The Null Device
2003/10/27
20,000 Libertarians to move to New Hampshire, vote as a bloc, create anarchocapitalist utopia, where Man can smoke dope, fire guns and be free of the depredations of evil collectivist parasites. (via bOING bOING)
Although Jackie Casey had voted for Wyoming, she just moved from Portland, Ore., to Merrimack, between Nashua and Manchester, renting a basement apartment with her cat, Soopa Doopa Hoopa, and her two 9-millimeter handguns. (She wants a machine gun "or at least a rifle" for Christmas.) She has already hung one wall and her bathroom with framed posters of Frank Zappa, who was a libertarian himself.
Dr. Sorens wrote that "within about 10 years after our move, we should have people in the state legislature and we should have entrenched political control of several towns and counties." He added that "once we have control of the county sheriffs' offices, we can order federal law enforcement agents out, or exercise strict supervision of their activities," and "once we have obtained some success in the state legislature, we can start working on the governor's race."
(Why does the name "Clearwater, FL" come to mind at this point?)
Libertarianism, of the American Ayn Rand-influenced Propertarian bent, is weird; in particular, the part about putting property rights above all other concerns. I half suspect that, had Libertarianism as we know it existed during the American Civil War, most Libertarians would have sided with the slave-owners, whose sacred and inalienable property rights were being threatened by the evil statist Abraham Lincoln (the "American Lenin", as some Libertarians call him).
In 2003, we have 2GHz Pentium boxes, which we use to surf the web and check our email. This means that we have all that left-over CPU power to emulate vintage machinery, like arcade machines and old computers and analogue synths, and analogue televisions
Yes, analogue televisions. The latest release of jwz's big boffo compedium of doovy display hacks, aka xscreensaver, has code that emulates the circuitry of a NTSC television; originally, this was intended for an Apple II emulator, including the blue/orange fringes of letters. Gradually this evolved into a general-purpose TV emulator, one which can add authentic ghosting, snow, colour distortion and other television artefacts to the JPEGs on your desktop. Which is pretty nifty, in a somewhat perverted kind of way.
As computers get faster, emulators get more and more fine-grained, and evolve from emulating the high-level behaviours of the machines to emulating their implementation, down to the electrical characteristics of the circuits. How long until we see, for example, TB-303 emulators which simulate the cheap, loose-tolerance components used in the original 303s, or analogue synth emulators that come realistically untuned as they "warm up", neatly getting rid of that unsexy digital precision?
Today's Cat and Girl ties in nicely to the chip-tune/authenticity debate previously mentioned:
"Guitars are bourgeois, OK? They're expensive and the skill they demand is elitist!"
"We should be making music with computers! They're the populist medium of today!"
Mind you, computers are bourgeois and expensive too; the iBooks that all the inner city hipster kids have certainly are. Though maybe it's more authentic if you shlep along a battered beige box that looks like it was stolen out of an office and souped up numerous times, running Windows 98 and AudioMulch (or better: Linux and some home-brewed audio software; it's not going to sound as slick as Cubase, but slickness is bourgeois). Having to lug that and a 15" glass bottle to see what's going on bespeaks punk authenticity and commitment to one's art, in a way you can never get with an Apple PowerBook.
(Of course, there's no way you could carry a PC/monitor to gigs on a bicycle. Then again, real proles drive, usually battered Mazdas or Holden panelvans. Cycling everywhere is a bourgeois affectation, like vegetarianism. Discuss.)
(Btw, Graham: any ideas on how one could combine tracker modules and live performance? Perhaps a tracker with keyboard-controlled mutes/cuepoints/sample triggers could be useful for that...)
It's official: Radiohead are touring Australia next year. They're playing the Rod Laver Arena on April 26, with tickets going on sale in about a week. I'm not sure I'll go; I went to see The Cure (yes, I know) at the Rod Laver Arena some years back, and needed to rent a pair of binoculars to actually see the band; had they been booked into, say, the Metro (where I saw New Order and Kraftwerk) or the Forum (where Moz tore the roof off the place), I'd buy a ticket in a flash.
In other rumours, a certain Scottish band may be touring Australia next year; they'll probably play at the Corner or the Prince or somesuch, undoubtedly supported by Architecture In Helsinki or The Lucksmiths or someone like that.
And speaking of touring bands, FourPlay are coming down to play the Queenscliff festival. So Melbourne fans will be able to see them slightly more conveniently than by travelling up to Sydney.