Derek_Timothy's Xanga

True or False?

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 16:14:46 GMT

On my favorite hospital drama television show, a patient is informed that she has a small but quite operable brain tumor. She's reassured by her doctor that the procedure will be performed by a certain Dr. Derek Shepherd: "Don't worry ma'am. Doctor Shepherd is one of the best neurosurgeons on the West Coast. He's the best. Elite, even." The patient responds, "He's elite? Oh, no..." and begins to cry.

A man finds himself in fairly serious need of a root canal. After getting a list of the local dentists and oral surgeons covered by his company's medical insurance, he asks around the office for recommendations (being new to the area). One co-worker informs him: "You should go see Schuffler. She was excellent when I had some troubles, and she graduated near the top of her class from one of the most elite dental colleges in the country." The man considers this and responds, "Elite, you say? I dunno – I'm more comfortable with a dentist I can relate to. Someone who generally disbelieves or is ignorant of sound science would be more to my liking."

Having grown up enjoying playing a few different sports (sandlot baseball as a kid, intramurals in college, pick-up games at the gym as an adult), Peter is attempting to explain to a buddy why he doesn't enjoy watching the NBA Finals. "What's up with all these elite players? They're all, like, at least six feet tall. I can't dunk a basketball – I'd rather watch normal guys play, not these lanky, well-trained snobs."

Obviously (hopefully), all three of these examples are false. Or anyway, they're intended to be (I just made them up – no similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is intended). I thought all this up after reading something that Sam Harris wrote:

"Americans have an unhealthy desire to see average people promoted to positions of great authority. No one wants an average neurosurgeon or even an average carpenter, but when it comes time to vest a man or woman with more power and responsibility than any person has held in human history, Americans say they want a regular guy, someone just like themselves...

This is one of the many points at which narcissism becomes indistinguishable from masochism. Let me put it plainly: If you want someone just like you to be president of the United States, or even vice president, you deserve whatever dysfunctional society you get. You deserve to be poor, to see the environment despoiled, to watch your children receive a fourth-rate education and to suffer as this country wages—and loses—both necessary and unnecessary wars."

It's odd to me that folks (including me, both four and eight years ago) will actively vote against their own self-interest (and for that matter against the well-being of others, especially if they're a marginalized, demonized, or otherwise unfamiliar minority) based on, among other things, measures like "relatability" and glossy biographical summaries. This is a big problem for democracy, quite apart from our willingness to believe outright lies, or to not notice or care that the Corporate Media seems blissfully content to regularly avoid pushing for facts and honesty from politicians and pundits.

SOB

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 15:34:46 GMT

A few weeks ago, LEO asked me to write another music review. I ended up with a pre-release copy of the debut from Scars on Broadway. The album came out maybe two weeks ago, but my review wasn't printed until this week.

You can hear a track or two on the band's website, or you can check out two of the songs mentioned in my review at their Myspace page. For some reason my review was edited, and in a way that doesn't make much sense to me. One sentence was cut in half, and one sentence was actually lengthened to include a dig at SOAD. Plus, if you consider the wasted spacing higher on the page in the printed issue, there's no reason to have shortened my review for space constraints.

Anyway, the online version is here, and my original text is here:

Scars on Broadway
Scars on Broadway
(INTERSCOPE)
<incongruous>

With SOAD on hiatus, lead guitarist Malakian and drummer Dolmayan have formed a new band called Scars on Broadway. A more straight-forward rock direction is attempted, but the music ultimately fails to live up to the hype.

Most of the songs sound like two or three minute ideas that rely on a single hook, frantic delivery, and little else. The record’s cohesion is questionable – is this minimized formula rock? A studio-slick amalgam of punk, dance, and disjointed screaming passages? Did he really just shout “supercalifragalisticexpealidocious”? Lyrics range from political commentary to frivolous nonsense, and Malakian's descending hollering during the verses of "Chemicals" is laughably obnoxious.

These disparate elements do work together on a couple produced-to-sound-heavy pop songs: not completely on the single “They Say,” but tracks like "Kill Each Other / Live Forever" and "Babylon" are better. To compliment this debut, I could characterize it as diverse and driving, but it's more honest to just note its lack of development and direction. Scars on Broadway is an odd attempt at over-produced frat-rock that does not compare favorably with the band members' previous work.

YouTube

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:35:58 GMT

Decided to try my hand at YouTube, recently.

Several of my uploads are of Introvert performing live, and I experimented with annotations on this one.

One of my first videos was a coincidental juxtaposition of bluegrass with The Terminator.

Later, I tried my hand at combining video with audio, once with a waterfall and another time with burning Christmas trees.

Then I edited a 5-minute MST3K clip from one of my favorites, "Deathstalker and the Warriors from Hell."

More recently, I spliced some Joshua Jesty with some Star Wars Cantina dialog, and shot some video of a train going through my neighborhood and added some Kate Tucker music to it. Also, a William Gibson piece, and video of some live music performed at a local bar.

If you like what you see, please subscribe to and/or friend my channel.

Published in LEO

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 06:21:14 GMT

I've had some letters published in LEO a few times over the past year or so, but this week they published a music review that I wrote! Below are two songs that you can listen to (make sure to listen past the 3:20 mark on the second one), a scan of the review, and the full text.

Watershed
Opeth
(ROADRUNNER)
<beautiful agony>

After waiting for three years, with only the live double-album The Roundhouse Tapes to tide us over last year, fans will be eager to finally have their appetite for Opeth’s mixture of ’70s prog rock and Swedish death metal satisfied (if only temporarily).

Those unfamiliar with Opeth will do well not to let “progressive death metal” fool them into missing this album. Its three-minute opener might be the band’s most beautifully gentle acoustic song yet, and Åkerfeldt employs his powerful growling voice for less than half of the vocals on Watershed. But make no mistake — the band’s reputation for complex arrangements, stunning musicianship and thundering heaviness is skillfully reinforced.

Death metal at its best can be epically brilliant, as made clear on tracks like “Heir Apparent” and “The Lotus Eater.” And at 11-plus minutes, “Hessian Peel” is like a negative photograph of Opeth’s continual journey into new territory: Long and gorgeous progressive melodies are only sparsely interrupted by brutal genius for a minute or so, reminding us that music can still be exciting.

Ear Candles

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 16:10:27 GMT

Have you ever heard of ear candles? I have, and I've even used them (ear candling is sometimes referred to as thermal-auricular therapy or auricular coning). You yourself may have used ear candles or been told how great they are, and may even have been convinced by your experience that they do indeed work. In fact, sometime during the past 18 months, Amy and I bought a pair at a local natural/organic food store, intending to use them in my ears (don't miss the end of this post, where I describe and show pictures of an experiment I performed).

More recently, maybe two months ago, I stumbled across a seemingly random reference to them (if memory serves, in a SWIFT bulletin from the James Randi Educational Foundation). In any case, I began to do some reading and some light Google-assisted research.

One of the first articles I found was this one. It gives a brief description and overview of ear candling and lists different benefits that are claimed by the products or their proponents, and summarizes normally suggested procedures and techniques. Then it describes, at some length, the actual research that's been done to test the efficacy of ear candles. In every test or experiment described, ear candling has been repeatedly proven to be completely ineffective.

It turns out that the claim that an ear candle can produce enough negative vacuum to literally suck wax and other material out of the ear canal is preposterous on its face. According to Doctor Roazen, a vacuum powerful enough to actually suck wax out of the ear canal would be powerful enough to rupture the eardrum! Second, the medical research indicates that ear candling is actually dangerous. Patients and doctors have reported not only external burns caused by the candles (whose flames are actually quite large), but also candle wax burns in the ear canal and damaged (sometimes perforated!) eardrums.

The research described in this article is even worse. Experimentation demonstrated no negative pressure was created by ear candles, and furthermore that a powdery substance was actually deposited into the ear canal during candling! Before and after photographs were taken of waxy ear canals, showing no change whatsoever after candling was performed.

The FDA has issued an alert, warning that ear candles are often labeled or advertized in a misleading way and that there is no scientific evidence proving their usefulness, and they are evidently illegal in Canada.

A detailed description of this experiment (including pictures) demonstrates the above summarized findings. But, I decided to run my own experiment and to take my own pictures, hoping that I might convince anybody who reads this to avoid ear candles and never ever use them. All pictures can be clicked to view them in a larger size.

For my experiment, I used a set of "Wally's Natural Plain Paraffin Ear Candles." For candle #1, I chose the vertical method that I've always seen done (where the person would lie down on their side). I used the funnel because the hole was small enough that the candle tip fit snugly, but big enough that it didn't actually seal tightly, which is exactly how the instructions say the candle should be used in an actual ear.

Note the two-to-three inch flame. I was almost immediately surprised by an incredible amount of smoke coming out of the bottom of the funnel! Contrary to the claims of negative pressure and an upward vacuum, the candle was actually sending air (and smoke) downward. Following the directions, I used scissors to remove the ashen tip of the candle any time it exceeded one inch in length, waiting for the candle to burn down to its final four inches.

Upon completion, I found that an incredible amount of smokey residue had been deposited on my plate. Imagine all of that in your ear canal! I proceeded to cut open the last bit of the candle, as is normally done to show people how "well" they work, and even though I had used the candle without a waxy ear canal, a whole bunch of material was found inside the candle.

As you look at the above picture (and note the clever corporate logo placement), consider that the average human ear canal is less than 8.5 cubic centimeters in volume.

To be thorough, I used candle #2 to test the angle method (where the person sits up and holds the candle up at a modest angle). The four pictures below show my setup, the even larger flame produced by this method, the waterfall of smoke pouring out of the bottom of the candle, and that I once again trimmed the candle as it burned down, as per instructions.

My results were very similar. Lots of smokey residue was left on the plate, and plenty of yucky-looking wax (that didn't come from anybody's ear) was discovered inside the magic candle.

My experiment corroborates the other experiments I've read about, and matches up with all of the medical research I've been able to find. The wax and debris found inside of ear candles post-candling is created by the candle itself and does not come from the ear canal. Ear candles, rather than creating a negative vacuum or any kind of suction, actually create downward airflow which deposits a dusty residue into whatever unlucky thing is placed beneath the candle.

My conclusion? Ear candles are a dangerous fraud. They have been proven to be not only completely ineffective, but harmful. Please forward this article to anybody you know who uses or has used ear candles. A person's ear canal, and hearing, is put at risk any time these fraudulent devices are used. If you have some ear candles sitting in a drawer, throw them away or perform your own experiment to confirm the above, but whatever you do, please do not stick them in your ears.

Get Me A Rope

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 18:50:29 GMT

So I made the mistake today of reading through the comments section of this article on ABCnews.com about the SCOTUS decision regarding the execution of child rapists.

What I read was...disturbing, to say the least. Please heed this warning: you might not want to read the comments on the article if you have a weak stomach or a fully-functioning empathy gland. I would think that even a person with an iron stomach would be nauseated by such a display of blind hatred, mob-mentality, and double-think.

Fully 90% of the responses included at least one of the following arguments (and I use the word "arguments" very, very loosely here), summarized and only mildly characterized for your convenience:

Criminal child rapists, and people who enjoy bestiality, are similar (if not identical) to law-abiding homosexuals.
All inmates are career criminals bent on being even worse when they are paroled.
Sexual violence is terrible, sick, and wrong; therefore, those who commit it should be repeatedly subjected to brutal sexual violence.
Victim's rights are protected only if the state engages in the barbaric practice of execution.
Some people are sick and disgusting and inhuman; however those of us who are clamoring like a lynch-mob for punitive sexual mutilation and state-sanctioned murder are life-loving, kind, humane people.
If it happened to somebody in your family, you too would lose your mind, forget ideas like the rule of law and the Constitution, and yell and scream just like us about how life and justice are best respected by descending into the insane barbaric behavior of the dark ages. After all, everybody who knows someone who has been sexually abused is in favor of slaughtering the offenders.
God (which god is being spoken for is not made clear) can be counted on to console the victims and eternally torture the perpetrators, but cannot be expected to prevent such things from happening in the first place.
Even though it costs more tax payer dollars to execute somebody, let's complain like blinkered idiots about how much money it costs to send them to prison for life instead.
Life is sacred and violence is wrong, therefore I would subject such perpetrators to the following list of brutalities... [I'll not repeat the insanely disgusting things I read here or in any other forum.]
The SCOTUS is wrong any time they hand down a decision that's "out of touch with majority public opinion," such as when they ruled against racism and sexism in the 50's and 60's, because the majority is always right -- Constitutionality, morality, and humanity be damned.
Superstitious beliefs about "souls" and the ability of god (again, which one?) to console and care for us in the afterlife should dictate our secular, civil laws.
Eye-for-an-eye! What was good enough in 1,000 B.C. is good enough for me.
The US would do well to "get back to the basics" and "the good old days." You know, back when racism was even more rampant within the justice system, and when even more innocent people were executed because of emotional hysteria and fear-mongering.

It's stuff like this that makes me terribly worried for our country. It would be one thing if I'd read these things on a fringe website like FreeRepublic, or in the comments section of some extremist's blog, but this is an ABCnews article linked from the main Google News page. Hundreds and hundreds of comments literally foaming at the mouth with so much blood-lust and unreason, it makes me wonder how the people typing such things are able to avoid suffering strokes induced by cognitive dissonance.

Prejudice; Community

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 15:47:28 GMT

"...sets us free again in the wilderness, and we exult."

I've been reading a book that a favorite friend gave to me. So far,

I liked a part that included this:

Mr. Abbey writes as a man who has taken a stand. He is an interested writer. This exposes him to the charge of being prejudiced, and prejudiced he certainly is. He is prejudiced against tyranny over both humanity and nature. He is prejudiced against sacred cows, the favorite pets of tyrants. He is prejudiced in favor of democracy and freedom. He is prejudiced in favor of an equitable and settled domestic life. He is prejudiced in favor of the wild creatures and their wild habitats. He is prejudiced in favor of charitable relations between humanity and nature. He has other prejudices too, but I believe that those are the main ones. All of his prejudices, major and minor, identify him as he is, not as any reader would have him be. Because he speaks as himself, he does not represent any group, but he stands for all of us.

And a different part that included this:

The community here is that of "recorded human experience". . .It is bewildering both in its amplitude and in the eminence of some of its members. A teacher leading his students to the entrance to that community, as would-be contributors to it, must know that both he and they are coming into the possibility of error. The teacher may make mistakes about the students; the students may make much more serious ones about themselves. He is leading them, moreover, to a community, not to some singular stump or rostrum from which he will declare the Truth.

Republicans - Fiscally Conservative?

Fri, 23 May 2008 18:06:40 GMT

A little over a month ago, Garry Trudeau penned this spectacular strip for his Sunday Doonesbury comic.

To summarize: of our over $9 trillion dollars of national debt, 70% was accumulated under just three presidents (Reagan, Bush, Bush). Of 19 proposed budgets, only 2 were balanced.

Thus, the strip posed an important question: what's up with the myth of Republican fiscal responsibility?

Intrigued by this, I did some more reading. I found an article by Michael Kinsley (whose last name is pronounced like idiots think mine is) summarizing the 2005 Economic Report Of The President. His findings? On average, yearly Big Government spending increases at least 37% more under Republican administrations than Democratic ones. Since 1960, the average yearly federal deficit is $131 billion, but that number under Democratic presidents is only $30 billion. In an average Republican year, the deficit grows by $36 billion, while it shrinks $25 billion in an average Democratic year. National debt under Republican administrations goes up more than double the amount of increase under Democratic administrations.

I also found this report by Steve McGourty. He explains that since 1946, Democratic administrations have been responsible for increasing the national debt an average of 3.2% per year, while Republican administrations are responsible for an average increase of 9.7% (that's a three-to-one ratio). Since 1945, during any given year when Republicans have been in charge of both the Executive branch and the Congress, spending has never been reduced. He also notes that Reagan campaigned and got elected while calling for a balanced budget amendment, only to never submit a single balanced budget himself. Furthermore, under Reagan the national debt increased by more than 200%, the only beneficiary being the rich people whose taxes were cut. And if you find any of this surprising, you simply must read his summary/conclusions.*

I found several reports (check out this one, or this one) on zFacts that give more details regarding the brief summary in Trudeau's comic. Also, you can check out this graph, or follow this running total. The numbers and facts are truly stunning.

Moral of the story? Most people who name fiscal conservativism as a primary reason they vote for Republicans have been sadly, badly, terribly deceived.

Haiku?

Wed, 21 May 2008 16:07:03 GMT

For one of my final assignments in an Education course I took during the Spring semester, I tried to write two haiku. This may have ended up having something to do with what happened a few weekends ago, when Amy and I drove out to Bagdad Kentucky to visit the campground I used to work at. While reading poetry late on Friday night, some unremembered turn of our conversation resulted in my decision to spontaneously utter a poem about my favorite Christmas movie, Home Alone.

My parents are gone,
The burglars are coming and
I will kick their ass

After making it up, I realized that if I added that "and" to the second line, it would fit the 5-7-5 pattern often prevalent in modern Western haiku. Other than its lack of a season word, or kigo, I'm pretty happy with it.

SOP

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 20:21:15 GMT

You may be aware that there's an internet "comic" called Married To The Sea. It's created by the husband-and-wife tag team who independently author Toothpaste for Dinner and NatalieDee, respectively. It's hilarious, so you should read it. Here's a recent piece:

A couple days ago, a show I like on NPR interviewed Errol Morris about his new documentary, Standard Operating Procedure, opening today in New York City and around the country over the next few weeks. It's about an 8 minute interview, and you can listen to it here. You can also listen to David Edelstein's short review of the film here.

Morris' film is about the Abu Ghraib prison torture incident and scandal from 2003, specifically the many photographs that document the events. The film is an attempt to look behind the pictures, to present their context and background, to delve into the standard operating procedures already in place before the photos were taken. Morris wants to point out that the pictures by themselves can leave us with the impression that only a few people committed a few unusual acts, but that in truth the photographs depict soldiers at the bottom of an entire chain of command, enacting abuses that were part of the standard operating procedure. You can view an official trailer for the film here.

There are a few things in the radio interview that troubled me. First, hearing Lynndie England speak in defense of her actions was surprising. Second, I was sickened by the all-too-familiar attempt to excuse torture by characterizing it as the use of mere "stress positions." Third, the information about Sabrina Harman (the army reservist who took many of the photos at Abu Ghraib) and Manadel al-Jamadi (one of the people who was murdered in the prison) was startling.

I'll quote the director, Errol Morris:

"But let me give you one example - I would prefer that the audience thinks about it themselves rather than allow me to tell them what to think. There's one photograph, [where] Sabrina Harman is smiling with her thumb up over the corpse of a man named al-Jamadi. People saw the photograph and were appauled, and I might add, myself included. Well guess what? She had nothing whatsoever to do with this man's death. The top eschelons of the chain of command were involved in trying to cover up the murder. The commanding office had told her, "This is a heart attack victim." Without Sabrina Harman's photographs, we would never know about this crime. A crime which she herself was in no way, in no way involved with. Under another set of circumstances she would get a Pulitzer Prize in photography. And yet this is how it went down: the people involved with the crime and the people involved with the cover-up have never ever been punished. The only person threatened with punishment over al-Jamadi's death was Sabrina Harman for taking a picture. And you have to ask yourself, what is the crime? Is the crime photography? Is the crime embarassing the administration, embarassing the military, embarassing America? Or is the crime murder?"