Church of the Open Sky

Anyone reading this blog needs no introduction to Midnight Oil, nor any explanation of the high regard in which I hold them.

You'll understand, then, that when I heard about The Break I was excited.

I've found something to cherish in every Oily side project. Rob Hirst has been particularly prolific, and the Angry Tradesmen's Beat the House is one of my favourite albums of the last decade. But the Oils themselves had something more than raw musical talent, a synergy which brought them beyond the sum of their parts.

The Break reunites the musical core of the Oils - Rob Hirst, the musician drummer; Jim Moginie, guitar wizard and resident gizmo man; and Martin Rotsey, the yin to Jim's yang, bringing clarity with his clean and precise guitar. Completing this powerhouse is Brian Ritchie, of US Alternative group the Violent Femmes - a band which, musically and thematically, have little in common with the Oils. Perhaps they were drawn together by their uncommon history - one of success despite fierce independence. Regardless, it was the ex-Oil's who called on him, and it's clear that he can deliver.

Church of the Open Sky is an unusual album. It's not an album of its time, but rather of its place. It's about living on the edge of suburbia, and here, that means living by the sea. It's about a last refuge from human arrogance, amongst the humbling power of nature. It's about knowing our roots, and keeping them.

From the outset, CoTOS wants to shake up your preconceptions. The opening seconds feature a minor key sketch of Irish folk music - just long enough to have you check that you're playing the right CD and turn the volume up - before launching into the driving rhythms of Cylinders, a maximum impact surf anthem with a killer riff. This is what CoTOS does best - foot tapping, uncomplicated, joy filled rock. And then there's those familiar elements - the flawless drum breaks, the twin guitar assault. It's new, but instantly familiar.

Late in Cylinders the riff is reprised in a higher key, taking everything to 110%, and it never fails to make me grin. Such moments of musical genius are scatted across Church of the Open Sky - from the wonderful little uplifting chord progression in the chorus of Blasket Islands, to the operatic grandeur first hinted at in Winkipop and later expanded upon by The Surfing Priests.

It's always clear that, despite their instrumental nature, these songs have a story to tell - one of joy and sadness, anger and reprieve. However, it's not until the late stages of the album that it becomes clear - this is but the soundtrack to a greater production to exist only in our imaginations: the first surf-space-rock opera. After Phobos-Grunt, the songs develop a thematic cohesion, pitting the forces of rock against an alien threat, culminating in Cyclops with the negotiations at the end of the world.

Or at least, that's what I hear. Perhaps the beauty of the instrumental is that you're free to imprint your own stories on each emotional framework. My Church of the Open Sky is about remaining grounded in a world of technological distractions, a journey through rock to rediscover my core beliefs. But yours will be unique - 3 parts Oil, 1 part Femmes, and 1 part you.

The Break can't quite recapture the magic of Midnight Oil - but they are far, far more than 3/5's of its parts.

Howdy

It probably does a person some good to just sit down and write once in a while. Unfortunately, studying Electrical Engineering doesn't leave a person with much to chat about. Kirchoff may have been a genius, but I doubt he was the life of the party, even in the 1850's. "Why, dear Kirchoff, you must tell me sometime about how you can present your laws as a new development - it seems to me they're nothing more than simple rephrasing of the well known principle of Conservation of Energy!".

As we can see, Kirchoff's great aunt is no better.

Perhaps I should pretend that I have a readership - invent a hypothetical target audience. Then I'd be able to post links to things you'd like and stir up controversy by posting before checking my sources.

Truth is, though, there wouldn't be much point. It wouldn't be long before somebody noticed that I got all my news on religious idiocy from Pharyngula, that my ramblings on skepticism and medical ignorance all looked a great deal like those from Respectful Insolence, and that you'd seen all the cool tech news on Hack a Day - two days ago.

Nonetheless, I intend to resume writing here more often - hopefully next year I'll manage more than two posts. If you're really lucky, some of them might even have content in them.

Why I Torrented "Funeral" and "Neon Bible"

(or "Why new media need not be free - just cheap")

1. To Hear Them
   (or "Advertising Wants to be Free")
   
   I first heard about Arcade Fire around the time Neon Bible was released. I heard good things, and I was curious. The website, at the time, held no samples, and evaluating music based on the quality of clips on youtube seemed like a poor plan. So, in order to hear it, I torrented it.
   
   Some bands(and/or labels) have got this right - Evermore, notably, posted the entirety of Truth of the World on their Myspace page the week before it was launched. But in this case, it was the only way I was going to hear the music - they certainly weren't the sort of thing I was going to hear on Top 40 radio.
   
   Certainly not the first time I've walked that path, nor was it the last. Liam Finn's I'll be Lightning, Crowded House's Time on Earth, and indeed Evermore's Dreams, Real Life and Truth of the World. The common ground between them? All of them were later purchased by myself or Cass.
   
   Yet I still don't own these particular albums. Why's that?
   
   
2. To Get Them at All
   I'm not sure why, but "indy" and "alternative" music is ridiculously hard to get hold of here, regardless of how sucessful the artist is. At the time, I was keen to buy - but they were nowhere to be seen.
   
   
3. DRM
   At the time, iTunes was infested with DRM, and provided only poor quality lossy encodings. The CD versions were copy protected - an avoidable nuisance, but enough to put me off, given that:
   
   
4. Music costs too much in Australia
   It makes some sense that new music should be costly - after all, it has to pay off the cost of studio time, music video production and marketing. And obviously the record label wants to turn a profit.
   
   That's all good and well - but that doesn't need to be an ongoing cost. Why is it that unless I can catch a special, Neon Bible still costs the same $29 I could have found it for the day it was released? By now, the label has their share, the costs are paid. The only people left to pay are the band, something I certainly don't disagree with.
   
   Then we turn to the ongoing costs, those of printing, pressing, packing, transportation, breakage, distribution and shelving - why should I have to pay those fees, when all I want is the music? Certainly, I want it in lossless perfection (preferably unmarred by the Loudness War), but I don't need it to come on a disc.
   
   Of course, the internet makes distribution practically free, per unit. And all the initial costs are well and truly paid off by now. I, for one, would gladly pay Arcade Fire themselves $5 per album (twice what they'd get from a CD). The record label can have a few bucks too, for now. So call it $7.00 for a paid-off album. Just how much this scheme would have a new album cost, I don't know - but would it have to be that much more? Make CD's $9.99, and they're an impulse buy item again. There has to be a balance point for maximum profit - and I don't believe that it's $30 an album. That's just old media thinking.
   

Expressions

It would seem I have once again reneged upon my pledge of frequency - perhaps we should look upon this as a developmental process. It has been only a month, which is a distinct improvement.

So, what has caught my eye recently? Most prominently, the writings of the admirable Mr Stephen Fry, whose blog I very much enjoy but frequently forget about.

Unfortunately for Mr Fry, though he will never know it (even making the rather large assumption that his pageview counter worries him terribly in between writing and counting his money), his blog always reminds me of Douglas Adams. From mentions by name, in reference to an imminent TV sequel to "Last Chance to See", to an article about his gadgetry which, despite the generous lacing of product placement, can't help but reminds me of Adams' musings about Frank the Vandal, Mr Fry's writing holds the qualities of irreverence and irony which are increasingly, and saddeningly, unique.

Incidentally, "saddeningly" doesn't appear to be a word, despite following the same pattern as "maddeningly", which is.

What else in the wide world has caught my attention? Not much.

*http://news.google.com.au*

The news that Malcom Turnbull has taken up twittering his every move saddened me when I first heard it, my skeptical inclination jumping the gun a bit. A quick browse shows this to be a little more deep than Kev's marketing campaign. I was surprised, and pleased. I think, just maybe, he gets it.

Of course, there's always somebody who doesn't get it. Minister Tanner is one of those people.

My response follows. If it is flawed, please blame it upon the hour, revise it, and submit it yourself. They have asked for our contributions, let us provide them in abundance.

Dear Minister Tanner,

Unfortunately, the proposed plan to implement an ISP level filter preventing access to child pornography demonstrates a fundamental failure to understand the fashion in which the internet works.

While filtering of traditional protocols such as HTTP and FTP may have some limited effectiveness through use of an imposed blacklist, this will inevitably be only a temporary inconvenience, unless you also plan to filter any and all material pertaining to stenography and encryption. Such filtering would constitute a remarkable violation of our democratically-implicit right to free speech.

But the problem runs deeper than that. The internet simply doesn't work the way many people think it does. The World Wide Web is not the Internet. The internet encompasses many layers, including bittorrent, Usenet and FreeNet. These networks are designed to route around damage, can be encrypted end-to-end, will operate on any available port ranges and are, as a result, effectively unblockable.

You have previously spoken about ensuring that social decorum translates to the medium of the internet. What you fail to understand is that the internet is not like any traditional construct. The notion of regulating the usage of the internet within the borders of a specific nation is as absurd as regulating the breathing of air. The internet does not respect borders. The internet is not designed to be ruled. It is defined by those who use it.

A friend of mine today proposed that the ownership of the internet could be modeled as a colonial process. Tribes of natives eventually supplanted by corporate exploitation, followed by the imposition of government controls. It is here that we stand today.

But consider this: The content of the internet is created by its users, not by the controlling government. How long is it going to be before we, collectively, ask you to leave, and take your tea with you?

I only ask of you and your department that you consult the right experts - not experts in implementing filters, but experts in IT Security. Perhaps you should hire a pair of consultant teams. Ask one to draft a comprehensive test of your proposed filter, and the other to perform your test.

Perhaps such a test, before many more millions of dollars are outlaid on this project, could provide convincing evidence to you, far more so than the posts of 100 angry bloggers.

Yours sincerely,
Christopher Kerr

NB: Yes, this entry has now been updated several times - I'm not a great believer in leaving content static. Corrections of grammar and spelling only serve to enhance your enjoyment of this content. The addition of relevant hyperlinks is something I typically perform after posting, partially to allow you to see this discussion in a wider context, and partially for my own amusement.

Relaxation: Eight Different Kinds of Tired

It would appear that the HSC is finally over. This won't come as any surprise to most of the people who'll read this, since, unless they've gotten very drunk since I last saw them, they'll already know.

Rather, this is a notice that I'll be posting here more often. Which is ironic, given that my original purpose in starting this blog was to give myself a space in which to write, frequently, as an aid in preparing of English. That didn't happen, and so be it - I've gone to all the trouble of buying a domain name, so I may as well get something more out of it than a tidy email address.

Apparently Kryten Crichton died today. A small shame, I enjoyed much of his work - Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, Congo, Timeline - good reads, and quite well researched factually. Can't say the same of his later work, although I did enjoy 2002's "Prey", for all its scientific inaccuracies.

Warning: Controversial content follows. It contains political and ideological commentary in a humorous style. Supporters of John McClane McCain, devout Christians, small children and members of the family Brassicaceae would probably enjoy their day more if they left off at this point, although it would amount to a spectacular irony if you did. If you fit into one of the above categories, but understand irony, you probably want to read on.

Scientific alarmism is alive and well, but it was sad to see it being perpetuated by somebody who should have known better. Casting doubt on the veracity of established science based on selective use of evidence and ignoring the scientific method is nothing more nor less than manipulation. I'm all for the process of science and its role in continually questioning the status quo, however, casting doubt on that process of science does nobody any favours. Well, except for proponents of the Intelligent Design Theory Hypothesis, who would really like science discredited in favour of something more easily subverted. Perhaps rote dictation (er...NSFW) from the clergy.

Unfortunately, said rote dictation seems to be fairly effective. I used to have a fantastic history teacher, who, whether he read it or coined it, used to talk of disliteracy - that is, those who are literate but choose not to read. Australia has an excellent rate of literacy, fast approaching 100%, but has one of the most disliterate cultures in the world. Failure to develop critical thinking skills, unfortunately, isn't such a Darwinian trap as it once was, and so we're startlingly willing to believe Ugg when he tells us that the mountain lion around the corner will be an easy kill on account of it only possessing three legs. Unfortunately, it would seem that a significant portion of the world population no longer have the ability to assess whether Ugg is a reliable reporter.

I can only suggest that you go forth, and read the works of those who don't ask you to believe what they say, only to consider it. Read Dawkins. Actually, read lots of Dawkins. Read Randi. I'm sure there's other things I should suggest, but it's extremely late, and my brain has ground to a halt. Any further suggestions on effective scepticism are welcomed!

The Illusory Nature of Success

Disappointingly, but inevitably, every blogger, or indeed every writer, will realise they cannot be profound all of the time. Some of these people will immediately go on to become comedy writers, despite the odds against them being taller than Kilimanjaro. Some get employed, shifting the responsibility of content to higher levels of authority. Others become whores of the lowest order, copying news articles to reap traffic and Adwords clicks. Still more will yet, in the true LiveJournal fashion, tell us every detail about everything. I don't know if they carry a notepad, or just make shit up, but there's way too much detail out there. The guys over at Penny Arcade have summarised this issue perfectly, and I couldn't agree more. Some of a more noble breed use it as a sort of public scribble pad, sometimes playing with words and ideas, sometimes with stories, sometimes just sorting themselves out. And finally, there's people like me, who just write with a lot of commas and hope people won't notice that there's no content between them.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you - Clarity of Mind. Which is, incidentally, a fantastic song, of which you'll find a Youtube video amongst the substratum of this very blog.

Life is now going live

Life. Don't, of course, talk to me about life. I'd rather talk to you about it.

It just occurred to me, you see, that philosophy is a most curious notion. It's a life recursion - people spend their lives trying to determine the purpose of their lives, when they've made the purpose of their lives to find the purpose of their lives, thus making the whole thing rather pointless, and the answer blindingly obvious. Whooh. Glad I didn't have to say that one aloud. I might have hurt myself.

It's just more validation, really, that we never really like the answer, because we're not asking the right question.

So, I propose the field of meta-philosophy (no, this isn't meta-humour, Sarah, it's an unusual but serious notion) - the study of finding the right questions for people to study. Maybe if we turned all those Tibetan monks trying to find all the names of God to examining every question anyone has ever turned away because they didn't, personally, have the time to think about it, we'd find a decent answer, and finally know, once and for all, the Question to the Ultimate Answer of Life, The Universe and Everything.