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New compositions on the Reaktions site, all made with versions of the HERW Modular-Mini synth--a user-built instrument in the Reaktor library. While all Reaktor synths are "modular" and "patchable" in the sense that you can go behind the interface and move parts and wires around, this one has virtual patchcords (and a keyboard) on the front. The look and sound recalls the old modular synths from the '60s and '70s, so not surprisingly the compilation has its nods to Wendy Carlos, Keith Emerson, and the Forbidden Planet score, all updated into the clean, infinitely tweakable digital environment. My favorite .mp3s are by chietronix, r.domain, Joe Risch, and herw (Herwig Krass) himself. The Reaktions group is a bit insular--many restrictions are put on the entries for these compilations, the main one being "made in Reaktor only." I suppose it's a way to really learn the instrument, but it's like Iron Chef having a "soft shell crab battle" where the only ingredient the chefs could use was soft shelled crab. Yes, one is a foodstuff and the other is a totalizing instrument, but while all-Reaktor compositions can be stimulating they frequently need something else.
An earlier report, on the Oki Computer 2 compilation, is here.
The Wilhelm Scream Compilation Video [YouTube]
This audio clip of a man screaming dates back to a '50s western (in which "Wilhelm" is shot by bow and arrow) and is an in-joke among sound effects artists. They stick it in films whenever possible. See an assortment of Wilhelm scream clips in rapid succession. (via Eyebeam reBlog).
Meet Abby Walton. As Travis Hallenbeck says, "a photo a day, same expression."
Juan Cole:
The idea that the whole Eastern Mediterranean had to be polluted, that the Christian Lebanese economy had to be destroyed for the next decade or two, that 900,000 persons had to be rendered homeless, that a whole country had to be pounded into rubble because some Lebanese Shiites voted for Hizbullah in the last election, putting 12 in parliament, is obscene. Bush's glib ignorance is destroying our world. Our children will suffer for it, and perhaps our grandchildren after them.
The New York Times' Bob Herbert on Hillary Clinton and the other "Iraq War Enablers":
So there was Hillary Rodham Clinton grandstanding for the television cameras last week, giving Donald Rumsfeld a carefully scripted chewing out for his role in the Bush administration’s lunatic war in Iraq.This is great, but to the list of "Iraq war enablers" we have to add Herbert's employer the New York Times, which printed false stories about Iraqi superweapons and gleefully got behind Bush's propaganda effort.
Casual viewers could have been forgiven for not realizing that Senator Clinton has long been a supporter of this war, and that even now, with the number of pointless American deaths moving toward 2,600, her primary goal apparently is not to find an end game, but to figure out the most expedient political position to adopt — the one that will do the least damage to her presidential ambitions.
Mrs. Clinton is trying to have it both ways. A couple of months ago, she told a gathering in Washington: “I do not think it is a smart strategy either for the president to continue with his open-ended commitment, which I think does not put enough pressure on the new Iraqi government.” She then added, “Nor do I think it is smart strategy to set a date certain.”
Slick Willie has morphed into Slick Hilly, as the carnival of death in Iraq goes on.
Mrs. Clinton is just one of the many supporters of the war who should have known better from the beginning, and who are now (with the wheels falling off the Iraqi cart and public support for the war plummeting) engaged in the tricky ritual of rationalization.
The favored “it’s not my fault” explanation is that the war was always a grand idea, but the Bush gang was so dopey it fouled up a good thing. If only they’d sent in more troops. If only they hadn’t disbanded Saddam’s army. If only they’d turned right instead of left, or left instead of right, Iraq would be an oil-rich, free-market, democratic paradise, even as we speak.
I’m not trying to give a pass to Mr. Rumsfeld, President Bush, Dick Cheney or any of the rest of the war-loving, high-strutting, muscle-flexing men and women in this most dreadful of administrations. These are the individuals who drove us into the flames of Iraq that so far have consumed scores of thousands of lives. But they could have — and should have — been stopped by wiser heads.
This was a war that never should have happened. There was a legitimate war for the United States to fight in Afghanistan, [Whatever.--tm] but that was not enough for the administration. The Bush gang wanted a war with Iraq, and less-than-courageous politicians like Mrs. Clinton and many others lined up as enablers to help make that war happen.
Many of the Democrats in Congress supported the war only because they remembered the price paid by party members who stood against the first gulf war, a stand that became an embarrassment when the war was easily won and was therefore popular.
Despite the rationalizations now suddenly on the lips of so many, the problem with the current war in Iraq is not the way it was conducted, but the fact of the war itself. It was launched amid blinding, billowing clouds of deceit. There was never any legitimate reason for the war. Iraq had not attacked the U.S. and there was no imminent threat of attack.
The U.S. went in with guns blazing (“shock and awe”) like Matt Dillon shooting up the dusty streets of Dodge City. Only this was the real world, and the result has been unending tragedy.
The American occupation of Iraq was guaranteed, sooner or later, to provoke a sustained and bloody resistance, and it was inevitable that terror would be the resistance’s most effective tool. It was also certain that if the Shiites were empowered, there would be widespread retaliation for their many years of suffering under Saddam, and then the inevitable counterreaction of the suddenly disempowered Sunnis, and so on.
None of this was a secret. The warnings came from around the world before the first shot was ever fired.
Mrs. Clinton, other Democrats and whatever sensible Republicans may still be out there should be getting together to work out a plan for an orderly withdrawal of American forces from Iraq. This was not a war we were ever going to win. It’s time we brought our involvement to an end.
Americans no longer support this war, and there are few things more empty of meaning than dying in a war that one’s fellow citizens — safe at home — have already given up on.
We went into Iraq with bombs falling and guns blazing, insisting all the while that we were bringing the Iraqis the gifts of freedom and democracy. Instead, we gave them terror, chaos and civil war — in other words, a whole new generation of misery and mass death.
Shock and awe, indeed.
"Pop Mechanix" [mp3 removed]
The majority of the sounds were taken off the Internet--various sample sites. Does that mean the samples are public domain? Doubtful. Anyway, the material is reassembled more or less from the ground up. The piece starts off as a rather blunt techno stomper (built around three notes from the "classic" Roland Juno), and gradually gets more percussive and atmospheric, without ever quite losing the beat (I hope).
From an AP article (probably behind the Salon firewall)--not sure if the bolded statement is wry humor, fear of the Christian right, or both:
Previously hidden writings of the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes are being uncovered with powerful X-ray beams nearly 800 years after a Christian monk scrubbed off the text and wrote over it with prayers.What's wrong with "...during the Middle Ages, when superstition largely replaced science"?
Over the past week, researchers at Stanford University's Linear Accelerator Center in Menlo Park have been using X-rays to decipher a fragile 10th century manuscript that contains the only copies of some of Archimedes' most important works.
[...]
Born in the 3rd century B.C., Archimedes is considered one of ancient Greece's greatest mathematicians, perhaps best known for discovering the principle of buoyancy while taking a bath.
The 174-page manuscript, known as the Archimedes Palimpsest, contains the only copies of treatises on flotation, gravity and mathematics. Scholars believe a scribe copied them onto the goatskin parchment from the original Greek scrolls.
Three centuries later, a monk scrubbed off the Archimedes text and used the parchment to write prayers at a time when the Greek mathematician's work was less appreciated. In the early 20th century, forgers tried to boost the manuscript's value by painting religious imagery on some of the pages.
