Posts by Rich Lock
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It's worth noting that synthetic cannabis products have been on sale in New Zealand for nearly a decade, from specialist outlets. The problem has really arisen through Kronic's owners pushing it into suburban dairies and, more recently, the priceless promotion of panicky media stories.
I'm personally more concerned about the insiduous rise in the use of Panikk (or to use the full scientific name: MoralPanikk-2011).
Used and pushed heavily by media employees and politicians, the active ingredient of this drug cleverly binds on to matters of some concern, but amplifies and distorts the perceptions of the user to the extent that it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to tell reality from fantasy. Users become confused and incoherent, and can have difficulty coming to logical conclusions when presented with simple fact scenarios. Although not itself physically addictive, reports from heavy users in the media and politics describe experiencing a 'power rush' when using Panikk, which leads them to repeated use in order to maintain their high. One other common side-effect is a paranoid and hysterical obsession with the welfare of minors.
There have been limited successes in countering the effects of Panikk by heavy doses of Hard Science. However, there has been some difficulty with delivery.
If you suspect your parents of being under the influence of Panikk, talk to them gently in a soothing low voice, and get them to sit down and relax while you make them a nice cup of tea.
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I found this piece on XL Recordings so positively uplifiting in it's 'we make the music we want to make, and if anyone else likes it, that's a bonus' vibe that I stuck a hardcopy on the fridge at home.
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I'd also argue that hip-hop [was] Elvis in [its] own radical wee way.
Elvis, was a hero to most, but what did he mean to me? :)
I could hear something tomorrow that is new in every sense, totally underivative in every way. But it seems likely that I won't even recognize it as music.
Lousy biology, limiting the boundaries of popular music again
Ben can have my proxy for this discussion, as he seems to be posting the comments I wish I had the time to write.
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Dave Dobbyn has actually been down in Christchurch already. According to a NatRad report I heard back in September, he turned up with no fanfare and no publicity to several of the welfare centres and played becuase he thought it would help cheer people up.
I've heard 'Loyal' several thousand times too many, and I could slag on him all day, but I think he deserves credit for that. Even if my unkind, uncalled for and frankly bad taste comment at the time was 'haven't the people of Christchurch suffered enough already?'
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Seriously, though, when's the last time you heard a piece of music that made you think this is really new, as opposed to this is really good?
Probably back when I first started listening to drum'n'bass. Which arguably just lies on/from a continuum of several other genres.
And there are probably several teens currently listening to dubstep who feel the same way I did twenty years ago (have fun, you crazy kids!)
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Hard News: Rough times in the trade, in reply to BenWilson,
I don't think there aren't new genres. It's just that there are so many, that none of them seem so titanic as they used to. It's rather like how there don't seem to have been any scientific breakthroughs like what seemed to be happening when Einstein was around. The truth is that there's more science happening than ever before and our expectations have shifted. Also, that body of knowledge is so mature that making a titanic shift involves a titanic effort now. Similarly with music, it seems like every conceivable sound has been turned into music, and every genre has 10 times as many artists as it used to. To seize a huge piece of that requires a revolution much larger than anything that's ever happened before.
I read Mick Wall's Led Zep biography recently. One passage I found quite startling from the persepctive of someone who regulary attended gigs only from the late '80's onwards is when he described one of their earlier US tours. They regularly played gigs where the audience would genuinely, by force of applause and acclaim, get them to do multiple encores - often up to a dozen or more per performance. They would run through all their own work, as many cover versions as they could remember, and then be forced into just jamming.
Compared to the lame 'oh, they haven't played their biggest hit yet. Suppose I'd better clap until they inevitably come back out again' style of today's bands, that's quite remarkably striking.
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Muse: Some Link Crack To Tide You Over..., in reply to Islander,
When you start to learn te reo, you - I- quickly realise that spatial & temporal dimensions - change.dimensions...
Follow me to Pormpuraaw, a small Aboriginal community on the western edge of Cape York, in northern Australia. I came here because of the way the locals, the Kuuk Thaayorre, talk about space. Instead of words like "right," "left," "forward," and "back," which, as commonly used in English, define space relative to an observer, the Kuuk Thaayorre, like many other Aboriginal groups, use cardinal-direction terms — north, south, east, and west — to define space. This is done at all scales, which means you have to say things like "There's an ant on your southeast leg" or "Move the cup to the north northwest a little bit." One obvious consequence of speaking such a language is that you have to stay oriented at all times, or else you cannot speak properly. The normal greeting in Kuuk Thaayorre is "Where are you going?" and the answer should be something like " Southsoutheast, in the middle distance." If you don't know which way you're facing, you can't even get past "Hello."
The result is a profound difference in navigational ability and spatial knowledge between speakers of languages that rely primarily on absolute reference frames (like Kuuk Thaayorre) and languages that rely on relative reference frames (like English). Simply put, speakers of languages like Kuuk Thaayorre are much better than English speakers at staying oriented and keeping track of where they are, even in unfamiliar landscapes or inside unfamiliar buildings. What enables them — in fact, forces them — to do this is their language. Having their attention trained in this way equips them to perform navigational feats once thought beyond human capabilities. Because space is such a fundamental domain of thought, differences in how people think about space don't end there. People rely on their spatial knowledge to build other, more complex, more abstract representations. Representations of such things as time, number, musical pitch, kinship relations, morality, and emotions have been shown to depend on how we think about space.
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Muse: Some Link Crack To Tide You Over..., in reply to BenWilson,
Only Satan puts eggs in his hash cookies.
Yes. Interminable stoned conversations about which came first bring everyone down. Or someone starts spouting crap like this.
I'd love to know German. I have a sneaking admiration for their highly practical and regimented national character, and deeply disturbing dark tales would be something of a selling point for me. All the German-language jokes I know seem to be deeply, deeply black.
However, as you point out, German is not widely spoken outside Germany. A few years ago I would have suggested Italian, or more usefully, Spanish - the rrrrromance languages of luuurve. Good for impressing and seducing the laydeez.
Unfortunately, I have a tin ear for languages, but speak Engineer, Legal and Geek passably.
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What I love most is the bizarrely guttural sound of the language.
This might work (flying on instruments only due to work firewall...)
How to make a cookie recipe sound like a Nazi rally.
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Hard News: Christchurch: Square Two, in reply to Emma Hart,
Stuff has a "what are you going to do?" poll up today.
Quite heartbreaking, that poll.
Since people are posting stuff like this:
Knowing you care means a lot.
And talking about social death and stuff, this misanthrope will break the habit of a lifetime and chip in with his best wishes and thoughts, for what it's worth.