“Among the consequences of financialisation is the creation of what an analysis by the investment bank Citigroup calls “plutonomy”. The bank’s analysts describe a world that is dividing into two blocs: the plutonomy and the rest. The US, UK and Canada are the key plutonomies: economies in which growth is powered by – and largely consumed by – the wealthy few. In plutonomies, these rich consumers take a disproportionately large slice of the national pie. Two-thirds of the world’s economic growth is driven by consumption, primarily in the pluto­nomies, which monopolise profits as well.”

link: New Statesman – The high cost of neoliberalism

“There’s the key — “the underlying realities of how the world works.” Because never, and I mean never, has there been capitalist enterprise that wasn’t ultimately underwritten by the state. This is true at an obvious level that even most libertarians would concede (though maybe not some of the Austrian economists whom Rand Paul adores): for the system to work, you need some kind of bare bones apparatus for enforcing contracts and protecting property. But it’s also true in a more profound, historical sense. To summarize very briefly a long and complicated process, we got capitalism in the first place through a long process of flirtation between governments on the one hand, and bankers and merchants on the other, culminating in the Industrial Revolution. What libertarians revere as an eternal, holy truth is in fact, in the grand scheme of human history, quite young. And if they’d just stop worshiping for a minute, they’d notice the parents hovering in the background.”

link: The lesson of Rand Paul: libertarianism is juvenile – War Room – Salon.com

“After the Association’s untimely demise, more benevolent organizations arose within neighborhoods to function as mutual aid societies. These Social Aid Clubs of the early 20th Century provided and (some still do,) aid to fellow African Americans and insure that club members get a proper burial. As stated before, the Clubs, and organizations, operated like a loose social safety net. A member paid dues to the club, and into his policy, each month, with some collecting as much as $2 every week. With the weekly or bi monthly policies, you built equity quickly. Remember, back in those days a funeral costs were around $200-300 dollars. 52 weeks at rates of $.50 cents to $2, netted you a max of around $104 a yr. Once you reached your burial expense, the equity started to build. After enough time had elapsed you could build quite a nest egg if you were frugal, and could even borrow against it, with some clubs. If times were hard, they were your social safety net. But unlike today’s welfare, that net had a very real limit. It was important to get on your feet again as quickly as possible. The dues structure also enabled the “societies”, to purchase tombs and vaults for their members. Some of the older Clubs, such as the Y.M.O., and the Zulu’s, still hold sets of vaults, located in only 2 cemeteries, namely Lafayette, and City II. Once the member’s burial expenses itself are paid, the balance of the money is used to finance the funeral of the member in style, sometimes, if desired, with a traditional New Orleans jazz funeral. Usually, the club would host a jazz funeral, complete with a brass band and horse drawn carriage bearing the casket. Some of the clubs, even had their own Tombs, with one designed to hold up to 25 bodies at a time. It no longer exist. It was severely damaged when the I-10 high rise was put through downtown New Orleans. Only seven such tombs are still in use, today Since more enrolled members meant the organization would continue to be solvent, these societies had to advertise, in a very unique way, their style. Throughout the city of New Orleans, there were fraternal organizations, groups and burial societies, who often competed with each other to see which group could send off a member in the greatest style. Members would dress in matching suits, and outfits, with handmade decorative chest banners, called “sashes” and they carried elaborately decorated fans, umbrellas, and handkerchiefs. All embroidered, engraved or imprinted with the organization’s name. One member would carry the club’s official banner. This gave the prospective members a glance of what their “processional” would look like. “

link: History of the Second Line in New Orleans

“Details: And what did you learn from Mr. Ali? Mike Tyson: Believe it or not, with all that poetry and the butterflies, what I learned from Ali was meanness. He was the meanest fighter of all time. He’d be in there with Foreman, hardest puncher of all time, he’d be in there with Frazier, another hardest puncher, and he’d be taking it, boom, getting pounded, and then he’d turn, when it was his time, and you’d look at that face, and he’s screaming. [Does an Ali impression] “I’m not [Throws a punch] scared [Throws a punch] of you, you fucking faggot. [Throws two punches] You fucking punk. I’m fucking God, and worship me. I’m the greatest. [Throws two punches] You’re a little fucking boy, cocksucker.” Nobody at ringside reported it, but nobody shit-talked like Ali.”

link: Everything You Think You Know About Mike Tyson Is Wrong: News + Politics: Details

“The Game of Life, also known simply as Life, is a cellular automaton devised by the British mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970. It is a widely known example of a cellular automaton. The “game” is a zero-player game, meaning that its evolution is determined by its initial state, requiring no further input. One interacts with the Game of Life by creating an initial configuration and observing how it evolves.

The Game of Life, also known simply as Life, is a cellular automaton devised by the British mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970.[1]It is a widely known example of a cellular automaton. The “game” is a zero-player game, meaning that its evolution is determined by its initial state, requiring no further input. One interacts with the Game of Life by creating an initial configuration and observing how it evolves.“

Conway’s Game of Life in HTML 5

“It’s legitimate to wonder, but it’s still asking the wrong question. You don’t “take back” income streams that no longer make sense in a market. You adjust and adapt — just like many other artists are doing — and move forward. Instead, Jason Robert Brown is looking backward wistfully at a world that no longer exists. And, again, no one is saying that creators shouldn’t get paid or shouldn’t make a living. They’re just saying that it’s your responsibility to find the right business model, and to adapt when the market changes. That’s not “amazing.” It’s basic economics.”

link: Composer Jason Robert Brown Still Standing By His Position That Kids Sharing His Music Are Immoral | Techdirt

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finally all the hacker unpleasantness is finished and this website is back up and mostly restored after i finally found the two backdoors that were allowing hackers to inject javascript into this site’s headers. after a few months of trying to fix it myself i finally gave up and paid the professionals (thanks sucuri security). still not really sure how it was hacked, but because it didn’t spread to my other blog i’m pretty hopeful it’s going to be an isolated incident.

i’m also starting to work out the planning for the 2nd annual midnight performance of terry riley’s “In C” . after talking to a few people we all figured it would be easier for everybody to attend if it were in the fall. right now i’m looking to have it as part of shane cadman’s RealNewMusic festival in whittier (september 18th 2010) and if this works out it would be a midnight show on friday sept 17th (which means midnight friday night (saturday night is the festival where i’m performing my music for controllers. we still need to iron out the details and post more soon but one big adjustment we are thinking about is having 3 open rehearsals on different sides of town to encourage a wider group of musicians to come out and play.

almost forgot… i’m also just started scheduling the recording sessions of my ‘requiem for a high homicide enclave’ for this fall and it’s one example in which these furlough days are working out in our favor. if all goes as planned it will allow bruce gallego an extended 4 day weekend to travel down from stockton to see his girlfriend and get a few days of recording in.

as you can see the last few months have all been about tying up loose ends before i start any new projects and i’m looking forward to clearing out these shelves and getting back to writing and performing again soon.

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“What went wrong here?” is an unpopular question with the type of city fathers and civic boosters for whom convention centers and pedestrian malls are the answers to all society’s ills but Harvey captured and chronicled every day what was–and will always be–beautiful about Cleveland: the still majestic gorgeousness of what once was–the uniquely quirky charm of what remains, the delightfully offbeat attitude of those who struggle to go on in a city they love and would never dream of leaving. What a two minute overview might depict as a dying, post-industrial town, Harvey celebrated as a living, breathing, richly textured society.”

link: Anthony Bourdain’s Blog

Video by Satan’s Pearl Horses http://satanspearlhorses.com/
Featuring Matt Marks and Mellissa Hughes
More info here: http://thelittledeathvol1.com/The Little Death: Vol. 1
by Matt Marks Directed by Rafael Gallegos
July 8-11, 14-17 2010
Incubator Arts Project http://incubatorarts.org

“So to me it seems that in banning the word classical we need to have some kind of agreement as to what we think it is we do that we wish to describe differently. “Classical“ clearly fails in 2010 as an a term of aggregation. “Classical” succeeds in maintaining a now elderly participant base for concert presentation, but fails in nearly other aspect of differentiation. Is there a coherent (though divergent) ‘classical’ music practice that could be better described with a single other word/phrase? Or is the suggestion that the discrepant musical discourses and modes of presentation would be better served through the disaggregation that the abandonment of the term classical would afford? These are both deeply philosophical and deeply practical questions.”

link: Ban the word “Classical” « Elissa Milne

“The university police department — about 10 officers and 2 detectives — don’t even know what an IP address is. I even contacted the local FBI office and they said they’re ‘not interested’ in the case despite it now crossing state lines. Am I chasing my own tail here? How can I get someone to pay attention to the fact that all the police need to do is file some RIAA-style paperwork to find the name associated with this IP address and knock on the right door to nab a criminal and recover my property? How can I get my laptop back — and more importantly — stop this criminal in his tracks?”

link: Slashdot Ask Slashdot Story | Retrieving a Stolen Laptop By IP Address Alone?

“Toward the end of our conversation in Birmingham, Donohue began to talk about the challenges of leading an organization. “The CEO in a major company now, if he lasts five years, he’s a hero,” Donohue said. It was clear that he was in part talking about himself. But Donohue has already lasted twelve years as Chamber president, and at the beginning of his tenure the board amended the bylaws to extend the mandatory retirement age past sixty-five. In 2009, he traveled 166 days of the year, coaxing open checkbooks, visiting twenty-seven states, and giving seventy-five speeches. All of this bodes well for his staying power. Still, “I am not powerful,” he said at one point. “The institution is powerful. If I walked out of the Chamber tomorrow, wouldn’t anybody return my phone calls except for a couple of my friends.” Given the anti-corporate rhetoric among Republicans, and the backlash against him in other quarters, this is a contingency he should consider. But for the moment Donohue is still the undisputed master of getting corporate giants to show him the money. And in a Washington that runs on money, that show must go on.”

link: Show Him the Money – James Verini

“I still think that if something is available for sale legitimately, you should pay for it (books, music, photos, movies, sheet music). A lot of the Bach, Scriabin and Rachmaninoff in Mr. Hawley’s collection is certainly available, and handing it to friends on a flash drive is absolutely depriving the publishers of their revenue. True, the composers are long dead, but editing and publishing sheet music is still worth something. It’s those obscure, out-of-print, not-available-anywhere items in his collection that make a tougher case. How many hours are you obligated to research and dig just to find out if something is available for sale? In this case, the barriers to a legitimate purchase are ridiculously high. Isn’t digital piracy justified in that case? Let me know what you think in the comments.”

link: No Easy Answers in the Copyright Debate – Pogue’s Posts Blog – NYTimes.com

“Composition, contemporary composition, is where reviewing comes to life. Complaining about interpreters, or rooting for them, however legitimate, is just fidgeting. Criticism joins the history of its art only when it joins battle, for or against, with the music of its time.” — Virgil Thomson, 1974

link: Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise: Quote of the day

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plan b
spent an evening trying to edit php.ini files on my server to find out bluehost doesn’t allow this

plan c
i used a windows program (wrx file splitter) to split the xml file into smaller sizes. now that i’m uploading them it looks like there is going to be a lot of cleanup and this might take a few days.

wonderful

wish me luck and hope to be back soon!

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“Well, I can’t say that it hasn’t been a blast, because it has. But it has been decided that this blog has lived its span and that we can better serve you at www.ocregister.com/arts.”

this is depressing.

limiting the OC Register’s arts bloggers to writing reviews and color pieces is definitely a step backward.

especially in journalism the blog functions best in which thoughts, ideas, and commentary are posted that may not quite fit into the ever shrinking daily newspaper (does anybody actually read the physical kind anymore?). it also creates conversations (the “Should I review Bocelli” post is a great example of this) that help define and connect the broader arts community as a whole.

but of course if you are reading this on my blog you already “get it”

Update July 12, 2010 9:32am

“Dear Mr. Bailey,

I’m happy to explain. We have tried the arts blog for more than a year, and it hasn’t gotten much traction online. A blog takes four or five posts a day to build up an audience.  Our three arts reporters have many responsibilities – including writing news, previews and reviews for our Web site and our newspaper.  They will  continue to cover those things and publish them online and in print.  We are just relieving them of the added duties of a blog.

The Register’s commitment to arts coverage has not changed.

If you have questions or would like to chat about it, please give me a call.

Sincerely,

Rebecca Allen

Deputy Editor, Features

Orange County Register Communications

625 N. Grand Avenue

Santa Ana, CA  92701

714-796-3654   Fax: 714-796-3681

email: rallen@ocregister.com”

fb8f421d9b814c99be8a80bea1a7aa0b

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looking forward to the socal @improvfriday meetup tomorrow with @swcadman and paul muller (all three of us #fb #

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“For me, what really made this blog so good was the combination of two things: (a) really good writing by Tim about a variety of topics related to classical music (plus the occasional diversion or two). The official reviews that get published in the hard copy version of the paper have always been and will continue to be among the best. The blog went beyond that allowed for all of us to read Tim’s thoughts and comments on things that would not have otherwise appeared in the paper. I hope the new format will allow him some, if not all, of the same freedom. (b) The reader’s comments to the original blog posts which added their own value, and more importantly, Tim’s willingness/ability to write his own follow-up comments in reply. A wonderful dialogue exists between those of us unwashed masses who add our comments and the respected music critic of The Orange County Register. The quality of this two-way communication simply doesn’t exist anywhere else (I stopped readying the comments at Culture Monster blog of the larger “other newspaper” long ago because none of the staff writers ever participated in the discussion).”

link: So long from The Arts Blog – The Arts Blog : The Orange County Register

“Despite the decision to forbid members from receiving pay for AA-related activity, it had no problem letting professional institutions integrate the 12 steps into their treatment programs. AA did not object when Hazelden, a Minnesota facility founded in 1947 as “a sanatorium for curable alcoholics of the professional class,” made the steps the foundation of its treatment model. Nor did AA try to stop the proliferation of steps-centered addiction groups from adopting the Anonymous name: Narcotics Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous. No money ever changed hands—the steps essentially served as open source code that anyone was free to build upon, adding whatever features they wished. (Food Addicts Anonymous, for example, requires its members to weigh their meals.)”

link: Secret of AA: After 75 Years, We Don’t Know How It Works | Magazine

“There is, however, a cost to this taciturnity. Limiting our emotional response to the travails fighting men endure is a little bit like limiting war aims; it distances us from the conflict, prevents us from engaging fully, dramatically, suspensefully, in it. Certainly in this instance no one in this beleaguered group becomes fully particularized as a human being. This standoffishness became a ruling convention in films about the Vietnam War. Putting it mildly, our moral qualms about that war prevented everyone this side of John Wayne from unambiguously identifying with our troops. Which left us with a rather squishy humanism—“Oh, the poor guys, it’s not their fault; let’s go levitate the Pentagon, instead”—to tide us along. Because the aims of our wars since have not particularly advanced, that’s pretty much where we remain.”

link: Richard Schickel: Into the Valley of Death Rode the … 15? – Film Review – Truthdig

“These 444 decisions pertain to the adjudication of security clearance cases for contractor personnel under DoD Directive 5220.6, which implements Executive Order 10865.”

link: 2010 Industrial Security Clearance Decisions

“At last, after two hours of his tedious, hacky, right-wing manifesto, Gallagher gets to the part his (willing) hostages have been waiting for. It’s time to smash some shit. There are the watermelons, there is some cottage cheese (“It’s got the curds that blow up, just like on the news!”), there is sauerkraut and syrup and honey. Then Gallagher gets a tin pie plate. He opens a giant can of fruit cocktail and pours it in. He opens a can of some Asian vegetable—water chestnuts, maybe—and pours that in, too. “This is the China people and queers!!!” he screams and takes his sledgehammer to the thing with a fury that is no fun at all. Wet chunks of China people and queers fly everywhere. The hateful, bitter old man laughs. I cannot believe Bill Hicks is dead and this motherfucker is still touring.”

link: Gallagher Is a Paranoid, Right-Wing, Watermelon-Smashing Maniac by Lindy West – Theater – The Stranger, Seattle’s Only Newspaper

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“What makes Piazzolla’s music so emotionally powerful is his infallible sense of harmony. I tell students over and over that the principal problem with most compositions I see is their lack of harmonic coherence. Listening to Piazzolla ought to be a model of how one cannot hope to establish an original musical voice without first having a secure and identifiable harmonic sense. Of course Piazzolla’s harmonic world is largely derived from Bach’s, with smooth, circle-of-fifths progressions moving effortlessly underneath the plangent cantilenas of his melodies. That was his special discovery—a melding of indigenous tango rhythms and melodic tropes with the contrapuntal sophistication of Bach and the edgy brutalism of early Stravinsky and Bartók.”

link: John Adams: Hell Mouth: El Tanguero

“In this Year of the Tiger 2010, there are perhaps as many boba shops filling the L.A. basin as there are intersections to hold them. I imagine container ships stacking up in San Pedro Bay bearing nothing but vacuum-sealed tapioca pearls from the food factories outside Kaohsiung, waiting to dump their payload into robotically-sealed cups of syrupy tea from Santa Monica to Ontario Mills. Taro, the starchy corm (i.e., a modified underground stem, rather than a true bulb), cultivated widely throughout eastern Asia and Oceania, is a personal bubble tea favorite–and a misnomer to boot. Rarely is there any actual tea in taro milk tea, which typically consists of taro powder, flavored and dyed a fetching lavender, sugar syrup and milk or creamer. Little culinary lies aside, I’m on a mission to source L.A.’s best taro milk tea. Below are the first five candidates. Your boba hits and misses are welcome in the comments.”

link: Triangulating Boba: In Search of LA’s Best Taro Milk Tea – Los Angeles Restaurants and Dining – Squid Ink

“They’re going to close you out, at some horrible level, they say, “You didn’t post the margin, we’re going to close you out,” and then what do you do? You’re going to sue them? By the time this thing wends its way through the courts, you’re out of business. And if you’re being foreclosed on by a bank, and you’re in litigation, that massively increases the probability that other banks will do the same thing to you, because they’ll be worried, and you’re caught in this vicious circle. Yeah, so, theoretically, in calm times you would look to the courts for vindication, but in difficult times the damage that’s done may be irreversible before you can get any kind of remedy.”

link: n+1: Bullies and Bankers

“LCK: I can go out on the road. I can make money. I can do what I do in its purest form without asking anybody for permission. You can’t cancel my stand-up tours. It’s impossible. There’s too many separate bosses. There is no “bosses.” I rent these theaters now. When I worked the clubs, it was very different. Pretty much you needed to please the Improvs, but if I get cancelled, I can put together a stand-up tour and go on the road and continue generating. I don’t worry that way anymore. I don’t know what it’s like to be an actor, where if your show gets cancelled, really you’re just a bum. [Laughs.] It must be really awful. You can’t go out and do a little acting, you know what I mean? If I’m not on tour, I can run down to the comedy club and do a little stand-up. If you’re an actor, you can’t go—I guess there’s forms of it.”

link: Louis C.K. | TV | Interview | The A.V. Club

“Dykstra, of course, was never a market genius. When researching our lawsuit against him (he eventually agreed to pay $200,000—but later defaulted), I uncovered emails from a stock-market analyst named Richard Suttmeier, who sent Dykstra a list of “deep-in-the-money” call picks each morning. Most of “Dykstra’s” picks came from this list. Several bloggers also figured out how these picks performed so phenomenally: He counted his winners, but endlessly rolled over his losers, in tallying his overall results.”

link: Jim Cramer – Lenny Dykstra Stock Scandal, Reports Randall Lane’s The Zeroes – The Daily Beast

“RZ: Yeah, I mean here in Los Angeles it’s tough. It’s tough to open a restaurant. When I went to San Francisco it reminded me a little bit of London. You can open anywhere and people come, a lot of neighbors come. Here you need to drive everywhere, you have the parking, it’s tough. But it’s not impossible. And I think if you can come here to Los Angeles then that’s it, you can go anywhere in the world.”

link: Q & A With Mo-Chica’s Ricardo Zarate, Part 2: The Joy of Barracuda, L.A. Peruvian Food + Life and Soccer in England – Los Angeles Restaurants and Dining – Squid Ink

“Why is the painting-camera gap where Baldessari toils so fertile? Before the media age, when pictures meant paintings, their rarity made them powerful and astounding. Today we’re so inundated by a nonstop flood of camera images that we’re largely insensible to them. Images wash over us, like the weather, so paintings have lost their once-singular ability to galvanize. Using paintings’ historic raw materialism as a guide, Baldessari finds ways to jam the whirling camera-circuits. His best work stops us short, allowing us to see things with fresh eyes.”

link: Art review: ‘John Baldessari: Pure Beauty’ @ LACMA | Culture Monster | Los Angeles Times

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