Comment: Watch the Packaging

We have never lived in a more duplicitous age of mass-communication.
Partisan propaganda is becoming more insidious and sublime than
ever before.

Here’s the classic setup:

1) First, the delivery: matter-of-fact, neighbourly, and gently
authoritative.

2) Second, the offence: more than just choosing a random offender,
but an offender who acts as a subtle metaphor for a greater (more
dire) concern. For example, rather than choosing someone who (let’s
say for naive reasons) refuses to honour fallen WWII soldiers,
choose someone who is also a university student. Student council would be
perfect: corruption at the root of education. Suddenly (seamlessly) your target
becomes indicative of a classic hate-mongering cliche: the
ungrateful and radical liberal post-secondary environment. This is
the classic stereotype – worked great in Cambodia.

3) Third, compound the offence with a black and white conflict:
heroes and villains. Follow the naive student’s debacle with an
earnest recapitulation involving inarguable tales of those who
bravely fought for our freedom from fascism. Talk about how evil
lurks at every corner and does not care about the democratic rights
of civilians, and how the only tonic for this insidious evil is a
militarised environment: soldiers, police, guards, controllers.
Slowly draw this together with the events proceeding September 11th
2001 and proudly unfurl the [place country here] flag.

4) Fourth, summarize. Condemn the naivety of post-secondary
environments – portray them as liberal oases for myopic elites, while
our downtrodden guardians fight without asking for thanks, against
an all-pervasive evil which is thankful for student dissent.

5) Conclude with a question for the general public: who’s side are you
on?

This is the overarching style indicative of news media formats
today: rhetorical, manipulative, and hate-mongering. It’s all in the
packaging, not the individual stories themselves. Who wouldn’t
believe the student is a naive idiot? Who wouldn’t believe that
soldiers put their lives on the line everyday? Put the two together
and you have cause to be suspicious about what goes on in
post-secondary environments – about the students, teachers, and
those who defend their rights.

It’s similar to documentary filmmaking: there’s no such thing as
objective. The minute you edit footage you are making an intentional
move to direct the discussion in a particular way/format. Words like
‘fair’, ‘balanced’, and ‘objective’ have been twisted like toffee in
the last five years. The end result is: you’re on your own.

Utilize critical thinking at all times. Ask yourself if you’re being
shown the big picture or simply baited. Ask yourself if there is a
perspective that isn’t being allowed into the picture. Ask yourself
if the questions asked are not actually questions, but assumptions
(ie. How long until Quebec separates?).

When you turn on the news, you have no friends.

Share

Remembering Michael Cahill

I don’t normally talk about “me”, because there are more than enough blogs out there that do a much better job at that sort of thing. However, it would be strange if I didn’t post an excerpt from an article that was published today in the Austin American-Statesman by Denise Gamino. It concerns the murder of my uncle in 1979, which has since gone into the territory of unsolved or ‘cold’ cases.

Link: A calendar book, a guitar and a very cold case

Excerpt:

Michael Cahill chased his musical dream down the street, around his apartment and through the backyard.

It was the last thing he ever did.

Seconds later, he was shot to death in his driveway, a single bullet through the middle of his forehead.

Cahill was running after his beloved guitar. It disappeared into the darkness in the hands of the very odd burglar whom Cahill startled, and then raced after.

Mike Cahill died in Austin on April 13, 1979.

He was 28.

His murder is still unsolved.

His guitar is still missing.

And his family and friends still mourn a young troubadour whose poetic recordings are preserved on an obscure album pressed posthumously by friends as a memorial.

Cahill’s murder case has been cold now for 27 years, almost as many years as he lived.

It is an old Austin murder forgotten by most. Perhaps it seemed nothing more than an unfortunate, random killing of a University of Texas dropout in love with making music back when Austin overflowed with career-free hippie types marching to their own casual rhythms.

But those touched by the inexplicable killing in the Bouldin Creek neighborhood of South Austin think of it differently.

To them, it will always be the haunting “Book of Days” murder.

Read On

It’s not my intention (or preference) to speak about family or personal matters here, but Michael’s story deserves attention. This is the least that I can do for him and his memory.

#####

UPDATE (April 2020): http://imagitude.com/michael-cahill/michael-cahill-coda/

Share

Comment: About My Photography

I would like to thank everyone for their feedback on the photographs I’ve intermittently posted. I have neither the time nor resources to pursue photography professionally (or even semi-professionally), but in a strange way this grants me the freedom to do things at a pace I can manage and maintain. Your comments are always appreciated.

A little (brief) history – my first camera was a Nikon 401-s. Great Nikkor 50mm lens, good auto/manual camera, especially for a beginner (I was all of 19 when I purchased it). It still looks sleek to this day:

However, the longer I used it, the more I realised that it was, contrary to its claim, more auto than manual. Whenever I tried to experiment with exposures it simply wouldn’t let me. Which sucked. However, again, for an amateur it was a sweet camera to have.

Last year I decided that I wanted to take control – full control. No auto focus, auto metering, auto exposure, auto anything. I wanted no handicaps, figuring that if I was truly going to learn more I needed to start from absolute basics. At first I thought about a Pentax K1000, which is rightfully heralded as a brilliant manual camera. However, upon further searching, I came across former-Soviet Union (or “FSU”) cameras. I’ve long known that FSU optics are particularly good, seeing as they raided the Zeiss laboratories during the Allied siege of Berlin in WWII – essentially, the Soviets took the equipment and some of the technicians back home with them. Soon after, they started churning out replicas of Leica cameras. Among them was the Zorki series. They’re good, they’re cheap, they’re ugly, they’re heavy (really, it’s like having a brick in your bag), but the optics are great and they’re generally reliable (in proportion to the person you’re buying from in any case).

So, I bought a 1966 Zorki-4 on eBay:

Um…pretty, eh? The lens is a 50mm Jupiter-8 (again, modelled on a similar Leica design). It’s a rangefinder camera, which means that it does not offer TTL (through-the-lens) focusing – basically you adjust the focus against a reflected image from the lens via an internal viewfinder. How’s thatfor manual. Simultaneously, I started shooting almost exclusively on positive (slide) film, particularly AGFA-brand.

The long-and-short is that I enjoy photography much more than I used to, and managed to do so in a way that recycled an existing good camera without buying something new (and managed to roll back time to an age where batteries aren’t necessary). More importantly, when I produce a good photograph now, I take greater pride due to the lack of auto-assistance.

All of the photographs you see on this blog (the ones tagged as “Photo: … “) are taken with the “Russian brick”.

A last note: I hate ‘gear’ sites, and I promise that this will not be a repeating theme – I’m not a prolific consumer. The reason I posted this is that the current market is flooded with a growing stream of plastic/electronic junk, and it’s enlightening to find something built 40 years ago that still manages to meet the task.

(btw – if you run a gallery, I’m all ears)

Share

Article/Review: The Man Who Said No To Wal-Mart

I caught a great review on Slashdot for Charles (Fast Company magazine) Fishman’s book The Man Who Said No To Wal-Mart. Although it seems a little lame to link to someone else’s review, I thought the review itself was very well written (kudos to Hemos). The subject matter itself is quite fascinating as it profiles a philosophy of doing business that seems…well…old-fashioned in the best possible way: doing what’s best for everyone from a long-term perspective. When was the last time you encountered that?

Excerpt:

—————-

Review – The Man Who Said No To Wal-Mart

Charles Fishman, senior writer for Fast Company magazine has recently published a book entitled The Man Who Said No To Wal-mart. It’s an excellent book (Yes, I’ve read it) that talks about the intersection of making good stuff, the commodization of products, and the changing world that we work in; not exactly high tech, but tech nonetheless.

Every year, thousands of executives venture to Bentonville, Arkansas, hoping to get their products onto the shelves of the world’s biggest retailer. But Jim Wier wanted Wal-Mart to stop selling his Snapper mowers.What struck Jim Wier first, as he entered the Wal-Mart vice president’s office, was the seating area for visitors. “It was just some lawn chairs that some other peddler had left behind as samples.” The vice president’s office was furnished with a folding lawn chair and a chaise lounge.

And so Wier, the CEO of lawn-equipment maker Simplicity, dressed in a suit, took a seat on the chaise lounge. “I sat forward, of course, with my legs off to the side. If you’ve ever sat in a lawn chair, well, they are lower than regular chairs. And I was on the chaise. It was a bit intimidating. It was uncomfortable, and it was going to be an uncomfortable meeting.”

It was a Wal-Mart moment that couldn’t be scripted, or perhaps even imagined. A vice president responsible for billions of dollars’ worth of business in the largest company in history has his visitors sit in mismatched, cast-off lawn chairs that Wal-Mart quite likely never had to pay for.

The vice president had a bigger surprise for Wier, though. Wal-Mart not only wanted to keep selling his lawn mowers, it wanted to sell lots more of them. Wal-Mart wanted to sell mowers nose-to-nose against Home Depot and Lowe’s.

“Usually,” says Wier, “I don’t perspire easily.” But perched on the edge of his chaise, “I felt my arms getting drippy.”

Wier took a breath and said, “Let me tell you why it doesn’t work.”

Read On…

—————-

Not the usual Slashdot fare, but it’s certainly nice to see.

Share

Live in Toronto: The Z-Rays

If you live in Toronto (or are visiting) and happen to be itching for something to do on a Saturday afternoon, may I heartily recommend catching the Z-Rays. They are currently in-residence at the mighty Planet Kensington, smack dab in the middle of Kensington Market. The band is an instrumental 3-piece specialising in hard-edged surf-punk and rockabilly. A total no-brainer, considering it’s backed by cheap beer and a total lack of pretention. Good times aplenty and a great way to spend a hangover, too. No, really – go.

(p.s. – they do pronounce it zee-rays)

(p.p.s – it’s from 3pm -> 6pm…what the hell does anyone do on a Saturday during those times but drink?)

(p.p.p.s – their MySpace site is here)

Share

Rest in Peace: Stanislaw Lem

From Reuters:
—————————————-

Solaris author Stanislaw Lem dies at 84
Mon Mar 27, 2006 10:34 AM ET

KRAKOW, Poland (Reuters) – Polish author Stanislaw Lem, one of the world’s leading science-fiction writers, died on Monday in his home city of Krakow at the age of 84 after a battle with heart disease.

Lem, whose books have sold more than 27 million copies and have been translated into more than 40 languages, won widespread acclaim for The Cyberiad, stories from a mechanical world ruled by robots, first published in English in 1974.

Solaris, published in 1961 and set on an isolated space stations, was made into a film epic 10 years later by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky and into a 2002 Hollywood remake shot by Steven Sodebergh and starring George Clooney.

“Shortly after 3 p.m. (1300 GMT) Stanislaw Lem died in the heart clinic, where he had been treated over the past few weeks for circulatory problems,” Andrzej Kulig, director of the Jagiellonian University hospital told Reuters.

Lem, born on September 12, 1921 in what is now the Ukrainian city of Lviv, studied medicine before World War Two. After the war, communist censorship blocked the publication of his earliest writing.

After the fall of communism in 1989 Lem ceased writing science-fiction, instead devoting himself to reports on near-future predictions for governments and organizations.

He wrote essays on computer crime, as well as technological and ethical problems posed by the expansion of the Internet.

—————————————-

As mentioned earlier this month, it is from an eponymous Lem book that I gave this blog the name Imaginary Magnitude.

I can only muster two thoughts:
1) Damn it.
2) Bless him.

Share

The Best of Bird Flu

A montage of the latest TV network bird flu graphics:

I particularly like the middle image (courtesy of CTV Canada) of the sideways-glancing chicken with the fiery globe behind it. Nice and balanced – no fear mongering here.

Share

Article: The Man Who Heard It All

I recently came across an article from The Nation that I’d bookmarked not too long ago. On the surface it seems like fanfare for the release of The Oxford History of Western Music (ISBN: 0195169794).However, as journalist Paul Griffiths talks to the man who put the canon together – Richard Taruskin – it quickly turns into a fascinating overview of how we encapsulate our historic understanding of Western musical culture. For example, the death of notation (ie original sheet music), the neglect of female composers, and racism. Fascinating stuff, particularly for those interested in music, history, and cultural anthropology.

Link: The Man Who Heard It All

Excerpt:

 

This is an astounding achievement. The Oxford History of Western Music fills five stout volumes (discounting a sixth given over to the index, bibliography and other such matters), and yet Richard Taruskin can justifiably speak of it as a single book. To be sure, it travels far and wide in pursuing a millennium’s ramshackle production of songs and dances, keyboard suites and operas, sacred chants and church cantatas, symphonies and chamber works, electronic compositions and virtuoso showpieces, a good number of them quoted in music type so that competent keyboard players can eavesdrop on this multicolored parade as it goes along. Meanwhile, however, the surrounding text keeps its steady voice of thoughtful inquiry, painstaking analysis, consistent generosity and courteous address to the reader. Nothing like this book has been attempted since the nineteenth century, and as the author ruefully remarks, nothing like it may be written again.

Taruskin makes clear his reason for this proud pessimism. The coherence of Western “classical” music–the jumble of types only partly enumerated above–lies in notation (though due acknowledgment is given here to what never was notated and so has been lost). Just as we can observe the emergence of clearly legible notation in the eleventh century, so we seem in Taruskin’s view to be witnessing its demise, as some of the composers he treats in his last chapter, from Charles Dodge to Laurie Anderson, go off into territories where notation is no longer of any use, and as the possibility arises with the spread of digital equipment that we may all compose, perform and even disseminate our own music without thought of staves, clefs and quarter notes.

In a sense, this book expresses the magnificence and melancholy of its age. Scholarship–some of it Taruskin’s own, on composers as widely separated in time as Stravinsky and the fifteenth-century master Antoine Busnoys–has brought into view, and often into performance, a vast amount of music that was only dimly known half a century ago. But that expansion of knowledge and experience has been accompanied, unavoidably, by doubts about the universal validity of the central repertory, or canon, that built up around the works of perhaps just a dozen composers from Bach to Mahler, nearly all of them not only dead white males but dead white German-speaking males.

There are many things I love about classical music. I love how, just like the best of our modern music, it can encapsulate history, life, and emotion. It is as if the composition itself is a biometric record of its day, its author.

However, music alone cannot tell us everything. When Solomon Volkov published Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich (ISBN: 087910998X) in 1979 which for the first time exposed a completely different picture of Shostakovich than what was assumed at the time (ie not a compliant citizen under Stalin’s reign), it drastically changed our view of both the composer and his music (the debate over this book is still raging today).

Music (classical or modern) paints a picture of lives and cultures past that deserve the painstaking (if admittedly imperfect) work that people such as Mr. Taruskin have committed to it, if only so that we can understand the context behind it.

Share