Pay Attention

The Texas Taliban

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 12:45:00 -0600

The Feminist Texican linked to a piece in the Texas Observer about a group of militant Christian fundamentalists called Repent Amarillo. While the article focuses on their fight with a local swinger’s club, the group also targets Wiccans Buddhists, Muslims, “compromised” Christian churches, community theatre productions, and even charity events to raise money for breast cancer research (citing the ignorant and detestable belief that breast cancer is linked to abortion). In their self-described battle against “demonic forces,” they have enjoyed tacit cooperation of local government and law enforcement.

Repent Amarillo is nothing short of a Texas version of the Taliban. Like the Taliban, they use a mixture of local law and prejudice to enforce their narrow world view and morality on others. They dress in military fatigues and go on “missions” to intimidate and harass anyone that differs from their narrow beliefs.

What drives this sort of behavior? It isn’t simply religion. A great many people that share Repent Amarillo’s world-view don’t stoop to thuggery to enforce their beliefs on others.

Repent Amarillo is a textbook cult, and like all cults, it recruits from a vulnerable population. Its military trappings are tailor-made to draw in young, disenfranchised males. When you’re young and broke in Amarillo, with few prospects for the future, being told you’re on a mission from God must be incredibly empowering.

At least that’s the way it felt for me.

——

I never joined a cult (if you don’t count my collegiate foray into Objectivism), but I remember the religious certainty of my teenage years. The absolute conviction that I was one of a chosen few that knew the truth, and that I was to bring that truth to the world brought a lot of comfort to an overweight teenage boy who couldn’t get a date.

But I had other opportunities. I had friends. I had a job and a little money. I knew I would be going to college. If my only prospects had been, like my classmates, a job in the shrimping industry or at the local factory (which sometimes manufactured blue jeans, and other times low-end desktop computers), I might have sought a higher purpose.

So it isn’t hard for me to imagine the attractions of a militant Christian cult in a relatively small town like Amarillo, Texas, but what can we do about to stop them?

It isn’t enough to simply stand up against a group like Repent Amarillo, though we should do so at every opportunity. It’s fiendishly difficult to kill a cult. They may die off eventually, but the harder you try to stamp them out, the more attractive they become. We need to head them off.

That may mean better education, or a fairer economic system, or just treating everyone we meet with compassion. I don’t think there’s a single right answer, but I know there are a lot of things we can do.

Women's History Month

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 08:28:15 -0600

March is Women’s History Month.

I never was a feminist until I had a wife and daughters. It’s not that I didn’t believe in equal rights for everyone, I did, but I didn’t grasp how different our experiences of the world are, and failing to grasp that, I didn’t understand the need for a political and social movement.

It shouldn’t be controversial that men and women are treated differently, and those differences aren’t necessarily traumatic, but it bothers me that anyone would try to limit what my daughters can do, or who they can be.

And those limitations don’t necessarily come from men. When I dress my daughter in t-shirts with rockets or dinosaurs, it isn’t the little boys that ask why she’s wearing “boy colors.” It’s the girls. It’s women, never men, that greet her by telling her she’s pretty. None of these are meant as slights or insults to my daughter. The adults are being friendly. The children are simply honest. But I fear that a life time of social pressure to be pretty, or to be a proper girl, will take its toll.

And that’s why I’m a feminist.

Tom Tomorrow visits parallel Earth. Click through for more.

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 08:09:32 -0600

Tom Tomorrow visits parallel Earth. Click through for more.

One Year of 'Pay Attention'!

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 21:04:45 -0600

It’s the one year anniversary of this blog, which began on New Year’s Eve 2008. To celebrate, here’s a few posts that pretty well sum up the last year:

My first post here was a look back at 2008.

This post on Amateurs and Art led to a new friendship.

Sometimes, I wrote about politics.

Some of my friends lost their jobs.

My wife and I celebrated our second anniversary.

I wrote about Star Trek and fan fiction.

and I wrote a post on Stimulation and Satisfaction.

——

Looking back, there are some things I didn’t blog about that I wish I had. I haven’t said anything here about the baby we’re expecting in March, or the deep burnout I experienced in the middle of the year. I’ve been busy with a new writing project that I haven’t said much about either, but I’ll reveal more on that in a few weeks.

Mostly, I’m just happy for the connections I’ve made over the last year. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next year.

RIP Dan O'Bannon

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 09:52:26 -0600

From Dark Star, Pinback vs. The Alien:

——-

Obituary here.

Morning Cartoons

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 12:40:00 -0600

Apparently, it’s cartoon week at Pay Attention.

I’m not sure if every parent experiences this, but even before my daughter was born, I started making plans to ~~control~~ curate her pop culture experience. Honestly, I can’t stand the bulk of modern children’s programming, and I freely admit that most of the shows I watched as a kid were pure crap too.

It isn’t that I plan to cut her off from her own generations pop culture, but I want to at least lob some influence in her direction. So we’ve been watching a few cartoons every morning, mostly Donald Duck cartoons from the 30s through the 50s because they’re both hilarious and gorgeous. (There’s a nice collection that Disney hasn’t seen fit to remove from YouTube if you want to check them out).

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to broaden her horizons a bit and showed her the Chuck Jones classic “One Froggy Evening”, better known as “that cartoon with the singing frog.” Apparently she enjoyed it because she now requests it every morning.

Which brings me to the point that I actually meant to post about. The songs featured in the short are extremely infectious. After I watch it, I find that I can’t get them out of my head for most of the morning. I decided to do a little research, and possibly purchase copies of the songs. During my research, I found a site that gives the full background of each of the songs that the frog sings.

It’s worth checking out, if only to discover how disturbing some of the music really is.

Clyde Crashcup

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 10:22:41 -0600

There’s no excuse for blogging this, except that the world has forgotten Clyde Crashcup. From Wikipedia:

Clyde Crashcup is a fictional character from the early-1960s animated television series The Alvin Show.

Clyde Crashcup (voiced by Shepard Menken impersonating Edwin Carp) is a scientist in a white coat whose experiments invariably failed. His was the only voice heard in many of the episodes, because the other character in the series was his assistant Leonardo, who only whispered into Clyde’s ear. In one episode, though, Clyde invented a wife (voiced by June Foray who also portrayed Rocket J. Squirrel in Rocky and Bullwinkle, among many characters). Clyde had one of the four segments, and the Chipmunks starred in the other three (two of which were musical segments). In the episode “Crashcup Invents the Birthday Party”, Foray provided the (all too audible) voice for the mother of Crashcup’s inaudible assistant Leonardo.

Clyde Crashcup was primarily an inventor rather than a researcher, although he tended to “invent” things which had already been invented. However, in one episode, he built a functioning time machine. He typically would invent something by taking a pencil out of his lab coat’s pocket and drawing a picture in midair of his conception: the picture would then become the actual object. Clyde’s catchphrase (and consider that term loosely used) was to break down the name of his invention into its etonymic elements to explain his thought process. For example, when asked to justify the invention of the telephone, he would say “That’s ‘tele-’ for tele and ‘-phone’ for phone: telephone.” Not exactly the scientific method one would seek, but for a five-year-old child watching the show, guaranteed hilarity.

Video of the great scientist:

On Adam Lambert

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 12:18:41 -0600

I’ve watched the last three seasons of American Idol, and I don’t think any contestant has been a better at pure performance than Adam Lambert (David Cook, from the previous year is a better artist overall). No one else from the season came close to Lambert’s cocky, theatrical stage presence.

Despite that, I’m probably not going to buy his new album because his brand of pop music really doesn’t wear well on my ipod, but I’m pretty tempted after the interview he gave this morning.

If you don’t follow these, things, Lambert gave a “sexually charged” performance at the AMAs earlier this week, including a kiss with another man. This led some people to complain, and he was dropped from an appearance on Good Morning America. CBS’s ‘Early Show’ then invited him on to talk about the performance, and he offered a defense of his music and performance so articulate and unapologetic that I want to compare it to Frank Zappa’s defense of free speech before the Senate.

That’s probably over the top, but watching the interview, I was really happy to see him push back on the notion that all entertainment needs to be kid-friendly, or that his performance was somehow worse for family viewing than Eminem’s. More to the point, I’m really glad to see a gay man on television who’s confident and sexual.

Americans have proven themselves relatively tolerant of gay men as long as they relegate themselves to the roles of neutered best friend, minstrel show stereotype, or tortured cowboy, but I think a lot of the outrage over this performance is rooted in the fact that it was clearly about sex and unapologetically gay. That makes a lot of people uncomfortable, and I can appreciate that, but they’re going to have to move past it.

Rorscharch Events: Leaked Climate Change

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 12:03:17 -0600

(Note: I initially shared this item and comment on my Google Reader ‘shared items’ page, and Adam asked me for a longer response. Since it was fairly long, I thought I’d share it here.)

From the New York Times: Hacked E-Mail Is New Fodder for Climate Dispute

Hundreds of private e-mail messages and documents hacked from a computer server at a British university are causing a stir among global warming skeptics, who say they show that climate scientists conspired to overstate the case for a human influence on climate change.
The e-mail messages, attributed to prominent American and British climate researchers, include discussions of scientific data and whether it should be released, exchanges about how best to combat the arguments of skeptics, and casual comments — in some cases derisive — about specific people known for their skeptical views. Drafts of scientific papers and a photo collage that portrays climate skeptics on an ice floe were also among the hacked data, some of which dates back 13 years.

In one e-mail exchange, a scientist writes of using a statistical “trick” in a chart illustrating a recent sharp warming trend. In another, a scientist refers to climate skeptics as “idiots.”

Some skeptics asserted Friday that the correspondence revealed an effort to withhold scientific information. “This is not a smoking gun; this is a mushroom cloud,” said Patrick J. Michaels, a climatologist who has long faulted evidence pointing to human-driven warming and is criticized in the documents.

Some of the correspondence portrays the scientists as feeling under siege by the skeptics’ camp and worried that any stray comment or data glitch could be turned against them.

This is one of those Rorschach events where your interpretation of its significance depends entirely on your prior opinion.

My own interpretation is that I’m willing to question what I “know”, though I’ve always tried to characterize myself as someone that believes in the warming hypothesis based on second hand observation. I’m not nearly qualified to assess the first-hand evidence, and I try to keep a moderate, ‘non-panicked’ view on the question.

I haven’t read the excerpts yet, just the above story and a post on Vulgar Morality. Unless the full contents of the hacked emails are released, I probably won’t read through them. It’s too easy to cherry pick quotes that cast a negative light. Also, years of reading email lists leaves me with the opinion that you learn almost nothing about the subject being discussed and a great deal about the people discussing it.

That said, I’m not surprised by the characterization that emerges. That some scientists are derisive of people that disagree with them, or that some scientists may have overstated their conclusions or falsified results is pretty believable. Those are very human things to do, but since there’s no single piece of evidence that all of climate science relies upon, and no single scientist or group of scientists behind the theory, I don’t see these revelations having a huge impact on the debate. If they lead to a re-evaluation of the existing literature, then that’s even better.

What interests me most is the automatic reaction from climate change skeptics and believers. Some skeptics point to this event as a “smoking gun” and some true believers automatically downplay its significance, or ignore it altogether. I don’t think either of those responses is the right one, but that’s probably the result of my own bias.

Woodie Guthrie Copyright Notice

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:37:42 -0600

For whatever reason, I’ve been listening to a lot of early folk, country, and blues. I was reading about Woodie Guthrie, and I thought this copyright notice fit well with the themes of amateurism that I’ve discussed on this blog.

“This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don’t give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that’s all we wanted to do.”

——-

Also, here’s one of only two known films of Guthrie performing.

Congratulations Sophistpundit.

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:46:48 -0600

Congratulations to Adam on five years of blogging at Sophistpundit, which he apparently began at the age of 19.

Now I will point out that there were no blogs when I was 19*, so I started a diary. It lasted for three months, and I used it to chronicle my thoughts on CGI in movies, Shakespeare, and my dread of dance class. Thankfully, the diary is long gone.

At any rate, congratulations.

—-

*Actually, it turns out there were blogs when I was 19, and I missed out on my chance to be an internet pioneer. Oh well.

CMA Shout Out

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:57:04 -0600

Only the Country Music Association could give its ‘New Artist of the Year’ award to a guy who had his first hit record fifteen years ago, but in honor of Darius Rucker’s big win, I present this, his finest hour:

——

Okay, I was kidding, but it’s actually pretty awesome (and disgusting).

Strangetastic Issue 3: Old Time Religion

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:55:47 -0600

The new issue of my online horror magazine is up, and I’m really glad that I got this issue’s main story, The Revival. It’s the story of a man who abandons his religion in a time of grief, then returns to it for love. Also, there is horror. Enjoy!

—-

Also, if you enjoy the story, take some time to let the author know. He blogs at Join the Birdie.

Amateur Music

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:08:00 -0600

The death of the long tail?

A few months ago, The Guardian ran a story reporting that most music didn’t sell a single copy in 2008:

According to his and Bud’s research, 80% of all revenue came from about 52,000 tracks – the “hits” that powered the music industry. Broken down by album, only 173,000 of the 1.23m available albums were ever purchased – leaving 85% without a single copy sold.

“I think people believed in a fat, fertile long tail because they wanted it to be true,” Mr Bud told the Times. “The statistical theories used to justify that theory were intelligent and plausible. But they turned out to be wrong.”

“The relative size of the dormant ‘zero sellers’ tail was truly jaw-dropping,” Page emphasised.

I couldn’t agree with that last sentence more, though I probably feel differently about it than the study’s co-author. When I read it, my first thought was “Holy crap, there are 1.23 million albums for sale”. The article doesn’t say when all of those albums were first released. I doubt they were all produced in 2008, so it’s entirely possible that they made some money in the past. It’s also safe to assume that scarcity is dead in more than one way.

It isn’t just that the business model of selling discrete units of music is dying, but also that there is more competition within the field of music than there used to be. Rather than seeing older works fall out of print to make room for newer artists, or having music labels farm a small crop of hit makers while more obscure artists languish, there is an increasingly flat and democratic (or anarchic) field for musicians.

Of course, this is pretty much the party line of copyright reformers everywhere. “Information wants to be free” and all that, but that isn’t my point. The point is that the long tail remains even when the money isn’t there.

——-

A brief aside on my history with music.

I love music like a teenager should. I honestly can’t help myself. I spend more on new music than a grown man is supposed to, but I’m making up for a lot of lost time.

I grew up in a religious family during a time when evangelical Christians viewed popular music as an evil influence, and even “Christian rock” was looked upon with suspicion. We didn’t listen to much recorded music in my home, and what we did listen to didn’t inspire me to seek out more. I didn’t really start exploring music seriously until my late twenties, when I got my first real job and could afford to take risks on new music.

But music still played a huge role in my life, except that it was the music of an older time. Baptist church music. Group hymn singing. Gospel quartets playing bluegrass standards with Christian lyrics.

Later, when I studied theatre in college, I developed a grudging respect, and then a secret love for, the songs and music from our stage productions.

Amateur music.

——

In Defense of Amateurs

In one of his talks, copyright reformer Lawrence Lessig quotes this statement to Congress from John Philip Sousa:

These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country. When I was a boy…in front of every house in the summer evenings, you would find young people together singing the songs of the day or old songs. Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal cord left. The vocal cord will be eliminated by a process of evolution, as was the tail of man when he came from the ape.

Lessig makes the point that, beneath the hyperbole, Sousa’s prediction came true. Musical entertainment became a predominantly passive after the introduction of recorded music. Most people, I think, consider music something you listen to, but for me, was always something you made, or at the very least, participated in.

I love that.

——-

So what does it mean if scarcity is dead, but the long tail fails to generate the income needed to be a professional musician, or writer for that matter?

I’ve written before that amateurs should be celebrated rather than stigmatized. I think this development makes that change inevitable. The reality is that most artists have always needed supplemental income, but those artists rarely had a voice outside of their community. As more amateurs gain an audience, the distinction between amateur and professional should disappear.

Does that mean artists shouldn’t be paid? Of course not, but it does mean that most artists probably won’t be. As an artist, I have to be okay with that, or I have to stop being an artist.

Report of the Postmaster General (1898)

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:11:00 -0600

Combining two of my obsessions, Sarah Winchester and Google Books, here’s a passage from the 1898 Annual Report of the Postmaster General in which Mrs. Winchester argues that rural mail delivery should continue in Santa Clara county:

I understand that this is the kind of thing that only the truly obsessed care about, but everyone’s obsessed about something. Right?

Halloween Post 7: My Jack O’Lantern

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 22:31:16 -0500

Halloween Post 7: My Jack O’Lantern

Halloween Post 6: The Haunted Mansion

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:31:48 -0500

If Halloween is my favorite day of the year, then Disney’s Haunted Mansion is my favorite place. Check out this video on its creation:

Halloween Post 5: Zombie Jamboree

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:59:51 -0500

Harry Belafonte performs Zombie Jamboree in 1969, with sexy zombie dancers:

Halloween Post 4: Faces of Bélmez

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:37:34 -0500

I’m a skeptic, but I love a good ghost story, and if that story purports to be true, I love it even more.

The face in the upper left corner haunted me as a child. I must have seen it on the Ripley’s Believe it or Not! television show or That’s Incredible, but wherever I encountered it, it stuck with me.

Here’s what Wikipedia has to say on the topic:

The appearances in Bélmez began on August 23, 1971, when María Gómez Cámara claimed that a human face formed spontaneously on her cement kitchen floor. María’s husband, Juan Pereira and their son, Miguel, destroyed the image with a pick axe and new cement was laid down. However, the Pereira story goes, a new face formed on the floor. The mayor of Bélmez was informed and forbade the destruction of the new face. Instead, the floor cement was cut out and taken for study.
María’s home, advertised to the tourists as La Casa de las Caras (The House of the Faces), was built in the 19th century. An excavation, conducted under the location of the house, revealed human remains, which were removed. However, this did not stop the purported phenomenon. By Easter of 1972 hundreds of people were flocking to the house to see the faces. For the next 30 years the Pereira family claimed that faces continued to appear. They were both male and female, of different shapes, sizes and expressions.

Halloween Post 3: My Halloween Set

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:34:48 -0500

A few years ago, my best friend and I decided to throw a Halloween party. Since I had previous experience building theatre sets, I volunteered to decorate. I’m still proud of the work I did here, even if I rue my poor photography skills.