Dentist drill demolition

Afraid of going to the dentist?

Listen to some great advice from Jeff Wilkin here.

How to avoid the grinding sound of the drill?

Man, that drill — there is no sound like it in science or nature. If the science-fiction boys ever decide to do a movie with mosquitoes the size of basketballs, I guess they’d sound something like that drill. And once the drill has found its mark, and jackhammers out bad tooth or old fillings ... well, those pleasant sounds used to bounce all over my head.

No longer. Whenever dental fireworks are planned now, I take consultants with me. Keith Emerson has made the trip. So has Chrissie Hynde. On Tuesday, it was John Kay.

They’re musicians — musicians associated with loud, rock’n’roll music. I’ve learned that earfuls of “Karn Evil 9,” the long and pretentious keyboard and percussion piece blared and blasted by Emerson, Lake & Palmer during the early 1970s, is the perfect antidote for any drill work. A CD goes into my portable player, earplugs go into the ear and I receive a loud audio welcome back to the show that never ends.

I know the drill is there, but the sounds of demolition can’t compete with Emerson’s Hammond organ. Seems like the louder the music is, the quicker the procedure goes. And if you are following the lyrics or the beat, you’re not thinking too much about the sound and fury below the ears.

Personally, I can vote for this also being usefull in other circumstances.

Like when wanting music to really listen to.

A rigid Anti-Semitarian?

The latest New Yorker takes up the old canard about G.K. Chesterton at heart really being a racist and anti-semite.

"Chesterton wasn’t a fascist, and he certainly wasn’t in favor of genocide, but that is about the best that can be said of him".

How nice.

Especially about a man who may have deserved a Nobel Peace Prize in the 1930's for trying so hard to make the world understand the dangers of eugenicm and ideological racism. Something he then had been doing for over 30 years.

Still, it is hardly unexpected that such allegations pop up. One reason is of course that there are some rather nasty clichés and comments about Jews in his writings. We are seing more than hooked noses. Some of his writings are also coloured by him not feeling particularly well about a group of Jewish financiers after a political scandal where his beloved brother did some revealing journalism - though lost a court case (the notorious Marconi Scandal) for vilification.

However that may be (and it is safe to say he lately has been acquitted on most counts), I think there are deeper or perhaps more unconscious motives. It may have something to do with keeping GKC's views and arguments at arms length. It may even more be tied to the mania of mediocrity. Great people of course must be belittled. And as they (and the rest of us) all have their small (not to mention big) secrets, it is not difficult to do. At least if one is into shallow readings of their works.

It is also in a somewhat free world legal to speculate if it has something to do with not a few modern media's lack of interest in portraying conservative (or more precisely classical) Christians as some kind of heroes.

Now, the Chestertonians answers back. Read about it here, and even more here (Dale Ahlquist as so often to the rescue).

What better way to comment upon racial inferiority , than GKC himself?

About all those arguments affecting human equality, I myself always have one feeling; which finds expression in a little test of my own. I shall begin to take seriously those classifications of superiority and inferiority, when I
find a man classifying himself as inferior. It will be noted that Mr. Ford does not say that he is only fitted to mind machines; he confesses frankly that he is too fine and free and fastidious a being for such tasks. I shall believe the doctrine when I hear somebody say: " I have only got the wits to turn a wheel." That would be real, that would be realistic, that would be scientific. That would be independent testimony that could not easily be disputed.

It is exactly the same, of course, with all the other superiorities and denials of human equality, that are so specially characteristic of a scientific age. It is so with the men who talk about superior and inferior races; I never heard a man say:" Anthropology shows that I belong to an inferior race." If he did, he might be talking like an anthropologist; as it is, he is talking like a man, and not infrequently like a fool. I have long hoped that I might some day hear a man explaining on scientific principles his own unfitness for any important post or privilege, say: " The world should belong to the free and fighting races, and not to persons of that servile disposition that you will notice in myself; the intelligent will know how to form opinions, but the weakness of intellect from which I so obviously suffer renders my opinion manifestly absurd on the face of them: there are indeed stately and god-like-races but look at me! Observe my shapeless and fourth-rate features! Gaze, if you can bear it, on my commonplace and repulsive face!

"If I heard a man making a scientific demonstration in that style, I might admit that he was really scientific. But as it invariably happens, by a curious coincidence, that the superior race is his own race, the superior type is his own type, and the superior preference for work the sort of work he happens to prefer.
(From The Outline of Sanity (1926), Collected Works page 168-69)

This book is also worth checking out, see quotes here.

As a Norwegian it saddens me that Gilbert did not get a Nobel Prize in 1933. Not the least as it went to another one of those political correct persons who later are proven deadly wrong.

Which in some decades are rather more difficult to forgive than in others.

Moog in Montreal

Carlo, a friend of mine, went to a work related conference in Montreal last week, and used the opportunity to visit some of the sights.

As a hobby musician and professional music fan (which of course means he knows all about Keith and Bob) he was pleasently suprised to see this piece of art at the Gallerie Yves Laroche in Vieux Montreal.

Not the least as the artist (whoever it is) seems able to draw proper hands - and that perhaps even without having studied with a certain Norwegian guardian of tradition.

Stay tuned for more about this piece.

PLP DVD 2C

As I have finally been able to sit down and watch Pär Lindh Project's (PLP) latest offering, Live in Poland, the verdict is simply that few lovers of adventurous music (or progressive rock (or neo-baroque as Pär calls it)) will regret doing the same.

This is pure Pär, in a set of great instrumentals with William Kopecky on bass(es), and Svetlan Raket on drums. While he is not as daringly modern in his choice of classical influences as Keith Emerson (and definitely not as wild), he is a head and shoulder or two above most of today's keyboardplayers.

Subtle elegance and carefull electronicity, or in short Rick Wakeman meets Jordan Rudess. Pär mentions in an interview Bach, Beethoven, Mussorgsky & Wagner as the classical composers he finds closest to prog, and it shows in his performance.

It is fun and rather impressive to see how much he enjoys playing Hammond, synths and piano (and moving quickly between them, not to mention the classic Emerson stunt of playing one with each hand while looking straight ahead). Not to mention a good ragtime thrown in for fun. No knives or daggers, though.

While the opening number may be a bit hard to get into (especially if you're not familiar with Mussorgsky), the rest of the show flows along with the neo-baroque flame kept very strongly alive.

The track list:

1. Night on Bare Mountain (incl. The Black Stone)
2. Baroque Impression
3. Mundus / Veni Vidi Vici Medley
4. Suite in Progress
5. Montagues & Capulet
6. Bill's Solo
7. Gradus ad Parnassum

There is also an interview with Pär. And a deluxe edition with a CD as well.

Some snips here.

Pär's homesite is well worth a look - make sure to check out the interviews (including the stuff about The Nice and Keith).

Go get!

Facebooks

The old "tell me what you read and I will tell you who you are" (or perhaps more often want to be), is getting ever more risky and relevant with the forces of Facebook.

Joe Queenan hits the nail somewhat on the head with his serious tongue-in-cheek analysis of the perils of public self revelation.

But of all the personal information disclosed on Facebook -- and that includes those exquisitely pretentious quotes about the meaning of life -- it seems to me that the section with the greatest potential to catch up with people down the road is "Favorite Books."

Precisely. And what do people read?

My daughter, who graduated from Harvard in 2006, is constantly drawing my attention to the preferred reading materials of her classmates, ostensibly the future leaders of America. She does this not only because surveying the stratospheric level of post-adolescent glibness is more fun than a barrel of monkeys, or watching the Lakers, but because she believes that American society as a whole has a right to know what lies ahead as the best and the brightest move into leadership roles. By the looks of things, it is not going to be pretty.

The most striking thing about the Favorite Books section is the lack of hesitance to identify less-than-immortal books -- "The Godfather," "The Notebook," "The Da Vinci Code," assorted trash by David Baldacci -- as rave faves. This, coupled with the alarming popularity of the voluble crypto-fascist Ayn Rand, strongly suggests that the Ivies may not be getting the job done, culture-wise, these days.

If not for Ayn Rand it would seem that students almost are like most people. Which is not exactly big news:

I'm not suggesting that young people today are dumber or less sophisticated than their forebears. I am merely saying that because previous generations lacked the technology to make their callowness available for all to see, they have been spared the pain of being ceaselessly reminded of the indiscretions of an intellectually derelict youth.

That is why some of us prefer ceaselessly to remind everyone of the indiscretions of an intellectually derelict middleager, by writing blogs.

Before my daughter went to Harvard, I thought that everyone at the school was a ruthless, Machiavellian schemer who played the game of life like six-dimensional chess, cunningly plotting each move decades in advance. The Favorite Books section of Facebook suggests otherwise. No one whose favorite book is "The Da Vinci Code" is thinking six moves ahead.

It is a rare treat to see the human condition summed up so well in one sentence. Seems like it is not only his daughter who is reading Chesterton.

Dragons can be created

Sometimes one does not quite know what to say. Or one has so much to say, that is is hard to decide where to start.

Reading Michael Onfray, provides not a few such occasions. Here is a brief comment by the admittedly rather less than disinterested Dinesh D'Souza, at a less than disinterested site. However, as it fits my own impression from having read his Atheist Manfesto, a few passages are worth quoting.

British atheists like Dawkins and Hitchens are eager to assure us that while they reject the Judeo-Christian God, they do not reject the values of compassion, human dignity, and equality that were introduced by Christianity and are widely shared in Western society. Dawkins and Hitchens insist that we can be moral without God. But Onfray, like Nietzsche, insists that this is an illusion.

Onfray describes the Dawkins-Hitchens position as "atheist Christianity," which he describes as an attempt to preserve Christian values while eliminating the Christian God. Onfray wants to move beyond this to what he calls "atheistic atheism," which requires the wholesale invention of new values that have never existed before.

What these values will look like, Onfray does not specify. He merely says that utilitarianism and hedonism should be our guides. His startling conclusion is that "atheism is not an end in itself." Rather, atheism exists in order to get rid of Judeo-Christian values that constrict our lifestyle. This is an atheism more honest, more darkly appealing, and ultimately more destructive than that of Dawkins and Hitchens.

Then the question naturally arises, is Onfray more consistent or just more crazy than other New Atheists? I am in a bit of a doubt about what I prefer.

But I am in no doubt that Onfray is into such stuff as dragons are made of.

Dragons can be killed

Unfortunately The Zimbabwean is no fantasy. If nothing else, it is interesting to see how much this letter section shows of both fantasy, fury and faith.

As all may be needed in the present situation, not the least as hope of intervention from the political or humanitarian world outside is nothing to put money on.

Dragons can be killed

EDITOR - Fairy tales do not tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed – said G. K. Chesterton.

Robert Mugabe is in every sense a dragon. Laying waste the land, devouring human lives, demanding the most vulnerable be sacrificed for his appeasement, hoarding treasure he can’t possibly use just so others can’t have it, armoured, intractable, smoking with resentment and rage, and stinking of hubris. Having deified their own power, such contempt have his ruling proxy elitist thugs for the collective wisdom of citizens, they will not be removed by runoffs, regardless of the outcomes. They have no interest in the betterment of Zimbabwe. Rather the prosperity of her people is everything they fear. They cling to power for no other reason than that they may continue to eat the flesh of damsels and babes. Make no mistake—these dragons will continue to savagely brutalize Zimbabweans no less if they win than if they lose.

Let Zimbabweans abandon hoping in the humanitarian intervention of Britain, the USA, or African neighbour nations for deliverance from these dragons.

The dragon Robert and his maggot-spawn can only be removed by a unified appeal to the hosts of heaven: chariots of fire, legions of angels, and the pulling down of strongholds.

Starting this present moment, let every powerless Zimbabwean begin to speak, mutter, and whisper the holy name of Jesus with every breath he or she draws. Just the name of Jesus is itself a complete prayer. The name of Jesus casts down the mighty from their thrones, and exalts the lowly. The name of Jesus routs pride and bondage straight back into the hell from whence it sprang. So let every lowly and powerless soul between the Zambezi and the Limpopo breathe the name Jesus into the air until victory is ours in the heavenly realms.
ED RILLING, by email

Strong, but perhaps not too strong.

From Disc to Deus?

While not quite my fav author, Terry Pratchett undoubtly deserves more acclaim and applause than most.

Not the least his brave fight against Alzheimer, as described in this interview.

After having told the world last December about his condition, he has been struggling to improve. And has discovered the usual silly obstacles which show that also National Health Service has symptoms.

He was genuinely angered, however, to find that he and others of his age are too young to get the Alzheimer’s drug Aricept on the NHS.

“If I ate myself into obesity I could get pills for that for nothing. If I wanted Viagra I could get that for nothing. But I can’t get a drug that gives me that little bit of extra edge. I can afford £90 a month, of course, but there may be someone who can’t in his fifties with early-onset Alzheimer’s with dependants - anything that gives an extra edge must be worth it.”
Last week’s Sunday Times story that patients who paid for their own cancer drugs would be denied NHS treatment enraged him. “In the early days of the NHS, if someone had a bit of spare cash they would hand it over to their doctor and he’d say thank you very much. I cannot see how paying for their own drugs undermines the NHS.”

Feeling that the disease is ignored, he has given more than £500,000 to Alzheimer’s research.

However, his daily life has become somewhat better.

Anger aside, Aricept and/or turmeric seems to be working for him. His condition has improved since December. In the car, he no longer has to keep stabbing away with the seatbelt; he can fasten it in one. Dressing, he’s no longer baffled by his clothes; he just puts them on.

His condition (or perhaps something else) has also led to more intriguing effects.

And here’s a thing: Pratchett may have found God. He says he is an atheist; but after his diagnosis, something happened. At the time, he was busy with all the new demands on his time and feeling that, perhaps, he ought to be writing.

“I’m certainly not a man of faith, but as I was rushing down the stairs one day . . . it was very strange. And I say this reluctantly, because I am trying to deal with this situation in as hardheaded a way as I can. I suddenly knew that everything was okay, that what I was doing was right and I didn’t know why.

Not much to go on really, however experiences always need to be interpreted. And Pratchett seems to believe this has something to do with God. Even if his God is rather detached.

It was his first such experience. Did it make him rethink his lack of faith?

“Faith in what? If I get pushed in this corner, I believe in the same God that Einstein did. Einstein was a clever bloke . . . And it is just possible that once you have got past all the gods that we have created with big beards and many human traits, just beyond all that on the other side of physics, there just may be the ordered structure from which everything flows.

“That is both a kind of philosophy and totally useless - it doesn’t take you anywhere. But it fills a hole.”

So, like Antony Flew, Terry Pratchett may be closing up on God. Or perhaps God on him.

Of course, this will lead to juvenile jokes about belief in God indicating Alzheimer. Lovers of parodic fantasy sometimes are rather more into parody than fantasy. Still, I think most will show proper tact and courtesy.

Like the best wizards of Discworld.

New album track list?

Rumours are starting and being spread.

Searching even more eagerly for that time machine.

Old video

And if you wonder how he looked in real life, here is a videolink from Holy Cross in Worcester, MA.

And here is how he sounded.

New statue

"I've searched all the parks in all the cities / and found no statues of committees."
G.K. Chesterton

While there still are no statues of committees, there is at least one of GKC - soon.

Bloodline bashing

Mania.com has a good review of the latest Da Vinci Code wannabe, the movie Bloodline, written, directed and produced by Bruce Burgess.

Not the least interest has been tied to the DNA test of the alleged Mary Magdalene discovered in a tomb in the Rennes Les Chatteâu area. Discovered by amateur archaeologist Bill Wilkinson, in true Indiana Jones style, by dropping his video camera down a hole in a clumsy moment. No doubt to outwit the local nazis.

How the test went? Not that good.

The central piece of evidence revealed in Bloodline is a mummified corpse found in Wilkinson’s accidentally discovered tomb, wrapped in a white linen mantle emblazoned with the red cross of the Knights Templar. The linen looks remarkably white, well-preserved, and rot-free for having survived a millennium of dampness at the base of a subterranean cave in the French Pyrénnées.

Open boxes of gleaming polished chalices near the body were similarly unaffected by time and oxidation, not unlike the props on the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction at Disneyland.

Hairs extracted from the head of the corpse (the extraction was not shown on camera) were sent to the Paleo-DNA Laboratory at Lakehead University (Canada) for analysis. According to Barnett and Burgess, the result of Mitochondrial DNA testing revealed a Middle Eastern origin for the deceased (ergo, this could conceivably be Mary Magdalene, although they seemed to have arrived at that conclusion well in advance).

Well - yes and no. The report from Lakehead was shown on camera and identifies the mtDNA sample as belonging to Haplogroup I, which migrated out of the Near East and into Europe between 30,000 and 40,000 years ago prior to the last Ice Age. It is virtually unknown outside of Europe, but is no stranger to the French Pyrénnées. One major subculture belonging to this haplogroup settled in southern France and Northern Spain 10,000 to 20,000 years ago during the period archaeologists refer to as the "âge du Renne", or Age of the Reindeer.

And, perhaps tellingly, this group is called the "Magdalenian Culture" - the name being derived not from Mary Magdalene, but from an excavation site called La Madeleine in the Dordogne region of southern France where its relics were discovered in the 19th century.

But forget all those bothersome dates and inconvenient details that tend to unnerve alternative historians and spoil a good story - "Renne", "Magdalenian" - close enough, right? Why split hairs?

Indeed, just relax and have a good time. It helps if you leave your brain at the door.