Is That a Real Reality?

Is That a Real Reality, or Did You Make It Up Yourself?:

"'Any musical innovation is full of danger to the whole State, and ought to be prohibited. So Damon tells me, and I can quite believe him; he says that when modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the State always change with them.'-- Plato, Republic IV"

"The idea that music can transform reality predates by many millennia the category "music" as we know it. Before art was understood as a phenomenon in itself apart from its ritual application, what we now call music was indistinguishable from magic."

Udo Kasemets once said to me, "I arrange sounds to have an effect on an audience; why is what I do is called 'abstract' while what economists do is called 'reality'?

Rotten Loves America

Johnny Rotten, the name synonymous with telling it like he sees it, is seeing America by bus and sharing his unique wisdom:

"Love your craft, love your family, love your friends, and the rest? 'Piss off'"

Statistics on Religion in America

Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life: "An extensive new survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life details statistics on religion in America and explores the shifts taking place in the U.S. religious landscape. Based on interviews with more than 35,000 Americans age 18 and older, the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey finds that religious affiliation in the U.S. is both very diverse and extremely fluid."

One of the great social triumphs of the 20th century is how Bohemian ethics have ubiquitously prevailed, and so deeply that tolerance and flexibility are now completely normal and commonplace; the new Pew study is further evidence.

Lest you believe the bile and rhetoric surrounding the upcoming US Elections or the non-sense non-science being foisted in the schools, the truth of the matter is a generally healthy human sense of awe and humility:

"Among those who are affiliated with a religious tradition, seven-in-ten say many religions can lead to eternal life. This view is shared by a majority of adherents in nearly all religious traditions, including more than half of members of evangelical Protestant churches"

Yellow Science

Yellow Science: "Global warming may or may not be 'the greatest scam in history,' as it was recently called by John Coleman, a prominent meteorologist and the founder of the Weather Channel. Certainly, however, under the scientific method it does not rise to the level of an 'item of physical knowledge.'

Nevertheless, the acceptance of man-made global warming as scientific fact has become so prevalent that the secretary-general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon, recently declared: 'The debate is over. It's time to discuss solutions.' Leaving aside the question of the secretary-general's qualifications, that is certainly one of the most antiscientific statements ever made."

some yellow journalism on yellow science, and why? for those who may be curious, yellow?