How You Sell This Stuff With A Straight Face I Have No Idea…
The Amazing Randi’s challenge to the golden ear cult made Slashdot today, and in the comments there is a link to a list of the worst audiophile products ever. If you remember what high end audio used to look like before The Absolute Sound and it’s spawn completely destroyed it, take a look now and weep. Here’s what it’s come to: A pen you color the edges of your CDs with to, I kid you not, "reduce the scattered reflections of the laser beam and increase the signal-to-noise ratio of the detected laser", for a "significant decrease in the harsh "edginess" in the sound of many CD’s and an increase in clarity, resolution and ambience". A $485 dollar wooden volume control knob to reduce "vibrations" and make your system sound "much more open and free flowing with a nice improvement in resolution." A thin mat you place "atop a CD, DVD-V, DVD-A, SACD, or mp3 disc" with cut-outs that will "…create a very specific energy spectra that mechanically dithers the laser to recognize and retrieve additional low level information that is otherwise lost, truncated or unseen."
But the ultimate really does have to be this demagnetizer for, I kid you not, CDs, CDRs, and DVDs. Yes, a demagnetizer for an object made of polycarbonate plastic with an aluminum coating. This is what you get, when you take objective measurements out of the picture, and replace them with a gaggle of golden ears.
"New! Featuring four beams, nearly twice the rotation speed and improved timing processing, the Quadri-Beam is an ultra cool disc treatment. This patented process reduces the noise floor allowing far more information to be retrieved from the disc. It also works great on DVDs, giving you a picture that is brighter, sharper, crisper and cleaner. For those of you who have never experienced the sonic benefits of the Bedini Clarifier, it significantly reduces high frequency glare and increases retrieval of information, enhancing dynamic range. Detail and resolution are improved dramatically."
I won’t comment. This is Slashdot, so I guess you have some entry level knowledge to know why this is the most ridiculous thing you’ve read in months.
There are physical reasons why vaccuum tube amplifiers sound DIFFERENT than solid state amplifiers. I don’t, however, subscribe to the philosophy that they’re better inherently, as I’ve heard some terrible-sounding tube amps.
Whoa. Let’s not equate the tube vs. solid-state debate with cable voodoo. You can look at the waveform of a tube amp’s output and compare it to a solid-state amp’s output and see the difference yourself, if you know what to look for. Tubes color the sound (essentially, distort it, but in a way that many people prefer) by emphasisizing the odd-ordered harmonics of a given tone.
EVEN ORDER, not odd order harmonics… TRANSISTOR gear has a higher ratio of odd harmonics to even, comparatively. Especially a triode vacuum tube in a single ended circuit design will have almost no 3rd harmonic signal compared to the second one.
"The thing is, even the cheap drilled wire of your phone-line is good enough to transmit multi-mhz signals for DSL over a few km."
That’s because the telephone system uses low-impedance balanced lines; without this technology, POTS would be largely impractical, and long-distance nearly impossible (at least in the days before satellite).
Low-Z balanced lines are also used in many hi-end audio systems, for the same reasons; they offer a material advantage. In fact, an inexpensive low-z balanced line cable can easily better very high-priced single-ended cables. It’s the primary reason that all of the equipment I build and work with uses balanced line technology.. better performance without fancy cables = value for the customer.
Man oh man how I wish the adults were back in charge in the world of high end home audio…
Transgender is not simply the ‘T’ in GLBT. It is people who, for one reason or another, may not express their gender in ways that conform to traditional gender norms or expectations. That covers everyone from transsexuals, to queer youth, to feminine acting men, to masculine appearing women. It is a broad label that cannot be confined to a specific silo of people. It is anyone who chooses to live authentically. To think that the work that we are doing on behalf of the entire GLBT community simply benefits or protects part of us is to choose a simplistic view of a complex community. In a very real way, the T is anyone who expresses themselves differently. To some it is about gender. To me, it is about freedom.
Just so. Unfortunately, Donna Rose had to say this, while resigning from HRC. John Aravosis is asking when transgender became part of the gay rights struggle. What I’d like to know is when "gay" became a synonym for "straight-acting". As I understand it, there weren’t very many of those taking to the streets the day they rioted at the Stonewall Inn.
This is so sad on any number of levels, not the least of which is watching people you could have sworn have a brain actually believing that the Bush republicans will accept gay equality before they’ll accept equality for transgendered folk. Yeah…they’ve always said they’ll accept us as long as we don’t flaunt it. I guess passing for straight is that freedom we’ve all been struggling for.
Not sure why, but this evening I walked the neighborhood with Franz Schmidt’s symphony #4 playing on my iPod, and ached for the missing people in my life. And for loneliness I suppose. Schmidt is said to have composed the piece after his daughter died suddenly. I’ve never heard music that expresses that wounded pit inside, that shock of…not grief exactly…but loss, like the first two movements of that symphony. It’s brutal. Until lately the Zuban Mehta rendering of it, with the Vienna Philharmonic was my favored version, but I’ve not been able to locate a digital version. I got a digital version today conducted by Franz Wesler-Möst, with the London Philharmonic that is just as powerful.
This work is one of three dark symphonies in my library, but the other two are dark in a different way. One is Shostakovich’s 8th, which is said to have been composed by Shostakovich, in part while in Stalingrad during the Nazi siege of the city. The other is Vaughan-Williams’ 6th, composed during and immediately after WWII. The Shostakovich piece is a brutal representation of war, that opens with a brooding creeping darkness which builds to a harrowing climax, punctuated by moments of bellicose militarism, then fades into more brooding. A giddy fascist goose stepping scherzo follows, and then the set piece of the entire symphony: a relentless rushing sweep of war across the land, like an insane machine crushing everything in its path. Then the symphony fades into a bottomless sense of grief, punctuated by this little light-hearted dancing tune that almost seems like a giddy madness. It ends in desolation. The Vaughan-Williams piece opens with a whirlwind and then settles into a bellicose, dancing, almost jazzy contempt, like a fascist thug skipping gleefully across the landscape, and then the whirlwind returns and fades, and for a moment, for one brief moment, the music breaks like a last fading beam of beautiful sunlight into an achingly heartfelt and lovely melody, that rises majestically…and then breaks apart into a brooding brutal dread, then into another giddy bellicose whirlwind, and then into a barren pit of loss that lasts the rest of the symphony. But the darkness in these two pieces is of a world that is collapsing around you as you watch. The Schmidt piece is a personal, private loss of the soul. The wound is internal, devastating, and yet the world around you goes on.
Why I got into the Schmidt piece this evening I’m not sure, other then going through several bins of old family photo albums recently (I was trying to track down a photo of my paternal great-grandmother who the family says was native American…but I am still unable to prove that conclusively…) brought back to me for a little while, all the people in my life I’ve loved, who are gone now…and perhaps too, the boy I once was, and thoughts of the life he could have had, had he lived in a different time.
Notice: The Iowa State Fair erotic corn dog-eating contest may be canceled…
The competition, which is organized by a Des Moines area radio station and tends to draw a raucous and appreciative crowd, is too tasteless, according to at least one fair board member.
After the topic came up Monday during the board’s critique of this year’s state fair, fair manager Gary Slater said he hasn’t seen it himself.
“I just heard it was kind of disgusting,” Slater said. He quickly added: “It was nothing that was sanctioned by the fair.”
KGGO-FM has held the contest right outside the doors of the Administration Building for four fairs in a row.
Iowa State Fair Board President Jerry Parkins on Monday suggested getting rid of the contest, so state fair staff will tell KGGO’s organizers that it’s inappropriate, Slater said.
If the radio staff don’t agree, “then we’ll take it back to the board and see if they’ll be invited back next year,” Slater said.
The news was tough to swallow for Steve “Round Guy” Pilchen, one of the radio personalities who invented the contest. But it wasn’t a shock.
“I was waiting for that,” Pilchen said this morning in a telephone interview from the Urbandale radio station. “While it’s very popular and, I think, ingeniously creative, it makes sense that this would be just the thing that conservative, politically-correct people would be up in arms about.”
Pilchen said they don’t intend to go away quietly.
“I would hate for it to have to end, because it’s gained so much notoriety,” he said. “Our take on it is that we’d like to continue to do it and will, up until the state fair board tells us we can’t.”
Competitors — so far it’s only been women, and all were required to be at least 18 — are given 30 seconds to demonstrate erotic techniques on the staple state fair treat.
“We stress technique,” Pilchen said. “There’s a lot of simulation.”
Condiments are available if the women want to get creative, he said. “We had ketchup and mustard, but the big hit was mayonnaise.”
Mayonnaise. Right. Good thing they weren’t running a booth advocating same sex marriage or the radio station would have been boycotted, their advertisers would have dropped them like flies, and the DJs run out of town on a rail…
Our rant about those $7,250 Pear Anjou speaker cables found its way to the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF), and Randi offered $1 million to anyone who can prove those cables are any better than ordinary (and also overpriced) Monster Cables. Pointing out the absurd review by audiophile Dave Clark, who called the cables "danceable," Randi called it "hilarious and preposterous." He added that if the cables could do what their makers claimed, "they would be paranormal."
Long ago Harry Pearson and others like him not only injected cultish mysticism into the audiophile world, Pearson in particular dragged the conversation into the gutter with his grotesquely venomous personal attacks on anyone who showed the slightest respect for objective testing and actual measurement of how audio equipment actually behaves. So what replaces objectivity in a high end audio review nowadays? Mostly a system of cult leaders and cult followers. Randi’s offered them a million dollars if they can prove in double blind scientific studies that their favorite equipment actually does what they claim it does for sound reproduction. Unsurprisingly, none of the cult leaders are biting. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain…
Before there was an Internet, there were computer BBSs. It was on a gay BBS, the Gay and Lesbian Information Bureau (GLIB), that I finally found my little subset of the gay community, and began settling in. It was during one of our GLIB happy hour gatherings that I had my eyes opened about transgendered folk. This was sometime in the late 1980s as I recall. A group of us were sitting at the bar and this really cute guy, not a GLIB member but a friend of one, joined us. He seemed almost a stereotypical D.C. K Street type. He had on his Power Office Worker suit and tie, and his expensive walking sneakers because it was rush hour and you leave your good shoes at the office and put on your Nikes for walking to your Metro stop. And he had his Franklin-Covey Day Planner with him, and as he chatted with his friends there, I kid you not, he would glance in his appointment pages to see where his free time was.
At the time I was working as a contract software developer, and as this was a time before PDAs were mated to cell phones, I also had a paper day planner, mostly so I could keep track of my billable hours. Mine was the Daytimer product, largely because it had twenty-four hour day pages, and my workdays were anything but nine to five. And being a techno-geek, and more interested in the technology of managing time then actually managing my own, I asked this guy what he liked about the Franklin-Covey product. After a while he and I were enjoying a nice chat. I about the technology of time management, and he about how busy his life was.
Eventually he went off to make a phone call. As I sat at the bar a GLIB member who knew him came over to me and asked me what I thought of him. He’s real cute, I said. But a bit too much K street for me. Does he have any friends, I asked jokingly, or are they all business contacts? The GLIB member asked if I knew ‘he’ was really ‘she’.
I was stunned. I hadn’t a clue. Not clue one. He was, I was told, female, but living as a guy because that’s what he felt he was. He’d had no surgery, not even merely cosmetic, and apparently had no interest in it. He was just living as a man, because that’s what he felt he was really, regardless of the physical sex he was born as. And when he came back and sat down next to me, and we resumed our conversation, even knowing that he was physically female, I could not help but believe, somewhere deep in my gut, that I was talking to another guy and it wasn’t an act. He just gave off guy vibes.
That was, I think, when I saw for myself that there really could be a difference between the sex of your body, and the sex of your mind, and that it was something distinct from one’s sexual orientation. But that’s not to say that the struggle of transgendered folk is separate from our own.
Homosexual. Bisexual. Transgendered. What do these people have in common? One thing: we don’t fit the gender stereotypes of the majority, and that has had profoundly negative consequences for our lives. This is why we need EDNA, and why it’s at root, our struggle for equality. All of us. Not some of us. Our life struggles are different in the particulars, the obstacles we face are not always the same ones, but the hate has, I am convinced, a common root. People who hate gays and who would deny us jobs, housing, a decent life, the freedom to be, hate transgendered folk just as much, just as deeply, just as passionately, and really don’t see a distinction between us. We’re all sexual deviants, and they wish us all gone from this world.
As a point of clarity for the community: The recent version is not simply the old version with the transgender protections stripped out — but rather has modified the old version in several additional and troubling ways.
In addition to the missing vital protections for transgender people on the job, this new bill also leaves out a key element to protect any employee, including lesbians and gay men who may not conform to their employer’s idea of how a man or woman should look and act. This is a huge loophole through which employers sued for sexual orientation discrimination can claim that their conduct was actually based on gender expression, a type of discrimination that the new bill does not prohibit.
Do you see the problem with leaving out protections for transgendered folk now? If your employer can fire you for not acting like a normal All-American heterosexual, as opposed to simply for being gay, or bi, then the bill does exactly nothing.
Let me reiterate…the problem isn’t that we’re homosexual, the problem is that we don’t conform to the gender norms of the majority. You can’t craft a law that protects homosexuals, and not the transgendered, and end up with a law that actually protects homosexuals. It has to outlaw discrimination based on gender expression, real or perceived, or it won’t be worth the paper it’s printed on.
I have to say I’ve lost a lot of respect for Barney Frank in this. His reputation is as a shrewd politician, and in fact he tried to justify doing this to ENDA on the grounds that it made better political sense. It was something he averred, that he could get more agreement on…maybe enough republican agreement that Bush would either sign it, or his veto could be overridden. Damn Barney… God Damn… Haven’t you fucking learned yet, that when you shake hands with these people, you need to count your fingers afterward…?
This version of ENDA states without qualification that refusal by employers to extend health insurance benefits to the domestic partners of their employees that are provided only to married couples cannot be considered sexual orientation discrimination. The old version at least provided that states and local governments could require that employees be provided domestic partner health insurance when such benefits are provided to spouses.
In the previous version of ENDA the religious exemptions had some limitations. The new version has a blanket exemption under which, for example, hospitals or universities run by faith-based groups can fire or refuse to hire people they think might be gay or lesbian.
The problem with negotiating in good faith with people who have no conscience, should be obvious. Even to people on Capital Hill. Or so you’d think anyway.
My love of driving, of the simple, singular act of driving a car down the road, never mind where I’m going, or if I’m going anywhere in particular, believe it or not actually makes me an oddity in this country. That’s right. In a country where they say the automobile is god, a nation of car worshipers, when I tell people I regularly take cross-country drives to visit family out in California, that I’d Much rather drive it then fly because for me the road is the vacation, people look at me like I’m crazy. You drove all the way to California…???
Oh yes…we love our cars. More precisely I think, we love the independence they give us. We don’t have to construct our lives around bus or a train schedules. We can go where we want, when we want, live where we want, shop where we want, play where we want. The car made the suburbs possible. The car is an integral part of our economy. And we make our own cars into statements about ourselves. They are our status symbols, our tricked out souped up air conditioned chrome and burled walnut accented inner child. We love our cars. It’s driving we hate. Mostly.
And to tell the truth I hate it myself when it’s heavy commuter or weekend shopper congestion I have to wade through. I hate traffic so much I bought a home within walking distance of work, and two good supermarkets. I could have bought a nicer one elsewhere in the city, but then I’d have to drive to work and I hate commuter traffic. With a passion. I don’t very much care for weekend shopper traffic either.
I’m just pondering all this because of a discussion I came across on another blog I visit often. Brad DeLong writes, "Time to Whomp the Drivers!", riffing on Megan McArdle. riffing on James Joyner…
Megan McArdle: I think James Joyner is absolutely right here:
I’m now commuting into D.C. on a near-weekdaily basis. According to GoogleMaps, the office is 13.5 miles from the house. I can usually drive there in 45-60 minutes during off-peak hours, although it can sometimes take much longer if there’s an accident. I can park in the garage next to my office for the day for $12. Conversely, I can drive 15-20 minutes to a Metro station, pay $4 to park, wait as long as 15 minutes for a train, pay another $2.65 to get two blocks from the office 35-50 minutes later, followed by a 5-10 minute walk to the office.
So, in order to save $2.70 (plus a nominal amount of gasoline), it would cost me 30-75 minutes each day for the round trip, plus the privacy and autonomy I enjoy in my own vehicle. Given that I earn enough that $3 is poor compensation indeed for that much of my time, I drive unless there’s a really good reason not to.
And they’re about to raise the rates for Metro fares and parking, further skewing the calculus in the direction of “drive.”
The massive subsidy provided to drivers in the form of free roads is obviously producing highly inefficient outcomes, which is why DC feels like a prison from which it is impossible to escape unless one wants to spend four hours on the Beltway. We clearly need to institute comprehensive road tolls combined with a congestion pricing scheme. Plus, of course, a carbon tax to compensate for the negative externalities drivers are imposing on those of us who use primarily mass transit.
I have a suggestion. Why not make cities more livable? In fact…I made this suggestion in the comments, where I said in part…
Driving long distances, for many hours out of your life a year, in stress inducing commuter traffic, already makes driving unattractive. Weekend shopper traffic is equally ugly and stressful. But as long as where people work, where they shop, and where they live are kept in separate corners people will just keep driving, and keep absorbing the cost of it.
My comment was promptly ignored, and a discussion of driving costs verses public transportation costs ensued. It’s not just that I’m a boring conversationalist…I’ve seen this happen before whenever this topic comes up. The obvious solution to traffic congestion, and the national gasoline bill, is to put jobs and basic needs shopping and housing within walking distance of each other. For bonus points, add an enjoyable night life to the walkable mix. Not everyone will want to live in the city, not everyone will want to be that close to work. But as traffic keeps getting worse and worse, and the cost of oil keeps going up and up, people will begin migrating back to the cities, if the cities are made livable. And that’s fewer cars on the roads, and less oil consumed. But they’ll only do that if the cities are made more livable. And this country doesn’t seem to want to have a conversation about doing that.
Even in cities with a thriving economy it’s a problem. My understanding is that D.C. doesn’t want to put housing, never mind affordable housing, near the major office zones. One neighborhood in D.C. that approaches livability very nicely is (surprise, surprise) the little gay neighborhood near DuPont Circle. It’s got housing (if you have to ask you can’t afford it housing, but still housing), shopping, and an active nightlife. It’s streets are walkable and it’s atmosphere is casual and welcoming. Metro is nearby. It’s a nice enclave close enough to some of the major office spaces that you could conceivably work and live there. I’m sure there are other enclaves like it elsewhere in the city, but not enough of them. The big downtown office zone is dead at night, except for a few bars scattered around the fringes. Anytime you see dead zones in a city, that almost certainly happened because some jackass city planners decided to make the area homogenized in some unnatural way.
In an area with as much traffic congestion as D.C. has, there’s probably tons of people who would be interested in living in the city, and within walking distance or a short Metro ride from where they work. But for one reason or another they feel they can’t. The availability and cost of housing. Fear of crime. Nowhere to go and nothing to do evenings and weekends. Streets that aren’t walkable. Schools that are run down. City services that are inadequate. Few safe places for kids to play. They don’t see city life as being viable. That’s the problem.
Suburbanites for some reason though, want to complain about traffic, and greenhouse gases, and carbon usage, and gasoline taxes, and highway construction (pro and con) but they don’t want to talk about making cities livable. Go figure.
Via Box Turtle Bulletin… You need to understand this…particularly if you’re a younger enough gay person, that you don’t remember much before the Clinton years, and the Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas, which nullified the sodomy laws: When the homophobes start talking about the "good old days" when homosexuals stayed in the closet, this is what they mean:
I SAT down in Dr Lansley’s surgery. “Well, what seems to be the problem?” he asked.]
I came out with what I’d been saying over and over in my head. This man, with the film-star looks and smart suits, was the first person I had told in my life.
“I … I think I’m a homosexual.”
He looked at me and froze. What was he going to do? I’d heard homosexuals could be sent to prison – was this going to happen to me?
Finally he spoke. “Don’t be stupid. You’re 12 years old. How could you possibly know?”
He smiled. “You’ll grow out of it.”
I left, feeling wretched. Now there was nobody I could tell– certainly not my mum. I was terrified of losing her: one mother had already abandoned me and, as much as she reassured me, I thought she would do the same.
Two years later, I went back to say I was still a homosexual. This time, Dr Lansley gave me some Valium. “Take these, you’ll be all right,” he said.
They made things even harder, as I was terrified of mum finding them, and the way they made me feel scared me. I poured them out of the bottle and flushed them down the toilet.
…
As time went on, there had been one man down in London who had been writing to me regularly. I’d gone off him and he had taken it badly. He had sent me one letter threatening to kill himself if I started going out with someone else – typical drama queen stuff.
I’d read it and hid it in my bureau as I was late in for work at the Cabin club. But it must have slipped out as I closed the door behind me.
After work that day I got a lift back with my boss. It was 3am and I crept into the house. Walking up the stairs, I saw a light on. I thought mum hadn’t been able to sleep, and went in to say goodnight.
She was white. In her hand was a sheet of paper, and she looked absolutely destroyed.
Mum handed the love letter to me. “What does this mean?” she asked.
I felt sick. The letter had fallen out where she could see it. Everything was there, plain as can be. Did I try to lie my way out of this? Did I tell her I was bisexual, even though I knew I wasn’t? It might soften the blow if she could think her son might still settle down and give her grandchildren. No, I thought, that would be another lie – and this has to stop now.
“It’s true, mum,” I said. “I’m a homosexual.”
It was a decision which would lead to me being checked in for aversion therapy – the most horrible experience of my life – but it was something I had to tell her.
She looked at me, then screamed: “Get out of the house!” Then she rushed to the toilet and I heard her throwing up as I ran down the stairs.
How the doc tried to turn me straight
I SAT down in the doctor’s room in a psychiatric hospital in Chester. An old-fashioned Grundy TK 20 tape machine was sitting on his desk.
He started to interview me about sex acts between gay men, taping my answers.
“Don’t you feel degraded about what you are doing?” I remember him asking me.
After he stopped the recording, he told me we would start therapy the next day.
“We’re going to try and put you off looking at men,” he said.
In the morning I was shown into a windowless room with a male nurse. A crate of Guinness arrived, and I was given a stack of dirty magazines showing body builders – not the sort of thing that would have turned me on in a million years.
The nurse started playing the tape of my conversation. I sat and listened, flicking through the books with a pint, not knowing what the hell was going on.
Then he gave me an injection and suddenly I started feeling sick.
“I think I’m going to vomit!” I yelled out. “I need a basin.”
The doctor smiled. “Then be sick.”
“I think I’m going to go to the toilet.”
“Just do it on the bed.”
I screamed: “You’re joking.”
All the while the tape of the doctor’s questions was playing in the background, over and over: “What you do is disgusting.”
It continued for 72 hours – the drink, the injections, the vomiting and excrement – hour after hour.
All I could think was that I wasn’t going to get out alive.
When it ended, I lay there sobbing, the doctor came in.
“Now you’ve got to have the electrodes … ” he said.
Peter Price is a radio personality in the UK. Click on the link above to goto the Liverpool Echo for more, including a link to a place in the UK selling his book. I just checked Amazon and it isn’t there, which makes me doubt you’ll be able to find it at your local gay bookstore either. But hopefully the book will make it to these shores too. This is history every gay person should know.
Then Jesus Said, “Hey Everyone…Let’s All Sit On This Side Of The Table…”
Seeing yet another outraged headline from some right wing crank site, about the so-called anti-Christianism of the annual Folsom Street Fair, coming across my Google News Digest, finally made my gorge rise enough that I started looking through Google images for other parodies of da Vinci’s Last Supper to post here. I’d come close to doing it the other day when I saw Andrew Sullivan bloviating about the Ad being a provocation. You can always tell that Sullivan’s taken his stupid pills, when he starts channeling the likes of William Donohue. I was scanning Google for other examples of anti-Christian blasphemy, like this one of Christ as a medical marijuana advocate, and the truly bizarre painting titled Frida Kahlo’s Last Supper (I have No idea…), but I soon found that Dan Savage had beaten me to it. Though he Did miss this little collection of Last Supper Cartoons.
Allow me to gratuitously join in the…provocation. Here’s the image, from the Folsom Street Fair program that’s giving the kook pews vapors…
"The bread and wine representing Christ’s broken body and lifegiving blood are replaced with sadomasochistic sex toys in this twisted version of Da Vinci’s The Last Supper," says Concerned Women For America. "’Gay’ activists disingenuously call Christians ‘haters’ and ‘homophobes’ for honoring the Bible, but then lash out in this hateful manner toward the very people they accuse". Kiss my ass. Listening to CWA yap, yap, yap about people not having respect for Christianity is like listening to Al Capone giving advice on fighting crime. I’m no fan of the S&M subculture by any means. My libido doesn’t go there, I’m not into it, I don’t grok it at all, it completely grosses me out. But S&M is by no stretch particular to gay folk, as any casual stroll through the world of heterosexual sex fantasies will quickly show you, and I’ll endure lectures on hate from a lot of people, but not from Concerned Women For America. Hate…did you say? Hate? Let me hear CWA denounce Paul Cameron’s The Medical Consequences Of What Homosexuals Do and I might consider listening to them talk about hate.
It’s a symptom of how the conversation about religion and spirituality has degenerated here in America, that people, even normally sane people, are treating a 15th Century wall painting (it isn’t actually a fresco) as though it’s a page right out of the bible. Iconic it may well be, but that speaks to the skill of the painter, one of the true masters of the art form. It’s Leonardo’s version, not Matthew’s, not Mark’s, not Luke’s, not King James’, not Cyrus Scofield’s. And it’s not a particularly realistic representation of the event either (Hey everyone…let’s all sit on This side of the table…). As I’m told some of the figures in the painting are supposedly representations of politicians who lived during Leonardo’s time, the painting may itself have elements of parody in it. The fact is that this Folsom Street Fair graphic is just one of hundreds, if not thousands, of parodies of Leonardo da Vinci’s famous work that have been created over the years. If anyone has a right to be offended here, it’s Leonardo’s ghost.
And…you have to laugh sometimes…Leonardo, if he wasn’t gay himself, certainly sets you wondering about it. Charged (and acquitted) of sodomy as a young man, he never married, and once said that "the act of procreation and anything that has any relation to it is so disgusting that human beings would soon die out if there were no pretty faces and sensuous dispositions". And what did he consider a pretty face? Take a look at the figure of John in The Last Supper. It’s probably his pupil Salai, whom Leonardo fondly and often painted. Another pupil, Melzi, the 15 year old son of a Lombard aristocrat, became his life companion, traveling with the painter and Salai (who was said to have been greatly jealous of the younger student at first), and remaining with the painter until his death. If Leonardo was alive today, Matt Barber would be bellyaching that The Last Supper, with its androgynous John practically swooning at Jesus’ side, was a hate filled anti-Christian parody of…er…The Last Supper.
Now, the sentiment in these works strikes me as a profoundly beautiful one. If I’d been allowed to see more imagery like this in church as a young gay man myself, I might still be calling myself a Baptist today. But again, it just strikes me as funny that the kook pews are whipping themselves into a sanctimonious lather about the sacredness to them of a genre of religious art, that itself has a rich history of homosexual overtones. Have any of these jackasses looked, really looked, at some of these Last Supper paintings?
Just so you know, and to help spread the word, I’m on the Charles W. Woodward Class of 72 Reunion Committee. We’re planning a 35th year reunion this November, on the weekend after Thanksgiving (on the theory that most of our classmates will be traveling home for Thanksgiving…), and I’ve set up a class reunion website at www.woodwardclassof72.com.
If you’re a classmate who occassionally reads my blog, or knows someone who is or might be, stop on by the reunion site and check out some photos from way back when, and a few issues of our student newspaper, The Advocate (some of my classmates may appreciate the irony in my being able to honestly claim to have had my photos and cartoons printed in The Advocate…hehehehe…), and get up to date on the reunion news. And…join us for a good time at…er….wherever we decide to hold our reunion (we haven’t settled on a venue yet…)
I’d really love to see all my classmates there. And especially some…and extra especially a certain someone… Even though he wasn’t class of 72…
The original intent of the forum, according to Coalition of Conscience director Dr. Michael Brown, was to have an open and honest dialogue between the Coalition of Conscience and members of the Charlotte-area gay & gay-friendly clergy.
Brown said he had invited members of the clergy from thirteen area churches – including the New Life Metropolitan Community Church, MCC of Charlotte, Myers Park Baptist Church, St. Martin’ & St. Peter’s Episcopal Churches, Holy Covenant UCC and Jay Bakker’s Revolution Church. Brown also said up to 500 personal invitations to the event were handed out at the Pride Charlotte festival at the end of August. He also noted that this was his third or fourth attempt at organizing a public discussion on issues of sexuality & Christianity with members of the Charlotte-area LGBT community.
…
“We want to open a door of grace to the gay & lesbian community. We are convinced from the Scriptures that Jesus is against homosexual practice. We are equally convinced that Jesus died for homosexual and heterosexual alike,” Brown said, “We know there is a lot of misunderstanding. We know that a lot of gays and lesbians have been driven out of churches as if homosexuality was the worst of all sins…. Just by saying, ‘Let’s talk about it,’ hopefully we can break a wall down there.”
Oh how…neighborly…
Uhm…well…sort of….
At the beginning of the forum, however, Brown made his point very clear: One cannot be gay & Christian, or rather, one cannot be a self-affirming gay person and Christian:
“If you mean, can I be a devoted follower of Jesus while struggling with unwanted sexual desires, while saying I know these are wrong, I resist them, I don’t give into them, I do not practice homosexuality, I’m celibate and I’m abstaining from these things and my goal is to be pure in front of the Lord, but I’m still struggling with these things… Can you be gay and follow Jesus? In that sense, yes. And that’s the same as a heterosexual struggling with lust, desire, temptation outside of wedlock. However, if you mean can I practice homosexuality? Can I engage in romantic and same-sex relationships and does God endorse those things and can I be a follower of Jesus at the same time? The answer is absolutely, categorically no. The Scripture leaves no room to question that.”
(Emphasis mine…) Oh. Well there’s nothing to talk about after all then is there?
It’s been almost a year now since we talked. It was amazing that last time, to hear your voice after so long: you sounded just like you did way back when. It took me back…almost like that first time I called, and heard your telephone voice. Well…actually it was better, because that first time, I think I might have gotten you into some kind of trouble. You remember. You gave me your phone number that Friday before school was over, and we agreed that I’d call you Saturday and maybe we could both take our cameras for a hike somewhere…like maybe Great Falls. By the way…I still have that roll of film of yours you had me develop. I think I gave you the contacts I made, and some prints, but somehow I ended up with the negatives. I can mail them to you if you like. Anyway…I called and asked whoever it was who answered if you were home, and then you got on the line and you were all like…uh…sorry…I didn’t think you’d call…why did you call…I can’t go anywhere…I didn’t think you’d call…like I wasn’t supposed to call, which really confused me because we’d agreed I would call and you gave me your phone number which isn’t the sort of thing you do when you Don’t want someone to call you. Next Monday morning I met you at school it was like nothing had happened. There were times while we were seeing each other, when I wasn’t sure when you were teasing and when you were serious. And you always kept me at arms length from your family. For years afterward I wondered if I’d gotten you in some kind of trouble with your parents for giving me your number. Maybe we should have agreed you would call me.
Say…maybe you should call me now. It’s been almost a year. It would be nice to hear from you again. We’re too far away from each other to go for that camera hike like we were going to back then. But we can chat now, can’t we…without it getting you in trouble…right?
Wave back sometime. Please. It would be the best birthday gift ever.
WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 — The Senate approved a resolution on Thursday denouncing the liberal antiwar group MoveOn.org over an advertisement that questioned the credibility of Gen. David H. Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq.
MoveOn.org, with 3.2 million members, has become a powerful force in Democratic politics and the advertisement it paid for, which appeared in The New York Times, has come under sharp attack from Congressional Republicans and others as unpatriotic and impugning the integrity of General Petraeus.
Damn those dastardly democrats! Impugning the integrity of a war veteran! Is there no low they won’t sink too!!!
Like…oh…this for instance…?
At a White House news conference, President Bush called the advertisement disgusting and said it was an attack not only on General Petraeus but also on the entire American military.
I got your disgusting right here Junior…
You want a civil debate on the issues? Fuck Off! pls? kthxbye…
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Oh. My. God. One of the items in there is some sort of box for processing your disks [musicdirect.com]:
"New! Featuring four beams, nearly twice the rotation speed and improved timing processing, the Quadri-Beam is an ultra cool disc treatment. This patented process reduces the noise floor allowing far more information to be retrieved from the disc. It also works great on DVDs, giving you a picture that is brighter, sharper, crisper and cleaner. For those of you who have never experienced the sonic benefits of the Bedini Clarifier, it significantly reduces high frequency glare and increases retrieval of information, enhancing dynamic range. Detail and resolution are improved dramatically."
I won’t comment. This is Slashdot, so I guess you have some entry level knowledge to know why this is the most ridiculous thing you’ve read in months.
There are physical reasons why vaccuum tube amplifiers sound DIFFERENT than solid state amplifiers. I don’t, however, subscribe to the philosophy that they’re better inherently, as I’ve heard some terrible-sounding tube amps.
Whoa. Let’s not equate the tube vs. solid-state debate with cable voodoo. You can look at the waveform of a tube amp’s output and compare it to a solid-state amp’s output and see the difference yourself, if you know what to look for. Tubes color the sound (essentially, distort it, but in a way that many people prefer) by emphasisizing the odd-ordered harmonics of a given tone.
EVEN ORDER, not odd order harmonics… TRANSISTOR gear has a higher ratio of odd harmonics to even, comparatively. Especially a triode vacuum tube in a single ended circuit design will have almost no 3rd harmonic signal compared to the second one.
"The thing is, even the cheap drilled wire of your phone-line is good enough to transmit multi-mhz signals for DSL over a few km."
That’s because the telephone system uses low-impedance balanced lines; without this technology, POTS would be largely impractical, and long-distance nearly impossible (at least in the days before satellite).
Low-Z balanced lines are also used in many hi-end audio systems, for the same reasons; they offer a material advantage. In fact, an inexpensive low-z balanced line cable can easily better very high-priced single-ended cables. It’s the primary reason that all of the equipment I build and work with uses balanced line technology.. better performance without fancy cables = value for the customer.