cringleman

Dude, I met Fred Penner, once. He did a gig at my old high school, and I was running the sound for the show. He sets up his own rig, and hires randoms to make his giant, inflatable cat dance during the appropriate, closing number. I guess he just tours around doing shows or something, now. When I saw him, last (four years, actually, I guess), it was just him and some other dude who played a sweet Godin (sweet!) synth (shit ...) guitar backing him up. He's pretty much right on.

Exactly. Makes me wonder if that wasn't why Neil Young kept going back to CSN (to add the Y), even though it was never an amiable situation. Maybe it just pushed him, when he went back to do his own stuff.

Summer of Sam (After 192 pages, I can only imagine that a lot of these are rehashes.)

I Am Sam [Edited: out of sequence]

I'm posting this from a Dell, but it's an ancient laptop, and its only major problem is clear: its battery lasts an hour, flat. I highly doubt that it'll spontaneously combust. I also have another Dell box, that runs Linux and serves a website from the living room of my shared flat, and another one at the old homestead that's been running not too badly since the millennium. If you want a decent computer, though, you build it yourself (or pay and arm and a leg for an Alienware). That's why I don't like Apples -- everything proprietary. You can't just get a generic HD for a Mac (as far as I've been educated), and upgrading is a bitch-and-a-half. Though, at least you can game on a Mac again. Those dark days have ended.

Omissions! Actually one of my favourite songs on any album, and I've always associated as having a similar sound to 'I, The Throw Away.' I do love 'Haven't Slept in Years,' though.

The interesting thing I've always found about Spiritual Machines is that, while it's certainly somewhat more accessible than some of their older material, it's actually also sort of a light concept album. I mean, it's not as complex as Animals or anything, but it's successful in being a concept album, with the notion of examining what being human is. That's why Gravity made me really sad. SM showed some real creative balls, for a reasonably mainstream band (having the Kurzweil readings from that book in between songs, for example), Gravity, as we've looked at ... well, it didn't. To be honest, though, maybe they just thoght that Bob Rock had the ultimate name for a rock producer. I mean, he has 'rock' in his name, right?

Reading anything is very rarely a waste of time. I also accept no victory: while lyrics may not actually be more subjective than anything else (at least, it's impossible to measure whether or not they are), the main thrust of your argument would still stand, simply because it's more than the content of Matt's lyrics that have been changing, lately. However, the thread did get sort of locked into lyrical content, long, long ago, for some reason. It's funny, sometimes, when people automatically equate music and poetry. Really, music is to poetry as painting is to sculpture, if not even to a greater degree. Make more threads like this, man, 'cause this was enjoyable -- beats the hell out of having to pretend that Snakes on a Plane isn't actually happening.

I guess it depends on the circumstances, what you call them. If at the time, they're 16, you call them ego-stoked and cocky. If it's on an Internet messageboard, and someone claims not to be a virgin, the convention is clear: You call them a "liar." For guys, at least ...

What I meant, MarketTomato, was that Vai and Sheehan are, at the very least, undisputably phenomenally virtuosic players. They're technically very talented. I guess I never really directly considered that it was the producer-switch that resulted in the downslide of my beloved OLP, but (funnily), I think I was always sure that the switch to Bob Rock and dumbing down the sound was what made Turner leave. Spiritual Machines did have a poppier, more accessible sound than some of the previous records, but I agree with you, timtheory: there was still a greater complexity in their construction and production, which let it remain a good album. Let's just have a nice Bob Rock hate-fest.

Wow, angry, Azalroth. As for the disbelief at the lack of a word for homosexuality in Greek, while I can't offer a scholarly reason for it, I can shed some hypothetical light on why it could have been the case: perhaps it was just too mundane to bother making a word for. To my knowledge, the ancient Greeks (and the Romans, too, I think) just had sex with everyone and anyone. What would be the point in making a word for someone who exclusively has sexual relations with men, if that didn't exist? Back then, sex was sex, and you just partook in it with whomever you so chose -- personal preference was just a matter of taste, not 'orientation.' We don't have a word in English (nor any other language I'm familiar with) for people who don't like seafood, after all, nor for someone (like me) who has a massive appetite for hamburgers. Unless you count 'hamburglar.'

I'm not even going to pretend that there's any actual point in debating whether or not the supernatural exists; I would hope that no one here would bother with that -- it is equally a leap of faith to believe that there is, as fact, no god (small-g, big-G -- whatever you like to not believe in) as it is to believe that there is. Where Southern Baptist Evangelicalism is faith that Jesus is God, Scientific Atheism is just the belief, essentially, that Occam's Razor is. That being said, not all organized religions are convinced that all other religions are 'wrong;' look at lots of Buddhists. In fact, there are, indeed, a great number of people following Judeo-Christian faiths (which seem to be the focal point, here) who don't have any interest in telling anyone else that they're 'wrong.' Of course, the great downfall is that organized anything tends to become bloated, and often corrupt. Everything from organized religion to organized sport has its levels of unbridled bureaucratic BS. And when matrix says that you were 'incorrent,' ecnarf, I believe what is meant is 'incoherent,' not incorrect. Of course, the statement he cites is confusing, but certainly not incoherent -- as was the intended effect, I imagine. That is a strange thought -- just like a country propping up a dictator in Iraq to fight Iran, only to later wage two wars on Iraq -- the second of which to remove said dictator that they had put up, and clean up the mess he left, all so that they could continue to have influence in that country ... that they messed up by wielding a subversive influence in the first place. It's an old story. In any case, not all organized religions take their chosen book to follow literally (and some don't follow books, really) -- most don't, in fact, I would wager. It just happens that, as in all cases, the nutjobs are way louder at yelling than the sane folk. Crazy people like to yell, after all. Same thing with soccer fans -- they don't all riot, but you never hear about the boring, pleasant ones, do you?

Technically speaking, it is our genetic code that defines us as 'human' (Homo sapiens), but there is a massive amount of variation within the genes that separate us from our nearest relatives (we share a bit over 98% of our genome with chimpanzees). Looking purely genetically, it would seem that defining the categories of 'human' and 'not human,' there must be some number of differing genes that would cause a creature to be no longer human, but it is possible for someone to be born with such a high load of genetic defects as to be, under a strict binary distinction (of 'human' or 'not human'), defined as inhuman, despite the truth of the matter (or, correctly, dependent on your view). The problem is that genetics simply provide almost too much data to be of use in the matter, and no one (to my knowledge) has ever even attempted to set out a guidline (which would, even so, be highly debatable), saying, 'If you lack X number of alleles from your code, you are not human.' Also, 'reason' is a highly plastic term -- crows are able to solve fairly complex puzzles (as is my Jack Russell terrier), and Koko the gorilla could understand language (she'd have been taught an audible language if her vocal apparatus could have supported it), which further blurs the distinction. You are, of course, roughly correct. We tend to have superior reasoning skills than most other animals (and, we assume, all other forms of life, like plants and algae and bacteria), and no one really knows to what extent (if any; scientists are loathe to admit any at all) animals can feel emotions. We are also different due to an inherent general genetic difference in our makeup. It just isn't quite as simple as that sounds.

Touch

You know, it's funny -- I do enjoy ASMZ a bit, but it's never really done it for me in the same way that GY!BE did. They're technically not broken up, though, so they could, one day, release a new album. Personally, my new favourite instrumental band has been The Fussy Part, out of Fredericton, NB. They also play some sort of alt-pop stuff, but their big-build style ambient grooves are just slick. Their drummer also kicks some serious, serious ass. (No album, yet, though -- all the members are in other bands, so it remains a side project.)

My pleasure. Sorry that it took me so very much text to explain myself.

Yeah, the 'post-X' terminology is a little nondescriptive for my tastes, too. As far as I recall, I think 'Lift Yr Skinny Fists ...' is a movement from either Storm, Static or Sleep (three of four tracks on the album of that name; the last is Antennas to Heaven). The most famous band of this genre that slipped my mind: Sigur Ros. Who are also awesome.

I'm sorta new here. I know. I've just been floating about, for the past week, perusing the threads around here and generally making use of the account I registered for over a year ago (for the first time, really, except for asking Matt Good a question in the site-wide interview). In participating in Shortcut to Moncton's Musical Discussion Thread, I noticed that he brought up one of my favourite bands, Godspeed You! Black Emperor (ignore the exclamation point; it used to end their name, and they moved it to the middle just to be esoteric). After making wise use of the site's search function, I realized that only Moncton had ever mentioned them like, ev-errr. Have you people never heard of post-rock (a term coined by Godspeed, and later abandoned by them once the press latched onto it)? (Sometimes lumped into the 'ambient' category.) I'm beginning to ramble, so I will tell you this: Godspeed You! Black Emperor play sweeping, instrumental, quasi-classical arrangements of music using a variety of instrumentation. They were a fiercely anti-establishment group, almost never gave interviews, and left a huge impression on the post-rock genre (which now includes bands as diverse as Set Fire to Flames, Explosions in the Sky, Mogwai, A Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra and countless others). They were also from Montr

First of all, I should clarify that when I mention Free Will, I simply mean self-determination to the extent of having some choice, at all. My views can, on this issue, largely be grouped under weak libertarianism, where I feel that if you're not doing harm to anyone else, then you should be free to do whatever you choose. Clearly we have some choice, unless you're a scientific determinist (in which case, I think you need to learn more science), or a religious determinist (which no one seems to be, thus far). What I would say as far as treatment of the species being used for research is that this case is no different than other research involving lab animals, which is no different (I would argue) than eating meat (which I adore; mmm, meat!). To my mind, there's really not a whole lot more to the issue, unless you want to debate the use of lab animals in general, which is quite a sticky situation. Back to the free will debate, where you say, Azalroth, that we do not have free will, you demonstrate that we do, if only to a limited extent. If we didn't have free will at all, thanks to the government, then it must be the government willing you to say that. We do, in fact, have unlimited free will: we're perfectly capable of acting against the laws of the land -- others will simply impose their wills upon us if we do. Ultimately, the test of free will is whether or not you may choose to not choose. If we so wished, all of us could cease to choose, and simply wait to expire. As far as evolution, the recombination of species that have diverged previously is exceedinly rare. Examples include how we came to have mitochondria, and also how plants came to have chloroplasts. Generally, however, the accepted trend in evolution is toward divergence: groups of one species slowly become separate species, and not the other way around (hybrids exist in the wild, but are usually quite rare; the red wolf, for example, is a cross between a coyote and a grey wolf, and isn't as common as either). I apologize for the tangent, but as a student of biology, I'm going to have to explain something. The mistake most people make with regards to evolution is inferring a directionality in it; some say it moves towards greater complexity in organisms (which is not always the case), and some say that it is 'perfecting' the genomes. Really, all evolution is is the increasing frequency of genetic alleles that happen to be advantageous at the time. It's the at the time that's important. At some point, it was useful for us to become bipedal, which has helped us out. At some other point, it was useful for certain populations to develop a resistance to malaria, but, sadly, that allele can also cause sickle-cell anemia, now. The sickle-cell thing is now more problematic than the malarial resistance is helpful, because (in the developed world, at least) we have a much lower exposure to the pathogen that causes malaria. As for the desire for conformity, I do realize (and concede) that that is not a uniform value held by all of us. I, personally, am neither conformist nor nonconformist. I do what pleases me, whether it is conformity or not. I try to simply think for myself, without worrying it if is accepted or original. What I was observing was a general trend -- the trend that is responsible for fashion, for example. I also never said that society does hold free will to be of utmost importance: I said that it should. In any case, the topic's starting to veer wildly into some heady philosophical territory.

The reason that no one knows for sure how a human child would turn out if raised by a nonhuman parent (though, good luck finding an animal willing to do the job) is that there is no single study that is sufficiently well-documented and verified for the data to exist. As a corollary, the experiment will not be performed, under today's standards, because it is considered an eithically repugnant thought. Personally, I don't believe that society should hold anything sacred, except the utmost basics: life and free will swim immediately to mind (there are others; the Charter of Rights and Freedoms isn't a bad approximation). Something as truly meaningless as genetic information can't really be held as sacred, because it is inherently unfit. Any species' (if we assume that there are seperate species, which is the penultimate biological convenience) genome is constantly changing, and the natural possibility for hybrids already exists (although, to my knowledge, never across genera). We also shouldn't hold something as perfect and untouchable just because it's part of us -- that's extremely conceited. While I will be the first to admit that it is crucial for restraint to be exercised in this new avenue of biological research (we don't need Seaman, any time soon), to simply call a halt to intermingling different species to any degree would be motivated out of ignorant fear. It is plain, already, that interspecies combinations have existed for millennia (a massive proportion of agricultural grains, and many domesticated animals are hybrids), and no one thinks that a mule or a hinny (a horse bred with a donkey; a mule has a donkey father, where a hinny has a donkey mother) is an abomination of science (nor the common garden primrose, for that matter). It is exceptionally odd to think of a pig with a human heart, but what is wrong with it? I would caution merely against the overenthusiasm of some researchers to grow creatures with human brains, simply because, if that creature were to attain human cognition, it could be very disquieting for both the creature and all of humanity. We crave being the same, after all. The irony is that the reason we cannot define a precise, categorizing definition of 'human' is because we are far too varied. We are not all bipedal. We do not all create, or produce (or even comprehend) art. We do not all feel strong emotions. Some of us have great difficulty learning. Some of us are born without certain limbs, with extra limbs, or attached to a whole other person. One day, we may create a computer (or software) that can think and feel, just as we do. Would it be human? It is impossible to create a definition of 'human' that does not exclude some obvious humans, and still manages to exclude things that are clearly not human. All but the vaguest definitions are flawed (and the flawed ones vague to the point of meaninglessness). We are, by and large, social creatures that crave some measure of homogeneity, and yet we are all so very different. Perhaps humanity is simply compassion. [As a side note, I learned, in ascertaining the parental sex-difference for hinnies and mules (I always forget), that a male donkey is called a jack, whereas a female is a jenny.]

I sincerely doubt that there are plans to have the implanted chips networked to satellites, nor actually tracked via GPS (though a lot of people think that that would be awesome for finding missing persons). As to the medical comment, my paranoia about having a chip that's implanted in you for ID purposes, so that you can't lose it, scares me. You can lose anything, it's just harder to fix the problem when something's harder to lose (the steps to replacing an implanted chip would undoubtedly be vastly more difficult than replacing, say, a MediCare card). This is not to say that there isn't a great deal of merit to the idea of having ID made much more simple, but I disagree with the implant idea at a fundamental level, just personally.

Freddy Beach? (Not that anyone seems to have called it that since the 80s.) Well, shit on a monkey. I just assumed that it was some other Hilltop. At least this story didn't involve Nicky Z's.

I'm glad this thread ain't locked. "There's nothing more subjective than lyrics in music." There are few more false assertions than that. Could you please try and offer justification for a statement so sweeping? You've no proof, and there's good reason why: this is a half truth. Lyrics are, in fact, very subjective. You mention content as your example, and there are surely other possibilities. Some prefer straightforward lyrics, while others prefer poetic ambiguity. I have no qualms with you, there. The flip side is that music, itself is highly subjective. Prove to me whether Mozart or Bach is superior. There's a very, very good reason that there are a hojillion different 'Hundred Greatest Guitar Solos' lists. While technical difficulty can be gauged to a certain degree in musical composition, and complexity can be measured on a rough, relative scale, there is no "better" or "worse." You also make the flaw of citing only examples of rock and its derivatives: let's expand this to all music. Some prefer country with a female vocalist (regardless of what she's singing, or what she looks like), and some prefer men. Some prefer classical to everything else. Some prefer music composed of nothing but close vocal harmony, and I, personally, am fascinated with the Thai elephant orchestra. There is no absolute measure of musical quality or skill (look a the genre of virtuoso guitar: arguments can be made for Steve Vai, Joe Satriani and Yngwie Malmsteen [blech], just to name a very few, and it's difficult to judge logical merit in any case [except that Malmsteen nearly plays the same damn scale for every "song" he has]). You need to understand, very clearly, that almost all music is entirely subjective, unless you subscribe to Pirsig's metaphysics of Quality. I can make arguments about why Matt Good's music is vastly superior to 98 Degrees' catalogue, but I cannot prove that I am conclusively right. I believe that his lyrics and his music are better to a degree that makes comparison an insult to his craft, but I can't write a logical proof of it. Lyrics are no more subjective than melody, harmony, timbre, rhythm, groove, content, context, delivery ... I could go on. If we're being honest with ourselves, demonstrating conclusive quality in any art has been a philosophical nightmare for centuries. No one can do it (except Pirsig, who's in a whole different ballpark, playing a strange, lonely, lovely game). (As an aside, I just got junk mail allegedly from the "Folger's Coffee Ninja." What the hell?)

Despite the ... er ... omission of Omissions (which does only make sense -- I just had to ask), I also will take War is Over, being somewhat interesting in its arrangement, as well as all of the usual (well-written, nice-sounding ... blah, blah ...).

It'd be awesome to have a listing available on the Bored of what people have submitted, too. I don't have a high enough bandwidth connection, right now (or, rather, I'm sharing one with six other people and incoming/outgoing scientific data dumps), to download any of it, but it'd be nice to see what's been done.