxing its criminal history and High School diploma requirements to meet its repeatedly-lowered "goals."

Sometimes – and this is one of them – I have to ask trite, obvious, redundant, and rhetorical questions.
buy azithromycin online www.mydentalplace.com/wp-content/languages/new/generic/azithromycin.html no prescription

What the fuck is wrong to this country? Actually, I retract the claim that this is rhetorical. Someone tell me. Please. What the fuck happened to us?

Buried in today's "headlines" about the "MySpace suicide," NFL player Sean Taylor's funeral, and "Why Bad Kissers Don't Get to Second Base" (thanks CNN!) is an afterthought about the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear capability. It has been released for public consumption today but was completed almost a year ago. It concludes that Iran abandoned its weapons program…in 2003.

Now, what are the odds that no one in the White House knew about the content of this report almost a year ago? Let's be generous and call it one in 600 billion. OK. So. While this is only recently available to the public it has been well known to people like, oh, let's say the President and the Secretary of State, for a year.

That means, and stop me when I fall off the logic train, that the past 7 months of We Must Invade Iran saber-rattling and up-ramping has been done with full knowledge that not a shred of the "nuclear program" allegations were true.

I'm sorry, but since when is "President and entire administration knowingly lie to America and the world in an attempt to justify invading another country" not news?
buy strattera online www.mydentalplace.com/wp-content/languages/new/generic/strattera.html no prescription

No Flashing Breaking News Alerts, no headlines, no "Gee America, looks like we have nearly red-handed evidence that your entire executive branch are lying, warmongering cocksuckers" commentary, and no pointed, incisive questions. The talk radio crowd don't even bother to make excuses for it. It's just not even relevant. No one notices, no one cares. It's the 5th most urgent news item of the day.

We often succumb to the temptation to idealize the past in this country, but the part of my psyche that doesn't resist urges very well thinks that this would not be the case in 1950.

Or 1960. Or 1970. Hell, probably not even in 1980. But not in 2007. The President getting caught red-handed trying to bullshit the country into another pre-emptive "security" war is not news.

I often think there has been some sort of fundamental and irrevocable change in this country, an intellectual point-of-no-return that we breezed past in the mid-80s. Stories like this do not discourage me from thinking that more regularly. We're officially a nation of vacuous, disinterested idiots. Willfully ignorant. Proud of it. As anti-intellectual as we are intellectually incurious. In short, we as a nation operate at about a 4th grade level – our interest in the "news" essentially encompasses sports, movies, Top 40 music, and medical oddities.

I don't know what the hell is wrong with me, or anyone else who chooses to teach for that matter. It's like we're signing up to be the Designated Mourners for 40 years of progressively more depressing batches of young people.