How Does It Know?

Been listening to some music tonight. Here’s the graph for my enjoyment of the Deerhunter album Microcastle (similar to what I did with the Deathcab album, but with crappier, less detailed graphing software):

From money.cnn.com, what I guess was supposed to be a video on Henry Paulson’s last days as Secretary of Treasury… However, this error pretty much sums it up: He’ll likely be dealing with the unspecified fatal error that has occurred in our nation’s economy.

You would think I’d think a socialist style bailout of an industry where the workers make good wages with good benefits would be a great idea. But I just don’t see it helping. And for some reason it makes me mad that these companies set themselves up for this kind of failure again and again throughout their histories.* For a company that’s losing $1bil a month, I am unsure of what a bailout would do for GM. I await their proposed plans that are due sometime in early December. And I hope they do come up with an excellent plan that has a great chance of working. But I just don’t think it can be done.

* I read this evening that after WWII, a form of centralized/socialized pension was proposed, but the fear of communism was so great that the companies themselves said they’d take on the costs themselves instead. After that, we’ve had our Michigan Democratic Representatives and Senators (some of whom I vote for, so I guess I’m part of the problem), namely John Dingell (who has been in office since 1955), who has fought hard for the car companies and against regulation of any kind (I’m mostly talking fuel efficiency/emissions here), which automatically gets the car companies stuck in their ways, while the foreign companies continue to innovate. I don’t blame the UAW a whole lot here, because I feel like they took what they could get when it was available. I do blame the arrogance and shortsightedness of management though, in offering things without thinking about the future repercussions. Things like offering healthcare to employees in retirement was a way to avoid giving a wage increase, which in turn, made their numbers look better from one quarter to the next. The notion that this would become a crazy Pyramid scheme type situation never occurred to them, apparently. We should probably also investigate what kind of crazy compensation management gets. When Rick Wagoner states, upon being asked if he could give up his $2.2 million for $1 for a year, “I really hadn’t thought through that yet. I do have a son in college I have to pay for somehow,” I am highly confused by the state of things here. First off, does he really use his entire $2.2mil every year, and basically live paycheck to paycheck like the average working person, without having saved at least a little of that for his son’s college tuition? Secondly… well, I don’t know… Like I said, I am confused and a little bit weirded out that I’m siding with going for Chapter 11 bankruptcy here. I did hear a quote recently: “Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without Hell”… so, if we claim to be a free-market society, then all these bailout actions make absolutely no sense without allowing for intense government regulation and oversight. Otherwise, what’s the punishment for running your giant corporation into the ground? The solution to this needs to be giant systemic changes in the way things work (as far as government involvement in industry and universal healthcare), it seems, and it seems pretty impossible in our country.**

** I haven’t cited many sources here, but if you really want (feel free to ask), I’ll Google for the stuff I’ve read about these topics recently and give you a link.

Just finished this little thing.

Sit Up, Sit Down

This past Sunday, my friend Chris and I went up to Lansing to record with John, this time so Chris could lay down his saxophone part on one of the songs, and also so he could record some piano on some others. We didn’t end up finishing (everything in the studio always takes more time than we have budgeted), so we’ll take another trip up there soon, but I’ve got to say — the saxophone parts kick ass. The piano we did ain’t too shabby either. There is still a ton to do, the hardest of which will be the vocal harmonies, but I’ve been reinvigorated in terms of the project based on Chris’ saxophone and piano. They really bring out something in the songs I wasn’t hearing before, and I’m really pleased.

Totally changing subjects:
I don’t often drag my really personal life out for display here, but my step-father-in-law (is that right?), a totally cool dude who was a Hawaiian musician and all around awesome guy, is really ill. Some kind of blood cancer that is eating his bones. Seriously. So it’s been kind of rough with the news of it worsening, etc. My wife will be going to Hawaii to visit in December, but I won’t be able to make the trip. Needless to say, the emotions surrounding the illness, the last minute travel plans, etc has been interesting. We are simply trying to keep our heads up and I’m trying to be a strong support for my wife. Whatever ends up happening, I am glad I have gotten to know and talk to my step-father-in-law.

Anyhow, Thanksgiving is a couple days away and that means long weekend, which I am very much looking forward to. Have a happy one!

Quick note to mention this:

Worldmapper

This site has a ton of world maps with the sizes of the countries adjusted to show various attributes proportionally. The map above is the one for world population. I first found this when I was directed to the site of Mark Newman, a physicist at the University of Michigan. He did maps of the U.S. like this showing the results of the presidential election, which are really interesting too. He also wrote the software that is used to generate these maps, which is interesting to look into if you’re a geek like me.

I recommend looking at the malaria deaths, rabies deaths, and alcohol and cigarettes exports for how interestingly imbalanced they are.

Check out my new song.

Part Time Songs

This map was in the church where I voted today.*

Also, there was a pile of “No on Prop 2″ pamphlets on a table right next to the line, which I thought wasn’t appropriate inside a polling place. There was also a box of Kleenex on the same table, so I put the box on top of the pamphlets. Now I’m thinking I should’ve just taken them all.

*Purely from a cartographic perspective, it’s actually a pretty cool map. Green and dark green denote strong Evangelical Christianity, so you can see where the U.S. stands there… Seems to also be a bit of activity in South America and Australia. Doesn’t seem to have much of a foothold in Europe, Africa or Asia, though.

That last post was pretty ugly, eh? Those images are way too big for my blog format. I am thinking about switching to a theme that’s wider… But I spent so much time customizing this one that that’s a time investment that I’m not sure I’m ready for.

Well, Friday again. My plan is to finish the Marshmallow Mission* 2-song EP this weekend and post that up on Part Time Songs (need to make some cover art too…); other than that, my family will be celebrating a late Diwali by having Indian buffet on Sunday. Other than THAT, I am hoping to get some sleep and hang around the house. I love hanging around the house, lazing about with no agenda. Except that I always seem to give myself an agenda (”record stuff by Sunday”, “vacuum out car”, “read for fun” — yes, I actually have that on a to-do list… what is wrong with me?). I tend to feel a little guilty when I’m not doing SOMETHING. You’d think I’d be more productive.

Happy Halloween.

And please please please make the effort and go vote.

*”Marshmallow Mission” consists of just me and Dan. The idea is to do these songs together where it’s really quick and easy. But it hasn’t been that quick**, due to my time restraints. Anyway, so it’s an easy mission, easy==!hard==soft==Marshmallow. There’s other reasons for the name when it came into my head, but that’s the rational, makes-sense answer.

**Though it’s coming together fairly easily, now that I’m learning/using/exploring Sonar 7 and the workflow is a lot smoother and easier than FL Studio***

***Though I did end up purchasing the VST versions of the FL Parametric EQ2 and other plugins that are built into FL, so I could use them in Sonar, because they are really awesome… I mean, showing a graphical signal analysis in the paraEQ alone is worth the money.

Hi. Been super busy and a lot has been going on in all aspects of my life. Sorry for the lack of content.

Just wanted to make a quick post pointing you to this other blog post that compares the McCain tax plan to the Obama tax plan. It takes the popular diagram made by the Washington Post:

… and pokes holes in the way they chose to lay out the data. I mean, the Post’s chart DOES make Obama’s plan look pretty good, but the way they calculated the average tax cut is faulty (read the post for more).

Anyway, the person at this blog takes the same data and actually charts it out in a fair and mathematically sound way, which shows that Obama’s tax plan is actually EVEN BETTER for those of us who don’t make millions of dollars*:

Sorry for the lack of analysis, but I’m hurrying to get out of here and to go on to enjoy my Friday night. Hope to have more better/faster/stronger/cooler content in the near future!

BTW, all this graphing and analysis is courtesy of:
http://chartjunk.karmanaut.com/taxplans/

* if you do, in fact, make millions of dollars, please post a comment, because damn, a fucking millionaire is reading my blog, and I need to know these things.