The pythagorean scale has perfect fifths while the octave is off and the third is further off than standard 12tet.
http://www.pianofundamentals.com/book/en/2.2.3
Experimental. Sometimes emphasizing the perfect fifths. Other times not in any key at all.
I like the keyless stuff. But the transitions and overall flow isn't so great.

To summarize that link:
Meantone Temperament has perfect thirds (the freq ratio between c and e being 5/4 for example.)
12 tone Pythagorean Temperament has perfect fifths (c and g being 3/2)
12 tone Equal Temperament fudges both thirds and fifths and instead has a perfectly smooth step up for each note. It only has a perfect octave.
12 tone Well Temperaments are a variety of alternate compromises between meantone and pythagorean, the primary goal being to have both good thirds and good fifths. Supposedly the best WTs are by Werckmeister and Young. And supposedly Moonlight Sonata sounds better in WT for example. I had already been thinking about doing the midi for moonlight and listening to it with various temperaments. WTs additionally keep it meaningful to have all the different keys as each has it's own 'color'. Which is the same idea as what just intonation would do. Although just intonation may be too extreme.

I do think that I sort of like having the octave off a bit. If I had to choose, I'd choose fifths or thirds over the octave. I guess somewhat like this link I earlier had read was saying:
http://www.nonoctave.com/tunes/

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/02/16/us/a-newer-lonelier-crowd-emerges-in-internet-study.html?pagewanted=1

In short, ''the more hours people use the Internet, the less time they spend with real human beings,'' said Norman Nie, a political scientist at Stanford University who was the principal investigator for the study.

Mr. Nie asserted that the Internet was creating a broad new wave of social isolation in the United States, raising the specter of an atomized world without human contact or emotion....


In the past Mr. Nie has been the author of studies on the decline of American involvement in political and community organizations. He said that while much of the public Internet debate had been focused on the invasion of privacy, little study had been done of the potential psychological and emotional impact of what he said would be more people ''home, alone and anonymous.''

Mr. Nie, a co-author of the study with Prof. Lutz Erbring of the Free University of Berlin, contended that there was no evidence that virtual communities would provide a substitute for traditional human relationships....


In August 1998 researchers at Carnegie Mellon University reported that people who spent even a few hours a week connected to the Internet experienced higher levels of depression and loneliness.

In contrast to the Carnegie Mellon study, which focused on psychological and emotional issues, the Stanford survey is an effort to provide a broad demographic picture of Internet use and its potential impact on society.

''No one is asking the obvious questions about what kind of world we are going to live in when the Internet becomes ubiquitous,'' Mr. Nie said.

''No one asked these questions with the advent of the automobile, which led to unplanned suburbanization, or with the rise of television, which led to the decline of our political parties.''

''We hope we can give society a chance to talk through some of these issues before the changes take place,'' he said....

''There are going to be millions of people with very minimal human interaction,'' he said. ''We're really in for some things that are potentially great freedoms but frightening in terms of long-term social interaction.''

...The internet could be the ultimate isolating technology that further reduces our participation in communities even more than did automobiles and television before it."

Email is like a slot machine:

...works on a principle of variable reinforcement schedule, which Tom Stafford, a lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the University of Sheffield, explained has been established as the way to train the strongest habits. "This means that rather than reward an action every time it is performed, you reward it sometimes, but not in a predictable way. So with email, , usually when I check it there is nothing interesting, but every so often there's something wonderful-an invite out, or maybe some juicy gossip-and I get a reward."

..."When we log in to our email server," writes Richard DeGrandpre in Digitopia, "the expectation of finding new mail negates any possible excitement or surprise; if there's no new mail, we're disappointed," So we check it more and more. As the condition progresses, sufferers feel increasingly isolated from society, become argumentative, and fall into depression... Early sufferers, Block says, tended to be highly educated, socially awkward men, but now more and more they are middle-aged women who are either at home alone or wokring."

-

Memory:

A group of twentysomethings were asked to sort a deck of cards-once in silence, a second time while listening to randomly selected sounds in search of specific tones. "The subjects' brains coped with the additional task by shifting responsibility from the hippocampus-which stores and recalls information-to the striatum," Kirn explained, "which takes care of rote, repetitive activities. Thanks to this switch, the subjects managed to sort the cards just as well with the musical distraction-but they had a much harder time remembering what, exactly, they'd been sorting once the experiment was over."

I multitask and I don't remember very well. The reason why people don't remember as well when they get older is that they're multitasking much more so. The multitasking they're doing is constantly remembering the farther past, thus not focusing on the present so much. It's necessary to do this to some extent. If you didn't, if the past is never remembered, what point was there in living it?

Read something that one should 'never criticize anyone in email. Use face to face meetings or phone calls instead.'

Unfortunately it's true. It's not very idealistic to face that it's true. But it usually is true. It's true enough that one will eventually wear out if they don't follow this rule. If I follow this rule though I definitely cannot have any meaningful interaction with anyone that I never do face to face interactions/phone calls with. To attempt to still interact with a person then leaves things in a fake place that I really don't care to be.

I haven't, by the way, followed this rule. But I think I'll go ahead and do so in the future.

Also I hereby refuse to interact online with anyone who won't actually speak to me.

And, I hereby rename all computers: 'sensory deprivation machines.'

I 'hate' mankind but like all individuals...

I recognize that this is an incredible dystopia. At the same time surely I see that individuals can be awful too... But the thing is that it's a moral precept to assume good things about individuals (unless the evidence is already very good to the contrary). A huge reason this world is such a dystopia is exactly because people don't make good assumptions. They start out suspicious and so ready to demonize. It's a matter of ethics that one must always assume the best of people. Assume that they're probably trying to be good, trying to get along with others, etc.

Although this definitely can mean getting burned more often than one otherwise would, it is mostly a very good thing. It means actually that I work with roughly 50 or so people and I get along with each one. There's no one at all that I truly dislike, that I truly think badly of. And this attitude it seems has resulted in everyone I work with seeming to like me also.

But I do 'hate' mankind. As a whole this world is awful. We're stuck into such awful social norms.
-
Pity. My 'friend' S hates the idea of being pitied. She's been fired twice in the last few months and is now mostly sitting at home with nothing to do. She also recently got a DUI... Also is seeing a counseler. And she observes to me that when you're unemployed, suddenly no one wants to hang out with you. Which is true and another example of the awfulness of the social norms of western society. But then when I say me and my wife would always be happy to hang out with her, she says, "no, I don't want pity! I was just observing this tendency..."

And I can't push the point because I'm worried that it's become awkward that I'm married. In truth, dammit, she is so attractive to me that I'm not quite thinking 'correctly'. And I don't know. So we hardly see each other. Perhaps because it's 'inappropriate' because I'm married and she's single. I don't know. So maybe it's not really a matter of wanting to not be pitied...

But this idea to hate being pitied. What's the difference between compassion and pity? In what kind of society are so many people worried they might get pitied?

"According to a survey in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, we misunderstand the tone of emails 50% of the time--and for good reason: there is no face on the other end to stop us in midsentence, to indicate that what we are in the process of saying is rude, not comprehended, or cruel.... Psychologists call it disinhibition, and its pervasive effect--as can be witnessed every day in nasty comments appended to newspaper articles online, in the aggrieved tone and intent of some blog postings, in email inboxes scorched by flame wars--has turned many parts of the internet into a nasty place."

"According to Marco Iacoboni, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at UCLA, this has bolstered the notion that "our mental processes are shaped by our bodies and by the types of perceptual and motor experiences that are the product of our movement through and interaction with the surrounding world." Consider then, the ramifications of an era of communication in which we are disembodied as never before...."

"A 2006 Cisco research paper concluded that failing to respond to a (email) sender can lead to a swift breakdown in trust. Lose an email forever, and you are sitting on an unexploded land mine."

"Email is addictive, it has been shown, in the same way that slot machines are addictive. You press the send/receive button just as a gambler pulls down a slot machine lever, because you know that you will receive a reward some of the time."

"Thirty years ago, in The Society of the Spectacle, the French philosopher Guy Debord predicted we would be spending more time apart. 'The reigning economic system is founded on isolation,' he wrote. 'At the same time it is a circular process designed to produce isolation. Isolation underpins technology, and technology isolates in its turn; all goods proposed by the spectacular system, from cars to televisions, also serve as weapons for that system, as it strives to reinforce the isolation of "lonely crowd.'" To this list of machines we can now also add the internet and email.

Ironically, tools meant to connect us are enabling us to spend even more time apart."

" By depriving ourselves of facial expressions and the tangible frisson of physical contact, we are facing a terrible loss of meaning in individual life. The difference between a smiley face and an actual smile is too large to calculate. Nothing-especially-'lol'-can quite convey the sound of a friend's laughter."

The Tyranny of Email-John Freeman

--



Better sounding 19tet than I did with my awful 'Homegrown Piano.' Maybe I'll have to purchase something from h pi. Not a lot else out there really...

Of tet versus just intonation, for 12 tone each key will have different sound in just intonation, not just if it's major or minor. Except for a few trifles each key is exactly the same in 12tet. That's a positive for 12JI.
Then there's this fellow:
http://music.case.edu/duffin/Norton/Letter.html
Unfortunately the damm song files aren't working. I guess I could figure it out on my own further...

But I must say for very large scales there is something nice about a relatively even step up. In Partch's pure tone 43 I don't like the jumps.

Another issue 43 notes means only two octaves for an 88 key keyboard. Needs to be a bit less. I think 31 will still be too much. May have to stay at 19. But will experiment further up into the 20's. Or should I be limited by the keyboard I happen to own anyway? I hate to be a dabbler (into too many things) but I see myself trying to build a microtonal instrument eventually.

But for now I want a conventional virtual orchestra, yet microtonal. Something that can just be played on a keyboard.

It sort of matters to put down this half thought out stuff. Otherwise I forget. I forget whole projects not to mention possible directions. Granted this is somewhat ignorant musing.

-

Read Perfume by Suskind. Good but will leave no trace at all on me.

The Handmaid's Tale by Atwood. Excellent. Like 1984 but darker. I guess a little too dark. 1984 has the hope of a love affair smacked in the middle. Handmaid just has a small one near the end. But it brings up the question again of how women are treated especially in the ME. Though many of the women claim they want to be treated that way and will scream religious intolerance if anyone says there's something wrong with the inequality there, still it ought to ultimately be handled like slavery was. It should not be tolerated. No matter the panglossianism.

Kushiel's Dart, the first 100 pages were pure fluff and I gave it up.

These three mentioned by Robin Hobb, possibly to just hopefully get me to go away for a while. In response to the concept of 'preachy' books. She ignored my mentioning 1984, CS Lewis and Ayn Rand and instead responded with these three. As books that bothered her. Awfully fluffy reply it was. But then it's an awful medium to interact by so who cares? How she can stand being so open and out there and yet exposed to endless anonymous hidden people is completely beyond me.

I recall Chomsky promptly used to answer emails. What did I feel when finding this out? Sad that he wasn't sufficiently famous. That his email address was right on the internet and he could so quickly respond to people. And then I felt him to be such an angel. The guy must get incredible hate mail. And yet there he sits dutifully opening up new anonymous email messages. What an incredible saint.

In other news Lamarckian evolution might be right after all.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1951968,00.html

Originally I was delighted by the internet because it was a chance for people to be honest. Normally in face to face interactions so much is held back. But on the internet, while perhaps speaking anonymously, there was a chance to finally get to The Truth. Not to mention bringing minorities or 'iconoclasts' together from across the globe.

Unfortunately it turns out that 'The Truth' mostly consists of hate and for additional reasons not too many 'iconoclasts' have been brought together. And furthermore I've finally come to feel like interacting with people online is like having paint chips for dinner. That it's not nourishing. It's not healthy. It's the desperate act of someone who feels like they're just not getting enough face to face interactions... And I feel like every interaction that occurs online is not 'real'. That I can interact online with people for decades and still they don't 'know' me. I still wouldn't 'know' them. And that thus, ultimately all online interaction, beyond exchanging technical information, is utterly meaningless. A waste of time.

That furthermore in the act of trying to formulate a reply to someone, through revising, etc, determining what one wants to say and never actually saying it outloud, one can start forgetting what one even actually said. And with thinking of it all ultimately as paint chips for dinner one cares less to even try to remember so that eventually one has no idea what they've previously said. So everything is quickly forgotten. And knowing you're just going to quickly forget a thing truly makes it meaningless. So it becomes meaningless twice over.

At the same time, taking more time to think out what you want to say, (while to an extent clearly a good thing) ends up going way too far. One gets into an antagonistic exchange and instead of it usually passing relatively quick in a face to face interaction, one spends days, weeks, slowly formulating replies in their head and imagining the negative responses. One wastes days stuck in ugliness that's all just in their own head. Which is awful and after a few years one has had about as much as they can stand of it.

But going back to not really being 'known' in online interactions, wait a second, there are people I've interacted with face to face off and on for decades who haven't got a clue who I am. So perhaps each type of interaction has it's flaws and good points and online interaction is useful and not necessarily any worse than face to face?

No. There is important information that one can only get from a face to face interaction. It's just that most people are too stupid to get it. Bluntly put, a stupid person can't interact with a smart person and really understand or 'know them' very well.

And of the internet, it hasn't brought 'iconoclasts' together so very much. Why?

Because the ones who are really interesting, who in face to face interactions have to censor themselves, who then come to the internet to supplement their crappy face to face interactions won't then ever have a face to face interaction with whoever they're being more honest with. Because it would be scary to be 'real' with someone they haven't been properly censoring themselves with.

To be honest face to face is dangerous. Very dangerous. And so this honesty they've exchanged anonymously with someone who lives far, far away and has nothing to do with their 'real' life, they can't make it become 'real'. It has to stay unreal. It has to stay meaningless. Because they can't be honest face to face. And they have been honest with this person. Thus there can never be any face to face.

The above two paragraphs are somewhat overstated but I think do play a role on top of the normal fear everyone has. And perhaps people who are just more introverted to begin with go to the internet more in the first place, thus one is more likely to be interacting online with a shy person.

And so not so many people really have been 'brought together' from around the globe.

Occasionally sitting down and thinking out your thoughts while alone and putting them in writing is a really good thing. I'm glad I have this blog... (At least until the fascist takeover utilizes the compiled lists...) Also having a technology by which people from around the world can become aware of each other is a good thing. But very quickly it does go from a good thing to just paint chips for dinner.

Most technology can be put to good or bad uses. Television for example doesn't have to be such a bad thing. But it is. It's one of the worst things to happen to humankind. So then also, the internet doesn't have to be a bad thing. But it mostly is.

Morality and Myopia

...to the extent we can distract ourselves with little trifles, materialistic possesions and so on. To the extent one can be happy by constantly distracting themselves in such ways, that person can see more reason to be more totally selfish.

To the extent one loses their myopia and sees the bigger picture and sees how relatively meaningless yet another restaurant, another car, another outfit, etc, etc is, one has to turn elsewhere for meaning. And often here, is where people decide to be relatively altruistic instead. For whatever reason, many reasons perhaps.

To lose one's myopia often leads to being less selfish.

Just don't completely lose your myopia. As eventually all meaning is lost.

'(Says her unconscious)'.

The unconscious/subconscious is what's interesting. But how does one 'show, not tell' the unconscious? The standard writing form is (sigh) a slightly bizarre thing. I think of Hobb's trilogy where after 2000 pages she finally goes into the mind of the main bad guy. After 2000 pages we finally get to see what this guy is actually thinking, we finally get to understand why he acts like that. For two single pages we go into his mind.

And it wouldn't work any other way. It has to be held back, concealed, in order to work. And it's nice that finally we find out (That's it! That's all?) But that part isn't really that important. The concealing is what matters. Without it there's far less reason to bother reading 2000 pages. Without the concealing the whole thing just dissipates into nothing.

This is the form. This is writing. Is it actually a lie which brings us closer to the truth? Or is it just about making sure there will always be an unknown? An unknown which exists simply thanks to lying?

Perhaps it's just to mirror the real world where we generally don't know. There are always things we just don't know. There is always adversity. So you've a book full of people trying to persevere in the face of the unknown/adversity. Thing is perhaps to understand that the two go together. Without an unknown there possibly isn't really much adversity... And so we read of people trying to persevere in the face of adversity. And if we made the unknown known we're just destroying most/all of the feeling of adversity.

Dance for me. Put on an act for me. Be 'fun' to be around. Smile, make me feel at ease, show that you're no kind of threat.

'ring ring'

"mom, it's doris."

"Tell her I'm not here..." ("I can't stand to put on the act right now. I feel too awful....", (says her unconscious.))

ringaringaring that phone. Everyone wanting my mommy to dance. She's so popular!

Meanwhile stepfather will not act. ('How incredibly rude!') He refuses to dance for anyone. Blunt, to the point, totally honest. ('Bastard!') The only people who call want money (he gives away a ton). And he'll talk to anyone at anytime unless he's in the middle of sleeping. He'll dial a wrong number and have a 5 minute conversation with the person.

He believes the only reason for being alive is to make the world a better place.

Everyone hates him. He doesn't have a friend in the world (other than stepson and wife). Luckily he doesn't care. He thinks I'm the most amazing person he's ever known. Poor poor man.

-

...make up negative things about other people so that we have something to talk about. Come on share some gossip. You think he's mentally unstable and might try to kill you? Well, that's some good gossip. Ha HA. Excellent insinuation.

(A week later.) Gee, he seems really subdued(sp) and unhappy at work today as opposed to his usual frenetic self. Oh well.

Every person is a threat. You just don't know what they might do. Keep them at distance. Don't be open with them. Avoid the phone like the plague. Just communicate through facebook and email. Find one single person you can actually open up to. Actually be real with. Only one! One person can supply your every emotional need, at least until you've reproduced.

At least for all others (at least) every face to face interaction, every speaking interaction, is an act. A somewhat stressful act, because it's somewhat dishonest isn't it? As it is an act. And because, again, every person is a threat.

And those who didn't play it like this died. Slowly but surely mankind reached this point. Being suspicious, being full of fear, assuming the worst, demonizing, these things work. The goal is not for the individual to have a good time. The goal is for the individual to reproduce and this is how it's done. One just barely has enough of a good time that they bother to stay alive and reproduce, mostly thanks to an awful memory.

The side effect is that this world is hell. Bearable to the extent you ignore or constantly forget virtually everything in it.

And that too by the way, has been a goal of evolution. The people who manage a twisted sort of intelligence, where they can operate heavy machinery, fill out difficult paperwork, determine exactly which act to put on, etc, at the same time that they're oblivious to just what this world is and what they're doing, these are the people who pass on their genes.

Learn these.

91. /6JI
This is 7/6, 8/6, 9/6, 10/6, 11/6, and 2/1. I thought it sounded very similar to something from a zelda game but I searched and searched and can't actually find anything similar to it. The zelda music is very chirpy and fast paced in comparison. Maybe something deep inside a castle that wasn't posted online or I couldn't find.

My curiousity in alternate scales taken all the way should mean trying to isolate a single variable. But that kind of rigor would ruin the enjoyment. Needs to be both. This inbetween thing where I'm both just curious what such and such might sound like while at the same time somewhat bothering to make things that I actually like the sound of.

Mostly driven by curiousity though.

90. /3 and 4 just intonation.
This was an experiment using just the ratios: 5/4, 4/3, 3/2, 5/3, 7/4, 2/1. Which is to say, just dividing by 3 and 4. I figured it would be so consonant that I could perhaps otherwise just randomly play notes and it might still seem musical/pleasing to the ears. So, it is pretty close to random. Although a relatively high note is generally followed by a relatively low note with really high notes and really low notes spaced out somewhat evenly. Otherwise I again want to not know where I'm at in the song. Just a whole bunch of notes that can't be predicted but are yet relatively consonant. And that one can find bits of traditional melody within it, but which it doesn't follow, instead wandering off again and again.

This was the first scala file I made. Making the file took about 30 seconds. Once I finally figured out how to do it. I could make a youtube tutorial that would take 10 seconds.

Also I see myself much younger waking up early and something like a church (but not really) playing something like this very loudly each morning (or once a week? or whatever calendar system would be used..) so that it reverberates throughout the community much like church bells, etc sometimes does in our world. This would be played as a sort of improvisation. Where there are some basic parameters combined with plenty of the random. As the player does it over and over again, they get better at it. This here was, BTW, me actually playing (with quantisization, etc afterwards). But I haven't practiced, with more practice there would be less of the random... although again, that would mean more of knowing where you're at in the song (how close to it's end/death) with respect to it being a recording.

In this other world the technology is in some ways greater while in other ways seems medieval. I guess the idea is using more wisdom with regards to technology. So, I get up to a verdant world in a connected commnity and I walk a relatively short distance to wherever it is I'm going. This plays in the background. It's a positive bit of music for a much more positive world than this one.

As it's reverberating all around us, it would have more reverb than the version I finally posted online. The idea then is to play it loud from a room or two away, with doors closed, etc so that the listener can control the amount of reverb themselves. (You can always put more yourself, but you can't take away recorded reverb.)

The problem with the standard greeting between two people (Hi! How are you?") is that it's pretending the two people are a part of a community when almost always they aren't. In truth it's not only a lie when it's a person you've never met before and will never meet again, say working at WalMart or whatever, it's still a lie even when the person saying it is someone you work with.

In either case, because you're not a part of an actual community with them, the only answer is to pretend you're just fine no matter how you may actually be feeling. Because of course it's not really anything to them if you're not doing well at all. It's not actually any of their business or concern and they're not going to do anything to help you out if you're not actually doing fine.

But as bizarre as the pretending you're just fine is no matter how you actually feel, the really bizarre part is the pretending you're a part of a community with the person in the first place, and thus have any business asking such a question.

The whole thing is a fucking bizarre charade; the pretending we are all a part of some big happy fucking community when actually we're almost all isolated, disconnected people who have to pretend we're happy with each other not only for the above reason but further, because you can lose you're fucking job if you don't appear suffciently mindlessly happy.

These constant strangers asking how I am, I want to respond: I'm not a part of a community with you. You're a total stranger to me who couldn't possibly care less how I'm doing. Quit pretending we're a part of community. There is no community. There is no connection at all.

Today my wife wanted to go to Taco Hell (she eats that unethical disgusting swill, I don't). Through the drive through some anonymous voice asks how she's doing today. She politely responds, "just fine, and how are you?" Speaking to an anonymous voice of someone if she even was seeing them, she'd have never seen them before or would ever see them again. I'm driving and so I'm in the middle of this bizarre conversation from Mars and I want to scream, "WE DON'T FUCKING KNOW YOU. YOU DON'T FUCKING KNOW US. QUIT PRETENDING WE'RE A PART OF SOME NON-EXISTENT COMMUNITY!"

Of course her boss just makes her ask how we're doing. It would be ridiculous to yell that. Incredibly stupid to bother doing so. Just as dumb to go inside and find the manager and yell it at him. Of course don't say anything.

The whole subject... I'm a drop against an ocean. Full of rage at the moment. Being "artistic" at the moment because I feel that it might lead to something useful. Might lead to some kind of worthwhile truth. But really it's just dangerous. Not satified with my lump of coal. Might end up with nothing at all.

A drop that doesn't even exist.

It is very very hard at times continuing on in my life, having motivation to bother doing things... when I know that these actions which I take, which I consider the most ethical, don't cause people to like me. They result in hate or most often just indifference. Mostly they just don't even matter at all to anyone. I try to be the best person I possibly can be and the end result is nothing. For all my efforts I might as well not even exist.

It is the truth. I might as well not even exist. Everything I've done matters nothing at all.

...in the past I've often thought: "I don't exist!" Because well, that's about what it amounts to. For all intents and purposes I'm not even really here. Not really even alive.

It is partly, or completely, the result of the collapse of community in America, I guess.
http://www.bowlingalone.com/ Sometimes though, I doubt there's ever been a time when it really would have been different in any positive way. Although I'm sure there have been times when it could have been much worse...

But they have some example solutions:
http://www.bettertogether.org/about.htm

And I've just got to point out the problem with each:

* A mentoring and reading program in Philadelphia that brings together retirees and elementary school children to the benefit of both – the children get help reading and the retirees have a richer, more purposeful life

It's just random kids that don't actually live anywhere near you. One day (each day) another one doesn't show up and you just never see them again. It's not a real community. It's just random people pretending like they've got meaningful connections whom actually will disappear from each other's lives almost immediately. Because, this is how Philadelphia is set-up. Millions of people all plopped down together. Not a single one of your nearest 200 neighbors probably even works at the same job as you. You're teaching some random children that you'll otherwise never ever see. There is no community the two of you are actually a part of.

* A group of sixth-grade activists in a small Wisconsin town who managed to persuade local authorities to improve safety at a railroad crossing and in doing so learned a valuable lesson in civic activism

...ok. That's fine. A small town. Improving an unsafe railroad crossing. Sure. Not really a big deal though..

* A neighborhood in Boston that has been revitalized by a civic association that overcame ethnic differences and now plays an ongoing role in the neighborhood

Well that sounds good as it sounds like an actual neighborhood. Most "neighborhoods" don't deserve the term. It's just a bunch of houses in the same area. From car to house, from house to car. You go ten years and never speak to your next door "neighbor". If they're saying they've got an actual bonafide neighborhood, that's something.

* A community effort in the impoverished Rio Grande Valley, one of the poorest regions in the U.S., that brought such basic services as electricity, roads, and health care to the mostly Spanish-speaking residents

...ok, that's great.

* A successful small business initiative in Tupelo, Mississippi, that began sixty years ago with the purchase of a prize bull

Not enough info.

* Chicago public libraries that have broadened their mission and have become true community centers

Public libraries broadening their mission sounds like a good idea. My town though only has one very small, very moribund public library. Seems to mainly be used by homeless people to get inside for a few hours in the winter. Which of course, is something, I guess.

* Two huge and rapidly growing churches in Los Angeles that are making people feel connected to other church members and their community

Not enough info. Also as Putnam mentions the KKK is also a sort of community. And OK, the reason I feel this whole issue more than most people is probably because I'm not a christian. The endless churches are generally people's sense of community. And this is largley why I suspect there hasn't really been a time in history where my personal situation would have been any better. Becuase, the way I think, I'm just too small of a minority for me to ever really feel a part of any community. Unless I used the internet to go off and find some community that more fit me. But I'm married to a woman that won't let me. So, here I sit in my unexistence.

* The city of Portland, Oregon, where the anti-war movement of the sixties actually changed the institutions so that now there is a remarkably high level of civic engagement in government and politics (more so than in other cities, even other cities on the west coast).

Yes, they're just better people out there. The west coast and even more so in the northern part Oregon, Washington and up into Canada. I would love to move out there. And as Putnam's book says, the sense of community/civic life, hit an alltime high in the 60's as the idealistic baby boomers hit their 20's. And set out to change the world.

The problem with these solutions, is at least what's mentioned here doesn't touch on the problem of geography. There is a book called the Geography of Nowhere which talks about our zoning laws, etc and how we've become a car culture and how this has played such a crucial role in destroying our communities. Solutions to the current lack of community must focus on this problem.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Geography_of_Nowhere

And/or http://www.ic.org/ needs to get much, much bigger. The idea of an intentional community shouldn't be dismissed as some kind of fruity, hippie thing. It would be good if even smaller towns had many such intentional communities, where there was real structured ways and a certain way of thinking whereby the people actually had meaningful connections, associations, etc. Where it wasn't just people holed up in their houses in front of the internet or TV day after day as their lives passed them by, as if they practically hadn't even existed at all.

A blog IS a good thing. And I think I should start running again. Except there's a half a foot of snow on the ground. That will burn out my calves too quick. And starting a running program in the dead of winter will probably give me a cold. I actually own a really nice treadmill. But still it sits at the old house. It wouldn't but my wife is so very good at throwing up obstacles. She mistakenly thought the cold would destroy it. And where would we put it anyway? "Oh my god you couldn't put it there!!!!" We still have half the pictures not put up because I have to ask her approval first and she hates making decisions so much that instead she finds something to scream at me about whenever I ask about finishing to unpack. So the treadmill sits unused in the cold at the old house as I really wish I had a way to do some jogging her in the dead of Januaury. But then the house is so big and circular I can just jog in it. And I hate treadmills anyway. I bought it for her. ($1000). She never uses it. Endless excuses why she can't exercise.

But, I lay in bed at night and if I'm touching her I can sleep. Just the back of my hand against her upper thigh and the overheated feeling and insomnia abates a bit. And I sleep. She hates to be touched when she's going to sleep though. So I have to be kind of clandestine about it. Reminds me of my past cat Gulliver. He wanted to be touching the much older very grumpy cat when he went to bed. And it was just like my wife. It would hiss at him to get away! So, he'd wait till it was asleep and then reach out delicately with one paw lightly touching his back.

So I do the same with my wife. I do wonder about how cats sometime seem to act like the people they live with.

Gulliver was killed by coyotes in New Mexico.

So my wife rolls over in her sleep on top of my hand and I finally wake up with my hand all sweaty and pull it out from under her. And immediately that relaxed sensation is gone and the insomnia and overheated feeling is back. I lay there and experiment with lightly touching her upper thigh with the back of my hand and then not, back in forth. If it's just in my head why can't I pretend I'm touching her when I'm not to get the same effect?

I work night shift so we usually don't get to sleep together. I haven't been sleeping so great. So many factors go into sleeping good/bad.

Through a bad memory I feel guilty about Gulliver's death. I used to let the cats go outside, now I don't. Gulliver died because he was allowed outside. But the reason we don't let them out now isn't because they could die. It's because the one cost us 800 dollars when someone shot it with an air rifle and broke it's leg. I periodically remember that all these years later Loki's dad could still be here with us, if only I had kept him inside. And I feel guilty. But it's because I keep forgetting. The cats we have right now I'd also let outside except that I can't afford huge vet bills when they hop home with dangling legs.

-

Started a song on the old "music" computer using z3ta+, that new wonderful reverb, and Partch's 43. Just using 6 notes though from it. The root, 1.25, 1.5, 1.75 (the lost harmonic seventh), 1.33 and 1.66. So effing beautiful. z3ta+ destroys every previous VST. But on the old "music" computer just one instance of z3ta+ and that impulse reverb uses from 40 to 60% of the CPU. But it sounds so beautiful it's worth it. I guess I should upgrade the computer to 4 gigs of memory. Had been thinking to just go right past 4 up to 6 or 8, possibly just buy another computer. But, actually 32 bit systems can't use more than 4 gigs anyway. And most VSTs are only 32 bit I hear.

The new piece is so beautiful I have to just let it sit untouched for at least a few more days.

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It would be better if he looked like he meant it. As that is an essential part of what a real idiocracy is about: Everyone feeling forced to pretend an absurd happiness they don't actually feel.

How can there be change when to even appear unhappy to anyone other than your significant other is socially unacceptable? In the real idiocracy it would be revolutionary to appear unhappy. And this fellow's simple "lack of enthusiasm" would cause him to be considered an unemployable dangerous radical.

Some "revolutionary activities"/activism:
-Honestly expressing unhappiness or simply refusing to constantly express fake happiness. Even this is a step in the right direction.
-Buying food grown locally.
-Choosing art that isn't supported by corporate power. If you personally know someone who does art. Look, listen, etc and try to comment, to the extent you're not afraid you'll offend I guess.

'Revolutionary' is a better word than 'activist'. I haven't used 'revolutionary' because I figure the usage of such a word increases the chances I'll eventually get rendered to Sudan. But by feeling intimidated into not using the word, the direction of my own thinking has been influenced. As our words shape our thinking to some extent.

Partch's 43

z3ta+

..it's actually 12 out of 43-tET (1/5-comma meantone). Whoopsie.
http://www.huygens-fokker.org/docs/scalesdir.txt

I remember being very annoyed with myself in either the first or second grade because I couldn't stop daydreaming. Seemed at times I couldn't concentrate continously in class for a single minute. Instead... I'm suddenly flying off, literally, out the window, etc.

I wrote a story when very young about finding a secret door hidden in the corner of my room that led to a hidden place where I ...what was it that happened? Did I obtain power? Something like that...

And so endless such daydreaming. Daydreaming of being a: professional basketball/baseball/football/tennis player/boxer/composer/musician/writer/scientist/inventor. More fantastic when younger, then I dreamed of really doing amazing things: levitating, magic in general. Such daydreaming.

Of course dreamed of women also, etc, etc.

As I got older these dreams have disappeared. First in that it became clear they weren't actually going to happen. Then in the understanding that even if they did it wouldn't actually mean anything to me anyway. And that most of it was really just the desire for power...

So then hope was gone. All my grandeur dreaming, was it seems, primarily my hope. To sit and have such dreams was a fun way to spend my time. To work towards such dreams was something actually worth doing.

Perhaps it's what I got from my biofather. Going back to Rowling's Slitherings whom desire power.

I've negated most such dreams and where/what is my hope now?

...so much to be said for forgetting. Someone (nobody famous) asked recently, "Does total forgiveness only come with total forgetting?" Such a horrible thing to say as forgiveness should be about understanding. But actually forgetting it seems is so essential to life in general...

Horribly insomnified and facing the prospect of a 15 hour day taking care of critically ill people. I can't fall asleep. I finally get up and turn my music on, as it sits up in the far right corner of this blog like so many trees fallling unheard in the forest. I manage to catch the edge between sleep and waking. And enjoy the collapse of logic as I lay there and try to make nonsense sense of the music. The songs speak. Obviously literally speak at times. For hours I can't actually sleep but I lay there drifting to the edge at least into some other consciousness. Something different at least. Through at least the first 60 songs. A very few times I fall into a 10 minute sleep. Once I wake up to Tschai's Spaceport. I hear it. Not able to place it. I know I wrote it but have no idea what it's name is, or what the construction was... Instead I hear it in it's true beauty for the first time ever.

I'm laying there and praying I'll get the call that they have enough people and I don't have to come in. And I do get that call for the first 4 hours off.

I can't sleep remotely anymore though. I come downstairs. I check out the demo for z3ta+. High CPU but has a nice sound and does indeed do the microtuning. Great!

Alternative consciousness, perhaps symbolism or false symbolism or synthesia or sycretism or just blissful illogic... combined with getting 4 hours off and finding that z3ta+ looks nice... The earlier despair about the end of hope which is slowly dragging me to Nothing is forgotten for the moment.

And I had forgotten: just feeling physically horrible. Insomnia is an awful feeling. Combined with my body feeling like it's on fire. This was caused by overzealous Grease The Groove exercise. So I knew to rest and as I missed the next and next workout my body relatively quickly repairs.

So then, happy for a change. Now 4 days off. Where will I be in four days?

The cycle repeats such that one could perhaps remember better and predict... But what would such remembering do? Would it improve the situation or make it worse? Would the remembering help the predictions such that I could avoid the pitfalls? Or is the forgetting the only respite that there ever really is?

Censored stories I missed this year:
The origination of the Somali pirates:
http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/3-toxic-waste-behind-somali-pirates/

Interesting timing in the death of Karl Rove's voter theft engineer.
http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/12-mysterious-death-of-mike-connellkarl-roves-election-thief/
"Timing of Connell’s deposition may have saved the 2008 presidential elections from electronic theft." (I had been wondering why they didn't also steal the 2008 election...)

http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/category/two-thousand-and-ten-book/