Rhinocrisy

that the video of the beheading of Nick Berg is floating around on the internet and people seem so interested in downloading and watching it. Or, at the very least, people are posting it on a website because “the public has a right to know” and they think there are a lot of people interested in watching it. Something about that creeps me out.

But I wonder also where the line must drawn. I take no pleasure in viewing pictures of corpses but I think it’s important people are aware of what is happening in our world, especially if it’s a result of what our country is doing. I think people need to know so they know what they’re supporting when they say “yeah, we should invade ___;” “yeah, bomb them to the Stone Ages,” “yeah, our boys are just defending themselves,” “yeah, let’s go liberate some Iraqis.” People need to see these pictures to know how things translate to people on the ground. At the same time I don’t think people should become desensitized to the violence.

I am so disgusted that I can’t really convey it in words. If somehow I could vomit onto this blog it might convey the depths of my disgust.

I’m disgusted by self-righteous back-patting (e.g. here)over our wonderful democracy. Why is democracy so great? Because, after we killed 10,000 civilians and tortured hundreds of others, some of us feel bad about it. Gee fucking wowie. Thank god for democracy, where we pause and say, “Huh, that wasn’t so nice,” after committing the same crimes as our favorite enemies. Our glorious leader refuses to apologize for the crimes of his intelligence agencies, but will wax melodic about how wonderful it is that people are making inquiries into “what went wrong”. And here I imagined that the laudable goal would have been a society that didn’t birth such evil mischief in the first place. Will someone tell me what school of morality condones the slaughter of 600 civilians as a punitive measure?

What’s especially appalling is that the level of outrage is really NOT that high, if people can still praise the virtues of America after all this. Even a generation ago My Lai turned stomachs, but I heard nary a peep over the comparable level of slaughter in Fallujah.

May the wrath of God quickly wipe this sorry excuse for a nation off the face of the planet, and may the mere memory of its name forever inspire the same disgust I feel right now.

Well, dangit, as expected the wimpy Saudis caved and announced a production increase in oil. Prices fell accordingly. Though, I will note with glee, they didn’t fall that far and remain well above $30, and people continue to mutter darkly about high demand and China. I’ll keep my hopes up… or… down… I’m not sure which it is.

I hope you’ll forgive me this opportunity to flex my Cassandra syndrome and chortle gleefully at the possibility of impending catastrophe. The price of oil reached $40 for the first time since 1991 and forced government faplaps to finally admit that yes, high oil prices could ultimately slow the economy. Even OPEC is distressed by high oil prices, since sustained high oil prices means conservation, i.e. fleeing from oil to other energy sources, which means loss of profits (though since they announced production cuts a month ago, maybe they have no one to blame but themselves).

I chortle gleefully because I’m an afficianado of the Peak Oil theory, which says that global oil production is going to peak sometime in this decade (and maybe already has), following which it will inevitably decline while demand continues to grow and oil price thus skyrockets and economies grind to a halt, followed eventually by agriculture and civilization (depending on how cranky you allow your theory to get). This theory gets short shrift from just about everyone for reasons I am unable to fathom, and it’s somewhat gratifying to see evidence that it might come crashing down on the heads of all these doubting Thomases.

I’m going to milk this “I told you so” stuff for all its worth, since I’m clearly not going to get any other gratification out of life.

Update: Looks like Paul Krugman has joined the Cassandras. Although he’s pretty wimpy about it. But I’ll take any heavy-hitters I can get… gratification, here I come!

Every time I listen to the piece in question* I am struck by the fact that the listener is brought through a very specific range of emotions when listening to it. This is really a tribute to Chopin’s genius, but what I find really striking is that his feat is even possible in the first place. Why is music so emotionally compelling? How can a specific passage make me weep, or feel hope, or feel light-hearted, or aggressive, etc.? Why is it that the same passage can produce the same effect regardless of who listens to it? Why do you know you’re listening to a sad love song before the lyrics start?

I’ve been mulling over this for a couple of months now. Several explanations have been suggested to me. The first was that it’s simply learned behavior: I’ve heard Chopin’s Funeral March so many times I know it’s supposed to be sad. This explanation is too B.F. Skinner for my tastes. I don’t have to be told how to feel when I hear a new piece of music, the music speaks for itself. Similarly the explanation that I’ve absorbed some cultural instruction, been taught to associate particular intervals or progessions with specific emotions doesn’t sit well - I can just as well listen to music from any culture and be swept along in its emotional currents. [NB - I apologize for my lack of proper terminology. I don’t know a goddamn thing about music.]

Unfortunately the relevant fields seem to be dominated by idiots. For example, Steven Pinker (whom I consider to be a fuckwad) opines that music is “mental cheescake”, a happy evolutionary accident that’s simply an outgrowth of other developments, like language or some sorts of pattern recognition. Aside from the fact that I generally think Pinker is a boob, I find this claim outrageous. First of all, as usual Pinker has no evidence of any sort to back up his specious claims (and yet he gets so far in life - tragic). Second of all, it seems quite clear that music operates in very specific and complex ways on the brain. We only enjoy certain frequencies, rhythms, harmonies, and more stuff that I don’t have words for. For all this to be the result of haphazard accident seems unlikely. Finally, music isn’t tied to just one emotion; it’s a full-on emotional language. These associations have to be intentional (e.g. God made us that way) rather than accidental. Thankfully nearly all other serious researchers in the field disagree with Pinker (who is a moron).

Then there’s a crowd of hopeless dimwits attempting to pin naive evolutionary explanations on it, like “It’s because of mating advantage that it evolved.” Since our understanding of human evolution and the workings of the brain are incredibly primitive no one should even be hazarding a guess right now as to how something so complex evolved.

I’m gratified that there’s a body of research at least confirming my observation (e.g. a lady named Carol Krumhansl from Cornell who does research on music cognition finds that music with quick tempo and a major scale makes people happy, and slow tempo and minor scale makes people sad). I’m going to try and read some of the relevant literature. Of course, anything interesting will be reported here.

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*Sorry, I can’t link to it. You can email me for an mp3.

From the internal Army report, via the Washington Post, then Empire Notes:

Basic Army Doctrine was not widely referenced or utilized to develop the accountability practices throughout the 800th MP Brigade’s subordinate units. Daily processing, accountability and detainee care appear to have been made up as the operations developed with reliance on, and guidance from, junior members of the unit who had civilian corrections experience….

So, the prison is amazingly abusive and they get their culture from…members of the unit who had civilian corrections experience? What does that say about US prisons?