Cheesy robot pilots battle for the planet and disco nightlife. You have seen these pilots massed outside travel agents – you know they move when you’re not watching – here the awful truth is revealed at last in high definition. First made in 2004 in standard 4:3, now regenerated at great personal cost from the original source files, extra string and leeches. Special note – the last version had a different president. The choice of current president is simply a matter of accuracy and pilots have no political bias – they hate everybody equally.
We’ve had 40 years of post everything. Stop with the passive language. Stop analysing. Publish and be damned. Progress is pornographic, but that’s not a bad thing. Music is not research, it’s not measured in milligrams. I don’t want to told how many speakers you used, whether it was MaxMSP, whether you used a Wiimote. It’s not to be metricised. To hell with funding as the score and festivals as the new concept album. We need people to make music that’s intangible, loud, tiny, ridiculous and in every way metaphysical. Music that’s brave and foolish. Stop seeking approval from the past, seek community, seek experience, seek humour. But the whole ‘golden age / end times’ argument has got to go. It belongs in the 1800’s. I am not afraid of pop music, of pubs, of top 40. I make things. I make chairs, I make myself useful. Milton Babbit asked Who Cares If You Listen? I do. Reclaim randomness. Randomness is an energy source, infinite opportunity. It is not shuffle, it’s not a nihilistic everything is the same as everything else. Difference is an energy that can lead us onward.
Last June, District Attorney David Capeless of Berkshire County, Massachusetts, announced that he was dropping all charges against 44-year-old Bernard Baran, a man who has spent half his life behind bars on child molestation charges that the state no longer has the confidence to retry. Baran was convicted in January 1985 of molesting six children at a pre-kindergarten day care facility in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. He was released on bond in 2006 after an appeals court determined that his trial attorney had been incompetent and that the prosecution may have withheld key exculpatory evidence. Baran says that during his jail term he was raped and beaten more than 30 times, necessitating six different transfers to new correctional institutions. Such is the cost the prison system exacts on an openly gay man convicted of molesting children. Baran was one of the first people in the country to be prosecuted in the day care sex abuse panic of the 1980s, a bizarre nationwide hysteria fed by homophobia, fears of Satanism, and a wing of child psychology that used unproven interrogation techniques that critics say caused children to recount sexual incidents that never took place. In this case, prosecutor Daniel Ford, now a judge on the Massachusetts Superior Court, showed the grand jury that indicted Baran an edited video interview with the children. According to court documents, the video shows several kids alleging that Baran had sexually abused them. Edited out was footage in which some of the children denied any abuse by Baran, interviewees accused other members of the day care faculty of abuse or of witnessing abuse, and, most important, interrogators asked the same questions over and over – even after repeated denials – until a child gave them an affirmative answer. Some children were even given rewards for their answers. [...] In upholding the ruling that granted Baran a new trial, the appeals court added in a footnote that if the state wanted to retry him, Baran could file a motion for a hearing on Ford’s alleged misconduct. By dropping the charges, the D.A. avoided that hearing. “In my opinion,” says Boston civil liberties attorney Harvey Silverglate, “ the possibility of an embarrassing hearing into misconduct by a former prosecutor and now sitting Superior Court judge was the main reason, if not the reason, they decided to drop the charges. The appeals court opinion cut a bit too close to the bone for them.” So while Bernard Baran is free after 22 years of incarceration, there are no plans to look into the actions of the prosecutor, now a sitting judge, responsible for his conviction. Ford’s career trajectory indicates the backward incentive structure that prosecutors face: Convictions produce rewards, while abuse rarely comes with a penalty.
The Bernard Baran indictment appears to have many factors in common with dozens of ritual abuse cases which surfaced during the 1980s and early 1990s. Bernard is a homosexual. That has proven to be a tremendous personal liability, because of the high level of homophobia in American society. On 1983-AUG-1, Bernard Baran was hired as a teacher’s aide by the West Side Early Childhood Development Center (ECDC) in Pittsfield, MA. Pittsfield is located near the extreme western border of Massachusetts, very close to the state of New York. The uncle of one of Baran’s students complained to the ECDC that he did not want a homosexual teaching his nephew. Shortly after this complaint, he and his sister-in-law called police and said that the boy had accused Baran of molesting him. On 1984-OCT-6, Baran was charged with sexually assaulting two three-year-old children at ECDC. The number of charges reached nine after most of the 160 children at the ECDC were interviewed. Baran was 19 years of age at the time. On 1985-JAN-30, he received a sentenced of 3 concurrent life terms. Because of his age and slight build, he was easy pray for other inmates. “During his first four years, he was raped and physically assaulted 30-40 times. He has suffered serious eye injuries and many broken bones. [...] In all probability, he is innocent. In fact, the criminal acts for which he was charged probably never happened. However, the children (now in their twenties) probably retain “memories” of the abuse that were implanted in their minds as a result of improper interview techniques.
Articles continue at links. See also the Free Baran archive. I lived in a small town as a teenager in the 1980s. I read books, including books on taboo subjects. I played role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons. I listened to music that wasn’t to be found on the radio. I was very aware that a satanic panic was occurring in the United States, and that I could be caught up in it for my interests. I could be accused of the kind of nonsense that Baran was caught up in. I found two strategies that worked well in keeping myself safe. Those strategies were knowing when to be public about my interests and when to be private. Being public (including publishing OVO) meant that any argument I was a secret agent for evil would be weak. Being private meant that what the do-gooders didn’t need to know about they never knew about. But it was my dumb luck that the do-gooders didn’t try especially hard. Now I’m an adult and it turns out reading those books, playing those games and listening to that music didn’t do me or anyone else any particular harm. Turns out the good guys were the bad guys and the bad guys were innocent. I’m the one who stuck by my guns. The judges and therapists and police and teachers and clergy who made bank on the satanic panic are the ones who tucked tail and shuffled into an underground tunnel. I don’t deserve any particular reward for what I did. But were this a just world, they would be held accountable for what they did. Bernard Baran spent half his life in prison to satisfy the blood lust of those who serve an invisible monster that lives in the sky. And that’s one of the reasons I’m public about my interest in the withering away of religion under the twin suns of scorn and reason.
[Lord Byron] chose to be noisily “immoral” not because he was any worse (or any better) than the average aristocrat of his time but as a weapon against the moralism of Wordsworth. I don’t mean “moralism” in a normative sense – God no. I remember sifting through the elderly Wordsworth’s letters looking for any comment at all on the Great Famine which was extirpating the Irish, and finding only one remark, in which the great moralist earnestly prays that England will not weaken, ie provide any aid whatsoever. It’s one of the curiosities of English literary history that you’ll never find the least particle of compassion for the Irish in “moral” poets like Wordsworth. Only the “mad, bad and dangerous” Byron mentioned the slaughter of 1798, attacking the PM, Castlereagh, for “dabbling [his] sleek young hands in Erin’s gore” and, as Pope would have recommended, delivering an extra kick to his enemy’s corpse in this epitaph: “Posterity will never survey a nobler grave than this: here lie the bones of Castlereagh: stop, traveler, and piss.”
Members of a congregation in north London have abandoned their church – because of a council noise ban. The Immanuel International Christian Centre was ordered to keep its amplified music and sermons quieter after a neighbour complained. But the church’s pastor Dunni Odetoyinbo claimed Waltham Forest council had only told them to keep quiet so as not to offend the Muslim community. The church also argued the council had ‘taken away its ability to praise God’, and that congregation numbers had dwindled from 100 to 30 because of the restrictions. Baha Uddin, who lives near the church, had complained he was unable to use his garden at weekends and his one-year-old daughter was regularly disturbed by the noise from services. He said: ‘It’s been a nightmare. I’ve not been able to use my garden or living room on a Sunday because of the church services. The amplified music, drums and the loud sermons made having a conversation impossible. The noise made me depressed.’ But other neighbours say the noise is not a problem. The church lodged an appeal, and appeared at Waltham Forest magistrates’ court on Tuesday. In court Mrs Odetoyinbo, 55, claimed a council officer had asked her ‘to keep the noise down so as not to offend the Muslim community’. But magistrates rejected the appeal, and ordered the church to pay £2,250 costs.It can now only play music for 20 minutes on a Sunday between 11.30am and 11.50pm. A council spokesman said: ‘All attempts at mediation have failed and we regrettably were forced to issue the church with a noise abatement notice.’
Article continues at link. Previously at OVO, The Bells Bells Bells Bells Bells Bells Bells. When you’ve got an invisible monster that lives in the sky on your side, giving you special dispensations that are unquestionable and eternal, you might get it in your head that anything you do in the service of that invisible monster that lives in the sky is justified – nay, compulsory. That’s the sort of thinking that causes US Presidents to declare war [1] [2] [3] [4] and Saudi Arabian architects to hijack airplanes [1] [2] [3]. Perhaps compared to these evils, annoying a neighbor is a small thing. Perhaps it is an unfair comparison all around. But I will say that being a pest to your neighbor is not excused by superstition. And every time a place of religion drags the State into their affairs, both the freedom to worship and the ability to have a secular / pluralistic government suffer.
Wikipedia: “Radetzky March, Op. 228 is a march composed by Johann Strauss Sr. in 1848. It was dedicated to the Austrian Field Marshal Joseph Radetzky von Radetz, and became quite a popular march among soldiers.”
Oh, but for some of us this song means something else entirely [4:30].
What’s the use of striving? Life’s road in front unravels.
We get to do the driving, don’t choose the direction we travel.
Do your homework or wag for weeks, graffiti the Dandenong line.
It don’t matter much when you hear that scream “Greg! You missed the stop sign!”
Sometime in the next 10,000 years a comet’s gonna wipe out all trace of man.
I’m banking on it coming before my end of year exam.
The rich kid becomes a junkie, the poor kid an advertiser.
What a tragic waste of potential (being a junkie’s not so good either).
Your folks worked hard for what you got, you are the fruit of their vine.
Who cares what you sow and what you reap? ’cause Greg! You missed the stop sign!
Bought a car just the other day. Man! could that baby run.
But you know what they always say: there’s always a better one.
Got a tumor in my brain, it’s creeping to my lungs.
And I’ve searched around in vain, can’t find me a better one.
Hardwired into everyone’s head is the person they’re gonna be.
Growin’ up’s not a matter of choice, it’s a matter of wait & see.
So kids, yeah, you can do it! You can be your best!
Girls can do anything! You can pass the test!
I’m OK, you’re OK, we’re OK, we’re fine!
I thought I heard a semi-trailer… “Greg! You missed the stop sign!“
James King, Catholic Church Sues City of Phoenix for Right to Ring Church Bells: In June, a Catholic bishop was sentenced to three years of probation and 10 days in jail (suspended) for violating a noise ordinance by ringing church bells in a Phoenix neighborhood. On August 24, city officials warned St. Mark’s Catholic Church, located near Van Buren Street and 30th Street, that it could be prosecuted “if St. Mark did not reduce the amount of times that it rings its carillon to the satisfaction of certain neighbors,” according to a complaint filed by prosecutors. [...] The churches are asking for nominal damages, declaratory judgment under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, and a permanent injunction so they can ring their bells.
What King describes as ‘ringing church bells’ in his article are recordings that are played hourly. There’s a different mental image invoked by a weathered bell tower and its sonorous chimes peeling down through history on the one hand and a recording on the other. There’s no definition of what a religion is in US law – that’s what the Second Amendment does for us – so there’s no legal case for preventing hourly blasts of recorded bells because it isn’t a ‘real’ religious practice. But it does seem reasonable to compel them to pipe down, in the interest of those whose freedom of religion includes a little peace and quiet. The bishop fighting for the right to make his joyous noise may not know it, but he is laying the groundwork for any other religious group that wants to bomb their neighborhood with their own recordings. Say, a Muslim call to prayer five times every day over concert-grade loudspeakers. You don’t get one without the other. Think of the “ear-splitting” sound of 4,000 mosques doing just that – five times a day – every day – in Cairo. Or if Cairo is too far away, think of the problems caused by religious loudspeaker use in London. Is this really a problem that we need to import to the USA?