The cult of Rush Limbaugh certainly is an interesting phenomenon, isn't it? He's an unattractive, poorly-spoken hypocrite who has somehow weaseled his way into becoming the chief spokesman of the country's most powerful minority party.
This particular appointment, of course, was not by invitation. (Well, at least not entirely.) If the GOP are the the Sex Pistols—which I, incidentally, like to imagine they are—then Limbaugh is Sid Vicious, the manic, talentless, pill-popping attention whore who commandeered the band in 1977, probably murdered his girlfriend the following year, and overdosed on heroin the year after that. But the comparison is not entirely fair: while Vicious at least pretended to be the “ultimate fan” of the Sex Pistols before taking the helm, Limbaugh transparently cares for nothing but himself.
The GOP executives are clearly sick of him, and fair enough, but if they're now forced to jump at every crack of his whip—à la RNC Chairman Michael Steele, Congressman Gingrey, and others—it is because they have been so limp and permissive for so long. But why should they be surprised? If you're going to let your party get hijkacked by a professional troll, don't be surprised when he refuses to let you stand on his bridge. Even most of the embarrassingly credulous American public audience has caught on; he has an approval rating that aspires to meet that of the younger President Bush. But for some reason, he is considered nonetheless to be the most important political pundit in the country.
This is a man who mimicked on camera the physical manifestations of Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's Disease for the purposes of ridicule, and then actually accused Fox of melodrama. This is a man who didn't condemn or deny the torture regime at Abu Ghraib like an ordinary apologist but who rather positively supported it, describing the practices as well-deserved catharsis for the troops. This is a man who suggested drug users should be subjected to lengthy prison sentences and was not more than a few years later himself discovered to be abusing prescription drugs. In short, to merely describe him as a despicable human being just doesn't seem sufficient.
But the tenor of the national conversation with him has changed. He recently made a fairly vanilla comment about a comprehensive health bill being named in memorial of the not-yet-deceased Ted Kennedy—without, it should be said, any innuendo to either Teddy's alcoholism or Chappaquiddick—and still found himself embroiled in controversy. And never mind his public desire to see President Obama fail, other than to observe that saying the same thing about President Clinton a decade ago wouldn't have made him persona non grata in his own party, it would have made him Newt Gingrich.
Perhaps the conspiracy theorists are right. Perhaps the entire affair has been a disingenuous design of the Democrats. It certainly has worked out well for them; about six months ago, I wrote that the GOP was unavoidably headed for a schism, and now it seems like that observation was about six months late. All of this is somewhat satisfying to those of us on the left; conservatives spent a fair amount of time last year crowing about we had finally managed to uncover in Former President Clinton what they had known all along. Well, we're now we're finally in a position to return the jeer. The fact is, the majority of people in this country loathe Rush Limbaugh, and always have. I just hope for the sake of conservatism that when he falls—and he will fall, if he hasn't already—conservatives will be smart enough not to soften the landing with themselves.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
The Future of Music
From the moment I discovered the online service Pandora, I've been fascinated with it. Not with its predictive acumen, really, or with its method of distribution, but rather, with its broader technological and artistic implications. (For those unaware, it's a radio and music recommendation service that, through its algorithms, its database and the selective input of a dedicated user, “learns” the user's preferences and then streams music it deems appropriate.) It's a nifty little piece of software from the Web 2.0 generation, and it offers an novel and fairly effective method of getting one's musical fix, but it won't transform the world of music the way Wikipedia has transformed the world of information.
But its descendants? They certainly might. Its creators suggestively named the underlying technology the “Music Genome Project,” and its mission is to describe music in terms of its elementary particles. This is a noble but deceptively ambitious endeavor in reductionism, and it involves some strong underlying assumptions about the metaphysics of music; can this software, with only a few hundred genes in its vocabulary, actually develop a sufficiently expressive musical grammar? Could any mechanical software, ever? The naysayers argue against it on principle, but I think we should always hesitate to underestimate our own ingenuity. Pandora is only the very beginning, and with the exponential growth of processing power, future iterations will be progressively more sophisticated, nuanced, and automated. And beyond this project lies even more stunning theoretical possibilities; we might someday be able to create computer programs that can effectively compose music—or can at least imitate those who could—and in doing so, might also come to better understand the principles and metaprinciples of the composers themselves.
This is probably less difficult than it initially seems. Consider the relatively prolific J.S. Bach, for instance, who left fewer than two thousand works; a comprehensive analysis of his music and his methods is far from impossible, and, although it would be a daunting task by current computing standards, encoding his principles into an application which convincingly randomizes music based upon them is certainly not inconceivable. And thus, fresh manuscripts from the grandmaster of the Baroque, at our fingertips.
In the distant future, our computers will be able to “render” these projects in real-time. You might at first direct it to “Play something Wagnerian for about half an hour, with those sensational orchestral tuttis at about thirteen minutes and at about twenty-nine minutes” and then, five minutes into the session, suddenly wish to hear a tutti or a cello solo immediately, or simply wish for the work to conclude, and all that will be required to seamlessly insert these effects into the music in real-time will be a bit of fiddling with the knobs. Our computers certainly won't mind this kind of capriciousness, and they might even find it helpful. There will surely also be an evolutionary component to this kind of software; it will synchronize with a global network, check its work against what other computers have devised with similar guidelines, and continue to discover what works best.
In the very distant future, the computer might simply be able to detect your preferences through some kind of neural peripheral, and adjust itself accordingly. Just plug in, turn up, and tune out. Perhaps some of the music of the distant future won't involve sound at all—not even the illusion of it. People might well wonder what it was like not to take one's music intravenously, so to speak, and they might pity those who didn't.
In any case, whatever Pandora is, it has clearly sprouted something; I suspect this distant future isn't as distant as it seems.
But its descendants? They certainly might. Its creators suggestively named the underlying technology the “Music Genome Project,” and its mission is to describe music in terms of its elementary particles. This is a noble but deceptively ambitious endeavor in reductionism, and it involves some strong underlying assumptions about the metaphysics of music; can this software, with only a few hundred genes in its vocabulary, actually develop a sufficiently expressive musical grammar? Could any mechanical software, ever? The naysayers argue against it on principle, but I think we should always hesitate to underestimate our own ingenuity. Pandora is only the very beginning, and with the exponential growth of processing power, future iterations will be progressively more sophisticated, nuanced, and automated. And beyond this project lies even more stunning theoretical possibilities; we might someday be able to create computer programs that can effectively compose music—or can at least imitate those who could—and in doing so, might also come to better understand the principles and metaprinciples of the composers themselves.
This is probably less difficult than it initially seems. Consider the relatively prolific J.S. Bach, for instance, who left fewer than two thousand works; a comprehensive analysis of his music and his methods is far from impossible, and, although it would be a daunting task by current computing standards, encoding his principles into an application which convincingly randomizes music based upon them is certainly not inconceivable. And thus, fresh manuscripts from the grandmaster of the Baroque, at our fingertips.
In the distant future, our computers will be able to “render” these projects in real-time. You might at first direct it to “Play something Wagnerian for about half an hour, with those sensational orchestral tuttis at about thirteen minutes and at about twenty-nine minutes” and then, five minutes into the session, suddenly wish to hear a tutti or a cello solo immediately, or simply wish for the work to conclude, and all that will be required to seamlessly insert these effects into the music in real-time will be a bit of fiddling with the knobs. Our computers certainly won't mind this kind of capriciousness, and they might even find it helpful. There will surely also be an evolutionary component to this kind of software; it will synchronize with a global network, check its work against what other computers have devised with similar guidelines, and continue to discover what works best.
In the very distant future, the computer might simply be able to detect your preferences through some kind of neural peripheral, and adjust itself accordingly. Just plug in, turn up, and tune out. Perhaps some of the music of the distant future won't involve sound at all—not even the illusion of it. People might well wonder what it was like not to take one's music intravenously, so to speak, and they might pity those who didn't.
In any case, whatever Pandora is, it has clearly sprouted something; I suspect this distant future isn't as distant as it seems.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
The Election
For once and maybe forever, this year's student elections are actually important.
These are troubled times—on both the global and the domestic front—and next year's student body president will unfortunately be given the right to decide exactly which pennies we're going to pinch. Anderson Hall has also just backed into a new president of its own, and his relationship with SGA next year will probably inform student/administration relations for the duration of his tenure. And most relevantly, SGA themselves have been an embarrassment this year, everyone knows it, and if they don't make some better choices next time around, you can bet that I won't be the only one complaining. Hopefully through all the overblown rhetoric about voices and choices, we'll make a decent choice.
There's an interesting concealed point; our university's recruitment crew makes an awful lot out of the fact that our student government is so comparatively powerful, but is this something about which we should actually be proud? I don't think so, and amidst all their bloodletting, I further wonder: why hasn't anyone thought to turn the gun on them?
We have on more than one occasion this year had fully-tenured professors with decades of relevant experience forced to plead for their lives to inept, self-important kids who neither know nor care about any of the relevant considerations. Of course the situation has ultimately turned out to be a disaster; it should have. But even aside from the matter of disrespect, we ought to also be asking how exactly our student government managed to get so much authority in the first place.
It's not because Anderson Hall is so interested in the pulse of the students; if they were, they'd use the referendum and actually find out. It's also not because the administration actually trusts the student government; no, when the grown-ups feel sufficiently compelled, they're perfectly willing to intervene—à la the marching band fiasco—and nudge SGA back into its kennel. It's not as if the absurdity wasn't already apparent; last year a presidential candidate nearly won the election on the back of the “Ninjas vs. Pirates” meme, and this year he's back, promising to “save the world through juggling.” Why would any reasonable administration ever allow these kind of people power? SGA ought to deciding between Funyuns and Corn Nuts in the campus vending machines, not deciding whether or not the campus arts or media get their necessary funding, and allowing them an inch more is asking to be treated to more of the same confused, obstructionist behavior we've seen this year.
I don't wish to be misunderstood on the general point; many of the student senators are good people who just quietly go about their jobs. Many of them—maybe even most—promptly answer their emails, earnestly listen to their constituents and vote accordingly. I suspect our next student body president is one of these senators. But whoever he might be, he needs to strive for transparency, to never forget that the ultimate prize is a student body not a bolstered resume, and to never forget that he serves at our pleasure rather than the other way around. The person we need to elect president is the person who can best make himself vanish.
These are troubled times—on both the global and the domestic front—and next year's student body president will unfortunately be given the right to decide exactly which pennies we're going to pinch. Anderson Hall has also just backed into a new president of its own, and his relationship with SGA next year will probably inform student/administration relations for the duration of his tenure. And most relevantly, SGA themselves have been an embarrassment this year, everyone knows it, and if they don't make some better choices next time around, you can bet that I won't be the only one complaining. Hopefully through all the overblown rhetoric about voices and choices, we'll make a decent choice.
There's an interesting concealed point; our university's recruitment crew makes an awful lot out of the fact that our student government is so comparatively powerful, but is this something about which we should actually be proud? I don't think so, and amidst all their bloodletting, I further wonder: why hasn't anyone thought to turn the gun on them?
We have on more than one occasion this year had fully-tenured professors with decades of relevant experience forced to plead for their lives to inept, self-important kids who neither know nor care about any of the relevant considerations. Of course the situation has ultimately turned out to be a disaster; it should have. But even aside from the matter of disrespect, we ought to also be asking how exactly our student government managed to get so much authority in the first place.
It's not because Anderson Hall is so interested in the pulse of the students; if they were, they'd use the referendum and actually find out. It's also not because the administration actually trusts the student government; no, when the grown-ups feel sufficiently compelled, they're perfectly willing to intervene—à la the marching band fiasco—and nudge SGA back into its kennel. It's not as if the absurdity wasn't already apparent; last year a presidential candidate nearly won the election on the back of the “Ninjas vs. Pirates” meme, and this year he's back, promising to “save the world through juggling.” Why would any reasonable administration ever allow these kind of people power? SGA ought to deciding between Funyuns and Corn Nuts in the campus vending machines, not deciding whether or not the campus arts or media get their necessary funding, and allowing them an inch more is asking to be treated to more of the same confused, obstructionist behavior we've seen this year.
I don't wish to be misunderstood on the general point; many of the student senators are good people who just quietly go about their jobs. Many of them—maybe even most—promptly answer their emails, earnestly listen to their constituents and vote accordingly. I suspect our next student body president is one of these senators. But whoever he might be, he needs to strive for transparency, to never forget that the ultimate prize is a student body not a bolstered resume, and to never forget that he serves at our pleasure rather than the other way around. The person we need to elect president is the person who can best make himself vanish.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
The Space Race
How is it possible that there's even a debate about whether we ought to fund our space program?
Forget about imagination for a minute: its costs are relatively low and amortized over time, and its contribution to the long-term health and survival of our civilization is probably essential. (Stephen Hawking thinks we won't survive another millennium cramped together on Earth alone; I remain slightly more optimistic.) The exploration of the cosmos is the paradigmatic example of a good global expenditure, and to forsake it for some kind of supposed economic reason is to miss the point of our existence in the most misguided kind of way.
And if we are to consider our imagination, then there could not possibly be an investment that pays better dividends. Mars might seem positively ordinary by now, given its extensive coverage, but if you've been paying attention, you've been rewarded for it; the Martian expanse is inconceivably marvelous and paradoxical. Those vivid, Technicolor pictures from midday are themselves already enough of an achievement, but even more evocative are those panoramic shots of the long Martian dusk, which could be mistaken for portraits of evening in the American Southwest. Well, they almost could; the dull blue sunset and the miniature sun on the horizon betray the fact that this eerily familiar landscape is actually very, very far from home. (The few photos we have from Venus, on the other hand, are instead only mere glimpses into a murky heart of darkness; at a thousand degrees Fahrenheit and ninety atmospheres of pressure, the Venusian surface only allows our cameras to survive long enough to tell us how much sharper we'll have to become before our footsteps may follow.) And the iconic photos taken during our visits so many years ago to our nearest celestial neighbor—which, in lacking any atmosphere, has both a surface bathed in blinding Saharan sunlight and a sky blacker than the darkest Terran night—have long provided us with a kind of surreal beauty. But most extraordinary of all, I think, is the single grainy image captured by the Huygens probe not five years ago: it might as well just be a photo of some rusty, rock-littered undeveloped property in the middle of Riley County, except that it happens to have been taken on Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, nearly a billion miles away.
These humble images—easily accessible through a Google Image Search or even on some of their respective Wikipedia pages—provide us with a haunting sense of cosmic insignificance and a profound sense of human achievement; they provide the seam between the past and the future of our species, and they leave us spellbound in the process.
This month, NASA will have to decide between some very important competing projects. They'll have to decide whether they should fund a comprehensive voyage to the Saturnian system or a comprehensive voyage to the Jovian system, and if some other project ultimately looks more inviting, they won't fund either. To select Saturn is to return triumphantly to Titan to analyze its ocean of hydrocarbons and to visit Enceladus, with its volcanic activity and suggestion of microbial life; to select Jupiter is to visit Europa, with its rolling hills of water ice and its subterranean oceans, and to meet Ganymede and Callisto, two moons certain to be future outposts. In any case, a very large and significant portion of the outer Solar System will go uncharted, for the foreseeable future. Perhaps all of it. And for what? So we can build a couple more ephemeral monuments at home?
We must fund our space program. We simply must.
Forget about imagination for a minute: its costs are relatively low and amortized over time, and its contribution to the long-term health and survival of our civilization is probably essential. (Stephen Hawking thinks we won't survive another millennium cramped together on Earth alone; I remain slightly more optimistic.) The exploration of the cosmos is the paradigmatic example of a good global expenditure, and to forsake it for some kind of supposed economic reason is to miss the point of our existence in the most misguided kind of way.
And if we are to consider our imagination, then there could not possibly be an investment that pays better dividends. Mars might seem positively ordinary by now, given its extensive coverage, but if you've been paying attention, you've been rewarded for it; the Martian expanse is inconceivably marvelous and paradoxical. Those vivid, Technicolor pictures from midday are themselves already enough of an achievement, but even more evocative are those panoramic shots of the long Martian dusk, which could be mistaken for portraits of evening in the American Southwest. Well, they almost could; the dull blue sunset and the miniature sun on the horizon betray the fact that this eerily familiar landscape is actually very, very far from home. (The few photos we have from Venus, on the other hand, are instead only mere glimpses into a murky heart of darkness; at a thousand degrees Fahrenheit and ninety atmospheres of pressure, the Venusian surface only allows our cameras to survive long enough to tell us how much sharper we'll have to become before our footsteps may follow.) And the iconic photos taken during our visits so many years ago to our nearest celestial neighbor—which, in lacking any atmosphere, has both a surface bathed in blinding Saharan sunlight and a sky blacker than the darkest Terran night—have long provided us with a kind of surreal beauty. But most extraordinary of all, I think, is the single grainy image captured by the Huygens probe not five years ago: it might as well just be a photo of some rusty, rock-littered undeveloped property in the middle of Riley County, except that it happens to have been taken on Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, nearly a billion miles away.
These humble images—easily accessible through a Google Image Search or even on some of their respective Wikipedia pages—provide us with a haunting sense of cosmic insignificance and a profound sense of human achievement; they provide the seam between the past and the future of our species, and they leave us spellbound in the process.
This month, NASA will have to decide between some very important competing projects. They'll have to decide whether they should fund a comprehensive voyage to the Saturnian system or a comprehensive voyage to the Jovian system, and if some other project ultimately looks more inviting, they won't fund either. To select Saturn is to return triumphantly to Titan to analyze its ocean of hydrocarbons and to visit Enceladus, with its volcanic activity and suggestion of microbial life; to select Jupiter is to visit Europa, with its rolling hills of water ice and its subterranean oceans, and to meet Ganymede and Callisto, two moons certain to be future outposts. In any case, a very large and significant portion of the outer Solar System will go uncharted, for the foreseeable future. Perhaps all of it. And for what? So we can build a couple more ephemeral monuments at home?
We must fund our space program. We simply must.
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