The Right-Wing Media-Industrial Complex - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

The Right-Wing Media-Industrial Complex - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

"Under Bush, the conservative media machine's partisan loyalty enabled the GOP to put domestic spending on steroids, launch two enormously expensive unending wars, drastically increase the power of the executive to trample on civil liberties, and added a huge unfunded entitlement, Medicare D. So while Fox was giddily celebrating power, conservatism was busy abandoning whatever policy principles it once had."

"I also believe that the health insurance reform was about as centrist a bill for universal care as you could get (but needs improvement and cost-vigilance) and that a winning party gets to pass what it ran on. For a Democrat, Obama is as moderate as it comes."

Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for continuing clarification of modern conservativism

The Physics of the Impossible

Last Book Read: The Physics of the Impossible - Michio Kaku

In The Physics of the Impossible Michio Kaku continues his enthusiastic discussion of cutting edge science and theorizs how technology might continue to advance through the next few millenia and beyond, to the point of being able to manipulate everything in the universe.  He discusses such topics as invisibility, teleportation, beam weapons, starships, time travel, and precognition.

Interestingly, while discussing technological means to reproduce psychic phenomema, he notes the ease with which scientists are fooled by magicians, just as Gardner has mentioned. The advancement of our technology with require fundamental leaps in acquiring energy and as we move to new levels we will be able to achieve more advancements that are currently deemed impossible.  We may be at one of the most difficult points now. Discussing the transformation from a Type 0 to Type I civilization, Kaku remarks, "a Type 0 is still wracked with the sectarianism, fundamentalism, and racism that typified its rise, and it is not clear whether or not these tribal and religious passions will overwhelm the transition." "There will emerge a planetary language and culture. . . There are also forces that oppose this march to a planetary sytem.  These are the terrorists who unconciously, instinctively, realize that the progression to a planetary civilization is one that will make tolerance and secular pluralism a centerpiece of their emerging culture, and this prospect is a threat to people who fell more comfortable living in the last millenium."  I think his analysis here is very insightful, not only from a technology perspective, but in regards to the evolution of humanity in general.

Kaku really shines while discussing parallel universes. Here he divides them into three types: hyperspace, multiverse, and quantum parallel universes.  But these distinctions seem unnecessary as types, if there is are multiple universes than they all must exist inthe multiverse.  The only difference between the types is how they are formed and their relation to each other.  Hyperspace suggests universes in a spatial dimension higher than the three we experience.   All of the universes are possibly pre-existing as independent ones, stacked in 11-dimensional space.  Kaku mentions the possibility of one googol universes predicted by string theory.  But it is unclear if this is the number required to contain all possible parallel universes, or if it amounts to one googol possible types of universes (each with a unique set of physical properties and constants).  Another explanation is that the universe splits.  One theory, the Copenhagen School, is inseparable from conciousness.  The state of the universe cannot be known until the wave function collapses.  Since we are in the universe, we cannot make the external measurement.  This implies a "'cosmic conciousness' pervading the universe," some type of god, which brings external difficulties into the theory.  Another theory is that our universe has "decohered" from other universes, essentially our wave functions are on different frequencies that do not interact with other universe, like separate radio signals.  The explaination here seems incomplete.  This seems to indicate that all universes in the multiverse exist in the same physical space, rather than sheets of three-dimensional space hyper-stacked on each other.  Only the "stuff" in these universes exist seperately because of decohered wave functions.  I imagine this is the kind of parallel dimension illustrated in the Star Trek episode "The Tholian Web".  This theory also doesn't explain what it means to exist in a multiple universe that has yet to decohere.  It would imply that there is simply one universe and if decoherence happens,  I suppose, certain things will just disappear, as they will be left in the original universe.  What was one universe becomes two and we wouldn't notice much of anything unless we were able to retune to the orignal coherence wave.  This leaves us in the same isolated condition as separate sheets of spacetime.  The third category suggests that universes can be created out of a quantum flucuation of the vacuum, out of nothingness.  Interestingly, noting the sum totals of properties of our universe in measurements of charge, spin or total matter-energy, the end result is always zero, suggesting a possible creation from nothing.  Both decoherence and quantum flucuation seem to suggest different ways that a baby uiverse could form in an ever growing multiverse.

Finally, while discussing a possible "theory of everything" he notes the difficulty caused by  Godel's Incompleteness Theorem.  Mathematics is self-referential and "since the observer cannot be separated from the observation process, it means physics will always refer to itself, since we cannot leave the universe.  In the final analysis, the observer is also made of atoms and molecules, and hence must be an integral part of the experiment he is performing."  This means that any mathematics used in the development of the TOE must be carefully constructed to avoid self-reference.


I find Kaku's predictions highly optimistic, yet this is necessary optimism.  Without it I fear there would be no drive to test these wild theories, and we have come so far in the twentieth century, with the verification of quantum theory and the existence of quarks, that we may be near the next leap.

Reverse Reaganomics

The latest poll about the Tea Party shows no surprises. For instance, most Tea Party members have above average income.  This is not at all surprising given their obsession over materialism.  Despite Fox News's attempt to make the poll look revealing and the "mainstream media" look insulting, the poll remains obvious.  The real problem with the Tea Party is that it's built on a foundation of ignorance.  They claim that the Tea Party is highly educated, but only 1/3rd have graduated from college. This doesn't seem "highly" educated to me.  The Tea Party attempts to make themselves look smarter than they really are as they spread disinformation.  They throw around terms like communist and socialist, without a real academic understanding of them.  But these are great words as a scare tactic.

President Obama is far from a socialist.  He has been denounced by the Socialist Party, and has been called Bush's third term.  The main point here is that he is continuing the 20th century tradition of corporatism.  He is continually supporting corporate America.  There has been no attempt to overtake corporations, nationalize them and make them public for redistribution.  The capitalist profit is not in danger.  But, the mythical small-business loving captialism that conservatives love to dream about is simply not real, it was surpassed early in the twentieth century, being replaced by corporatism and supercapitalism.  As these idealogies swung to the right of capitalism, we became even less socialist than in pre-World War I history when that party was much larger and more influential.

The only differences, economically, between Obama and his conservative predecessor are healthcare reform and tax cuts for the lower classes.  Public healthcare is no more socialist than Social Securty or the Post Office. In fact, the current reform still relies on the private insurance industry, funneling money into that system, making it a purely capitalist system.  Furthermore, public healthcare is actually less socialist than the current employer-based system. [1]  The fact that Obama gets called vile names and compared to Hitler for attempting to expand a publlic service, one that is difficult for many to afford, is mind-boggling.

The Tea Party claims to be for smaller government and lower taxes.  As for government, where was the party when the Republicans were handing out massive bailouts to the private sector?  Nowhere.  And now the polls show that Tea Partiers don't want cuts in Medicare or Social Security.  They don't want "their" benefits cut.  Clearly they really are not for smaller government.  If they were, the best strategy would be to denounce corporatism, end corporate welfare, and realize that government exists to serve the people - through public services like healthcare.

Concerning taxes, they protest even though 95% of Americans received a tax cut under Obama.  I suspect most Tea Party members fall into that category.  For the Tea Party to protest increased taxes while their own have decreased only shows their distorted view of reailty.  If the top 5% want to complain, that's fine.  But they have brain-washed the lower classes into fighting their battle.  The rich have never enjoyed as much prosperity as they have in the last thirty years.  To stand as a prosperous country, we need a strong social system.  And we have to pay for it.  Being the richest country in history this should not be a problem.  But, the wealthy have to pay their share.  Even Adam Smith understood the need for progressive taxation.  What Obama has done is reverse a little Reaganomics.  When Reagan made the largest tax cuts on the rich in the 1980s, economic inequality began to widen immensely, and has continued to expand since.  At best, Obama will be able to undo some of the damage.

I don't hear anyone calling Canada communist. Or Japan. Or England, or the rest of Europe. But even though those systems are more socialist, any attempt at advancement here prompts hysteria.  When the Tea Party gets useless airheads like Victoria Jackson to call Obama a communist it is not only ignorant, but blatantly deceptive.  And then, when the media propagates these terms in defense of the Tea Party, the result is beyond bad journailsm, it is plain lying.

It seems that countries are like people, with older ones exhibiting more maturity.  In Europe this maturity manifests as attempts to improve their public service and soften economic inequality.  Meanwhile, America acts young, loud and arrogant, without trying to improve.  As history continues, the human race matures and we find that we have better means to provide a society that is morally and practically necessary. We should not be afraid of trying new and better ways to improve society.   Conservatives should embrace American ingenuity and have faith that we can do things better than others.  We could make a public health system that is uniquely American and better than any socialist one.  But we can't achieve that level of thinking while manevolent manipulators are dividing the country by deceiving the American public.



[1] See Supercapitalism, Robert Reich, for an explanation of non-taxed employer benefits as publicly funded redistribution.  This is something I will return to in the future.

Episode 0

I have to take a minute and recommend the film reviews at  redlettermedia.com.  So far I've only got through the 70 minute review of Star Wars The Phantom Menace, and it's absolutely brilliant.  It's far more enjoyable than watching the film itself, and elucidates many of the thoughts, complaints and confusions I have about that film.  After sixteen years of intense waiting, The Phantom Menace was a kick in the crotch from George Lucas.  I believe it should really be relegated to being Episode 0, and we should get a free replacement made for our wait, troubles and disappointment.  Jar Jar is punishment enough, with Lucas's response being that it is a film aimed at children.  If that's true, then why the hell does the plot revolve around some obfuscated story about trade routes and taxation?  I've been to college and I can't understand what the hell it's about.  Anyway, if you are as frustrated as me then check out these reviews.

How to Read Literature Like A Professor

Last Book Read: How to Read Literature Like A Professor - Thomas Foster

This book is a good read about reading.  While not revealing anything too earth-shattering, it does provide a good insight into the process of reading and story construction.  Foster emphasizes how each work of literature is part of the meta-story of humanity.  He shows the relevance of the obvious literary allusions to classical mythology, Shakespeare and the Bible.  The collection of myth is highly relevant to all of humanity, it is "a body of story that matters."  "It is the ability of story to explain ourselves to ourselves in ways that physics, philosophy, mathematics, chemistry - all very highly useful and informative in their own right - can't."  Foster points out Egyptian writing that complains that everything has already been written, "that papyrus describing the postmodern condition is forty-five hundred years old." So while everything is reused and retold, there is a collective wealth of meaning that is accessed by common symbolism and metaphor.  These pre-defined patterns can be used to efficiently place a story on a determined path, without reinventing all of human history and share understanding.  Foster discusses many of these common and cliche ideas: weather, seasons, sex, illness, geography, etc, while ignoring others, as a comprehensive attempt would be immense.  Written in a conversational tone, this book is not a referential text, but it makes an easy and enjoyable read.

The Safety Dance

Political celebrity/imbecile Sarah Palin has attacked President Obama's latest Nuclear Posture review, claiming "we miss Ronald Reagan." Ignoring the fact that Reagan almost got us all killed, he was the first president to advocate the abolishment of nuclear weapons.  His goal was to meet with Gorbachev by 1996 and dismantel the final remaining weapons in each nuclear arsenal.  Now, Obama is only the second president to advocate the complete abolishment of nuclear weapons.  Therefore, as far as nuclear ideology goes, he is directly in line with Reagan.  So, once again Sarah Palin reveals her ignorance and her lack of political and historic understanding.  As for the new START treaty, there is little reason to criticize Obama.  The 1500 warhead limit still provides far more WMD firepower than we need.  A massive nuclear arsenal in a post-Cold War is beyond absurd and a necessary element of final completion of that conflict is the reduction of a complete strategic stockpile [1].  This 1500 limit is similar to what would have been the START III treaty in the 1990s, had it been ratified and not discarded by the Bush administration. What this new treaty does is just catch us up to 1990 levels, and we are still 10 years behind in reductions.  The neo-con reactions can only indicate their warmonger intentions and their continued wish for a U.S-dominated armageddon.


 For more, I turn to commentator extraordinaire Jon Stewart:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Big Bang Treaty
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

[1] I would not push for complete nuclear disarmament in an increasingly chaotic world with renegade countries developing WMDs.  As Carl Sagan stated while discussing nuclear war: a few nuclear weapons make you safer than none.

De revolutionibus

While searching for information about John Gardner, I came across a suprisingly high number of websites denouncing postmodernism.  These were mostly church and religious sites, and some academic ones (with educators that have some personal interest in religious evangelicalism).  These sites give lists of resources about the dangers of postmodernism (like the works of Sire, whom I've mentioned before).  Some of the resistance is probably due to multiculturalism and relativism, although the first is an inevitable fact of globalism and the latter is just one response.  But, they totally miss the point.  This is like lecturing about the dangers of a sky that is blue.  Postmodernism is a description of the contemporary world, it is not a prescriptive philosophy. If there has been a theory proposed from it that is complete and coherent, I am not aware of it.  [1] This is an exact repeat of what happened when the Sun was found to be at the center of the Solar System. The Church and traditional thinkers denied the facts of heliocentrism. I can imagine similar arguments circa 1600 denouncing the dangers of modernism.  Now, it would be silly to argue against the dangers of science (although some do, and they are doubly lost).  Postmodernism describes the current understanding of existence.[2]  It serves no purpose to argue against it.

Modernist art and literature, reaching its apex in the mid twentieth century, mourned the loss of traditional understanding, and uncovered the discontinuity and fragmentation of reality.  This sense of loss was the same as experienced by the existentialists.  They hoped for a foundation of absolute meaning, but knew that there could not be one.  These inevitable results of modernism were already predicted by Nietzsche and Kierkegaard.  Underlying nihilism would be the outcome of progress and deeper understandings of the world.  But, that doesn't mean we can stop progress, we must deal with it.  Overcome it.  This is what the existentialists did. Camus went in his own direction with absurdism, welcoming the inevitable alienation and celebrating experience in the moment.  Similarly, postmodernism celebrates fragmentation.  A number of postmodern commentators have picked up on this "living for the moment."  That might be a superficial response.  But, it doesn't have to be hedonistic.  Even Camus had deep reasons for advocating life in the moment for his "barbarian gods."  This is one track we can take, but there are always more.  One is already waiting. Existentialism is a pre-anticipated modernist solution to the problem of postmodernism.  Contemporary religious leaders might be wise to turn to Kierkegaard, rather than deny reality. [3]





[1] Deconstructionism is just an overly complicated jargon-filled method of literary analysis, and Foucault's philosophy seems to me to be fairly incomplete as anything useful.
[2] Historically, I would argue that the postmodern age started in 1991.
[3] I realize that the term "reality" is dicey in this situation, given hyperreality, etc, but I use this in the common traditional sense.

Are Universes Thicker than Blackberries?

Last Book Read - Are Universes Thicker than Blackberries?  - Martin Gardner

In this book the prolific Martin Gardner offers a collection of writings on science, mathematics, religion, literature and the paranormal. This work is much less cohesive than his previous books. It's really more of a random collection - something like what his blog would be like, I would guess.  The scope of the book is much more general, and the subjects are discussed far too narrowly, resulting in a lack of the dense insights found in Gardner's usual work, hence I have few comments to make.

The title chapter quickly dismisses the possibility of alternate universes, using Occam's razor.  This subject, while begging for further exposition, is never returned to in this book.  Moving through the section on science, one issue I find with Gardner is his view of postmodernism.  Here he refers to the views of postmodernists as "crazy", held by "professors of literature who know almost nothing about science."  I think these remarks show a superficiality, and an examination of Einstein and Heisenberg could reveal the foundations of a postmodern science.  Furthermore, works like The Postmodern Turn show the progress of science in the postmodern age.

Moving on to religion, while discussing false messiahs, Gardner makes some interesting points about liberal christians who take the Second Advent as a symbol of gradual progress in the world, not a literal second coming.  This point is highly relevant to the socio-political controversies of 2010 and something all churches would be wise to consider.

The section on literature mostly deals with very obscure works, many long out-of-print novels, and some poetry, the meaning of which I can't grasp.  The most profound ideas are in terms of one of Gardner's favorite authors - G.K. Chesterton.  While discussing Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday, Gardner presents intersting points about the problem of evil.  Natural evil, being less explainable than human evil can only be blamed on God.  This presents a problem for the theist.  Here, Gardner, borrowing from Henry James, points out the difference between life  (as individually experienced) and merely existing. He continues discussing one of his favorite topics, the mysterium tremendum. Illustrated in terms from Chesterton, nature must be viewed "as the back of reality", the front being unobservable to us.  Through horror "we pay for the mysterious gift of free will."

The final section, concerning the paranormal seems out of place in this collection and would probably have been better as a seperate volume.  Although mildly interesting, most of the topics here are too specific to be deeply engrossing.  As a magician and debunker of the paranormal, the most interesting element here is Gardner's analysis of investigating magicians.  He discusses why scientists are the easiest persons to fool - because they think too logically.  The only true investigation of psi activity, Gardner argues, can only be done by another magician.

While an entertaining read, the core of Gardner's thought is much better presented and expounded in works like Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener.

Something the Boy Said

As Lost moves into it endgame, we can now see the adventure accelerating.  So far this season we have seen serene, picturesque locales that are reminiscent of the quest in Myst [1].  But, now we see the battle between good and evil erupt into an engagement between two individual powers and the prophecized results are beginning to have catastrophic ramifications to individuals, past, present and future. I expect that the overly literal explanation of a Christ / Satan conflict is far too obvious to be the fundamental narrative.  Although, we have seen one individual in Christ-like performances, and the other has been labeled the "incarnation of evil".  Perhaps more significant to the nature of the show are the sci-fi overtones.  There is a definite Star Wars theme, as acknowledge by the "Obi-Wan" reference.  But the candidate/recruit element also reflects to the Jedi/ Sith conflict, where individuals carry on a tradition of a cold war-like conflict, ready to oppose the other, bringing "balance" to the force.  Furthermore, the Sith rule of two, or "there can only be two" may have some kind bearing on these individual forces that control the island.  Also present is a Highlander quality, involving immortals intent on killing each other.  Soon we will know if "there can only be one" will apply here, with one individual becoming triumphant.



[1]  The Myst reference was something that was also picked up by many others in various forums at the same time it occurred to me, after the lighthouse (as well as the cave) appeared.

Intelligence is a Disorder

This is the only conclusion that can be reasonably deduced, as many online discussions have recently accused liberals of having a mental disorder.  But these accusers are only capable of repeating this "clever" line without delivering any substance (similar to the one-trick charlatans like Levin and Beck).  It is the vacuous thought process of a group of people who have not proposed ANY alternate solutions to anything.  Their only mantra is" free market this blah blah and free market that blah blah".  Nevermind that the free market is what got us into this current mess (that and a little help from Bushco). Since liberals are the only ones attempting to provide rational solutions and not stick solely to name calling, I can only surmise that if they do have a mental defect, it is known as intelligence.

This weekend I saw Sarah Palin whining at the Teabagger convention about the left-leaning mainstream media - that is the media that presented her trite presentation on at least six different networks.  That may be a prime example of irony.  This was a convention of 600 people, but by their attitude you would think they are two-thirds of America.  Why is the media even covering a six-hundred person event?  Amusingly, Sarah Palin continues to provide new levels of retardation to her fellow conservatives.  She defends Limbaugh's use of "retard" because it was a satirical use of the word (obviously her understanding of satire is severely retarded, but then this is a person that had to read her hand.)  To be clear here, Sarah Palin is fucking retarded.

Palin’s Increasingly Casual Falsehoods

The Odd Lies Of Sarah Palin XXXVII: Limbaugh, Emanuel and "Retards"
 "And now she is to be exclusively "interviewed" by Fox News which now employs her. And that will be her only venue for scrutiny, apart from Limbaugh, Levin, Beck et al., even as she runs for president. And because she is no longer an elected politician, this game will go on and on. And eventually the lies will become the truth."

This is exactly the neo-conservative method: repeat lies over and over  (like "liberal" media) until people believe it as the truth (even though in reality the media gives Palin a pass on everything and never subjects her to any scrutiny).

But, if Palin is the kind of company conservatives wish to stand behind, then that speaks volumes about conservative anti-intellectualism.  Interestingly, the Tea Party was supposed to be a break by true fiscal conservatives from the Republican theocrats, but now seems to be the batshiat crazy wing of the conservatives, rather than the thoughtful problem-solving ones.  It seems their aim is simply to shift the field so far that Republicans look like crazy left-wingers.

Conversely, Jon Stewart may be the smartest person in the American public.  He at least knows what a narrative is, and is able to easily and articulately defend criticism.  He should win an award for getting O'Reilly to shut up.  Furthermore, his criticism of Obama being too friendly and cooperative is spot on.

Please note that any name calling in this post is purely Palinian satire.

Apple and the Cloud at the Dawn of Cyber-Punk World

In what seems like a fitting first post for 2010, Apple's announced its long anticipated tablet - the iPad.  What has surprised me most is the amount of negative reception. Some of the criticism is accurate.  The name, for starters, is terrible, but I won't go into why.  But, I am less concerned by the software limitations or its "lack" of usefullness.  This is exactly the device I have been waiting for - a laptop replacement.  And by this, I don't mean a device that can replicate all of the functions of a laptop.  What is needed is a truly portable computer for connectivity to the cloud, leaving full PC activities to Pcs.  As laptops have become desktop replacements they have become less portable, leaving netbooks to fill this category.  But netbooks seem rather useless to me, lacking the usability of a laptop without gaining much advantage.  The optical drives are gone, but the bulky and unnecessary keyboard remains.  As does the full operating system, along with its ridiculous boot up time.  In these respects, the iPad provides the solution.

At the other end of the spectrum, the argument goes, smart phones fill the need.  I don't think so.  Besides having the opinion that I prefer a phone to be just a phone (and I loathe AT&T), I'm not going to read a book or browse on a phone screen.  I don't want one device that does everything.  I want as many devices as are necessary to perform their respective functions the best.  The iPad solution begins by replacing the Ebook reader, and adds picture viewing and web browsing.  Since I don't need a laptop for full productivity, this eliminates two devices for me.

As for hardware, I am most surprised by the complaints about a lack of a camera.  Does everything really need a camera?  I don't want it.  At most I want two cameras - one that takes good high-end photos and one I can carry easily for everyday shots.  The best criticisms of the iPad do address its lack of drive connectivity.  It doesn't have a media card connector or a USB connector for flash drives.  This would pride much more flexibility for accessing photos and ebooks and would eliminate limitations with the internal flash memory.  There is a camera connection kit available, providing USB and SD connections.  Hopefully this will work with any devices of those types.  The other major problem is the lack of Wi-Fi syncing.  The iPad must be connected (by USB) to the host computer and files must be synced through Tunes like the Pod.  This also reduces functionality.  It would be much easier to access shared files through the Wi-Fi connection, like any computer can do.

But, it's early in this game and just as the first iPod had its problems, so will the iPad.  I'm sure the 2nd Gen will be much more useful and address the actual problems.  Apple may be a fashion-driven luxury item designer, being over-priced and over-rated.  But, they are good at what they do.  They produce items that are well received and integrated by consumers and reach the status of icons.  If anybody can introduce a new class of technology into the Zeitgeist, it is Apple.

More importantly, the iPad shows that we are finally advancing in our relationship with technology.  Computers are no longer boxes in the corner of the room, and now they're not boxes we have to lug around with us.   They have become integrated into the very fabric of our lives and everything we do.  We have invested so much into extending our lives into "The Cloud" through social networking as well as online information such as Google Docs and Notebook.  We have reached the door to the world of Cyber-Punk,but next we must enter it by making a fundamental leap to a new paradigm.  All that we need to do this is a good interface - something that is always with us and not an inconvenience or an out-of-place intrusion.  The iPad seems to me to be the beginning of this digital future.

Blue Angels

For the first time, St Cloud will be hosting a real air show featuring the Blue Angels, June 26th-27th, 2010.

Aviation Nation 2009

Nellis AFB, Las Vegas, NV 2009.11.14-15

Nellis AFB, being probably the most active and largest base in the Air Force, as well as the home of the Thunderbirds, is now the site of the Air Force's premier air show.

Performers (military jet):

Thunderbirds

Nellis flyby (F-15C, F-16C, A-10C, F-22A)

A-10C demo, and QF-4E heritage flight

C-17A demo

F/A-18F demo

Royal Netherlands F-16B demo

Static Displays (highlights):

F-22A, F-15E, F-16C, A-10

F-15C and F-16C aggressors

F-16C

F/A-18C

F/A-18F

B-1B

B-52H

C-17A
HC-130

C-5A

T-38C

MV-22

RC-135

E-3

Nellis Range Tour

Nevada outback road trip 2009.11.16

I couldn't go to Las Vegas without going out to see the various military locations around the Nellis Range.  Besides wanting to bring to life some of the remotest areas and the "loneliest roads," there is something captivating about the historical uniqueness of this area.  The isolation, the potential secrets - the mystique.  All of it waiting "out there".  Here are the dark, hidden inner workings of the Cold War, and the who-knows-what activities that are surely still conducted.  So, with a large supply of water and a small but precise survival kit, one that would let Bear Grylls live comfortably, we set off at first light to circumnavigate this immense area.

After leaving Las Vegas the first point of interest was Creech AFB, There were a few C-17s parked, and a few Predators were being worked on out on the ramp.

One thing that becomes quite clear by the time one leaves Indian Springs is how perfect this place is for covert activities. The mountains seem to become a giant natural wall that seals off the NTTR on the south, west, most of the north and the east.

The next waypoint was passing the "town' of Mercury. If one could, taking Mercury Road into the NTS would lead past a nuclear wasteland of hundreds of Cold War explosions, and as the road turned into Groom Lake Road would go through Station 700 into Area 51 and out to Highway 375 by Rachel.

After a detour into Death Valley we passed some of the visible radar stations of the Tolicha Peak Electronic Combat Range.  Despite a Green Flag in progress, there were no aircraft out at his point.  With the exception of Goldfield, an extremely aged and run-down gas-less town, there is nothing between Beatty and Tonopah.  Well, except a few brothels (some shut down), some radar domes, a strange hillside construct,  and a gas station abandoned eons ago about 25 miles north of Beatty.  After six hours, we reached Tonopah, where we stopped for lunch and to gas up for the remote leg of the trip.

We then set out on Highway 6, the "Grand Army of the Republic Highway" (a name which makes me hear the voice of Emperor Palpatine). This highway runs along the north side of the Nellis Range and through the heart of the flight operations, as the Desert and Reveille MOAs extend far beyond the NTTS.  Coming out of the Tonopah mountains into the Ralston Valley really gives an introduction into the type of terrain in this region. One can see for twenty miles to the next range, but in that visual space there is nothing.  Eventually, as one seems to be making no progress to the other side, roads begin to pop up.  After passing the derelict Tonopah Airport, we came to the entrance of the Tonopah Test Range, the original and final home of the F-117.  Unfortunately there were no B-2s (or anything else) flying weapons tests.

Looking down AR502 to the Tonopah Test Range

Upon reaching Warm Springs - which is one abandoned building: The Warm Springs Bar & Cafe (apparently built in the late 70s and probably shut down in the late 80s), we turned on to the "Extraterrestrial Highway".  Although one could continue on to see other interesting things: the Base Camp airfield a few miles up and the nuclear test sites of Project Faultless and Halligan Mesa. At this point we had passed approximately nine cars since leaving Tonopah.

The first thing one sees past Warm Springs are signs warning of "Low Flying Aircraft", the one here being to changed to "Cow Flying Aircraft". Despite these signs in the valleys of Reveille, Sand Spring, Tikaboo, and Pahranagat, there were no indications of any aircraft.  After progressing through the first valley, the road begins to turn through the mountains and into open range farms.  This stretch of road gets really long, and attention is required to avoid the cows in the road.  The only objects of interest is the occasional body of water, some of it iced over.  As expected, the most treacherous part of the journey was between Tonopah and Rachel, particularly after Warm Springs.  Finally, after about half an hour without any signs of humanity, a truck passed near the Twin Springs Ranch.  From here there were about four cars before Rachel.  After passing the Cedar Gate turnoff and entering Queen City Summit Pass, the Sand Spring Valley finally opened.  The first thing that was noticeable was a truck moving behind The Farms, possibly to the Area 51 back gate. Secondly the white dots of Rachel were visible, although still twenty miles away, as Rachel sits at the south end of a massive bowl, north of the highway is twenty-five miles of nothing.

After stopping to look down the road to the back gate of Area 51, we headed up to Mailbox Road.  Here we stopped at the infamous black mailbox.  Some pictures I've seen showed it sporting a KQRS sticker, but this seems to have been removed by 2008.  As I photographed it, I noticed that truck parked here was an Area 51 security vehicle, with a Camo Dude listening to the radio (which is apparently an unusual occurrence).

Moving on, we came to Groom Lake Road after a nine hour drive.  A fast moving vehicle could be seen approaching Groom Road from Mailbox Road.  As this was my first excursion to the area, everything felt intense, and I didn't feel like waiting for whomever it was to show up. 

Once again, the sky was silent.  There were no exotic, uber-secret flight tests coming from over the mountains.  And there were no B-1s, B-52s or A-10s making bombing runs on Range 61.  The day was beginning to fade, and after a few brief moments it was time to move on from the surreal, serene isolation back to the hyper-real kinetics of The Strip.  Making our way back into mountains, the terrain seemed less isolating.  We passed the new Alien Research Center and the shell of the original Alien Jerky building as we moved on to Crystal Springs, a wonderful shaded lake, where there were a large number of vehicles parked without anyone in sight (possibly a commuter lot for clandestine contractors?  As it has been reported that cars parked here are unusual, it would seem to indicate extra activity in the area.)

Driving down through the peaceful Pahranagat Valley, the sun began to slowly set, casting a red light. The calmness was unbroken as no Red Force aggressors were coming in from Caliente. At Alamo, 170 miles from the last gas station, we filled up.  Once dark, the drive seemed to feel long, this stretch didn't really have much to see.  Finally the darkness was broken by the intensity of the Las Vegas lights.

The End of Victory Culture

Last Book Read - The End of  Victory Culture - Tom Engelhardt

Fifty years ago today, October 2nd, 1959, The Twilight Zone premiered on television, portraying a new dimension of horror and uncertainty which has become a fundamental inspiration for an entire era of culture, including the recent ultra-post-modern Lost.  Like film noir before it, the themes of  The Twilight Zone, the uncertainty, the hidden dangers, the fear of the unknown, were possible only through the holes forming in American victory culture. The underlying neuroses of the culture, created by the beginnings of the Cold War and the nuclear age, were finally breaking through to the surface, and while not addressed overtly, they were omnipresent and influencing all aspects of American culture.

In The End of Victory Culture, Engelhardt traces the demise of victory culture through its earliest origins to the post 9/11 world.  He begins long before World War II, tracing the lineage back to colonial America, discussing atrocities throughout American history.  I think its easy to understand that this victory culture - the one we learned in school, and the one that likes to come out during oversimplified conversation, was always a facade but was a construct that was sustainable - for a time -under an emerging American leadership. Of course, anyone with any depth could tell by 2003, with the invasion of Iraq, that the American myth was dead.  So it seems that his historic introduction is far too lengthy and sometimes unnecessary, but finally we get to the beginning of the Cold War.


The atomic bomb that leveled Hiroshima also blasted openings into a netherworld of consciousness where victory and defeat, enemy and self, threatened to merge.  Shadowed by the bomb, victory became conceivable only under the most limited of conditions, and an enemy too diffuse to be comfortably located beyond national borders had to be confronted in an un-American spirit of doubt (6).

Faced with doomsday weapons of our own creation, wars were now unfightable, or at least unwinnable.  This led to the necessity of new operative agencies and underground freedom fighters and proxy wars.  "'War' had ceased to be a military operation. Left to the armed forces in those years was fantasy." (81)  Unable to find global solutions, America lost itself in the world of consumerism. "the United States was involved in a global 'war', yet Americans were military unmenaced. . .the country was reimagining itself as a magic kingdom."

In 1950s America, the worlds of consumer arcadia and global fear, of twenty-four-hour-a-day television and twenty-four-hour-a-day airborne nuclear-armed bombers coexisted.  In one of these worlds, Americans half-fancied that they had stepped beyond history into a postindustrial landscape of 'affluence' where 'leisure' might soon replace work almost entirely and the main problem was an inability to find problems. (87)

 This leisure filled existence "looked like a mass society from which there might be no exit for the individual."  While containment kept communism secured, it also kept the individual contained in the American lifestyle where image became valued over substance.  Traditional narratives fell apart and the only stories that seemed to hold their form were in pop culture, particularly television.  Here Engelhartd discusses the contradictions inherent in this mass culture where elements of sub-culture were appropriated, purified and produced for consumption.  White pop music took from underground black music and brought with it "an element of disorder and sexuality associated with darkness."

"Some of [the young] rushed to embrace the very nightmares their parents were conjuring up. In the rhythms of an unknown music, some were ready to discover a new kind of freedom story. In grown-up terrors, some found dark humor.  Behind a frozen universe of abundance and destruction, some spotted pleasure,excitement, movement, energy." (136)  The gruesome horror-filled comics became a target of decency advocates, but were eventually taken over to be corporate controlled.  Rock music and television came to be major industries by being marketed to the young.

Meanwhile the victory weapon became unusable. Engelhardt points out how the popular fears of nuclear conflict dissipated after the Cuban Missile Crisis, while in reality the Soviets were finally fielding a force that was highly capable of devastation. "With weapons of seemingly limitless destructive capacity, however, the idea of victory began to shrink." Conflicts had to be restricted and containment applied to oneself.  These limited wars would "perform a function midway between the abstractness of a show of force and the terrible concreteness of annihilative conflict." They could not bring about a "radical alteration in the distribution of power." (159)  We were locked into a stalemate, unable to win or lose.  Credibility replaced victory, but it could not be a viable substitute.  A quote by Daniel Ellsberg reveals the dangers we faced as a victorious entity, "we have been in the process of fighting monsters without stop for a generation and a half, looking all that time into the nuclear abyss.  And the abyss had looked back into us." This danger was, of course, that we had solely used nuclear weapons in the past, and at several points in the early Cold War had seriously discussed using them again.

Like all Cold War books, Engelhardt spends a great deal of time discussing Vietnam.  Most interesting here, is his illustration of "reversals"  Unable to achieve limited victory despite how much military might we expended, the U.S. military was forced to reverse all normal notions of success and failure.  President Nixon himself was forced to reverse that office's image and become a "madman" (A lesson learned well and now deployed by the "axis of evil") to convince the enemy he was capable of anything in an effort to provoke their surrender. The streets of America became a battlefield at home and at wars end reconstruction needed to be done here rather than in theater.  This reconstruction really peaked during the Reagan years (and the buildup to the Second Cold War).  After a decade of feeling the loss of the Vietnam War, we were finally able to achieve victory through pop culture, mainly in film.

When Engelhardt comes to discussing Desert Storm, his analysis would fit in completely with Baudrillard's The Gulf War Did Not Take Place.  He approaches it from the angle that the entire event was really just a staged production by the American military and government.  But, I think he really reads too much into it, particularly regarding the public's understanding of it.  It would seem that America was more concerned about getting it right and provided (from a strategic standpoint) everything necessary to ensure a swift and contained victory.  If it was just a one-sided bloodbath, then at least we have apparently learned from it.  I believe that it was the last war that will ever be fought in a conventional style.  The 2003 "shock and awe" campaign  was nothing of the sort, compared to twelve years earlier.  Furthermore, our continued Middle East campaign has become much more surgical in nature.  For instance, our bomb size has gone from 2000 lb to 250 lb now in order to minimize blast.  We have built MOABs and Bunker Busters, but when used these will certainly be less devastating than a massive assault of hundreds of aircraft that was normal by the end of Vietnam.

Finally, with the end of the Cold War, Engelhardt notes that we were really left without an identifiable enemy, and this led to complications of our own identity.  Even the latest incarnation of G.I. Joe was left to find new types of wars and new enemies. Until 9/11.

With the events of 9/11,  "the bomb's most essential message- of potentially civilization busting, planet-rendering, or even planet-ending destruction- reinforced over so many years by terrifying Cold War fears and pop culture fantasies, had finally come home" (306).  The destruction, although tremendous and considered "ground zero," was not nuclear and was not as nearly devastating as it could have been.  The president, a better actor than anyone previous, attempted to resurrect victory culture.  But now, following year after year of stalled progress,  this victory culture is clearly unsustainable.

In discussing the events of post-9/11 America, Engelhardt picks up where he left off with Desert Storm, the media production.  He notes that the history of the late twentieth century, aside from a few key points of the Cold War could be defined in terms of consumer technology, from the automobile to the ipod.  He discusses consumer society, "in the cyber-marketplace, history has been superseded by an new kind of storytelling." (329)  These fabricated narratives, used to sell toys, games, television and film are the same kinds of narratives used by the government to sell wars.  Military reality has crossed into fiction, and the distinction has been blurred, leaving new weapons inspired by fiction and new fictions inspired by weapons.


It's been a long path from August 6th, 1945, to the present moment, a long, long time to wait for apocalyptic catastrophe to strike in the most victorious nation on the planet, which, in more recent times, has been touted as the globe's last superpower, its sole hyperpower, its global sheriff, its New Rome. (332)


Throughout the book Engelhardt refers to a "narrative" and the resulting lack of narrative. While he uses these terms for the specifically American world, its interesting to view the events discussed here in terms of a more historic and global theory. What he says has much in common with the post-modern theorists.  He discusses technology, consumerism and corporatism in the same light. Landmarks are gone, leaving only the logos.  The "real" sources are gone, leaving only the baseless hyper-real.  There are no more narratives, or a meta-narrative, of history.  The only one now are created in television, films and games, existing independently, and their reality is blurry like the reality of post-Cold War history.  The more we progress as a technological society, the more truth seems obscured and lost in The Twilight Zone.

While being overly verbose and perhaps too politically correct, this book does shed interesting light on the underlying psychology of America at the end of the modern age. What is most interesting is not what is explicitly stated but the implications suggested by the resulting "lack of a narrative." As revealed here, the Cold War was the force driving America from the modern to the post-modern world, a notion emphasized in the post-9/11 conclusions.

The Death of God and the Meaning of Life

Last Book Read - The Death of God & the Meaning of Life - Julian Young

In this work, Young presents an excellent history of the development of thought concerning meaning from the pre-modern age to the current postmodern era.  Central to the progression of history from one period to another is the death-of-God, a fundamental change in human understanding. He presents this transition as a stream of thought beginning with Galileo and the advent of science and ending with the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989.  As Nietzsche noted when he originally announced the death of God in 1882, that when Galileo unchained the Earth from the center of the universe, we were placed in a cold, dark void, moving in an uncertain direction with no up or down.  There was no longer any fixed point of reference, and no longer a fixed source of meaning.  We were left with the dangerous possibility of nihilism.  The modern age responded by providing new methods of fixed systems.  The worlds conceived by Hegel and Marx moved the true-world of religion into the future history of humanity.  This true-world was no longer an other-world in space, but existed away from us in time.  But this illusion could only be sustained for so long.  With the end of functioning Marxism in 1989, this revision of religion also became defunct, providing a final death of God.

Young suggests that Continental philosophy deals with the death of God - conservative continental philosophy being the modern-era revisioning of God.  With the end of that came radical continental philosophy, which finds any replacement for God to be impossible.  "A religion is anything that postulates or promises a true world."   Here we have worldviews such as non-theist religions and schools of thought such as Marxism, that all function as religions the same as theism does.  When Nietzsche announced the death of God, he proposed that any of these systems were no longer possible in performing the function that they had done in pre-modern world.

I think that we could view radical continental philosophy as the philosophies of existentialism.  There may be some non-existential worldviews that have subsequently developed in the branch of post-modernism, but I would hesitate to call these complete philosophies, but rather culture theories, at this point. In other words, I think that all philosophy of meaning following the death of God is existential in nature.

Young examines the philosophy of four existential philosophers: Neitzsche, Heidegger, Sartre and Camus, as well as the two postmodernists Foucalt and Derrida. He divides Nietzsche into three distinct periods of thought (early, late and posthumous), Heidegger into early and late and Sartre into two different early versions (ignoring the late).

He begins by tracing the lineage of thought of other-world meaning from Plato to Kant.  Schopenhauer takes Kant's notion of the hidden other-world and applies it to his pessimism, where passing from this world to the other is preferable.  Nietzsche continues this "European Buddhism" and attempts to overcome the implicit nihilism by suggesting that we can experience the other world through art.  Hegel and Marx continue a non-supernatural view of the other-world by relocating it to history.

When Nietzsche finally changes his mind about pessimism, he creates a whole new track of thought - radical continental philosophy- negating all the true-world views. Young then discusses Nietzsche's attempt at creating meaning by creating the self as a work of art, a complete narrative.  However, there is a problem of choice - the question of what life to choose.  He suggests these are the problems of authority and the immoral script.  Young then moves on to Heidegger, discussing historicity and the discovery of the authentic life.  For Heidegger your heritage, your community, are central to the meaning of life. But what if these traditions are not moral or meaningful themselves?  The problems of authority remain.

Sartre is up next. Dividing the work of Being and Nothingness, Young finds two views of  Sartre, based on slightly different interpretations of absurdity, as well as opposing views of humanity's desire to be God.  Sartre-two he dismisses as a nihilist based on this Sartre's understanding that all of life is conflict with others,  making life both meaningless and eternal conflict.  The views of Sartre-one come down to this: "(1) God is Dead. (2)Since there is no God to authorize the good, we have to do it ourselves. But (3) we have no authority over ourselves. Hence (4) we possess no authoritative account of the good, and life is meaningless (and so worthless)."

Finally we have Camus who views life as absurd - that is the disparity between how things are and how we want them to be.  But as many have argued (such as David Cooper and Camus himself ), the absurd hero of Camus' vision accepts this absurdity and happily lives in alienation, and this sets him apart from the existentialists.  Young suggest here that Camus believes life is better with no meaning. There is simply no possibility of a grand-narrative meaning.   What Camus really wants is life full of experience, "an ethics of quantity."  He looks to the "Barbarian Gods" on the beaches of Algeria, living without appeal and a lust for experience. Camus' version of the overman lives without appeal, because there is no divinity to appeal to, but rather lives with strength and majesty in this absence.  Aimlessness is preferable because a project of disciplined self development causes one to be a slave to their goals. Freedom is reduced and one always lives in the future, never in the now.  The absurd hero is indifferent to time and is only concerned with "being there."  Young ultimately rejects Camus' view and his hero as constructing static person that "will not change." Without some kind of goal, one will ultimately have a life that is simply boring.  He regards building one's life through self-defining goals as essential.

After analyzing the traps of existentialism and the unoriginality of the postmodernists, Young returns to Heidegger. He is clearly a Heidegarrian and takes the late un-existential Heidegger track as a means of escape from nihilism. Meaning is discovered rather than created, it is realizing the proper disclosure of the world and your place within it. Meaning comes from facticity - essence and existence become inseparable, according to Young.  Guardianship of the world, of Being, becomes our central task. This "Being" does not exist in a theistic sense,  but it is rather "the god of the poets," immanent in everything. 

Young does a better job at revealing underlying flaws in existential philosophy than other religious anti-existentialists that I have mentioned in the past.  He also provides an interesting and refreshing solution to the problem of meaning, by being non-theist and non-existential.  I am, at this point, however, not ready to dismiss Nietzsche, Sartre or Camus quite as easily.  I think that perhaps Young neglects some of the horrors of World War II and the Cold War, and their effects on modern philosophy, which explain some of the dark, nihilist leanings found within it.  Nevertheless, I believe existentialism is still optimistic and the right direction for finding post-death of God meaning.  As for Heidegger, his final position of Being is at least a non-true-world one.  Therefore, I can only assume that this Being, as sacred but not God, is a form of pantheism.  Of course, this leads to the question if Being is non-true-world, then does that mean pantheism is not religion?  Atheism and pantheism certainly function the same in practice, but any more on this matter will have to wait for another time.

Overall this book is highly recommended as one of the best works on philosophy in recent years.  It is an excellent work on many levels, first explaining the development of modern philosophy, as well as elucidating the existential positions and highlighting their particular details. Finally, it functions as a current state analysis of history by showing the progression from modernism to post-modernism through death-of-God realizations and the failed and desperate attempts at true-world transmutations.

Achtung Baby

The 18.09.09 episode of Sound Opinions discussed the evolution of U2 and proposed that Actung Baby was a turning point in the band's career, a position I fully embrace.

1991 saw the completion of the transition from the modern world to the postmodern one, a phase which began with World War II and lasted until the end of the Cold War.  Nowhere was more central to this history than Germany.  The post-Cold War left a vacuous space with no remaining metanarrative.  At the heart of this time and place U2 recorded what many would argue is their masterpiece, Achtung Baby.  For a new time emerged a new sound and attitude from a band that had been at the forefront of events in the 1980s. This world had a new sensibility and the record reflected that: it was darker, more complicated but in many ways less serious.  The future was open, free - but also very uncertain.

Every aspect of Achtung Baby showed that U2 had evolved.  The guitars not only gained an industrial-esque distortion, but a rawness and urgency.  The beat gained more dynamic rhythms and the bass developed a deeper influence.  The vocals also received distortion and different voicings.  Lyrically and thematically, this album revealed a deeper introspection and reached new levels of metaphor.  The album was noted for being U2's "heaviest" work, and as "dark," "intense," "dense" and "violent."  All of these words are quite appropriate and reveal the depth of the album.

Artistically, Achtung Baby was a success by being not only highly relevant, but showing an awareness of its point in history. It felt dynamic, and being musically innovative was progressing forward into the future. After two albums of exploring American music, this album is purely European and as such seems less stuck in one place or time.  The album is consistent throughout in a way no previous album has been.  The Fly, being the first single, as well as the opening track Zoo Station provided the most abrupt departure in sound through heavy beats and power guitar riffs.  Upon first hearing these tracks, the listener was exposed to a new world, something not heard before.  Even Better Than the Real Thing exemplified awareness of the hyper-real postmodernism of the era.  Until the End of the World continued the guitar-driven momentum and brought the album to inner depths of despair, guilt and betrayal.  One personifies the most conventional U2 track on the album, but thematically centers it with the concepts of separation and unification.  Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses and Mysterious Ways provided the lightest and brightest pop on the album.  So Cruel and Tryin to Throw Your Arms Around the World contribute the slowest and quietest moments of introspection.  Ultraviolet and Acrobat pick up the pace and contain the final push of the album to find meaning.  Finally Love is Blindness is the dark conclusion.  None of these songs are particularly "daylight" songs, it seems hard to visualize any of them except in dark rooms and streets.

It could be said that U2 was in a period of "irony and nihilism" (Assayas, 294).  But, I would say, a better description would be that U2 was in a period of hyper-awareness - of postmodernism, and the record (as well as Bono's extracurricular activities) was an attempt to overcome the nihilism in this world was lacking a firm foundation.  The artistry found on this record expanded U2's vision.  Subjectively, the work is much more individualistic - involving a personal contemplation, and conversely, it showed a historical and global awareness - the pulse of the Zeitgeist.  It would seem that U2 found a perfect balance of gravity in this period, always serious, but here the awareness of gravity is also an attempt to overcome it. When the band took this new record on tour, the result - Zoo TV-  was a massive presentation of this postmodern feel.  An epic display of the hyper-real through facades and technology.  But, as Bono says, the music was only "wrapped in irony. Actually, there was real blood going through those veins." (Assayas, 295)

The continued experimentation found on Zooropa and Pop was almost certainly more innovative, but did not reach a similar level of achievement. [2] The first was far too eclectic and viscerally inconsistent and the latter suffered from bad production [3] and a superficiality - the irony just seemed stretched a little too far and the balance of gravity seemed off.

Is Achtung Baby their masterpiece?  It often makes the list of best albums of all time.  And it rests at the center of these polarized discussions.  I will certainly claim that is a driving force in these debates and is therefore one of the leading contenders.  Is it a departure?  The band certainly intended it to be.  They needed to break the tension that had risen from the success of Joshua Tree.  And they felt it was - there was trepidation by the band about releasing it because they thought it so different.  The experiment was to see if all of the band's "outward manifestations" could be removed but leave that "spark" that is the essence of U2.  Of course, the result is something that is still purely U2.

Is Achtung Baby better than the revered Joshua Tree? I would certainly argue yes, beginning with the reasons stated above. Being innovative, the freshness of the sound has lasted longer.  The main problem with the Joshua Tree is its success [1]. While Actung has a more multi-era sound, Joshua Tree has a very 80s sound which has lead to the successful tracks being considered more as "80s hits." The sound is stripped-down, more acoustic and more Americanized.   Its track list is also inconsistent.  With or Without You and Where the Streets Have No Name are definitely A-grade U2. The third super-track, I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, despite being their most well known, is perhaps their weakest single and most over-rated track on the album, in my opinion.  Bullet The Blue Sky has survived as a concert favorite, but comes through better with the post-Zoo TV energy.  Running to Stand Still, In God's Country, Trip Through Your Wires and One Tree Hill are all good songs, but a little too uniform, lacking a certain edginess.  Red Hill Mining Town is more of the same - not bad, just not breaking any new ground.  Exit and Mothers of the Disappeared become the low points of this album, lacking enough significance for independent interest.  On the other hand, I would concede that some of these weaknesses are strengths.  In many ways this record is the antithesis of Achtung Baby [4].  Here the songs can be visualized in daylight, and in open spaces.  The murky, layered depths are not present, and everything is clearer and less confused.  The album is a good example of stripped-down simplicity.

But when it comes to creating a masterpiece, I think complexity is a necessity.  The depth of the material found later on Rattle & Hum foreshadows what would develop on Achtung Baby and shows an evolving maturity that surpasses Joshua Tree.  Rattle & Hum showed U2 expanding as musicians, but Actung Baby showed them progressing as artists. They were no longer a rebel New Wave band, but something more.  Certainly Bono in reflection seems to know that Actung Baby and Zoo TV was a major turning point in the band's evolution.  It was U2's exercise of "judo" to overcome the criticisms of their past, and through this experiment they propelled themselves to new levels of achievement.

U2 has always evolved their sound over trilogies.  Boy/ October/ War debuted the band as a New Wave rebellion.  They then began their global ascent with the Unforgettable Fire, broke out with The Joshua Tree, and continued with Rattle & Hum.  This trilogy formed the "classic" U2 sound.  They re-emerged with the post-modern Achtung Baby and continued experimenting with Zooropa and Pop.  As a new millenuium dawned, they returned with All That You Can't Leave Behind, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb and closed the decade with No Line on the Horizon.  [5] These three form what I consider the "neo-classic" trilogy. The core sound returned, but as always when one returns to a place from where they started, everything that has been learned is re-incorporated, and the neo-classic represents a synthesis between modern and post-modern U2[6].

U2 will be playing a free concert in Germany to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the death of communism. Hopefully the set will draw heavily from Actung Baby. [edit 10.29.09]


[1] I would compare The Joshua Tree to Rush's Moving Pictures.  Both had three standout A-side tracks become iconic.  In both cases these three tracks were brilliant, but became identified synonymously with the band and were extremely overplayed.  Decades later, these songs are inseparable from the band and often blind people from experiencing better material.
[2] The post-modern themes of Achtung Baby were developed even further on Zooropa.  The title track is a great exploration of the postmodern condition of hyper-reality.  The album as a whole shows its own postmodern essence through it eclecticism.  Beginning with the slick, electronic European Zooropa and ending with the more acoustic, raw, American The Wanderer shows a journey  ending in its opposite.  But as a complete work of music, this variation is less interesting and a bit less cohesive.
[3] Most discussions of Pop seem to place the blame on the production.  I can't tell myself, I only know the album is displeasing to my ears.
[4] I think its quite appropriate that the only song U2 released between JT/R&H and AB/Zooropa was Night and Day.  The symbolism could not have been more perfect .
[5] Its possible that the release of  Songs of Ascent will change this pattern.
[6] U2 also functions on another post-modern level.  As members of the New Wave that helped build Modern Rock, their status in the 80s was unquestionable.  Once Modern Rock aged and receded farther in time to exist alongside Classic Rock, what came after was literally Post-Modern Rock.  As their status as one of the greatest rock bands has continued to persevere throughout this time period, they have continued to contribute to the definition of contemporary rock music.



Sources:

U2 & Philosophy, Mark A. Wrathall, Open Court, 2006
Bono in Conversation, Michka Assayas, Riverhead, 2005
Cultural Theory And Popular Culture: A Reader, John Storey,  University of Georgia Press; 2006

Fargo 2009

Fargo Air Show 2009.08.22

FULL POST



PHOTO SET

A Nightmare to Remember

Dream Theater @ The Orpheum Theater, Minneapolis, 2009.08.21

Once again Dream Theater has embarked on a Progressive Nation Tour. This year's show, despite being propelled by a massive amount of energy and the usual precision performance of the band, suffered from an abysmally awful setlist.  The show consisted of three songs from the latest album, featuring some of their heaviest material, and roughly one song from every other album from the last nine years, which meant the exclusion of Images and Words, Awake and Falling into Infinity [1].  This willful abandonment of their three best works seems to me to be a pure sacrilege. It's as though they have gone from a progressive band with metal influence to throwing away their past and trying to be the heaviest progressive metal band.  Ever since Train of Thought the band has tried to push the envelope too far.  Octavarium and Systematic Chaos came out well, but the latest- Black Cloud & Silver Linings falls right back into that trap, as it tries to be loud and heavy for no reason.

I have to give credit to Dream Theater for switching up their setlists, and I've always hated it when bands have to play "that one song." But I still think that their are some essential elements to the career of any band which can hopefully still be kept fluid and dynamic.  For Dream Theater, I think a show must consist of one of the following: Pull Me Under, Metropolis, A Change of Seasons, or Surrounded.  I guess that means that there must be some reference to Images and Words, or at least some selections from Awake or its B-sides.  This night's list started as an alternate that usually contained Hollow Years to at least slow things down for a moment and most contain Take the Time (the night before).  The prime sets contained Metropolis (such as the next night). There was even one performance of Pull Me Under (two nights before) and the inclusion of The Camera Eye in Toronto (four nights earlier).  I could point to virtually any previous night of the tour and show why it was a better setlist.   But it seems the sets are getting increasingly newer and heavier, and here the line of balance was severely crossed and the result is something that is frustrating to the ears and to the brain.

As for Progressive Nation 2009, I'm bewildered by the inclusion of Zappa Plays Zappa.  If anything it sounds like Progressive Nation 1978, and I wouldn't even call it progressive, just psychedelic weirdness produced by a lost decade of excessive substance intake.  The performers were quite good in their own respects, but the songs are, well not really songs in this sense - just freeform jams, lacking a basic necessary structure.  It seems a waste when there are many good progressive bands out there, Enchant for instance, that could fulfill the intent of the tour. But Dream Theater keeps recruiting the weird or hyper-heavy metal bands. I think its time for them to take a rest from Progressive Nation, and do a well planned tour consisting of a extended set spanning the history of their work which highlights the quality and depth that they can achieve.

Setlist:

A Nightmare To Remember /A Rite Of Passage /Keyboard Solo/ Prophets of War /The Dance of Eternity /One Last Time / Solitary Shell / In the Name of God /The Count Of Tuscany

[1] When Dream and Day Unite and A Change of Seasons not included.

The GOP Has Become a Party of Nihilists

A recent article on Time.com was entitled The GOP Has Become a Party of Nihilists. This may be the best notion I've seen in journalism lately, and I was impressed that it made it to the mainstream. The main point being: "they have been overwhelmed by nihilists and hypocrites more interested in destroying the opposition and gaining power than in the public weal." I would love to see more in-depth analysis of this revelation.

On August 19th, Jon Stewart did an excellent piece on Fox News being the "New Liberals," pointing out how for eight years they have called protesters "loons" and unpatriotic. But now that the protesters are conservatives, civil disobedience and dissension are the patriotic methods. Furthermore, Fox has claimed the mainstream media is liberal and that they are the only alternative voice. So for Fox to really be liberal they would have to part of the mainstream. Of course, while attacking the major media outlets, Fox has at the same time been promoting how much bigger they are than their competing media outlets, claiming to be the most powerful - thereby cementing their "liberal" status.

Finally, to quote Seth Macfarlane from his recent interview in Playboy about Obama's liberalness, "he's a hell of a lot less liberal than Bush is conservative."

And, speaking of Seth, he also said that Carl Sagan was "an antidote to the superstition, fundamentalism and mysticism that runs rampant in this country." Recently I heard the BBC claim that America was a world of "stone-age superstition."  Of course books like The Sceptics Guide to Atheism [1] claim that worlwide theism is going up, only Western views on theism are declining due to the lingering effects of Logical Positivism.  The only truth I can discern from this position is that theism is declining in the West.  Meanwhile, America looks like it is in the stone age because of the reactionary ultra-conservative anatgonism to progress.

[1] Information taken from Philosophy Now, June/July 2009