All the News That Fits

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has a nice piece deconstructing a recent Thomas Friedman column (for the New York Times) on the National Ignition Facility, a controlled fusion experiment being carried out in Livermore.

I happen to live in Livermore, so I’m naturally curious to know what my friends and neighbors are up to.

In the course of the piece, however, Hugh Gusterson says this: “Surely New York Times readers have a right to expect more from a high-profile columnist than an embellished press release.”

As they say in Internet-land, ROFL. Hugh, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but that’s the entire function of the New York Times, in a nutshell. Especially the op-ed pages. I don’t read the Times, but I know which side of the bread has the jelly on it.

Photoshop Junkie

Remember the Mac IIci? Great computer, for its day. Back in 1992 or thereabouts, I found myself with a loaner machine in my home. On it was a copy of Photoshop.

I can’t draw, so Photoshop was an ideal program with which to discover the joys of being a visual artist. Apply three or four filters to areas selected with the magic wand tool, apply a few color contours, and you can end up with stunning abstract textures that you might never think of if you could draw. I had a few of my best images printed (not cheap, in those days) and framed (not cheap either). Four or five of them hang on my walls today.

Computers are a lot faster now, and I’m sure Photoshop is more powerful too. But it’s also expensive! Plus, I don’t need a bad case of mouse hand. So I’ve been able to resist temptation.

Last night I was looking for some basic photo processing software to crop some images, and downloaded Gimp. Oh, no! It’s Photoshop! And free! (Yes, I know it’s properly GIMP — the Gnu Image Manipulation Program. I just hate names that are in ALL CAPS.)

I still don’t own a digital camera, but I do have a nice scanner in my office, so old family photos are fair game. Not only that, but the possibilities for presentation of digital artwork have progressed rather markedly. In 1992, there was no such thing as a personal website, let alone flickr.

The possibilities go far beyond that. I’ve had a look at Ren’Py, a free program for building interactive visual novels. The folks who created it seem to be devoted to anime-style comic books, but you could do a slide show with it. The slide show could be nonlinear. It could include embedded Python code that would do some odd or provocative things.

This could be fun!

Monsters Invade London

I’ve been watching a British TV series called Primeval, in which a variety of prehistoric monsters wander through time/space anomalies to menace innocent civilians. Thank you, Netflix — no commercials!

The monsters are scary, and so is the technology. Most of the creatures are so well animated that you can actually believe they’re real. And on a television budget, and coming alive within the time-frame of TV’s compressed production schedule. Very impressive.

Some of the scripts are better than others. The giant centipede in episode two was … well, they tossed the square/cube law out the window on that one. But most of the science isn’t too bad. The series has a story arc that makes you want to find out what happens in the next episode, some of the editing work is very stylish with a debt to fast cut rock video, the actors have charisma, and did I mention the great animation? Not to mention Hannah Spearritt flouncing around in her undies. Mmm.

Bleeping

So I’m driving along, and I hit the radio button to turn on NPR, and I’m dropped into the middle of one of those literary monologues they like to air. A guy is talking about his mother dying. She’s in the hospital, and she’s decided she doesn’t want the tube down her throat, or the oxygen mask, so she’s on her way out.

Then the guy’s stepfather and sister come into the hospital room, and the dying woman says,

“<bleeep>”.

That wasn’t what she said, of course. She said, “Fuck.” The narrator goes on to say, “My mother was not a woman who used profanity casually, so when she said, ‘<bleeep>,’ what she really meant was….” And so forth.

My question is, what dickless wonder at NPR thought it was necessary to bleep the word “fuck” out of this story? What kind of slimy ass-wipe would make that kind of decision?

Sometimes the human race is just really disappointing.

Strong language is a proud part of our psychic heritage as humans. Being deprived of strong language is like never being allowed to eat protein.

Back in the 1980s, I had a professional relationship of sorts with Tom Coster. Tom had been a jazz organist before he went on to play keyboards on and co-produce some gold records for Santana. In person, Tom was a quiet, polite man … but I remember him talking once about a jazz player he had been listening to. “Man,” he said, “that cat is a bad motherfucker.”

In this context, the word “motherfucker” is a high compliment. What it means, among jazz musicians, is approximately this: “Nothing less than strong language will serve to express just how awesomely excellent this player is.”

What amazes me are people who use the phrase “the F-word.” Look, if you don’t want to say “fuck,” just don’t say “fuck.” That’s easy. But causing everybody in the room to think “fuck” without having the balls to actually say “fuck” yourself – no, that’s just supremely lame.

I hope I never say “the F-word,” except perhaps in a mocking tone. I’ll stick with “fuck.”

Here & There in Sci-Fi

Had a video pig-out last night — watched three episodes of Season Four of Doctor Who. This is cheesy sci-fi at its finest. I’m still not sure why I like this series. Goofy devices, creepy aliens in silly rubber masks … none of the science fiction makes a lick of sense.

I think my favorite moment in these three episodes was when the Doctor is menaced by a stone creature whose interior is molten lava. So what does he do? He whips out a big yellow squirt gun and squirts it with water, which naturally sends it into paroxysms of agony because the water cools it off, thus giving him time to dash away. We never saw the squirt gun until that moment — no groundwork is laid, and there’s no reason on Earth (or any other planet) why the Doctor would be packing a squirt gun. But suddenly, there it is. And it does the trick. That’s a true Doctor Who moment.

Maybe I like this series just because I feel more attuned to the story and the action when the actors have British accents. But I think it’s more to do with emotion. The stories in Doctor Who are silly, but the emotions of the characters are real. In American sci-fi, on the other hand — well, Buffy was consistently good, but what can you say about Stargate? The characters go through hell, and what they’re feeling never, ever shows up on the screen. Not a glimmer. Maybe it’s bad acting, or maybe American directors think American viewers don’t care.

Or maybe American directors, when they’re doing cheese, secretly feel demeaned. They refuse to take it seriously, and their lack of involvement comes across on the screen. Whereas (just speculating here) maybe British directors of cheesy sci-fi take their work seriously, and care about doing it well.

Or maybe the American actors are showing emotion, and I just have no patience with Americans. Also a possibility.

Video: Doctor Who

Watched one of the new Doctor Who stories last night on Netflix — “Voyage of the Damned.” I haven’t paid a visit to the good Doctor in many years, but this episode was just as delightfully and spectacularly cheesy as the ones I used to watch on late-night Channel 54 in the early ’80s.

This is my kind of cheep and cheerful entertainment. The premise makes not a whit of sense — in fact, there’s not even a pretense that it’s supposed to – but the story is well constructed and the acting is more than adequate.

A pleasant surprise in the plot (using the word “pleasant” in a technical sense) was that some of the good guys actually die! Think about it … at the end of Lord of the Rings, all of the good guys made it through. Lord of the Rings is a morality play, not a story about an actual war.

The perils the Doctor faces are real perils. At the end, he tries to bring a young woman who has died back to life — and he fails! That moment of drama easily makes up for the fact that the “aliens”, even the ones in rubber masks, are obviously human and speak with British accents. Doctor Who fans won’t mind that in any case. We wouldn’t have it any other way.

Viewing: Aeon Flux

As science fiction films go, Aeon Flux is a cut above. Mavens and cognoscenti will note that I’m calling it science fiction, not sci-fi. The difference is mostly in the eyes of the science fiction community, but it’s significant. What lifts Aeon Flux above sci-fi is that the premise and the plot actually make sense, more or less.

The action sequences are quite silly: Aeon has no trouble killing dozens of black-clad armed guards with her machine pistol, spraying bullets wildly at a distance of at least 50 yards and mowing the guards down like dandelions before a weed-whacker. But when one of them actually shoots her and she falls down … she gets up again and starts running and jumping as if nothing had happened.

That part was stupid, but I guess they had to do it because the movie was based on a comic book or something. But the plot wasn’t bad at all.

Move along, folks. Nothin’ to see.

The human brain is not good at absorbing, understanding, and acting on the basis of abstract information that arrives from distant places. There’s no reason why evolution should have equipped our ancestors with that ability. In sub-Saharan Africa, where our ancestors lived, there was no abstract information arriving from distant places!

The only information that was important in the passing on of one’s genes was immediate and concrete. Lion over there, gotta run.

So here we are, living in a vastly different world from the one our ancestors lived in. Abstract information reaches us daily from distant places — and some of it is vitally important to our survival. But we don’t have the capacity to process it and act on it. We act like nothing is the matter. We just stroll onward, averting our eyes.

Here in the U.S. (I can’t speak very knowledgeably about other nations), we have, in no particular order:

– An entirely corrupt Congress and Administration, in which our nominally elected officials are all accepting enormous bribes on a weekly basis from

Brave New World

This morning’s email served up a surprise announcement from Gino Robair that he has been laid off as editor of Electronic Musician. “Due to a corporate restructuring,” he says, “my position was eliminated.”

Let’s see, now … the corporation publishes magazines. And they restructure a magazine so that it has no editor. This makes sense how, exactly?

Keyboard did exactly the same thing a couple of months ago. Laid off Ernie Rideout, leaving the magazine without an editor. For now, Steve Fortner is functioning as Keyboard’s editor, though without the title, the pay raise, or the staff he would need to do the job.

Last year Virtual Instruments had to close its doors. My most recent word from Markkus Rovito at Remix (which is owned by the same company as Electronic Musician) was that he would be able to pay only a small fraction of his former rates for articles, because Remix has gone online-only. And of course Kylee Swenson had already been laid off as editor at Remix. Gossip (totally unconfirmed) is that while Craig Anderton continues at EQ, his pay has been cut rather drastically.

This is all very discouraging if you’re in the music magazine business, but ultimately it’s musicians who suffer.

Three factors have combined to bring us to the present state of affairs: a worldwide economic depression, corporate stupidity, and the Internet.

The Internet nibbles away at magazines from both sides. On the editorial side, readers can get huge slabs of information for free, so why pay for a subscription? Plus, the Internet is blazingly current; a print magazine is always six weeks behind the times. On the advertising side, manufacturers all have websites now, so they have less need to buy print ads to tout the virtues of their products. It’s a deadly combination.

Corporate stupidity is a separate topic. I’ll save it for another time. Let’s just observe that a dinosaur can run downhill at a pretty good clip and still look like it’s in control – but when it has to change course due to a fallen log in the path, expect to hear a loud crash.

Here’s a perspective from an industry insider. I won’t reveal this person’s name, but it’s someone who has looked at the numbers. Magazines are paid for by advertising, and that has become a big problem: “The advertising-supported business model will not be able to sustain print magazines much longer,” says my source. ”With ad revenues at an all-time low and magazines being distributed for free to ’subscribers’  (not to mention the newsstand problems of printing copies and throwing away 80% of them), magazines do not generate nearly enough revenue to cover the costs of being produced, printed, and distributed.  Subscriptions and advertising rates have been discounted way too much over the years, and too many copies are given away for free — all to sustain rate bases that advertisers have insisted on but never wanted to pay for.”

Musicians still need good solid information about all sorts of things — technology, career-building, musicianship, current events, other artists to keep an eye on. The trouble with getting your info off the Web is that it’s unmoderated. You’ll be subjected to all sorts of bias and blather, and weeding through it will become an endless time-sink.

That’s what magazine editors are for: to sort out the bias and blather. In recent years (since the late 1980s or thereabouts) bias has started to creep and ooze into the magazines’ editorial pages, due to unremitting pressure from advertisers and corporate cowardice in resisting that pressure. So I’m talking the theory of magazine editors here, not necessarily the reality in all cases. (If you’re an editor, past or present, please try not to be offended by that observation. I can back it up with facts.)

All the same, editors perform a valuable social function: They figure out what’s important, they fact-check information to make sure it’s reliable, and they package the results in a way that’s easy and convenient for readers to absorb.

Maybe I ought to start a music magazine. The idea has crossed my mind a few times. I can think of a few talented people I’d hire, and I’m pretty sure they’re all looking for work.

What does anybody think? If you were starting, not a print publication but a timely magazine-like information source that employed editors to prepare the content, what would you include? What would you leave out? Tell me a story.

Newspapers

Newspapers across the country are in big trouble. And let’s face it, a democracy needs reliable sources of news. Which means newspapers and news magazines. Bloggers are bullshit. Television is hyperactive fluff.

Not that anybody is paying the slightest attention to me, but I can tell you how to fix your major metropolitan newspaper.

First — don’t publish daily. Today there are better sources of instantaneous news. Publish two or three times a week; Sunday and Thursday would be ideal. Take a little extra time and get the story right. Publish longer stories. Add depth.

Second — get rid of the crap. No comics, no horoscopes. Just give us news, analysis, and commentary. The crap sold papers sixty years ago, but people today already have way too many sources for free crap. Reviews of local plays and concerts, sure. We need that information. Reviews of TV shows? I’m not so sure.

Third — cheap sensationalism is not news! Don’t report on gory crimes at all. Instead, give us news that actually affects our lives. Tell us more about what the legislature is up to. Tell us about the environment we live in.

Fourth — don’t print wire service stories verbatim. Intersperse every wire service dispatch with intelligent analysis by local writers.

Fifth — and this may be the most controversial suggestion of all — hire delivery people who can get the damn paper up on the porch, not leave it lying in the gutter in the rain. Is that too much to ask?