A Slap in the Face of Naïveté

Terry O'Neill

If Woodstock was the zenith of the hippie-era aspiration for free love, then Altamont was its nadir

National Post, Monday, September 14, 2009

If nothing else, the news that British police are reviewing the July 1969 drowning death of founding Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones demonstrates that, even after almost half a century at centre stage, the Stones -- even the dead ones on whom moss has most certainly grown -- continue to possess an uncanny ability to command the public spotlight unlike few other entertainment acts. Or, for that matter, unlike few other people on Earth.

This ability to mesmerize the media and the masses also was evident at a more mundane level when newspapers and websites around the world published an entertainment-industry trifle disclosing that Sir Mick Jagger and his grizzled group of geriatric rockers are now, at $9-million a show, the world's most expensive wedding band.

It seems that whatever the story --dead Stones, money-grubbing Stones or simply ever-rolling Stones -- it matters little. They captivate us still.

It must be noted, however, that there was one rather significant show-biz and pop-culture story from the summer with which the Rolling Stones were not associated: the celebration in mid-August of the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock Music & Art Fair, the renowned gig at which the famous band did not play, but which nevertheless quickly became known as an epoch-defining event.

Having missed the magic bus ride to the Age of Aquarius that supposedly sprung fully formed from the mud of Max Yasgur's field in upstate New York, the Rolling Stones decided to stage a festival of their own later in the year at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. But poor planning forced the Stones to move the event at the last moment to a venue 30 minutes down the road.

And so, despite only two days' notice and with virtually no advertising, some 300,000 fans flocked to Altamont Speedway on Dec. 6, 1969, to gambol in what they expected to be some sort of post-Woodstockian stardust being sprinkled on an event billed as "three days of peace and music." That was the plan, anyway.

Instead, it is generally agreed that Altamont, with its four fatalities (one fan stabbed by a boozy Hells Angels bouncer; one drowned in an irrigation ditch; two run over by a hit-and-run driver while they slept) brought a crashing end to the euphoria created by the Woodstock festival just four months before. If Woodstock was the zenith of the hippie-era aspiration for free love, free weed and an eternal playlist of rock and psychedelic music, then Altamont was its nadir.

After all these years, however, it seems to me that Woodstock, which a contemporary observer enthused was "the greatest weekend since creation," was actually much less than what it appeared at the time, and Altamont was actually much more. Indeed, if it is true that Woodstock embodied generational aspirations -- that is, a drug-fuelled, euphoric utopianism where music, peace and love frolic like lambs in a field of clover -- then common sense should tell us that whatever success the festival enjoyed was, to put it bluntly, a fluke.

It was all a fantasy. The Age of Aquarius was actually the Age of Illusion. Or Self-Delusion. Anyone with half a brain knows, or should know, that half a million people cannot subsist on pot smoke and good intentions, no matter how much Jimi Hendrix they listen to. Yes, it was a good party, but it was not and could not be reality.

As surely as Kipling's Gods of the Copybook Headings inevitably return with "terror and slaughter" to claim hapless people who fall for the latest "ism," certain truths about our mortal existence here on Earth asserted themselves with devastating consequence at Altamont. Chief among them was the fact that half-baked notions of universal love will do little to protect human wellbeing when common sense is jettisoned.

Jagger may have thought that giving thugs unlimited beer, in exchange for their agreeing to protect his pitiful four-foot-high stage, would provide sufficient security, and he also may have presumed that an overriding Aquarian spirit would pacify the throng, but he was dead wrong on both counts.

If naivete was allowed to strut about unchecked at Woodstock, it received a needed slap in the face at Altamont. The idealism of the hippie era didn't tragically die at Altamont; it committed unavoidable suicide.

I can't help but recall the interview Jagger gave to a distinguished panel of academics and religious leaders during a British public-affairs TV show, World in Action, filmed shortly after he had escaped drug charges in the summer of 1967.

Asked how he wanted to be understood by the world, especially by young people, Jagger answered, "Just in the very way that I started myself, when I was quite young, which is just to have as good a time as possible, which most young people do try and do without any regard to responsibilities of any sort... The main thing to start off is to have as good a time as possible."

Two years later at Altamont, it became quite apparent that simply having "as good a time as possible" was as pathetic an excuse for a personal philosophy as could be imagined. It remains a tragedy that so many people of the Sixties and beyond still fail to recognize this. - Terry O'Neill is a Vancouver writer and editor who is also co-host of RoadkillRadio.com.

© 2009 The National Post Company. All rights reserved. Unauthorized distribution, transmission or republication strictly prohibited.

How high do you want your fi?

By Steve Guttenberg   •   Stereophile   •   April, 2009

Would you really want a perfect hi-fi?

Indulge my fantasy for a second—I'm talking about a system with DC-to-light bandwidth, zero noise and distortion, and unlimited dynamic range and resolution. It's an audiophile conundrum: When output precisely matches input, have we attained nirvana?

Maybe not. Most CDs and LPs aren't all that transparent, so I'm wondering if our obsession with transparency is misplaced. Soundstaging? Not if you listen to rock or jazz—the music's spatial depth, low-level ambience, dimensionality, and reverberation are all fabricated in the mix. Dynamics? Sorry, pal—compression, and lots of it, is an integral part of the recording, mixing, and mastering of most of the music you buy.

I blame my Magnepan 3.6R loudspeakers for this latest round of audiophile soul-searching. The Maggies tell me more about the music embedded in bits, pits, or grooves than any other speaker I've had in my home system. The panels' 55"-tall ribbon tweeters resolve differences between recordings with uncanny precision.

That said, a perfect speaker, amplifier, turntable, or CD player wouldn't automatically make every recording sound lifelike. At that point, the gear wouldn't have a "sound" per se; rather, the gear would lay bare the sound of each recording. I'm guessing that such a system would reveal the best recordings' innate musicality and that the middle-range recordings would still sound revelatory, but also that a significant percentage of your music would sound pretty ratty. Contrasting a pure audiophile recording like Ry Cooder and V.M. Bhatt's A Meeting by the River (CD, Water Lily Acoustics WLA-CS-29-CD) with Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run (CD, Columbia CK 33795) would be a mind-warping experience.

The Boss's album instantly transforms my MG 3.6Rs into a pair of 6'-tall AM radios. Yuck. Born to Run sounds all kinds of awful—grainy, harsh, spatially flat, dynamically crushed, with truly nasty-sounding reverberation—and I still love the music. This record suffers from what I call the Humpty Dumpty Effect: once the sound is broken, a system comprising gear rated Class A in Stereophile's "Recommended Components" won't undo such sonic mutilations, only reveal them with greater clarity. But I can turn off the analytical, audio-critic side of my brain and just let it be. No matter what, Springsteen rocks.

A Meeting by the River is breathtakingly gorgeous—it sounds you-are-there spectacular. Cooder's bottleneck guitar all but materializes between the MG 3.6Rs—I hear it and Cooder's band filling the acoustic space of Christ the King Chapel. That's no accident; the album was produced and recorded by a master engineer, Kavi Alexander, whose recording chain—microphones, mike preamps, analog tape deck, and analog-to-digital converter—were all designed and built by Tim de Paravicini. When you're listening to this album, you're hearing it through the audiophile-grade gear with which it was produced.

I think/hope that most of us put together hi-fi systems that reflect our sonic preferences. We like what we like: tubes, solid-state, analog, digital, electrostatics, horns, whatever. Considered purely objectively, tube electronics are less "accurate" than solid-state; the same can be said of CD vs vinyl. But if vinyl, or tubes, or both are what raise the hairs on the back of your neck, so be it. At the end of the day, what we crave is good old musicality. Music moves us more than sound. A lot more.

I think the age-old analog/digital divide is the least of it. The musicians do their thing, and the microphones, their positions relative to the instruments, and the skill and imagination brought to bear by the engineer, producer, and masterer in their use of equalization, compression, processing, etc., create the sound we hear. Analog tape, if used at all, is a mere flavor; today, virtually no one mixes or edits in analog; tape just about always gets bumped to digital before the recording date is complete. Pop or rock music is rarely played and sung live in the studio by the entire band. Out-of-tune singers and players are pitch-corrected, and drummers' off-kilter rhythms are tweaked. There's not a lot of there there.

Audiophile recordings, however, are almost always recorded "live," with the entire group playing in real time, and with minimal EQ, compression, and processing. But even these efforts never truly sound like the real thing. The very best high-end speakers and electronics are still a long way from perfect sound reproduction. Here, I define perfect as "indistinguishable from the sound of live music"; whether it's symphony orchestras, jazz combos, or rock'n'roll bands, we're still not even close. Some solo instruments fare better; guitars, flutes, voices—you can almost get a glimpse of their actual sounds. But a drum kit? An acoustic piano? No way.

One of the reasons we're not yet even in the ballpark is that we're still stuck in two-channel mode. Don't get me wrong—I love stereo—but if I could get the whole enchilada of a 360° virtual-reality experience, I'd plunk down serious cash. However, I've yet to hear a multichannel mix, whether on SACD, DVD-Audio, or Blu-ray, that's appreciably better than two-channel sound. We still await a holographically convincing recording technique to get us there.

The fantasy of perfect-fi is further complicated by the acoustics of the listening room. If you placed a perfect speaker system in an average room, you still wouldn't have perfect sound. The very best room-correction systems are a beginning, but they can't make your room disappear. We won't see that for a long, long time.

Which brings me to my final point: Does any of this matter? Most of my music collection hews closer to Springsteen's sound than to Cooder's. We've grown so accustomed to hearing heavily processed music that we now accept it as at least plausibly realistic.

The music is what we're here for. If it were perfectly reproduced, would we enjoy it any more? Or would we be happier if our speakers and/or electronics smoothed over the sound's rougher edges? Mark Levinson observed years ago that one of the worst symptoms of the audiophile "disease" is playing only music that sounds good through your system, to the exclusion of the music you love because the latter sounds less good through your system. I've been there; I know firsthand how absurd that is. Listen to music, not your hi-fi.—Steve Guttenberg

by Stacy Conradt - January 1, 2009 - 6:00 AM

Like a lot of you, I grew up on Sesame Street and the Muppets. But did you ever stop to wonder where they came from? Some of the characters we know and love were recycled from other TV shows and commercials Jim Henson worked on, while others were invented by using whatever materials were around. Be prepared for a little nostalgia, and I hope I didn’t leave out your favorite – not all of the characters have interesting background stories (sorry, Big Bird).

1. Cookie Monster. Jim Henson drew some monsters eating various snacks for a General Foods commercial in 1966. The commercial was never used, but Henson recycled one of the monsters (the “Wheel-Stealer”) for an IBM training video in 1967 and again for a Fritos commercial in 1969. By this time, he started working on Sesame Street and decided this monster would have a home there.

2. Elmo. The way it’s described by a Sesame Street writer, apparently this extra red puppet was just lying around. People would try to do something with him, but nothing really panned out. In 1984, puppeteer Kevin Clash picked up the red puppet and started doing the voice and the personality and it clicked – thus, Elmo was born.

3. Telly Monster was originally the Television Monster when he debuted in 1979. He was obsessed with TV and his eves would whirl around as if hypnotized whenever he was in front of a set. After a while, producers started worrying about his influence on youngsters, so they changed him to make him the chronic worrier he is now.

4. Count von Count made his first appearance in 1972 and was made out of an Anything Muppet pattern – a blank Muppet head that could have features added to it to make various characters. He used to be more sinister – he was able to hypnotize and stun people and he laughed in typical scary-villain-type fashion after completing a count of something and thunder and lightning would occur. He was quickly made more appealing to little kids, though. He is apparently quite the ladies’ man – he has been linked to Countess von Backward, who loves to count backward; Countess Dahling von Dahling and Lady Two.
5. Kermit was “born” in 1955 and first showed up on “Sam and Friends,” a five-minute puppet show by Jim Henson. The first Kermit was made out of Henson’s mom’s coat and some ping pong balls. At the time, he was more lizard-like than frog-like. By the time he showed up on Sesame Street in 1969, though, he had made the transition to frog. There are rumors that he got the name Kermit from a childhood friend of Henson’s or a puppeteer from the early days of the Muppets, but Henson always refuted both of those rumors.

6. Real Swedish Chef Lars “Kuprik” Bäckman claims he was the inspiration for the Swedish Chef. He was on Good Morning America, he says, and caught Jim Henson’s eye. Henson supposedly bought the rights to the Good Morning Americarecording and created the Swedish Chef (who DOES have a real name, but it’s not understandable). One of the Muppet writers, Jerry Juhl, says that in all of the years of working with Jim Henson on the Swedish Chef, he never heard that the character was based on a real person.
7. Animal. Everyone’s favorite member of Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem may have been inspired by Keith Moon of The Who. This is speculation, but people who support this theory will point out that Jim Henson named one of the Fraggle Rockcharacters “Wembley,” which is the town Moon was born in.
8. Miss Piggy is apparently from Iowa. Makes sense. Anyway, she started as a minor character on The Muppet Show, but anyone who knows Miss Piggy can see that she wouldn’t settle for anything “minor.” Her first TV appearance was actually on an Herb Alpert special. It wasn’t until 1976, when The Muppet Show premiered, that she became the glamorous blonde with a penchant for frog that we know and love today. Frank Oz once said that Miss Piggy grew up in Iowa; her dad died when she was young and her mother was mean. She had to enter beauty contests to make money.

9. Rowlf the Dog, surprise, surprise, was first made in 1962 for a series of Purina Dog Chow commercials. He went on to claim fame as Jimmy Dean’s sidekick on The Jimmy Dean Show and was on every single episode from 1963 to 1966. Jimmy Dean said Rowlf got about 2,000 letters from fans every week. He was considered for Sesame Street but ended up becoming a regular on The Muppet Show in 1976.

10. Oscar the Grouch is performed by the same guy who does Big Bird, Carroll Spinney. Spinney said he based Oscar’s cranky voice on a particular NYC cab driver he once had the pleasure of riding with. He was originally an alarming shade of orange. In Pakistan, his name is Akhtar and he lives in an oil barrel. In Turkey, he is Kirpik and lives in a basket. And in Israel, it’s not Oscar at all – it’s his cousin, Moishe Oofnik, who lives in an old car.

11. Gonzo. What exactly is Gonzo? Nobody knows. Even Jim Henson had no particular species in mind. Over the course of The Muppet Show, Muppet Babies and various Muppet movies, Gonzo has been referred to as a “Whatever”, a “Weirdo” and an alien. Whatever he is, he first appeared on the scene in 1970’s The Great Santa Claus Switch. His name was Snarl the Cigar Box Frackle. In 1974, he showed up on a T.V. special for Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass. He became Gonzo the Great by the first season ofThe Muppet Show and developed his thing for Camilla the Chicken almost accidentally: during one episode where chickens were auditioning for the show, puppeteer Dave Goelz ad-libbed, “Don’t call us, we’ll call you… nice legs, though!” It was decided then and there that Gonzo would have a bizarre romantic interest in chickens.

12. You have to love Statler and Waldorf. I couldn’t find much on their particular inspiration, but I can tell you that they’ve been around since the 1975 Muppet Show pilot. They are named after popular New York City hotels (the Statler Hotel was renamed the Hotel Pennsylvania in 1992.) Guess what Waldorf’s wife name is? Yep… Astoria (she looks startlingly like Statler.) FYI, Waldorf is the one with the mustache and white hair. Statler has the grey hair. Apparently Waldorf has had a pacemaker for more than 30 years.

13. Beaker. I always thought of Beaker and his buddy Bunsen Honeydew as characters that came along later in the Muppet timeline, but they have been around since the The Muppet Show. Although Beaker usually says things along the lines of, “Mee-mee-mee-mee!”, he has had a few actual lines: “Sadly temporary,” “Bye-Bye” and “Make-up ready!” Despite being word-challenged, he manages to do a pretty convincing Little Richard impression and, surprisingly, had mad beatbox skills. Beaker is one of the only Muppets that was never recycled from some other purpose – he was created solely for The Muppet Show.

14. Fozzie Bear. Poor Fozzie. He’s the perpetual target of Statler and Waldorf because of his horrible jokes and puns. It actually created a bit of a problem during the first season of The Muppet Show, because when Fozzie got heckled, he got very upset and sometimes cried. Viewers didn’t feel sympathy; they felt embarrassed. The problem was solved by making Fozzie an optimist so that even when he got heckled he was good-natured about it. It’s often thought that he was named after Frank Oz, who was his puppeteer, but Frank said it’s just a variant of “fuzzy bear.” Yet another story says he was named for his builder, Faz Fazakas. Wocka wocka!!

15. Bert and Ernie are the Muppet version of Felix and Oscar (theOdd Couple, for you young’uns). Lots of people think Bert and Ernie were named for some minor characters in It’s A Wonderful Life, but according to the Henson company, that’s just a rumor. Jim Henson always maintained that it was just a coincidence – the names just went well together and seemed to fit the characters. Jerry Juhl, one of the head writers, corroborated this and said that Jim Henson had no memory for details like that and would have never remembered the name of the cop and the taxi cab driver in the old Jimmy Stewart movie.

Other rumors to clear up: Bert and Ernie aren’t gay and neither one of them are dead. Now that we’ve got that straightened out, here are a few more tidbits: the original Ernie used to have a gravelly voice similar to Rowlf the Dog’s. Frank Oz was Bert’s puppeteer and hated him at the beginning. He thought Bert was ridiculously boring, but then realized that he could have a lot of fun with being boring. Jim Henson once said, “I remember trying Bert and Frank tried Ernie for a while. I can’t imagine doing Bert now, because Bert has become so much of a part of Frank.”

16. Grover. Everyone’s favorite “cute, furry little monster” made his TV debut on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1967. At the time, he was known as “Gleep” and was a monster in Santa’s Workshop. He then appeared on the first season of Sesame Street, but sported green fur and a reddish-orange nose. He didn’t have a name then, but by the second season he transformed into the Grover we know today, more or less – electric blue fur and a pink nose. The original green Grover was reincarnated as Grover’s Mommy for a few episodes. In Latin America and Puerto Rico Grover is known as Archibaldo, in Spain he is Coco, in Portugal he is Gualter and in Norway he is Gunnar.

17. Sweetums is one of a handful of full-body Muppets. He showed up in 1971 on the TV special The Frog Prince. This is where he got his name – when Sir Robin the Brave is about to defeat the ogre, a witch shows up and changes him into a frog (who later becomes Robin, Kermit’s nephew). Apparently smitten with the ogre, the witch tells her darling “Sweetums” that he can have the frog for breakfast.

Bigger fame awaited Sweetums, though – in 1975, he appeared on Cher’s variety show to do a duet with her to “That Old Black Magic”. He officially joined The Muppet Show cast in 1976.

18. Rizzo the Rat might sound familiar to you, especially if you’ve seen Midnight Cowboy – he is named for Dustin Hoffman’s character, Ratso Rizzo. He was created after puppeteer Steve Whitmire was inspired by rat puppets made from bottles. He first showed up on The Muppet Show as one of a group of rats following Christopher Reeve around – he’s easy to spot because he hams it up more than any of the other rats. He occasionally performs with Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem.

19. Pepe the King Prawn’s full name is Pepino Rodrigo Serrano Gonzales. I heart Pepe. He was a chef in Madrid before going Hollywood on Muppets Tonight in 1996. He was paired with Seymour the Elephant (Pepe was originally going to be a mouse) on the show, but Seymour never developed quite the same following and was only in two episodes. He rarely gets names right – some of his mispronunciations include “muffins” instead of Muppets, “Kermin” instead of Kermit and “Scooper” instead of Scooter. He’s quite full of himself – in addition to thinking that he’s quite the ladies’ man, he also fully expects to win several Oscars.
20. Herry Monster from Sesame Street was the Big Bad Wolf in his original incarnation, which you can kind of tell by looking at his fur. It’s pretty wolf-like (if wolves were blue, I mean). He became a Sesame monster in 1970 to replace the Beautiful Day Monster, who looked kind of like Sam the Eagle and existed to cause destruction wherever he went, thus ruining the beautiful day people had been having before he showed up. Herry used to have a furry nose but got upgraded to his non-furry, purple nose in 1971.

http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/21354

February 3, 2009 6:39 AM PST

Posted by Steve Guttenberg

You can use two, but each speaker can produce stereo sound!

(Credit: Zealth Audio)

Kevin Nelson may be homeless, but his story isn't so different from countless other speaker designers I've met. Aspiring speaker designers never had it easy, but nowadays it's a lot tougher to break into the business.

Nelson says he first started building speakers when he was a kid in high school, tinkering with drivers and building cabinets. With a few investors lined up, and prospects looking good, he was planning on exhibiting his inventiveness at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last year.

The U.S. Navy veteran's personal life, however, took a turn for the worse. He is currently living in a shelter in California.

Nelson never wanted to build just another speaker. No, his Zealth speaker produces stereo sound from a single box. Nelson devised special "Crossfire Imaging" crossover networks to produce stereo sound from a single speaker (the crossover is the part of the speaker that routes treble frequencies to the tweeter, bass to the woofer, etc.).

In other words, there's a right and left channel in each Zealth Audio speaker cabinet. He started working on the stereo from one speaker concept in 1989, then spent years of hard work refining the design.

Kevin Nelson, speaker designer

(Credit: Zealth Audio)

Nelson isn't opposed to using two speakers, and he feels the sound is even better with two. He says, "When the speakers are set up just right, and you're sitting in the zone, the two speakers disappear."

I was impressed with his drive to succeed. Before he was homeless, Nelson sold 35 pairs of speakers through word of mouth and on eBay. When compared to those of Polk, KEF, Klipsch, and others, the Zealth speakers, which sell for less than $1,000 per pair, have come out on top.

Nelson, whose company is called Zealth Audio Loudspeakers, is currently looking for investors so he can start full-scale production.

Interested parties can contact Kevin Nelson via e-mail at zealthaudio@email.com.

Steve Guttenberg is a frequent contributor to magazines and Web sites including Home Entertainment, Playback, and Ultimate AV. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.

À l’occasion du centième anniversaire de la fondation du Canadien de Montréal, je réfléchis sur les aspects religieux d’un club de hockey dont le maillot est connu comme la « Sainte Flanelle ». Je me demande si le Canadien est une religion, en quoi, il peut l’être, quel type de religion il serait – religion instituée, religion populaire, religion civile, etc. – et quel type de relation il entretiendrait avec d’autres religions : inclusiviste, syncrétique, dimorphique, exclusiviste ?

Olivier BAUER

Professeur adjoint
Université de Montréal
Faculté de théologie et de sciences des religions

COITUS INTERRUPTUS
GAZA PENETRATION CUT SHORT

Eric Adler
January 14, 2009

Forced To Pull Out Early, Israel Not Satisfied

Gaza Strip – Israelis across the country today are lamenting the withdrawal of able men and women from compromising positions throughout the Gaza Strip. The announcement came as IDF soldiers were reportedly penetrating into the terrorists’ most vulnerable areas. A spokesperson stated, “We were afraid of what people would say if we were caught with our pants down so deep in Hamas territories.” With Hamas leaders on their knees, the cries of “indecency” from the international community became overwhelming. One soldier on the ground behind the bleachers of the Islamic University’s football stadium said, “At one point, I thought I heard the terrorists coming, but when it turned out to be faked, we continued our thrust.” As seamen spilled onto the Gaza shores, a Naval officer speaking on the condition of anonymity said the Navy was preparing to enter from the rear. “The IDF was really screwing them! They had strategically inserted themselves in all the right places. We were just waiting for our turn.” Analysts agree that Israel demonstrated that it has the balls to nail Palestinian terrorists, but worry about Israel’s fear of commitment.

Militant Islam Threatens Us All
Hamas rockets have the same terror goal as Hitler's blitz.

By BENJAMIN NETANYAHU

WALL STREET JOURNAL
January 7, 2009

Imagine a siren that gives you 30 seconds to find shelter before a Kassam rocket falls from the sky and explodes, spraying its lethal shrapnel in all directions. Now imagine this happens day after day, month after month, year after year.

If you can imagine that, you can begin to understand the terror to which hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been subjected. Three years ago Israel withdrew from every square inch of Gaza. And since that withdrawal, our civilians have been targeted by more than 6,000 rockets and mortars fired from Gaza. In the face of this relentless bombardment, Israel has acted with a restraint that other countries, faced with a similar threat, would find hard to fathom. Israel's government has finally decided to respond.

For this action to succeed, we must first have moral clarity. There is no moral equivalence between Israel, a democracy which seeks peace and targets the terrorists, and Hamas, an Iranian-backed terror organization that seeks Israel's destruction and targets the innocent.

The international community may occasionally condemn Hamas for putting Palestinian civilians in harm's way, but if it ultimately holds Israel responsible for the casualties that ensue, then Hamas and other terror organizations will employ this abominable tactic again and again.

The charge that Israel is using disproportionate force is equally baseless. Does proportionality demand that Israel fire 6,000 rockets indiscriminately back at Gaza? Does it demand an equal number of casualties on both sides? Using that logic, one would conclude that the United States employed disproportionate force against the Germans because 20 times as many Germans as Americans died in World War II.

In that same war, Britain responded to the firing of thousands of rockets on its population with the wholesale bombing of German cities. Israel's measured response to rocket fire on its cities has come in the form of surgical strikes. To further root out Hamas terrorists in a way that minimizes Palestinian civilian casualties, Israel's army is now engaged in a ground operation that places its soldiers in great peril. Carpet-bombing of Palestinian cities is not an option that any Israeli leader will entertain.

The goal of this mission should be clear: To end the current round of missile attacks and to remove the threat of such attacks in the future. The only cease-fire or diplomatic initiative that should be accepted is one that achieves this dual objective.

If our enemies assumed that the Israeli public would be divided on the eve of an election, they were wrong. When it comes to exercising our most basic right of self-defense, there is no opposition and no coalition. We stand united against Hamas because we know that only by defeating Hamas can we provide security for our people and hope for a future peace.

We fight to defend ourselves, but in so doing we are also fighting a fanatical ideology that seeks to reverse the course of history and throw the civilized world back into a new dark age. The struggle between militant Islam and modernity — whether fought in Afghanistan, Iraq, India or Gaza — will decide our common future. It is a battle we cannot afford to lose.

Copyright 2008 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson challenges the way we're educating our children. He champions a radical rethink of our school systems, to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence.

Why you should listen to him:

Why don't we get the best out of people? Sir Ken Robinson argues that it's because we've been educated to become good workers, rather than creative thinkers. Students with restless minds and bodies -- far from being cultivated for their energy and curiosity -- are ignored or even stigmatized, with terrible consequences. "We are educating people out of their creativity," Robinson says. It's a message with deep resonance. Robinson's TEDTalk has been distributed widely around the Web since its release in June 2006. The most popular words framing blog posts on his talk? "Everyone should watch this."
A visionary cultural leader, Sir Ken led the British government's 1998 advisory committee on creative and cultural education, a massive inquiry into the significance of creativity in the educational system and the economy, and was knighted in 2003 for his achievements.

"Ken's vision and expertise is sought by public and commercial organizations throughout the world." BBC Radio 4

We made the first mistake: There can be justified distinctions that are not discriminatory, yet lately, they tend to get mislabelled “discrimination”.

In its benevolent effort to not offend, Western society adopted a philosophy of acceptance, simplistically exemplified by the 1960s counter-culture as a “peace and love” revolution. Unfortunately ignoring Aristotle’s warning that justice consists in moderation regulated by wisdom, idealists replaced moderation and wisdom with empty buzz words like “toleration”. David Stove, an Australian philosopher, has suggested that this undercuts our ability to resist the subversive elements of society.

Recently, though briefly, Québecers examined their values when a series of hearings evaluating the scope of “reasonable accommodations” swept through the province. At its conclusion, the Co-Chairs recommended “that the government…defend the conception of open secularism adopted and implemented by Québec”.

In this pluralist society, it would be great if we could always allow everyone every idiosyncrasy, no matter how eccentric; and in private – for the most part, unless they are grossly immoral – we do. But in the public sphere, incompatible practices must be held in check. So when a soccer official rules that a Muslim girl may not wear her hijab (as was the case in Québec in 2007) because Law 4 in FIFA’s Laws of the Game states “A player must not use equipment or wear anything that is dangerous to himself or another player (including any kind of jewellery)”, he is not discriminating against her religious freedom. He is expressing what he considers to be a justified interpretation of Law 4: the dangerous risk she poses to herself and other players on the pitch. Yet, for putting his foot down, this (Muslim) referee was accused of religious intolerance.

It is easy to apply a rule of thumb – the difficulty lies in determining when to make an exception. Both Moses and Jesus are quoted, “Love your neighbour as yourself” (Leviticus 19.8; Matthew 19.19). But Moses prefaces that though “[y]ou shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbour, or you will incur guilt yourself” (19.17), and even extends this law to include the “alien who resides with you” (19.34). Yet these days, people seem worried about holding a potentially insulting opinion of their neighbour in place of a valid and merited criticism – or, in other words, they feel they had better categorically and indiscriminately tolerate, rather than discriminate and, occasionally, do so incorrectly.

Apparently, Western Society has grown intellectually lazy. Most people avoid critical thinking at the cost of their individuality. They would prefer to take Steve Jobs at his word when he pronounces that Macs are “cooler” than PCs than actually inform themselves of their respective merits. Personal opinions are shared, moulded by public opinion, because propaganda works. It worked for the Sophists who brought Socrates to trial on trumped-up charges. It worked for the Palestinians who convinced the world that Muhammad al Durrah was a casualty of Israeli gunfire.

So, having forgotten how to think for itself, why should we be surprised if the West – after being directly attacked by Islamic extremists, and subsequently fearing all Muslims, neglecting to discriminate between the fundamentalists and the dispassionate (mislabelled “moderates”) – is duped by one of the most successful propaganda campaigns in history? Traditional values were turned upside down with claims that Muslims are simply victims of hatred and contempt. Now, political correctness seems to dictate bending over backwards to “accommodate” such victims of our “insensitivity” – or at least, that is how it has been interpreted. Moreover, the propaganda machine is so effective that one who dares to draw attention to its folly is equally pronounced an offender.

Mark Steyn, one such “offender”, recognised the redirection of Western values. In America Alone, he wrote: “In a few years, as millions of Muslim teenagers are entering their voting booths, some European countries will not be living formally under sharia, but…they will have reached an accommodation with their radicalized Islamic compatriots, who like many intolerant types are expert at exploiting the ‘tolerance’ of pluralist societies.” This, however, seems to be a lopsided social contract, since while the Western World accommodates Islam, the Muslim world does not return the favour.

And it is a favour. This point needs to be emphasised: Muslims in a pluralist and secular society are entitled to practice their faith only as long as it does not conflict with the identity and harmony of the society, infringing on others’ lifestyles and interfering with its established justice. Where private and public practices overlap, local laws ought to intercede. Still Westerners have become so used to such an overly tolerant culture that they even seem to expect indiscriminate tolerance to follow them when they leave the West.

A friend of mine, originally from Montreal, has been living and working in the Persian Gulf for the past couple of years. He does not speak Arabic. He is not Muslim. He is surrounded by fellow expatriates. In fact, you might say he is not truly experiencing the culture of the United Arab Emirates.

But he would disagree. Before he left Canada, he updated his website to maintain an online journal of his new life in Abu Dhabi. Occasionally, he reports on the 45º weather or a new restaurant he has found. Yet the entries that fascinate me the most result from his apprehension of the divergent philosophies of locals and aliens.

Recently, he reported on the Adhan, “one of the most delightful sounds of the Muslim world”. He writes:

While I have heard some expats complain that it wakes them up with the first call just before sunrise, I find that it is actually quite soothing and enchanting. … The mystery for me here is why Western expats come to a Muslim country and complain about things like this. Deal with it or go home!

I was rather surprised to read such a clear-headed appraisal of a too-oft accepted moral negligence.

Just as misguided Western liberals neglect to distinguish between justified distinctions and categorical discrimination at home, they expect the same treatment abroad as they offer the “alien who resides with [them]”: total and indiscriminate accommodation. Western liberals, continually making concessions, and apprehensive of allegations of prejudice, indecency, and insensitivity, avoid drawing a line; unlike the soccer referee who unambiguously put his foot down.

We made the first mistake. However, we can still correct it.

In Rainbows: it’s not their best album, but it’s the best new album I’ve heard since their best album.

This is (possibly) Radiohead’s most important album, in terms of their legacy and their career. It’s easily the most highly anticipated — the first since the mature Hail to the Thief proved they’d polished up the lessons they’d learned over several albums-worth of experiment and live performance, and since singer Thom Yorke’s daring solo effort, The Eraser, worried Radiohead fans that he had retracted too far inside of himself to be able to extend his audience an olive branch. With In Rainbows, Radiohead needed to demonstrate their determination to push the mainstream envelope a little further still while remaining devoted to the sense of adventure and creativity that has defined them. Most significantly, this album is important because of its experimental method of distribution. It will be available in late-December in a package including In Rainbows on 2 vinyl records and 1 CD, plus an additional CD with previously unreleased material. Until then, it is available as 160-bit mp3s from their website for any price you’re willing to pay.

The new album won’t change your mood with every track the way OK Computer can. It won’t stir your blood to a boil the way Kid A can. It doesn’t provide any sing-along songs that you keep singing after your media player stops churning like The Bends did.

The new album is a solid album — no peaks or valleys. From start to finish, the tunes are developed as traditional pop songs with beginnings, middles, and ends, and hooks to hang on to. The musicians are curiously self-sufficient, encompassing their individual roles and not bleeding into each others’ spaces. Where they are usually heralded for their leading ingenuity, they are reserved. But they compensate with a level of proficiency demonstrative of the time they’ve spent acquiring and cultivating those innovations that now seem so derivative. And, as if to assert that rock ‘n roll is indeed not dead, Radiohead, waited until 2007 to let the world in on their greatest secret since The Bends was released over a decade ago: guitar heroes make great rock! This album boasts, arguably, their most accomplished guitar work yet, and includes full-bodied acoustics, raunch-squealing telecasters, and affected contemporary sounds of their invention, that would normally go unnoticed behind such a cleanly mixed production.

At this point, all I can say is, I can’t wait to see what else will accompany this album in the future (videos, the extra CD, the booklet and liner notes, a tour, …).

Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood on “In Rainbows”
“It’s Fun to Make People Think About What Music is Worth”

Brian Hiatt, Rolling Stone
2007.10.10.13.09GMT-05.00

Unlike the fans who haven’t removed their headphones since 2 AM, Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood is able to focus on something other than In Rainbows right now: We talked to him this morning for an upcoming story about his experimental orchestral work, Popcorn Superhet Receiver, which will be making its U.S. debut in New York this January. But Greenwood was also kind enough to share some thoughts about his band’s industry-shaking new album. Here’s a sample:

Why did you choose to release the album this way?
Partly just to get it out quickly, so everyone would hear it at the same time, and partly because it was an experiment that felt worth trying, really.

Why the variable pricing?
It’s fun to make people stop for a few seconds and think about what music is worth, and that’s just an interesting question to ask people.

How would you respond to complaints about the sound quality — that 160 isn’t a high enough bitrate?
I don’t know, we talked about it and we just wanted to make it a bit better than iTunes, which it is, so that’s kind of good enough, really. It’s never going to be CD quality, because that’s what CD does.

What goals did you have for the album itself?
I suppose we wanted to get back slightly to Kid A in that we were spending longer experimenting and trying stuff out — it wasn’t so much of a performance-based thing, like Hail to the Thief. Other than that, it’s the usual thing of turning up with these songs and the pressure is, “Don’t fuck it up, don’t record them badly, don’t do bad arrangements of them, and do them justice.” So that’s what we’ve done.

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so as you may know we have completed a video for the song- it has been in the land of google, and now also if you want to download a higher quality version without the internet streaming pixellation squash and enjoy it on whatever screen appliance, click here to download.

it was a strange experience, sitting in front of a lazer in the dark, then emailing back an forth with James the director as he sat in front of computers for a whole month with the amazing technicians who processed the data etc.. but it says something about the song and came out better than i had dared hope.

Thom

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The Making-of
"House of Cards"

Radiohead just released a new video for its song "House of Cards" from the album "In Rainbows".

No cameras or lights were used. Instead two technologies were used to capture 3D images: Geometric Informatics and Velodyne LIDAR. Geometric Informatics scanning systems produce structured light to capture 3D images at close proximity, while a Velodyne Lidar system that uses multiple lasers is used to capture large environments such as landscapes. In this video, 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute produced all the exterior scenes.

Watch the making-of video to learn about how the video was made and the various technologies that were used to capture and render 3D data.

Data Visualization

Explore data visualization through a 3D viewer and use your mouse to further manipulate the data and create your own visualizations.

Download the data and instructions on how to create your own visualizations.

If you manage to create a data visualization that you'd wish to share, the band would love to see it. You can share your videos on the House of Cards YouTube group.

©2008 Google