Beat Konducta Vol. 5-6: A Tribute to...

"Beat Konducta Vol. 5-6: A Tribute to... is an instrumental produced by Madlib, an American hip hop musician signed to Stones Throw Records. The album, alongside with J Rocc, is meant to be a tribute to his deceased friend J Dilla. This album boasts an extensive use of soul, jazz, funk, and house." Wikipedia

After listening to this album I have to admit that my expectations were left unfulfilled. I didn't enjoy this album as much as I enjoyed Madlib's other solo work. There are some definitely some head-bangers such as "The Mystery (Dilla’s Still Here)" but the album seems less even than Madlib's earlier work.

The Mystery (Dilla’s Still Here)

It was junior year of high school. I was bright-eyed and bushy tailed. I was devoting myself single-mindedly to my studies in a way that will probably never again be replicated. For the only time in my life, I tried my hardest and came up short. Also, I began listening to Cloud Cult.


"Cloud Cult is an experimental indie rock band from Minneapolis, Minnesota led by singer/songwriter Craig Minowa.

In 1997, lead singer Craig Minowa formed Earthology Records on his organic farm, powered by geothermal energy and built partially from reclaimed wood and recycled plastic. This nonprofit label uses only recycled materials and donates all profits to environmental charities.^[4] The band also tours in a biodiesel van." - Wikipedia

"Cloud Cult has two professional painters on stage for the band's live shows. The paintings are created live during the set and auctioned off at the end of the show." -Cloud Cult website

They are one of my favorite bands. Their last three albums have all been spectacular.

Cloud Cult - Six Days

Overpopulation

When I was in the South Carolina public school system we were required to take a class in health and sex education. When contraception came up in the curriculum (i'm not sure there was a set curriculum I think the teacher just made it up as she went along she did double as the culinary arts teacher) my teacher called in the reinforcements. A representative from some Christian organization came to our class and taught us about the various forms of birth control. She told us that they were ineffective and that abstinence was the best way to avoid unwanted preganancy. She also mentioned that the H.I.V. virus spontaneously arises when two homosexual men have sex with one another as God's punishment for their sin.

"Johns Hopkins researcher Janet Rosenbaum, who took a rigorous look at nearly 1,000 students. She compared teens who took a pledge of abstinence with teens of similar backgrounds and beliefs who didn't. She found absolutely no difference in their sexual behavior, or the age at which they began having sex, or the number of their partners.

In fact, the only difference was that the group that promised to remain abstinent was significantly less likely to use birth control, especially condoms, when they did have sex. The lesson many students seemed to retain from their abstinence-only program was a negative and inaccurate view of contraception." The Seatle Times

Humanity has a serious overpopulation problem. Maybe we should start taking contraception seriously.

Flying Lotus

"A series of pharmacy bottles lined the wall behind his equipment. The clear orange cannisters were familiar, but not the names on the laser-printed labels: Grape Ape, Purple Haze. 'Medical marijuana,' Ellison explained. He showed me a water-operated 'gravity bong' made from a bottle—a birthday present."
The New Yorker

Flying Lotus, (born Steven Ellison) is an experimental music producer, disc jockey , and laptop musician from Winnetka, California. He is most famous (yet also uncredited) for the music in many of the segues of Cartoon Network's Adult Swim

-wikipedia

I like FlyLo because he combines electronic noises with slightly off-tempo beats which adds a more organic quality to some very strange and original sounds. The great nephew of Alice Coltrane is leading a splinter of Hip Hop in a new direction and "Totally tripping me out man!"


Love Lockdown (Flying Lotus Remix) (This remix actually makes me like the song, kinda...)
Here's the song mentioned in the The New Yorker article
Interference Alt Link

Wikipedia: Hero or Menace?

According to Radio Netherlands:
"internet encyclopaedia Wikipedia has received 4.3 million euros in donations, enough to pay running costs for the next six months. In July, the company's founder, Jimmy Wales, appealed to users to donate money to Wikipedia. More than 125,000 people responded to the appeal.

Wikipedia is a free internet encyclopaedia that anybody can contribute to. More than 150,000 volunteers have written in excess of 11 million articles for beekeeping gear over the last eight years. The internet encyclopaedia is available in 265 languages. According to Mr Wales, more than 275 million people visit the web site every month."

I think that this is wonderful. A casual glance at this blog would attest to my support of the distributed source of all knowledge. I feel like this money should be spent making Wikipedia easier to use for a broader audience of users.

"it turns out over 50% of all the edits are done by just .7% of the users ... 524 people. ... And in fact the most active 2%, which is 1400 people, have done 73.4% of all the edits." The remaining 25% of edits, he said, were from "people who [are] contributing ... a minor change of a fact or a minor spelling fix ... or something like that." - Raw Thought

Bloggers have commented that this means that Wikipedia has a bottleneck for information which spells the end of its credibility. However, this information just reveals the way in which Wikipedia operates. Content is largely contributed by outsiders who make occasional edits with specialized knowledge. Insiders then make many times more edits adjusting its syntax and style. This tells me that since wikipedia is mostly written by outsiders its interface and its functionality should be adjusted for people who are not accustomed to it.

Regardless wikipedia is a valuable and wonderful way for one to kill time. And hey instead of constantly clicking "Random Page" why not edit an article or write your own? Procrastination has never been so revolutionary...and educational?

Israel-Gaza Conflict

"The assault brings new risks and the prospect of many new casualties on both sides in a confrontation that, before this phase began, had already cost the lives of more than 430 Palestinians and 4 Israelis. ...While a ground war in densely populated Gaza is likely to increase the civilian toll there, the Israeli Army also faces new threats...World leaders called on Hamas and Israel to accept an immediate cease-fire, and in several European cities tens of thousands of protesters demanded that Israel end its campaign..A mosque in northern Gaza was also hit, during evening prayer time, in what witnesses said was an Israeli airstrike. At least 11 worshipers were killed and about 30 wounded, according to Palestinian hospital officials. The Israeli military had no immediate comment."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/world/middleeast/04mideast.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5124&en=4cbfb59a9acc5b24&ex=1388725200&partner=digg&exprod=digg

"As noted, the US-Israeli alliance was firmed up precisely when Israel performed a huge service to the US-Saudis-Energy corporations by smashing secular Arab nationalism, which threatened to divert resources to domestic needs. That's also when the Lobby takes off (apart from the Christian evangelical component, by far the most numerous and arguably the most influential part, but that's mostly the 90s). And it's also when the intellectual-political class began their love affair with Israel, previously of little interest to them. They are a very influential part of the Lobby because of their role in media, scholarship, etc..” -Noam Chomsky

http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/4134

"United States blocked a security council resolution calling for 'an immediate Israeli-Hamas cease-fire in Gaza and southern Israel and expressing serious concern at the escalation of violence.' The United States...said that Israel's attack was a result of the Hamas bombing and that it condemned the attacks by Hamas..."

-wikipedia


"Hamas to 'fight to the last breath.'"
www.cnn.com

"The IDF warned that terrorists using civilians as human shields would bear full responsibility for their fate. Israeli prime minister's spokesman, Mark Regev, said this operation will stop. How many more before this ends?"

http://firedoglake.com/2009/01/03/gaza-ground-invasion/


This old conflict is making use of new technologies, but the results are the same:

"Israel's consulate in New York began holding online press conferences on Twitter, a microbloggin website, and the IDF Spokesperson's Unit opened a channel on the website YouTube to diffuse video of airstrikes against Hamas targets.<sup>"

-wikipedia</sup>

Meth?

My friend is fond of telling a certain story about his experience with meth. As the story goes, he snorted some meth and stayed up for 48 hours. He tells me, “I played halo for hours. I turned the sensitivity all the way up, but it still wasn’t enough.” Usually during this last part he grabs the collar of my shit and pulls me close. If I’m lucky one of his dreads will hit me in the face. Then if he decides to go into more detail he'll begin telling you how "crazy" Radiohead was...on meth.

This one time a student from a local radiological technical college was making a stopover at my college to visit an acquaintance of mine. He revealed to me that he used meth to study. He would take some and then read a whole text book on radiology. He was of Asian decent, wore glasses, and the holes in his pants took up more area than fabric. There was something about his demeanor that convinced me that he was at the very least bi-sexual. He made a circle with his hands and put them next to his pocket, “So I had a Meth rock which was about this big right in my pocket when I was being pulled over by this police officer, but I just gave him the rock and a hundred dollars and he let me go.”

Scientology

Scientology

JZ Knight is an Asshole

Mar 24, 2007 8:41 PM

Ishmael:
Amanda "The Shankster" Shanks mentioned you lent her "What the Bleep Do We Know!?" I feel like it is my moral obligation to inform you that that movie is a bunch of bull shit. The movie is based on teachings of this woman JZ Knight. Knight says that on February the seventh 1977, an entity called Ramtha, The Enlightened One, appeared to her and her husband in the kitchen of her Tacoma, Washington trailer. Ramtha was supposed to have defeated the Atlanteans and then to have led an army of over 2.5 million across the continents, conquering 2/3 of the known world. Two of the three directors of the film are admitted students of Ramtha's School of Enlightenment. In Knight vs. Knight, 1992-1995, Jeff Knight her husband alleged that he lost years of his life by postponing modern medical treatment for his HIV infection, due to advice from his wife that Ramtha could heal him — he died before he could appeal the court's decision against him.

JZ Knight is interviewed frequently in the movie and all the big-wigs involved in the making of the film are members of Ramtha's School of Enlightenment.

The movie is also full of pseudoscience fiction. Quantum mechanics deals with small systems, and quantum effects (especially Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle) are applicable only to matter on the scale of the de Broglie Wavelength. The movie exploits these effects by falsely implying that they (especially a wavefunction associated with an object and probability calculations concerning this object) are applicable to everyday objects like basketballs, humans, or fountains. And that water crystal stuff is complete BS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masaru_Emoto

I mean don't get me wrong, it doesn't bother me if people make up their own crazy religion based on fictional history (like the mormons), and I don't care if these people exploit people for money (like all religions) it just bothers me when they try to twist and use science to back them up.

Mar 25, 2007 5:02 PM

ovulayia:
hey thanks for the heads up, I appreciate you clearing up bias I wasn't aware of. I think the thing I liked most about the movie wasn't entirely it's spiritual to science connections but more so it's very simple explanations of quarks, chaos, and the laws on the subatomic level of our universe. Naturally the examples they give are non-applicable to everyday objects, I think the point was just that, to make an example to a public audience that was easier to comprehend than trying to explain more complex examples. It isn’t right though to dishonor the original principles of what they are trying to represent. Some of it I admit was pretty cheesy, and there were parts of it I didn't like at all but I appreciate the determination of some people willing to try and find universal truths that are evident in both the spiritual and scientific communities, but not at the expense of misguiding the public with tainted information.

Mar 27, 2007 8:39 PM

Ishmael:
Well I also admire search for the truth (though I don't believe in spirituality). It just really pisses me off when people try to deceive me. If you want simple explanations of the actual science you can check out this or this

Santa Claus is an Asshole

Five Reasons:

1. The Creepiness of Santa

He sees me when I'm sleeping? And knows when I am awake? An obese omniscient elf living in an arctic desert just sounds more like an effective horror movie plot than family fun. The mystical antagonist sneaking into your house in the middle of the night through your chimney to steal all of your money and magically turn it into more shit you don't need.

2. Basis of Christmas

Christmas is based on a variety of pagan holidays and virtually all of the traditional practices stem from these pagan roots. One of these holidays was the birthday of Mithras, celebrated on December 25. Mithras was a pagan god who had tweleve apostles, told his followers to commune with him by drinking wine and eating pieces of bread, and ascended to heaven. Furthermore, biblical evidence suggests Christ (if he existed and the story told is accurate) was born in the spring time. Therefore Christmas is either a bastardization of pagan holidays by the Church in an attempt to suppress these pagan holidays or the result of christans assimilating pagan traditions. In any event, christmas has little to do with christ and has been further bastardized by the consumerist society of the united states.

3. Commercialism

The myth and tradition of Santa has been transformed in The United States into rational for an orgy of consumerism. The day after Christmas: throw away the tree, mound trash in the can, and revel in the unneeded products.

4. Santa Claus is a Jewish/New Age/United Nations Conspiracy

As the bible believers website says:

"You ever noticed how easy it is to transform "Satan" from "Santa"? Just move the "n" to the end. And presto! "Satan" appears. . . Hmmm….An internet Google search on "Satan Claus" [not Santa Claus – but SATAN Claus] found over 1,700 hits! Obviously, there are many that tie the two together.The rearranging of letters (called anagrams) to hide secret names or words has long been practiced in the occult. Is "Claus" another anagram for "Lucas"? It’s no secret "Lucas" and "Lucis" is a new-age "code word" for "Lucifer". The Alice Bailey founded new age, occult publishing company was originally named "Lucifer Publishing Company" but in 1924 the name was cleverly changed to "Lucis Trust". By the way, the Lucifer worshipping Lucis Trust is a major player in the works of the United Nations (formerly located in the United Nations building) but now located on "prime-time" 1200 Wall Street."and finally: 'Claus' sounds a lot like 'claws'."

5. The Bible

Even the bible is against Christmas and its elf overlord.

Jeremiah 10:1-4
10:2 Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them.
10:3 For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe.
10:4 They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not.


sources:

http://www.truthbeknown.com/Christmas
http://www.endchristmas.com/
http://www.biblebelievers.com

John Seigenthaler is an asshole.

The biggest story on the internet: some guy posted a false Wikipedia article about John Seigenthaler. Some Joe Schmoe, Brian Chase, wrote that this Seigenthaler fellow was for a brief period suspected in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. And that's simply not true. However, considering the number of JFK conspiracy theorists and their average mental stability Seigenthaler has probably been suspected by many a wack job.

Who is this John Seigenthaler you might ask? Well I didn't know either so I decided to look him up on Wikipedia. Apparently he is an "American journalist, writer, and political figure." The biggest thing that he has ever done seems to have been being the assistant to attorney general Robert F. Kennedy in 1960.

How could this inaccurate post possibly go unnoticed? How could no one have noticed the false information on this highly well known and influential character? Luckily Seigenthaler was looking himself up on Wikipeida and noticed this horrible, horrible libel. In response, Seigenthaler wrote this ridiculous article for USA Today starting off saying, "This is a highly personal story about Internet character assassination. It could be your story." Those, my friend, are the words of an asshole.

If it was my story it would go something like this: "well I was bored one day. I had already played several games of solitaire, masturbated twice already, and my lunch break wasn't for another thirty minutes so I went to Wikipedia and looked myself up to see what would come up. I then saw that someone had written this faux article about me. The article said I ate shit for a living, stuff like that. I thought it was pretty funny, but I decided that I didn't really want any young kids who really really want to do school papers on me getting false information. So I moved my mouse over to the top of the page and clicked 'edit this page' and changed it around."

Since this whole controversy is about how Wikipedia could give false facts I decided that I should probably check the Wikipedia article so I don't look like a dumb-ass writing this entry. I didn't want somebody emailing me telling me that John Seigenthaler is actually a porno actor or something. So I went to MSN Encarta and typed in "Seigenthaler." The only thing that popped up? "No results were found for your search in Encarta."

Huh that's weird. Doesn't Seigenthaler's son work at MSNBC? So I then went to Encyclopedia Britannica: "Sorry, we were unable to find results for your search."

It is okay to be offended by untrue statements written about you. But John Seigenthaler Sr. is an asshole. He himself noticed the false material in Wikipeida, one of the few places that actually acknowledges his existence. But instead of just changing the information on the website, which is the premise of Wikipeida, he sat there and watched it like a vengeful asshole. He sat there for 132 days and no one changed it. Is this because no one gives a shit about Seigenthaler? Then again instead of just changing the article, he writes another article crying to the world about his character assassinatation.

Libel is usually defined as untrue written material that does harm to the person it is written about. Well the man who wrote this article about Seigenthaler as a joke has lost his job. So who's the real victim here? I say that Brian Chase was not necessarily in the right for writing false information about Seigenthaler, but it is not Wikipedia's fault that the article was not changed for such a long period of time, it's Seigenthaler's.