Book: Deconstruction in a Nutshell—An Interview With Jacques Derrida. The vanguard of pop music has always been inherently deconstructionist, so I feel that all of this deep discussion on the topic is somewhat useless. It's interesting and rebellious to rip tradition to shreds, but is it useful?
8/29/2004
Republican convention starts today. Thousands protest. It looks like 1968 again. The GOP is such a shameless lot. Their only platform is straw man attacks against John Kerry. No new ideas.
8/29/2005
Hurricane Katrina, a category 5 storm plows into New Orleans. They're saying this will be the worst hurricane ever to hit the US. It will flood the entire city. (More evidence of the catastrophic effects of climate change).
8/29/2010
NYT Article: The Billionaires Bankrolling the Tea Party.
8/29/2019
The history of automation was, at least partially, for the purpose of setting aside more leisure time for craft and creativity that wouldn't be seen as "work", and would give meaning to life. Personally, I prefer the idea of work as it relates to craft, and is the only way to get into "flow". If working in AI, with the final result a great piece of music you play over and over and uplifts you and others, then it has a place. But the idea of "replace humans" is a decidedly bleak idea.
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Reading (at least for me) is a way to connect things I already know something about, and enhance that knowledge. Social media has degraded our ability to read well, so we now skim, scroll, and swipe our way through the world.
8/29/2022
When I was first learning to play music, playing along with records and the radio gave me ideas for composing my own music. I have since realized that it really was an extension of my fascination with language and rhyme, and then rhythm. If you like wordplay, and reading in general, you're probably more inclined to want to write your own music.