Andrew Grathwohl

It isn't challenging and hard to listen to. Your ears are the challenged ones.

Try making the site more modern-looking. That would greatly help the effectiveness of this good idea!

You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Musique Concrete is not "abstract" or "non-conceptual" - you're the one that is non-conceptual. The concepts of musique concrete are easily recognized if one cares to listen, and the composition, structure, texture, and timing of musique concrete are no different than a piece of 19th-century classical music. The evidence is all there, right in front of you, but your archaic mind and your shallow non-acceptance of unique timbres doesn't allow you to hear it. Your claim would be amounted to: Musique Concrete is not music because it does not always feature purely western instruments. Definition of music: Music is an art form whose medium is sound. Common elements of music are pitch (which governs melody and harmony), rhythm (and its associated concepts tempo, meter, and articulation), dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture. Please help me understand what about any piece of musique concrete, let alone Revolution #9, isn't music. I could easily point out to you every single one of those "common elements" in any piece of Musique Concrete, within seconds - just like any other more typical symphonic piece. But clearly my 1.5 decades of intense classical musical training and my musical ear are just too "abstract" to understand your flawless "logic." Please inform me as to how the structured, pitched, dynamic, and rhythmic electronic musics of the past 60+ years is actually not music. Thanks.

Much of the music could be called Romanticist. Remember that lyrics are not the only thing that can be romantic. The Beatles romanticized the power and passion of the human mind in many of their compositions, particularly those that featured larger ensembles than just the four of them. They put out an extremely varied song set, which ranged from bizarre, to happy, to sad, to organic, to synthesized, to inventive, and to plain. In their career, they touched upon language I would not agree with, philosophically, but I wouldn't doubt for a minute that just about each song they wrote embodied a characteristic of their metaphysical interpretations of reality, of humanity, and of personality, whether it be through their lyrics, through their compositions, or both.

I need to preface this by saying that I am not an Obama fan in any sense of the word... But seriously? Obama has not waltzed around apologizing for anything. Has he taken our troops out of Afghanistan yet? Has he made any effort to logically conclude our involvement with Iraq? Has he even come close to admitting the altruistic ways that caused us to give up the oil refineries that should be ours in the Middle East? And I'm happy that Obama's department is trying to prosecute the CIA agents who were involved in the torture scandal. Perhaps, once and for all, we will have a definite Supreme Court ruling on what the CIA is allowed to do. It's not as if the Supreme Court isn't on your side right now as it is! Bush appointed two cronies who will certainly defend a very loose interpretation of the Constitution, where suddenly, the eighth amendment is meaningless. I too support gridlock, but I think change is coming, in some amount. Look out for Peter Schiff, a republican running for the 2010 Senate seat currently occupied by Chris Dodd. All Objectivists should be standing behind this man, and if he wins, he will be an absolutely fresh voice in Washington DC.

You should just stop arguing this. You clearly have no formal musical education, because what you're saying contradicts very firmly-held beliefs regarding the progression of western music. It's not a French-derived name - it's a French name, given by the inventor of the musical process, Pierre Schaeffer. Like all other western classical music that came before it, Musique Concrete is an accepted, legitimate form of classical music composition, which is intended to produce a narrative listening experience, a dynamically-flowing score, and a full-colored sound spectrum... like a symphony. It's not "noise" or an "awful racket" as you put it - just because you cannot hear the similarities between a piece scored for orchestra and a piece scored for tape machine doesn't mean it's not legitimate, beautiful art. Dhomont's music is some of the most romantic music I've ever heard, and the same is the case for Luciano Berio's works. You haven't given a mere molecule of your brain to seriously enjoying and analyzing contemporary music, if you wish to continue this slanderous ridicule.

Yeah, radio isn't really a serious method of listening to music anymore. Hasn't been for years, sadly. However, you still run into the atypical station every once in a while that plays interesting music and caters itself to a slightly more intellectual audience. And actually, classical music is typically the best-recorded music in the industry. It is an extremely painstaking process, and it takes a lot of time, configuring, and precise measurements, to faithfully record classical music. Luckily, on the radio, classical music stations have a pretty varied selection, with really knowledgeable deejays behind the microphone. Sirius is indeed higher quality, but still not enough to be able to distinguish the quality of the masters. Could you identify what specifically allowed the audio of the new masters to sound "better equalized" and "richer" sounding? Because I would disagree with "richness" - the 800-2k range was actually cut a bit for this release, which is where audible "richness" is held within the frequency spectrum. It's a good thing, too; it allowed Paul's basslines to come in much more clearly, and also made vocal harmonies sound more detailed. Many people have made remasters of the Beatles catalog, but EMI has only touched it a few times. A lot of folks on the outer fringes have remastered the Beatles catalog to be cut for vinyl, though I'm not sure how many of those masters ever actually made it to the pressing stage. I would agree with you here, actually. I love the Beatles, but even during their time period, there were other composers and performers doing just as, if not more, interesting things in terms of composition and production. In terms of the public's reception of the Beatles, if it weren't for their earlier material, which I find superficially simple and vile, they would have never been recognized for their later material (the good stuff).

Yes, it would be. Normal FM only broadcasts baseband audio - 30Hz-15kHz. Normal adult human hearing begins around 60Hz, but ends around 17kHz. The 15-17k frequency band produces essential audio information that greatly affects the perceived timbres of most musical instruments. It is especially important for brass, woodwinds, strings, and percussion. But that's beside the fact, because you'd need to be literally camped out right next to the broadcasting tower to hear the full 30-15k spectrum it produces. As you go further and further from the broadcast tower, signal noise gets introduced at pretty high levels. If you're listening on a stereo, meaning two audio channels, you'll have an especially low signal-to-noise ratio. Radio additionally compresses the living hell out of audio, so any positive dynamic processing you hear on an audio track would be void when listening through a radio receiver. Because of the relative cost of radio receivers, digital or otherwise, you also have to expect less-than-stellar audio reproduction components. The internal components will be Chinese-manufactured electronics not specifically-designed for audio playback, and the audio output components will be similarly low-quality. I'm studying digital signal processing in college, and have had years of training, both academic and professional, in audio engineering, production, and mastering. My equipment, by most professional standards, is precise enough be utilized in professional mastering studios. Indeed, I've listened to the new remasters on this equipment, and the new Beatles mono remasters are brilliant. The stereo ones are OK too. But to think you can hear the intricacies of an audio master through a radio broadcast would be nothing more than fooling yourself.

Frankly, with the sound fidelity of radio broadcast mediums, it would not be possible to hear the difference between the various older remasters of the Beatles catalog and the new remasters that were put out recently... especially if they played the stereo remasters! I've heard many of the mono and stereo remasters, and while they sound better, what you're writing about is nothing more than placebo.

Shows what you know about music. Revolution #9 was a musique concrete composition. Of course it wasn't a song. If it were both, it would be a contradiction of terms! Musique concrete is not devoid of "rational content," you simply do not understand it. If it weren't for musique concrete, developed by the masters of middle 20th century classical music, such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, Edgar Varese, and Francis Dhomont, some of the most widely-recognized achievements in music and production would never have been realized. Just because it abandons the tradition of western compositional form doesn't mean it doesn't have a form, or that it lacks structure.

You said: You claim, grounded in reality, that either the United States supports Israel, or else it is swept from existence. Since, in reality, Israel still exists, I would imagine, given what you said, that you think we've been engaging in the former, rather than the latter, and that it's been successful because Israel has not been replaced by barbarism. What may be pretty vile in its own way is the attempt to utilize reason to carry out policies as being irrefutably right or wrong, Odden, when your reasoning is not even close to accurately portraying the scenario. Introducing ridiculously simplified scenarios like the one you did belittles the lives of the people involved in the conflict, and then attempting to use reason as your faculty of understanding the situation just smacks every student of Objectivism across the face.

Networks choose to not broadcast those kinds of things all the time. FOX decided to not air a White House broadcast a couple months ago. ABC is not forced to broadcast presidential speeches... not yet, at least.

Don't reconstruct my argument by simplifying my words down to fit your distortions. I debated Mr. Odden's assertion plenty. Lots of people defended current US practices, including Mr. Odden. Maybe you could discuss the topic at hand more often, and criticize peoples' debating styles less. If you think you're right, why don't you demonstrate it without trying to put other people down without substance?

Actually, yes, everything is so black and white. Rejecting this notion, it's no wonder that you haven't respect for the individual's rights.

I agree that need is not a valid claim on our lives. The point I was making was that the Israelis, as a civilized nation, don't need help - otherwise they wouldn't be a civilized nation. What Israel needs, like any civilized nation, is specialization, trade, and diplomacy. Israel engages in that, but they also are the largest recipient of handouts from the US. Much of that aid isn't even military or defense related. They are fully capable of defending themselves from any enemy, and are one of most educated peoples on this earth. In other words, your argument is not valid. Civilized nations exist on their own, not through the aid of others. A civilized nation unable to survive on its own is an oxymoron. It is only rational to aid another nation if it is in our best interest. And it would only be in our best interest if that nation is legitimately unable to do whatever they wish to do without our help. So which is it - are they uncivilized - unable to live by means of their own virtues, and unable to keep their civilization from crumbling without foreign intervention and aid - or are we giving them charity - unnecessarily providing American resources to a nation that doesn't need them, unnecessarily sacrificing America's resources when they could be spent on things that would directly defend the individual rights of its citizens? Do the Israelis have anything to offer us? If so, then why aren't we trading with them for our money and resources that we provide them? If not, then why are we sending them anything, and why are they worth defending? If "stability" in the region is the answer, then why not overthrow the Israeli government ourselves, which, according to you, cannot survive without us anyway? Surely we could do a better job running their government than the Israelis? Of course, we couldn't do that, because that would be an initiation of force, but hopefully that makes the point pretty clear. You can't have it both ways. To defend the United States' current practices and opinions regarding Israel, would be to accept the notions that: 1. a nation can be civilized whilst helplessly depending on another nation for its very survival; 2. the lives of the Israelis are not capable of being run by the Israelis themselves; 3. the Israeli government should not have a monopoly on the initiation of force on behalf of the Israeli people and; 4. the United States' best interests are served by giving away their resources to another nation as opposed to trading for them.

By "we", I mean the United States. There's no need to be so nit-picky, as you could have easily deduced this fact. The United States' policies towards Israel are not supporting civilization over barbarism. You made an equally strange claim earlier: Israel doesn't need support from the US to exist. They have a stockpile of nukes, an extremely sophisticated military, and pretty sophisticated/educated citizens. And what the hell kind of civilization is one which needs the support of another to survive? If they could not survive on their own merits, then something would be seriously wrong with the way they ran their country.

I never said we shouldn't support Israel over other states. I said we shouldn't support them as we do now. Perhaps we do have "interests" in the Middle East, but they can be obtained through means of trade and mutual benefit. Your assertion, though, that I hate military action is almost completely unrelated to the Israel/Palestine debate. Most of our support to Israel is done on a diplomatic and monetary level. And if we did have military subsidies to that country to a greater degree, that would only make the monetary expenditure a greater threat to our individual rights. There is no need to get our armed forces involved in an area that can be beneficial to us only through peaceful diplomacy, trade, and specialization. You advocate a position that is completely unrealistic. It would be totally irrational to ignore the irrationality of the Middle East and their political systems. No matter how logical our actions may be, if they cause anything but benefit to the protection of individual rights, they are not rational. Our policies regarding the Israel/Palestine debate would only be rational if we accepted that all those involved are also thinking rationally - they're not. And I have a hard time believing for an instant that the US government acts with much rational thought. Your lumping together of "free nations" hinders your argument's logic. Is the US a "free" nation? Perhaps according to your definition of the word, and perhaps as compared to the world overall, but that doesn't mean our government - nor Israel's - respects individual rights enough to be involved in the issues as they are. As I said, the US practices its fair share of statist and socialist policies, as does Israel. Yes, they're better than most countries in that regard, but does that mean they're up to the standard to practice interventionism, give hand-outs, or play favorites? Dealing with issues that could result in either life or death, as we do with Israel, is extremely sensitive. Things like that should only be tackled by the most logical and rational of minds. If the US were a freer nation, I am confident that it would be capable in that area, but for the time being, we are not any safer because of our involvement with Israel. Supporting Israel as we do now is making the US less safe. We give an enormous amount of money to Israel for all sorts of whim-based reasons, many of which have nothing to do with our foreign policy at all. Just because the connection is abstract doesn't mean it's invalid. Of course, it would be illogical to say that the Treaty of Versailles "caused" the Holocaust, but that obviously isn't what he meant. In the case of the Treaty of Versailles, it was an irresponsible piece of diplomacy. The treaty attempted to quell Germany's military, which it did not succeed in. Any rational person would have had the foresight to understand that a treaty like that would send Germany spiraling into chaos, which would leave the region extremely unstable. Unstable regions, as history has shown, tend to produce radical figures, and those radical figures tend to be successful in gaining power in these regions. As I said earlier, if you ignore the irrationality of the parties involved, then you aren't acting rationally yourself. It was extremely irrational to think for an instant that Germany was going to live up to the Treaty of Versailles. Could we honestly expect the Germans to act rationally, after everything they did prior to the signing of the Treaty of Versailles? It was also extremely irrational to ignore the warning signs of history. Could we honestly expect the Germans to handle the responsibility of rebuilding under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, after all the nonsense they allowed to happen prior to the signing of the Treaty of Versailles? If the goal of the Treaty of Versailles was to keep the Allied powers safe, then that goal was not met. The treaty could have been written to ensure the safety of the Allied forces, but instead we wrote a treaty that merely "punished" the Germans... but not enough to allow them to remain in the depraved condition that the Treaty of Versailles mandated without a huge socialist uprising. A similar thought process could be applied to the Israel situation. Are our actions really making us safer? No. Are they protecting individual rights of Americans? No. Are they forcing the taxation of American citizens to pay for Israeli bulldozers, fighter jets, and construction contracts? Yes. Are the US government or the Israeli government rational governments? Not really. Our policies should be justified by rationally predicting and understanding the consequences of those policies - not simply ignoring the irrationality of the parties involved and hoping for the best. If those consequences are not directly defending individual rights of American citizens, then the American government has no moral backing in its actions. No matter how much you want to it, no Middle Eastern country, including Israel, is going to start acting rationally overnight.

USB ports are just above the PS/2 ports, to the right of the ethernet jack.

What? Surely, those TV stations broadcast the speech because they wanted to? Nobody is forcing ABC News to broadcast the speech. You're off your rocker.

Anti-discrimination laws? What about laws that are discriminatory? That would be what our present system of marriage entails. Here's the CT bill: http://www.cga.ct.gov/2007/TOB/H/2007HB-07395-R00-HB.htm Tell me whose rights are being run over in order to recognize a marriage as a union between two individuals (as opposed to a man and a woman).

How is that in America's interest? I think that needs an explanation. If the stability of that region was in our best interest, then why didn't we handle it? Why give our blood and treasure to another nation, when surely we could have handled it better on our own? Saying that our funding of the IDF is the reason for "peace" over the last 30 years among Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Israel, would be implying that their military might is only attributable to our charity. Would you be prepared to say that we bought Israel's friendship and military might, and that we created and inspired their society's protection of some individual rights? If so, then I'd question the rationality of obtaining such a friendship. It sounds like they've benefited a lot more from us than we have from them. Doesn't sound very rational to me. Israel should survive based on its own merits. If it cannot handle its own military, domestic, and foreign policy operations well enough without our help, then it has to go through the corrections necessary to revise its strategies. The United States grew to its level of greatness without the charity of other nations, and I believe we should expect the same level of responsibility from the rest of the world. Why hold the rest of the world to a lower standard?

I understand the distinction, but I did not mean to assert that Ayn Rand made racist remarks. I only meant to show that the Israelis, as a country, are not much different than the US, and as a people, are not much different than the Palestinians. Just because a nation upholds some individual rights in a similar vain as the US, does not mean that it is not a sacrifice (immoral) to back up that nation as we do Israel. Overall, our treatment of Israel has been altruistic, and has brought detriment to the Israelis, the Palestinians, and ourselves. Simply put, the United States is not any safer because of how we handle Israel, and therefore the peoples' individual rights are no more protected than if we weren't involved with them like we are. I don't necessarily believe that we should be in NATO, either. It is in the best interest of a nation to be involved in other nations' affairs at its own rational discretion.

There isn't much of an objective reason to support Israel. I agree that they share some of the qualities that make the United States great, but they also have their fair share of huge weaknesses. Like the US, their government engages in various forms of whim-based censorship. They have a non-voluntary military. They have engaged in many questionable war tactics and have treated life cheaply. Like Ayn Rand said during a Phil Donahue interview, anybody who would kill innocent women and children of their enemy is a monster. The Palestinians have engaged in such actions, but ignoring Israel's engagements in such actions would be intellectual dishonesty. A lot of people back up Israel by claiming they are an advanced nation surrounded by savages, but one look into the daily religious practices of their citizens would uncover all sorts of savage and mystical practices. Furthermore, and more importantly, much of their technological achievements come from US entitlements/subsidies. I refuse to ignore this fact when so much of the Objectivist opinion of the Arabs stems from our past political and business involvements in the region. If it is irrational to ignore these contexts, then they must be equally present when analyzing Israel's successes in the MENA region. Then I wonder what the true strategic reasoning would be to have Israel as such a great friend in the region. We are able to utilize pretty much any foreign nation's military resources and landing points at the whims of the commander in chief without needing to be "BFFs" with them; do we need to sacrifice so much blood and treasure defending such a questionable nation as Israel, if all we care about is our own selfish national defense purposes? It seems like an error in logic, considering what is required normally to utilize other nations' strategic locations. This question is posed ignoring the fact that our relationship with Israel is completely against a capitalist government's role of protecting individual rights, as we send Israel everything from weapons to bulldozers with We The People's money. I feel like even posing the question of whether or not these subsidies are a responsible use of government revenues is belittling the topic beyond a rational point of debate, but hey, I'm trying to understand where all of this pro-Israel zeal stems from. I can't possibly see it stemming from rational behavior, so bear with me. I see the Israel vs. Palestine conflict as having nothing to do with the United States. The only rational position I could take is to entirely remove our presence from this conflict, as it serves no truly helpful function for US domestic or foreign policy. We could be just as friendly with Israel as we are with Turkey and still be able to utilize their navy/air bases to the same effect.

This is probably the best speech Obama has ever given. If only the rest of his principles and positions paralleled his understanding of the virtues of hard work: http://www.whitehouse.gov/MediaResources/P...dSchoolRemarks/

I'm from Connecticut and am quite proud that my state has decided to recognize same-sex marriages. The bills forces nobody to marry anyone. My father was a justice of the peace in CT - he married a gay couple, not because he had to, but because he wanted to. Nobody in the public or private sector is forced to do anything other than recognize that the two individuals have entered a life contract with one another. Of course, I would prefer that the state not have anything to do with marriages, and thus have no requirement to recognize or ban same-sex marriages to begin with. This would force the homophobe in this thread to completely revise his argument, of course, which would not enable him to cover up his prejudices with pseudo-reason. In a nation that respected and protected individual rights, there wouldn't be a single piece of legislation having to do with marriage - ever.