No, I Am Not Starting A New Blog

The rumors are false. And also non-existent. But that's my answer, and I'm sticking to it.

Every "successful" blogger of which I am aware has practiced a technique that is common-internet-knowledge for reaching a large readership. They start a blog, learn the ropes, then close shop and start a brand new blog with a narrower focus. I don't know why this works, but it does. Everyone does it.

I could have (should have?) done this years ago, and I'd probably be a much more successful blogger, if success is based on how many people read my blog. It's not that I'm lazy and it's not that I just never got around to doing it. It's also not because I'm not internet-savvy. (I know it's hard to believe when you look at the design and layout of the blog, but...)

I have my reasons.

One reason is because I don't really need a large readership. The way I see it, if I were writing things that were important to other people, they would read them. Occasionally "bloggers of note" have linked to my blog. Occasionally famous musicians have. Occasionally people I respect beyond all respect have done so. I'm flattered. Whenever it happens, my blog experiences a surge in traffic that eventually dies down. This suggests to me that only a very few of my blog posts are interesting to the public at large. I like writing those posts, but they're not the only kind of posts I like writing. The most important posts to me are probably irrelevant to almost everyone else.

That's okay. Stardom is not appropriate for all people. I'm happy if you like my blog, but I'm not writing to optimize my MAX(readers) function.

Another reason I don't start a newer and better blog is because I believe there is a conflict of interest between popularity and truth. The minute I decide to be a more popular person is the minute I decide to craft posts with something other than my honest, authentic thoughts in mind. To be sure, not every thought belongs out in public, and there is such a thing as being authentic to a fault. I try to do enough self-censure to avoid saying anything I wouldn't say in a room crowded with people I love and respect. It doesn't always work out that way, but I'd rather err on the side of authenticity and later own up to my mistakes than err on the side of promoting a false image of myself as an incredibly interesting and popular person. That just ain't me.

Finally, and most importantly, the reason I don't start a new blog is because it would sever the continuity between my past thoughts and my current thoughts. Ultimately, at the end of the day, this blog is a record of who I was and what I thought - and believed, and valued, and held dear - that my daughter can read and try to understand, should she ever want to. I may not always be there to explain things to her. Maybe I will be there, and I might try, but I might fail. She may reach an age when she decides she just doesn't get me, and I can say, "Well, sweetheart, start here. This is the best way I remember ever trying to say this."

I want all that information in one place. I want people (such as my daughter) to know that it all came from the same person. I want my mistakes to be easily located, and the evolution of my thoughts to be as clear as they could be. I want to maintain the conceptual continuity between disparate blog topics like running and economics and music. I have often written things that I didn't even realize were important until, in the context of a conversation two years later, I realize that I wrote something relevant, and I can say, "Hey, I wrote something about this - check it out."

In short, I want to leave a paper trail. It wouldn't be intellectually honest to interrupt my train of thought with the advent of a new blog and a new brand. I don't have the world's strongest brand, but I do have a brand that is appropriate to who I am and what I want out of blogging.

I am a nobody, and my thoughts are those of a nobody. There are millions of people out there whose thoughts are as irrelevant to you, and to "the world," as mine. Some of those people live in foreign lands about which you may have some preconceived notions. Some of those people might live next door to you, and you had no idea they thought those things. If you have something in common with me, you might have something in common with that person you hardly noticed before. Maybe it's a potential legendary romance for you, or maybe it's something that could alter your political or religious or philosophical perspectives if you actually had a long conversation with that person.

That kind of idea is interesting to me, and I think if it were more widely appreciated, the world would be a better place. We can make the world a better place by being better people. That's what it's all about. Better people, though, not different people. I'm not starting a new blog.

Who Are The Muslims?

I begin my blog-stravaganza with an analysis of Islam; or, more specifically, an analysis of opinions held by non-Muslims of Muslim people in general.

A comment* in a recent Facebook post in the "Muslims Against ISIS" community reads as follows:

There's [sic] been a lot on this page recently about how compassionate, tolerant and broadminded [sic] Muslims are; but recent events in Saudi Arabia really do call this in to [sic] question. What am I to think when I hear that in fully islamic [sic] States [sic] such as Saudi Arabia and Iran they still hand out the death penalty to homosexuals, atheists, apostates, government critics, womens [sic] liberationists, labour unionists etc.... Are you going to tell me again that these are not true Muslims. [sic] Its [sic] obvious that ISIS has powerful and likeminded [sic] friends.

The community administrator then responded as follows:

[O]ne bit of advice is to understand that Saudi Arabia is certainly not a "fully Islamic state" they are not the representatives of Islam, or are Iran. [sic throughout that sentence] These countries have their own laws made by their own leaders. Saudi is run by a bunch of filthy rich evil people, who drink alcohol, have sex ourside [sic] of marriage, have more than 4 wives, have strippers etc.. [sic] These are all strictly forbidden in islam [sic]. They dont [sic] care about islam! [sic]

I remember an interview on CNN, Reza Aslan did and how he humiliated the journalists and educated them, what Saudi do [sic] is Saudis [sic] business, don't brush all Muslims on the basis of what Saudi and Iran do! [sic] That is called bigotry. You want to judge Muslims, judge us on what you see in front of your eyes, study Islam if you are so interested. Meet a real Muslim. Talk to us.

We posted an article earlier about sharia law [sic], did you read that?

There is much to unpack here. (And I don't mean the grammatical errors - where would I start?) Both the commentator and the community administrator make important errors in what they say. At the risk of sounding too cute, error is the enemy of understanding.

What I mean is, there seems to be a large swath of Americans who are critical of Muslims, and there also seems to be a large swath of Muslims who want to respond to those criticisms, but if both of these groups are making errors that the other side can't catch or doesn't fully understand, then this attempted dialogue is doomed to fail. The failure of this dialogue means a worsening of interpersonal relationships in America, and I don't want to see that happen. So, I'm going to do my small part to push us all a few micrometers closer to a better understanding of each other.

It Happened In Saudi Arabia, Therefore Muslims Did It

The original commentator makes a mistake that a lot of non-Muslim Americans seem to make about Muslims. He assumes that events that take place in the Middle East are representative of what "Muslims do," that views expressed by people in the Middle East are representative of what "Muslims believe," and so forth.

It's easy to see why this is a silly mistake. No one would suggest, for example, that beliefs widely held by Central Americans are representative of what "Christians believe." To suggest that the actions of the Greek or Russian governments represent the will of a largely Orthodox Christian populace is obviously laughable. Nor does the average Italian speak for Catholics at large. Nor is the American system the result of a melting pot of multiple different kinds of Christians. 

National and regional cultures are much, much more potent in shaping societies than religion alone. That's why Central America is culturally different from North America, even though both are largely "Christian" regions. And, against the suggestion that the difference can be explained by race, I'll point out that South America is quite different from Central America, as well, and both are quite different from Southern Europe. 

If we wanted to, we could construct a hypothetical fear-mongering narrative about the terrible things that happen in Christian societies, based on the historical events of isolated regions of the Christian world. But that would be silly, because what happens in Cuba is a result of Cuba (along with the international pressures that used them as puppets).

So it goes with the Muslim world. It's no secret that the Middle East is a politically unstable, frequently violent, and heavily feudal region of the world. It was so prior to the spread of Islam, and it was afterward. It is not the only such region in the world. Its cultures, however, are very different from the cultures of, say, Chechnya, or Kyrgyzstan, or Bangladesh, or Malaysia. There is no one, underlying set of "problems" faced by these nations, and just about the only two things they all have in common are Islam and a history of British colonialism. 

Long story short, you cannot say "X happens in Muslim countries" unless you can find an X that has happened in all Muslim countries. My modest proposition is this: the only X's anyone will reliably find for all Muslim countries are relatively uninteresting with respect to xenophobic concerns.

I am open to being wrong about this, but at least now the task of proving me wrong is a little clearer.

Muslims Don't Drink Alcohol, Have Sex, Etc.

The administrator of "Muslims Against ISIS" seems to have his/her own confusion about Muslims. To him/her, a Saudi prince can't be a Muslim if he drinks alcohol or fornicates. Or whatever. 

This one makes me laugh because, as my readers know, I grew up in Utah, where "mormons don't drink alcohol," "mormons don't have premarital sex," "mormons don't drink coffee," and so on and so forth. And yet, growing up amid all sorts of people who made such claims, I met lots of mormons who drank, smoked, got tattoos, had sex, and all the rest of it. As it turned out, mormons fell for all the same vices the rest of us human beings do, because - surprise, surprise - mormons are human beings.

And so are Muslims. Hence (and I won't name names), I know lots of Muslims who drink, swear, get tattoos, have premarital sex, do drugs, fail to pray five times a day, never make a pilgrimage, eat haram food and drink, and don't wear the hijab. It hardly seems necessary to point out that Muslims are just like us and get into all the same kind of trouble the rest of us do, but apparently it is.

But it doesn't just stop there. Take, for example, Bangladeshi Muslims, who eat shrimp several times a week (on a good week). Are they not "real Muslims?" Well, we could ask them - and in fact, I have asked them. The answer is that shrimp isn't forbidden at all. Do you think I'd get the same answer from a Yemeni Muslim? I doubt it (but if any Yemenis are reading this, please clarify your understanding of the matter in the comments). 

Among Christians, or atheists, or Hindus, or etc., it goes without saying that different people believe different things. We could argue about which set of beliefs is the most reflective of the Qu'ran, and which Muslim is the best Muslim, but leaving all that aside, we are forced to admit the following: Because Muslims are human beings, they (like other human beings) have a diverse set of beliefs and thoughts. Some of them do things contrary to Islam because they're not good Muslims. Some of them do things that they later rationalize as being consistent with Islam, even though it might not be. Some of them are atheists and just haven't told their parents yet. Some of them want to be good Muslims but just fail because they're still working at it. Some are incredibly modern and progressive people who have found support for their beliefs in the Qu'ran and among Muslim scholars. 

So, Muslims who claim that other Muslims "aren't Muslims" are being judgmental and proclaiming their own personal belief system. They are not, however, making "official" proclamations about who is and is not a Muslim. 

A Few Words On Shari'a Law

It would be helpful if my readers would consult the following two articles:

First, consult this short blog post from David Friedman, who spent some time studying Islamic law a couple of years ago. In it, Friedman says this:

Islamic law as it was interpreted by legal scholars and applied in the traditional court system is fiqh. Shari'a is what fiqh would be if the scholars always got it right, something they have never claimed to do. Think of it as law in the mind of God.

In other words, "Shari'a law" doesn't mean stoning whores and cutting off the hands of thieves. Instead, what it means is applying religious principles to legal problems with the aid of religious scholars. That's certainly contrary to America's long-standing tradition of the separation of church and state, but it's not quite as spooky as some have been lead to believe.

To better understand why it's not so spooky, consult this second article, from Salon.com, written by an American lawyer who has worked with Muslim clients in applying fiqh. (He incorrectly calls this "sharia law.")

Now a few quick thoughts from me:

First: I have deliberately chosen two sources at different ideological poles. If you are not inclined to believe a libertarian like Friedman, then you can consult the very leftist Salon, and vice-versa. There is nothing "ideological" about the above interpretation of Shari'a law.

Second: In the United States, fiqh is already happening, and has been happening for a long time. However, there is no way for a non-Muslim to be bound to this process unless s/he submits to it voluntarily. Think of it like formal legal arbitration. This, by the way, is fully consistent with libertarianism.

Third: Many, many Muslims object to the violent applications of fiqh that are common in some parts of the world. Indeed, any human being would object to such cruel and unusual punishment. Reports of widespread support of such systems by Muslims are greatly exaggerated. But, here's the important part: You'll never learn about the extent to which ordinarily Muslims object to cruel and unusual punishments by asking them about "sharia law." This is because when you ask a Muslim if they "support sharia law," you are effectively asking them, "do you support the perfect implementation of god's plan?" What religious person would object to that question? 

But, of course, that question doesn't ask what the inquisitor wishes to know, because the inquisitor doesn't understand the question (and, quite often, neither does the respondent).

The point is, don't assume that a Muslim favors beheadings and stonings just because s/he favors Shari'a law. Neither would you suspect your neighbor of being a slaver if you found out he supported a return to strict Constitutional American governance.

Conclusion

From all this, I hope I have managed to impress upon those of you who still have an open mind (and are still reading - ha!) that Muslims exhibit all the same diversity of opinion and belief that is present in people of other religions. I hope I have managed to convey the idea that most of the problems faced by various regions of "the Muslim world" are really regional problems, not specific to a religion. I hope I have managed to provide some information about people in such a way that you find it a little more difficult to place all Muslims in the same "box."

If there's one thing I've learned over the course of my life, it's that absolutely every human being in the world is an individual, and thus we have to interact with each other accordingly. You simply can't make categorical statements about individuals because individuals don't fit well in categories. Even the categories you hope define yourself don't fit perfectly, and there is a list of exceptions or justifications you use to reconcile that cognitive dissonance... And that's okay! Because that's what being an individual is all about. You're not just like everyone I might group you in with.

And neither are Muslims. This is painfully obvious when you know lots of Muslims - and getting to know lots of Muslims is the best, if not the only, way to cure ourselves of our in-group/out-group biases here.

But again, I'm open to being proven wrong. Why don't you get to know some Muslims and then tell me that I am wrong about them. It couldn't possibly hurt.

_____________________________

* Note: I have omitted a link to the comment and the group out of respect for the privacy of strangers. It is, I believe, a public group, so I'm sure you can locate these comments on Facebook if you would like to verify them for yourselves.

Alive And Kicking

Boy, oh boy, do I have a lot to blog about. I can't get to it all right now, unfortunately, but my thoughts are absolutely on fire and I think it's safe to say that my readers can expect this to be an active week for the blog.

Let's make this a great 2016, everybody.

Album Review: Alien Ant Farm - ANThology

Image courtesy Wikipedia.org

In the dry, dry, dry landscape of the early-00s rock scene, there were only a few stand-outs worth listening to. Of those, only a handful were actually heard on the radio. 

One of those bands was called Alien Ant Farm, whose 2001 album ANThology topped the charts thanks to their ubiquitous cover of the Michael Jackson classic "Smooth Criminal." Unfortunately, it was the band's only significant radio hit.

Because AAF's members were friends with the members of the comparatively more successful band Papa Roach, they were inevitably grouped-in with that band stylistically, along with other "nu metal" bands such as P.O.D., Linkin Park, and so forth. Alien Ant Farm, however, had virtually nothing in common with those bands. This might explain why they never achieved the same level of commercial success. I am utterly certain, however, that it is also why they never enjoyed the critical success that I think the band deserves.

I bought ANThology on a bit of a splurge. I was a fan of their minor radio hit "Movies," but not really a fan of the "Smooth Criminal" cover. I thought, What the heck? How bad could it be? What I expected was basically a Papa Roach album, with one good song on it in "Movies." What I got instead shocked me.

Even from their radio hits it's obvious that the band's rhythm section, consisting of drummer Mike Cosgrave and bassist/songwriter/guitarist/keyboardist Ty Zamora, was several notches above that of the typical nu metal band. When you actually take a deep dive into ANThology, what you discover is a funky, groovy, technically proficient band who lists Primus and Peter Gabriel among their biggest influences. Unbeknownst to the musically illiterate masses, Alien Ant Farm was the real deal.

The album's virtuosity is kept in check on the album, however, by a strict adherence to radio-ready song formats and the band's proclivity for subtlety over flash. 

Take, for example, their other minor hit, "Attitude." The song opens with a clever, weaving guitar line that drops off with an echo into a minimalist bass line, while Cosgrave carries the verses with delicious snare drum work. In the background, we hear congas as singer Dryden Mitchell's voice rises with an emotive quality that was largely absent from the airwaves at the time. As the chorus unfolds, rich vocal harmonies rise carefully behind those same emotionally charged vocals. Throughout the song, the guitar outlines the chords of the piece without stepping on the complex rhythmic underlay or vocals. It's a testament to the kind of attention to detail found throughout ANThology.

The album's unreleased songs deepen the groove, hit the guitars much harder, and highlight an important aspect of the band's music that was not evident on their radio releases: harmonic complexity. Alien Ant Farm has a knack for good song arrangements. Having only three instrument players in their live act, they'd have to be. On songs like "Stranded," the listener perceives a band playing, essentially, chords, but in truth what is often going on is that guitar, bass, and vocals are all playing single note lines, their roles within the implied chords changing as the harmonic movement demands. First the bass plays the root note, then slides up a step and suddenly we're hearing an inversion. Holding it all down, all the while, are Mitchell's complex but musically pleasant melodies.

Alien Ant Farm wasn't, by any means, the first band to write music like this, but in 2001, they stood alone, injecting intelligence into a musical landscape otherwise consisting of J.Lo singing duet "remixes" with Ja Rule. Hey, if that's your bag, more power to you, but for rock fans, the search for capable players at the time was quite daunting.

And, unfortunately, most people searching at that time overlooked one of the best albums of the time. ANThology is one album from the early-aughts worth revisiting.

Album Review: Steve Vai - Alien Love Secrets

Image courtesy Wikipedia.org

Despite taking some unconventional risks over the course of his career, there is an underlying continuity across all of Steve Vai's work (excepting his gig with Frank Zappa). Everything he writes has a certain stamp to it, and I don't just mean the raw guitar pyrotechnics. The compositional style is consistent across the David Lee Roth stuff, the solo stuff, the Whitesnake stuff. When it's Vai, you know it's Vai.

Still, some albums are "more Vai" than others, and as far as it goes, Alien Love Secrets, his 1995 EP, is among his "Vai-est." For me this is a bit of a Vai litmus test: If you can get through this EP, with its blue body paint, laser-equipped guitars, cringe-worthy VHS video companion piece, singing toddler, and uh... "The God-Eaters," then you're ready to pretty much swallow anything Vai serves to you. And I mean anything.

For me, this is a polarizing EP. I don't just mean that some will love it and others will hate it, although that is certainly true. I mean, more specifically, that I tend to love and hate this record at the same time.

There is no denying that it is a self-indulgent record. In the 90s, "self-indulgent" meant "featuring extended guitar solos," so there's that. But think about it: Vai wrote the song "Ya-Yo Gakk" around the nonsensical babbling of his young son. It's the kind of song only a father could love, more specifically, only the father of Julian Vai, i.e. Steve Vai. He didn't publish that song for his fans, he did it for himself.

But for all its self-indulgence, one simply cannot deny the passion on the album. "Tender Surrender" has always been a fan favorite and an aspiration for every guitar player to replicate. It's the kind of song that, at the time, was rivaled only by "For the Love of God" in terms of fan appeal, and is one of his very best. But it's not just that one song. "Juice," "Die to Live," "The Boy from Seattle" are great. I mean, they're really great. You'd be hard-pressed to find any songs that rival the unbridled passion contained on the mere handful of songs on this EP.

So that's just a case in point: Do I love it for its passion or hate it for its ultra licitum self-absorption? Do I hate it for the over-bearing noisiness of "Bad Horsie" and "Kill the Guy with the Ball," or do I love it for the almost shocking creativity present in "The God-Eaters" or "The Boy from Seattle?" Do I hate Vai for releasing the truly awful VHS video of this album, which contains nothing more than Vai pantomiming his own songs in a California TV studio in shirtless blazers and blue paint, or do I hate myself for having watched it so many times?

This is my relationship with Steve Vai. Some days, I hate his music but love listening to it anyway. Other days, I love listening to his music but hate how his phrasing starts to infect my own playing. Other days, I refuse to admit that I own so many of his albums, all while explaining to anyone who will listen about my in-depth analysis of his approach to playing. Other days, I'm a gushing fan who is somehow entitled to rant against this song or that album.

Here's the deal: Alien Love Secrets, like so much of Vai's music, a mixed bag. It's a complex web of visceral reactions, taste aversions, love affairs, triumphs, failures... It is, in a word, art. It makes me happy and angry at the same time, and only a very few albums have this impact on me.

Alien Love Secrets is one of those albums. I love Vai for releasing it and making me so angry. I love him for the long afternoons I've lost over the course of my life, learning "Juice" by ear. I love him for forcing me to have to understand jazz. I love him for being so over-bearing and over-the-top that any stupid face I make on stage in a dark and sparsely occupied club seems palatable.

But you don't need to know that. If you're reading this review, you bought the album already. You know exactly what I mean.

Album Review: Steely Dan - Aja

Image source: Wikipedia.org

Released in 1977, Steely Dan's sixth album, Aja, begins with what is perhaps my favorite of the band's songs.

"Black Cow" a bitter little number, lyrically speaking, but the way the music unfolds is remarkable. It opens up with sparse instrumentation grooving on that one, main riff. Then, as the minutes pass, the band layers additional tracks on top - clean rhythm guitars, doubled backing vocals, saxophones, additional keyboards, a horn section... The sonic impact creates a powerful, emotional, rising crescendo despite the fact that none of the instruments are really exploding like they would on a hard rock album. By the time the song reaches the outro, instruments are hitting you from all points in the stereo field and the album has its claws sunk into you. You'd better get comfortable, because you're not going anywhere until the LP is over.

But sonically, "Black Cow" sets the stage for the rest of the album. The harmonies, for example, are perfect in a way that's simply frightening for fellow musicians. Steely Dan had a knack for layering harmonies on top of each other, but not just for the sake of the harmony - they could somehow match each voice's and instrument's timbre perfectly to the harmony it played, creating tones that are far richer than anything else you'll hear.

It's particularly instructive to listen to compare the sounds on this album to the sounds on basically any modern record. Today, we're in the age of infinite digital possibilities and maximum polyphony. Anything that could ever be done in any music studio in the history of the twentieth century, plus sonic combinations that never would have been possible during any other epoch, is available at our fingertips... Yet, for all our technical superiority, we still haven't matched the arrangements and production on classic albums like Aja. It just goes to show you: there are some things technology cannot accomplish. Having a brilliant musical mind - one equpped to match timbre to note to emotion - is one of them. We need Becker and Fagen for that kind of thing, and thankfully, we have them.

Nearly every song on this album is a classic. You've heard them even if you think you've never heard them. These tracks decorate the airwaves in every department store, elevator, classic rock radio station, and grocery store you can imagine. You can try to resist, but ultimately I don't know anyone who truly dislikes Steely Dan. Their sound is as much a part of the social fabric in America as that crinkly crepe paper folded into a new dress shirt at Macy's. There's a reason for that.

But what happens when you come to Steely Dan through the usual channels is that you can sometimes fail to appreciate the music on its own merits. Aja is the answer to this subconscious bias toward the music. For example, it's impossible to ignore the crushing drum solo at the tail end of the title track; it's impossible to keep your mind from exploring the intricacies of its xylophone notes. It's too easy to get lost in the story of "Home At Last," essentially a retelling of The Odyssey through the medium of "jazz rock." But the groove is so heavy, and yet the vibraphone notes panned far-right offer a soft relief from it. And speaking of heavy, Aja just happens to close with what is perhaps the band's all-time heaviest number: "Josie."

Aja is sonic perfection, it just is. If you've ever wondered why people go so nuts for Steely Dan, start here. 

The Cynic On My Shoulder

To say that hard work today pays off in the long run is to state the obvious. We all know this to be true, because most of us invested significant amount of time during our early years getting good at something. 

Those of us who went to college - especially those who went to graduate or professional school after getting a four-year degree (I did not) - know this especially well. To have achieved that, we/they had to invest long hours studying and memorizing, working on projects, rehearsing oral presentations, revising theses, and so forth. It was difficult and thankless work, and having come out the other side, we/they now have an access ticket to higher incomes, better lifestyles, and greater leisure.

But now, we/they spend our/their evenings passed out in front of a television, or a magazine, or the internet - or, at best, working on some menial-yet-necessary chores that keep the household running at an even kilter - before finally calling it quits at an early enough hour that we/they can still get up for work the next morning. Where we/they used to stay up late, focused on an investment in our/their future, we/they are now in a hurry to wrap it up.

Thinking about it just now, I can't help but think that it is somehow... lazy.

"You don't have to be working on some big project all the time!" objects the cynic on my shoulder who, if correct, merely provides me with additional reasons not to try to do anything interesting.

I understand where my cynic is coming from. Nobody wants to feel bad about just relaxing and enjoying themselves, least of all me. But if my cynic had proven to be amply persuasive to me at an earlier age, I probably wouldn't have graduated from college, or run that marathon, or learned how to play the guitar, et cetera.

Whatever you may have accomplished in your life (and we have all accomplished something), the point here is that your cynic's objection, your cynic's reasoning, was every bit applicable on that day, years ago, when you decided to push through your difficulty, as it is today. Yet, back then, you decided to grit your teeth and keep working; but, today, you just turn on Netflix and check to see if they've added a new sequel to The Human Centipede. 

Thus, it's not that our cynic is always wrong, it's that we at one point knew he was wrong, but now know him to be right. What happened? 

It's not as if we don't know that our hard work will pay off. Of course we do. We know that spending an extra ten minutes per day researching investment strategies will improve our lot during retirement. We know that learning a foreign language improves our mental sharpness and opens up new travel or career opportunities. We know that honing a new talent will be creatively satisfying in the long run, and we know that working out a little more will make our lives better. Our cynic can't argue with results.

In fact, the cynic on my shoulder doesn't argue with results. He argues against results by appealing to your self-esteem. His, upon further analysis, rather weird, argument is that you shouldn't feel bad for not accomplishing more because anything you do over and above the bare minimum is gravy. Since it's just gravy, you can't feel bad for not doing it, and you shouldn't have to, so don't. And furthermore, don't do it.

But, like I just said, that's weird. To understand just how weird it is, place yourself in the shoes you were in when you were studying for your college exams. Your cynic would have said, "You don't have to pass this course to be a good person!" Your cynic would also be correct about that. But, in hindsight, you weren't studying to avoid being a bad person, you were studying because you wanted to graduate from college. And you weren't trying to graduate from college to avoid being a bad person, you were doing it to have a better life. 

So your cynic - by which I mean my cynic - is really just an overweening narcissist. Nobody said anything about being a bad person, except that damn cynic. You were just trying to learn something new, or get something done, or improve your investment portfolio, or whatever. 

You were just trying to have a better life, and the cynic on your shoulder had to infect it all with some neurotic defensiveness about being a bad person - something you hadn't even considered.

Here's My Personal List Of People I Like And Don't Like

Bryan Caplan has a clever argument against people who oppose immigration on the basis of demographics (e.g. "I don't want too many brown Muslim people to come in and change my country."). His argument is, Okay, then we should allow an offsetting amount of the opposite demographic (in this case, white Christian people) so that the total demographic makeup is unchanged. After all, migration is as much a right for brown Muslims as it is for white Christians.

In response, famous blog commentator E. Harding (he is everywhere) writes:

Makes sense, but there really aren't that many White high IQ conservatives outside the U.S. willing to move here. And opening immigration from any category of men substantially leads to a slippery slope -your proposal is an unstable equilibrium. 

And I don't mind Christian Arab immigration from, say, Lebanon. Maybe also Iraq and Palestine. But by no means Syria.

The truly stunning thing about this comment is E. Harding's unstated supposition that readers happen to care who's on his "do import" and "don't import" list.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure if someone asked him, he'd elaborate on his reasons to great length. But, tellingly, he didn't find it necessary to outline his reasoning in his comment. 

Live, In Concert

My latest musical project, Kraw, will be performing live at The Grotto, in Fort Worth, Texas, tomorrow night at nine o'clock P.M. Further details are available at the event's Facebook page, and don't forget to visit Kraw's official website.

The band is booking now for 2016, so please reach out to me if you'd like more details.

It's Not A Perfect System, But It's The Only One You've Got

The old trick to gaming a roulette table is to place your bet on red or black, the odds of which are 50/50. Then, if you lose, double your bet in the same direction. If you lose that one, double that bet in the same direction. And so forth...

At 50/50 odds, you are bound to keep winning if this is your strategy, because your bet will turn out to be correct half the time. So, because you're doubling your bet every time, you'll always (eventually) win back what you lost, plus double if you just keep betting.

What this strategy requires is a bank account deep enough to carry the losses, no matter how big they are, and most gamblers don't have that kind of money. Also, casino owners aren't stupid; they're trained to spot this particular strategy, and when they catch you, they'll throw you out of the casino and bar you from playing ever again.

The casino always wins in the long run, and that's what I'm writing about today: house rules.

Know When To Hold 'Em

Politics in every country is like a casino: The only one with pockets deep enough to carry any loss and double down in the same direction is the house; the house always wins; and if you figure out a winning strategy, you can be security is on its way down and they're packing heat. In this Las Vegas analogy, there are two groups left unaccounted for: hookers and drug addicts. The hookers are the dancing girls the casino has tossed aside after getting what they wanted out of them for a few years; the drug addicts are what happens to us when we've been kicked out of every casino for playing a winning hand.

I'm not trying to be cynical, but at the same time, one has to recognize the nature of the world we live in. Each one of us is a tiny gnat in the annuls of the universe - a microscopic blob of ectoplasm with a lifespan so short that the gods don't even take time to laugh at us. Each one of our lives is utterly inconsequential, and yet so significant to us. That explains a lot of what happens in politics.

On some level, we must know how insignificant our lives are, because if we didn't, none of us would fight very hard to achieve anything. That sounds backwards, but it's not. Knowing that we are insignificant, we fight to have one small bit of legacy, something to live beyond our own tiny lifespans, and most of us never really achieve it. So, when one of us happens to come into a pretty decent situation, like an elected office or a directorship in some bureaucracy somewhere, most of us are willing to fight for it, on the off-chance that, somehow, we'll have some plaque hung on the wall somewhere - something that will out-live us a little while, at least until they refurbish the building.

So now we have means: the political system. And, we have motive: legacy. Now all we need is opportunity.

Know When To Fold 'Em

The opportunities usually come in small and petty ways. 

We've all seen the people working the counter at the DMV. Their souls have been ground down to the nub, they have no control over their own lives. All they have is a computer screen, a little web cam, and the authority to withhold your license for anything their direct supervisors can verify with a form in triplicate. If they don't fancy anything other than the keeping of their jobs then a slight delay in your paperwork is the only way these sad sacks have to tell the universe, "I mattered!" If they're ambitious, though, they'll search the minutiae in your file for something that requires a more obscure form. A few dozen of these per week, and they'll be fast-tracked to supervisor. So if you have to keep going back to the DMV every day for a week or two just because one of these rock stars is trying to make manager, that's a small price for them to pay for their legacy. Get it? They care about you, but they also want existential significance, and one can hardly blame them.

Don't get smug here. You're not any different than they are, and neither am I. The only difference is that we don't work at the DMV, and they do. And there are lots of DMVs all over this nation of ours, plus the ones in every other country out there. That's a lot of legacy to be dealt with, and it's just the tip of the iceberg. Every little counter where you have to show your government-issued ID or work your way through a canned series of statements before you can proceed on to the next counter in your life is another inflection point for mankind's competing legacies. 

And, ultimately, we all work at a counter.

There are two ways you can proceed here: You can keep stabbing back at your own insignificance, setting your fellow humans back fifteen minutes to fifteen years (depending on the counter), silently screaming at the universe, "I mattered!" and silently knowing it isn't true... Or, you can step away from the counter and let people continue on in pursuit of their tiny scrap of potential legacy. You can fight for your right to matter, or you can just get out of the way and let other people explore theirs.

Know When To Walk Away

No, you can't really walk away, because first of all you have to eat and earning money is how you accomplish that; but second of all, the entirety of human society is organized in such a way that you will be punished and ostracized if you openly admit that you're not really into shouting your existential vanity into the ears of anyone who will listen. (NB: I am writing this on a public blog.)

So most of us have to play the game, to some extent or another. That doesn't mean, though, that you can't walk away in a manner of speaking. If other people use their position "at the counter" to achieve some kind of legacy, you can use your position for nobler purposes. We can make the world a better place by being better people. So if you make life a little easier for the people who come to your counter, you can do your small part to enable them to achieve their legacies. You might be an insignificant piece of the universe, damn it, but you did what you could to prevent other people from being worse off having known you!

This is how we walk away. This is how we look at the human system into which we have been born and decide that it's a bad machine, but we can make it better. This is how we stop playing the petty and futile existential game played by others and we simply... walk away, leaving the world slightly better for it.

Know When To Run

I know what you're thinking: "What about my legacy?" Well, that's the tricky part, the final step in the process of giving yourself real happiness and real freedom.

The answer to your question is: You don't get a legacy. You get to be a better person, you get to make other people happy, you get to live life by a worthwhile creed, you get to look at yourself in the mirror every morning. But you don't get a legacy. 

We are mosquitoes, fruit flies, bacteria... we are tiny little piles of animated flesh. We live, we love, we produce offspring, we fight from the moment we're born, and then we die. If the world remembers you for longer than one or two news cycles after you die, god bless you, you lucked out. Beyond that, no one will care. It's not because they're bad or apathetic people, it's just that they have their own lives to live and there have been many billions of us who have lived throughout the ages. I'm sorry - you don't count much.

But this is a beautiful thing. You don't have to count. You don't have to be remembered. You don't have to have a legacy. If you live a good life, if you love your loved ones truly and madly, if you leave others' lives no worse than when you found them, then you will have pushed this tiny, insignificant species a few inches toward a better future. And that's the best you can do.

That's the best we can all do. So, let's do it.

Album Review: Eric Johnson - Ah Via Musicom

Image courtesy Wikipedia.org

Eric Johnson's pivotal 1988 album, Ah Via Musicom, begins with some ethereal special effects before launching into what might very well be the most-learned rock guitar instrumental since "Misirlou." "Cliffs of Dover" has been published in guitar magazines for as long as I can remember, and every guitarist work anything has either learned it or attempted to learn it.

What makes "Cliffs of Dover" tricky is not the fast bits. In fact, it's not a particularly fast song, so the "shreddy" licks in it aren't too bad for most guitar players to learn. But it's an iconic work for Johnson because it captures something important about the way he expresses himself musically: his unique sense of rhythm. There's something odd about it; at times it feels straight, and at times it swings. It has an unmistakably c-jazz quality to it, and yet when you strip of it its elaborate production value, it feels Hendrixy. It's bluesy, but not too much so. It's complex, but not overtly so.

Put it all together, and it's a feel for music possessed by no other musician that I know of, and it's what makes Eric Johnson such a pleasure to listen to. Sure, plenty of people talk about his tones, but the fact of the matter is that anyone can get those tones if they're using $50,000 worth of vintage gear. Johnson's sense of "tone" really traces back to his feel, so that no matter how he happens to have dialed his amps and his pedals, he always knows which notes to play when, and at which fret, and with how much vibrato. It's the feel, man, the feel.

And that feel is everywhere on Ah Via Musicom. From the beginning to the end, you'll never play a note of this album correctly on your own guitar, if you don't have that feel. You could argue that the album is too diverse to have one, unique feel. After all: there's a chicken-pickin' two-step in "Steve's Boogie," an acoustic solo in "Song for George," genuine contemporary smooth jazz in "East Wes," and even a few radio-ready (well, by late-80s standards) vocal tunes. This album certain runs the gamut of popular styles. But if you don't have Johnson's feel, you're sunk, and all you can do is watch him do it for you.

In contrast to the other shredders of the age, though, Eric Johnson has always had a really nice voice. On later albums, you could argue that his voice was pitch-corrected - some later albums certainly sound like it - but on Ah Via Musicom it's obvious: No, Eric Johnson just sings like that. His pitch is absolutely spot-on, a testament to his famously sensitive ear. But if some listeners start to feel that the performances are too planned, too deliberate, I'd suggest they turn the music up a little bit. For example, there's a part near the end of "Desert Rose" in which Johnson's voice cries the lyrics out with grit and resolve, a suddenly passionate and masculine wail not always expected from such a soft-spoken shredder who has been known to record duets with Christopher Cross.

All these years after its release, that's what grabs me about Ah Via Musicom: The fact of the matter is that there is a rawness to it, a loudness to it, an energy behind the plate reverb. Not as much energy as his earlier work with the Electromagnets, but certainly more than his performances in the G3 Live video would let on a few years later.

And when you go back to the performances of that period - most notably his legendary appearance on Austin City Limits - you see the energy there, too. He hadn't yet come into his own, so he was still reaching for the stars, but he'd already identified who he was and what he did differently, and was starting to get comfortable showing it.

Album Review: Tool - Aenima

Image courtesy Wikipedia.org

According to Wikipedia, Tool's masterpiece, Aenima, was released on vinyl on September 17, 1996, and released on CD on October 1, 1996. I find the October 1st release date hard to believe, because I vividly remember driving to the local music store on my birthday, September 20th, and picking up my copy of the album as a present to myself. Memories, like so many other aspects of the human mind, are unreliable sources of information.

Fortunately for us, though, psychology is a fertile source of artistic inspiration, one from which Tool drew heavily when they wrote and recorded this stunning record.

It will be difficult for readers younger than myself to fully appreciate what Aenima accomplished. At the time, there was nothing else that sounded like it. In the rock world, there was grunge (think Pearl Jam's Vitalogy), there was metal (which, in 1996, meant Pantera), and there were a few bands out there doing something kind of... funky (think Faith No More or the Red Hot Chili Peppers). Somewhere at the intersection of those three very different worlds sat Tool. They were drum-heavy and bass-heavy, like the funky bands. They were loud and detuned, like the metal bands. But they toured with the grunge bands. By necessity, they were labeled "grunge" by the A&R people, and that was that.

Then Aenima came out, and it seemed to change the landscape. This was, of course, the album that put Tool on the map as a big headliner, but it was more than that. It was the album that finally put metal bands and alternative bands on the same page. 

As much as it pains me to say it, it was the album that gave birth to "nu metal." Korn, Linkin Park, Staind, none of those bands would have existed were it not for Tool's Aenima album. 

To be sure, Aenima is not a nu metal album. There are shades of progressive metal and elements of alternative rock, but it is nothing like the ten years of rap-rocking, spiky-haired garbage that surfaced in its wake. But the album put together an important series of musical elements that hadn't really found their way together in a format that stuck before. On a superficial level, it was the soft, almost crooning, vocals paired against unbelievably massive distorted guitar riffage. But on a deeper level, the album managed to capture the best elements of what so many other heavy bands were aiming for and finally channel them into a single stream. 

Today, for example, we call Tool a "progressive metal" band because of their deft use of complex rhythms. Complex rhythms weren't anything new in 1996, but Tool had found a way to deliver polyrhythms for mass appeal. The guitar and bass played in unison while the drums kept a steady reference ostinato, enabling fans to bob their heads to beats in 5/4, 9/8... even 11/8. A good example of this is the breakdown in the song "46 & 2." For the entire song up to that point, the band plays a simple, familiar, and repetitive 6/8 beat. In the breakdown, they suddenly switch to 7/8, but they do it in such a way that casual listeners never even notice. Underneath the riff, drummer Danny Carey unleashes a fury of quintuplets over the seven-count beat, creating a rather remarkable musical effect. But because the riffs are so well-arranged, most listeners don't even perceive that the beat has changed. They can feel a difference, and that difference is the polyrhythm, but for the most part they just bob their heads.

For years, every hard rock band in the business tried to recreate that effect, but the best they could do is use and abuse the three-over-4 polyrhythm that occurs when you mix 4/4 and 6/8 time signatures. That 6/8 component, though, is very telling; it tells me that these bands were inspired by "46 & 2."

Vocalist Maynard James Keenan's impact on metal music is undeniable. Before the release of Aenima, metal singers basically had two choices: growl like Phil Anselmo or shriek like King Diamond. Nobody was singing like a normal person if they were in a metal band. Then Maynard came along and showed that a pleasant-sounding, possibly even under-stated, voice could effectively carry a heavy song. Before long, it was Hoobastank by the barrel-full, but that never could have happened without Aenima. Nor was Keenan's impact restricted to radio music - even the metal bands got in on the action. Opeth likely would never have had a career had there not been an Aenima album. The influence is palpable.

It's quite possible that no other CD in my collection has been played as many times as this one. I've memorized every beat, every note. It is not my favorite album, but it was a landmark. It was the best and most important thing to have happened to heavy music for years. Today, it sounds as fresh and timely as it did when it was released. Few bands have ever been able to record something with as much staying power - even Sargent Pepper sounds like an emblem of its era. But when you listen to Aenima, you're almost unaware of the fact that it was released before Soundgarden had broken up, before Queens of the Stone Age, before Marilyn Manson. 

Aenima set heavy music down a path from which it has never branched. It is as much a part of modern rock as the blue note. We're all Keenansians now.

That's Interesting...

Here's something odd I noticed today. I use Chrome as my primary web browser. When you "sign-in" to the browser, then whenever you're on a Google site (Gmail, Google News, Blogger, etc.), the browser has provided a matrix-type icon which, if clicked, provides access to all of your Google apps. So, from your Gmail screen, you can go directly to Google Finance or Blogger or News or Play, directly through the link. No URL required.

That still appears to be true for my Gmail window. I checked all my other Google apps, too, and they all have the app icon. All of them, that is, except Blogger.

Is this the beginning of the end of Alphabet's support for the Blogger platform? Do they intend to replace it with anything?

The "Horror" Of Ben Carson's Health Care Plan

The news headlines today made me aware that Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson has released the "details" of his health care plan. I wanted to know what sort of proposal an actual health care practitioner would put on the table, but I didn't want to get too slanted a view on that plan. So, I made the following decision:

I decided to choose what I thought would be the most hostile (to Ben Carson) source of analysis and, if I could find something positive from that hostile source, I could feel better about the integrity of those positives.

I chose an op-ed in the Huffington Post, and here's what it had to say (in part):

So in place of Obamacare, which includes all sorts of rules about who health insurance companies have to sell policies to (everyone) and what kinds of benefits they have to cover (lots 0f [sic] them), Carson's plan would allow people to open tax-free savings accounts (which they already can) to put away money (which they probably don't have) to pay for medical care until their insurance deductible is met (which it probably won't be).

Set aside the question of repealing Obamacare. I think repealing it would be a good idea, but that's just my opinion.

Aside from repealing Obamacare, is there anything objectionable about letting people set aside tax-free money to spend on future health care expenses? I can think of a few downsides related to demand distortion, but other than that, it seems like a pretty harmless policy.

Why would anyone of any political persuasion object?