At the risk of being called snarky...

So this guy got caught shoplifting... but was released without charge when he offered this defense: "Sure, it's illegal, but look at all the great stuff I got!"

Wait! No! I got that wrong...

It wasn't shoplifting... He got caught torturing prisoners! Guess that defense works for war crimes.

Wasn't he the same guy who was criticizing liberals for situational morality?

Been Tying my Shoe Laces Wrong! Yikes!

Yeah, I heard on the BBC a few days ago that most people tie their shoes wrong... The basic issue is whether you're tying a granny knot bow (wrong) or a square knot bow (right). Click here for the BBC report.

Now, I learned to tie my shoes when I was 5 years old... I learned the difference between a square knot and a granny knot when I was a teenager. So I didn't get it right at 5 and been tying them wrong ever since.

And recently, I've been having trouble with the boots I wear on stage coming untied - very annoying in the middle of a show, lol.

So, I sat down and analyzed just what I was doing when I tie my shoes... and sure enough, I was tying a granny knot.

Now the trick to a square knot is to go "right over left; left over right" as you tie it. My final motion with the loops is very automatic and would be hard to change, but just changing which string goes over on the first cross makes it "left over right; right over left" - just as good as the standard format - and gives me a correct knot.

So now my boots look better (Check out the BBC link to see what I mean) and I don't have to worry about tripping on my shoe laces on stage.

Stone Soup

You know, that old story about the itinerant beggar who filled a kettle with water, put a stone in it, and started cooking "stone soup".

I heard this story again on WUNC - my local NPR station - the other day as a lead-in to a review of some cooking books.

Of course, the story continues with everyone in the village contributing something they had been hoarding and there was enough soup for everyone.

I've always thought of this as a sort of trick the beggar played on the village - for their own good - pretending to make soup from a stone. I think that's how most of us see the story. Who would put a stone in soup?

But maybe not...

Salt is one of the primary ingredients in soup. In our culture of plenty - our poorest beggar lives as well as the royalty of the middle ages - salt is a given... but that wasn't always true. You know, Rome grew to an empire initially because they controlled the supply of salt in their region.

What if the beggar's soup stone was actually a salt-containing rock. Were such rocks in common use in the culture which originated that story. The beggar may not have been playing a trick, but instead providing a critical component of the soup.

How did the author of this story see it? Was the moral of the story totally different from the one we see now?

To a Mother Concerned About File-Sharing

Valerie is a mother who is concerned about her son illegally sharing music files online. Here's her question:

I have a teenage son who tells me his pirating music is no big deal. Since he is a musician himself, I point out to him that someday that’s going to be his money people are stealing. But he remains unphased.

He tells me the record sales make money for the record label, not the artist. He says that the artists make all their money from touring and live concerts. He thinks the pirated music promotes the concerts and therefore helps the artist make more money. I still don’t allow pirating in my house.

But tell me what you think - as artists out there having your work “shared,” are you just glad to have it being enjoyed, or does it bother you? Admittedly, he is stealing music that is recorded by major record labels, so maybe its different than the independent musician working for his living. But I’d still like to hear what you think.

Thanks,
Valerie,

My answer:

First off, your son is right. If people aren't willing to pay for something, its monetary value is zero. There may be laws against file sharing, but for a record label or artist, enforcing them is just pushing your customers away.

What will people pay for? Access to the artist - the live show, front row seats, backstage pass, an in-person guitar lesson? Those are all possible. (I know someone who sells that guitar lesson as part of pre-CD-release fund raising and the price tag is $500.)

To paraphase Seth Godin, give away the music and sell the souvenir. People buy souvenirs. The ones who don't buy the souvenir either can't afford it or they're not true fans yet. Giving them the music helps them and their friends become true fans. Even if such a person can't afford the music, it likely that some of their friends can.

Your son is growing up in this world, not the world of the bad old days we grew up in, in which the record labels controlled the means of music production. If he's a musician, he needs to get comfortable with how it works now - and he'll find a way to make it work for him when he needs to. Have faith and don't worry about file sharing.

(All that said, it is still illegal and I don't recommend actively breaking the law without a compelling reason.)

Blues is like an Egyptian Wall Painting

What? A wall painting? What's Oakroot on about now?

Ever look at an Egyptian painting? Looks like it was drawn by a 4 year old... All the figures are in profile, but their eyes look straight out at you. It's just not realistic.

The Egyptian artist drew each part of a figure from the point of view that showed it best, without respect to realistic perspective. He presented fragmented features of the picture and counted on the viewer's brain to put it back together into something meaningful.

How's that relate to the blues?

Well, it's like this. Blues tells a story, but not in a straight-ahead recitation of events that we're used to.

Let me start with a counter-example... country music.

Here's what a country song looks like:

Verse 1: Everything's just going along fine
Verse 2: But then it all went to Hell in a handbasket
Bridge: I realized some new idea and it totally shook my world.
Verse 3: Now I'm singing exactly the same words as in verse 1, but it has a whole new meaning.

A very clear story, very sequential. You could make a movie by just putting the scenes in order as described in the song. (In fact a lot of country music videos are exactly that.)

Blues is different. Here's what a traditional blues song looks like:

Verse 1: I thought things were good, but they got totally screwed up
Verse 2: Something that has nothing to do with Verse 1 was good but got screwed up, too
Verse 3: Same thing as verse 2, but goes bad in a completely different way
Verse 4: Exactly the opposite of verse 1, but I'm gonna push on anyway.

It's not sequential. The verses may actually contradict each other - in one verse my woman's walking out on me, but in the next, I'm walking out on her. Contradiction... but you know, on an emotional level, that most relationship breakups can be seen in both ways. The contradiction is an illusion because you were focusing on surface facts rather than deep feelings. Blues is a story about the deep feelings.

Blues shows the fragmented features of the story and counts on the listener's brain and heart to put it back together into something meaningful.


Before someone jumps all over me because, I've oversimplified... let me mention that there are blues songs that tell sequential stories. There's very little pure blues and country influences certainly come into it. But even when a blues tells a sequential story, it may show the non-sequential features I talked about and always, it's about the deep feelings of the story - or it just ain't blues.

Did Satchmo play a Cigarbox Guitar?

Yes, Satchmo played cigarbox guitar.

From Jet Magazine July 9, 1981:

July 4, 1990 - Not unlike jazz itself, Daniel Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong was born in a back-of-town part of New Orleans. His musical ability became evident early. As boy he took time out from fighting in the streets and swimming in the Mississippi to sing for pennies and to form part of a strolling quartet in which he played cigar-box guitar. ...

Thanks to Red Dog for pointing this out.

Faster than Light?

Star Trek, Star Wars, Star Gate, E.E. Smith's Lensmen, Ensign Flandry... All require faster than light travel for the stories to work. (Sometimes it's moving FTL, sometimes a worm hole or other extra-dimensional path, but it all amounts to FTL).

But, modern physics seems to really be confirming that moving faster than light is not only impossible, but the idea actually doesn't even mean anything. And the extra-dimensional stuff doesn't work, because the universe is really really flat and the path in the universe is the shortest one. Yikes! What's gonna happen to all that great science fiction?

A few years ago, I read about a real life time machine... not one that has been built yet, but one that could be allowed by modern physics... It would require a black hole-sized mass. Once arrange properly, one could use the space time distortion around it to go back in time.

But only as far back as the moment at which the time machine was built... well that's pretty useless - the folks who wreck their economy constructing the thing don't get any benefit from it.

But how about this? You travel somewhere at the speed of light (lots of big technical problems with this, but all solvable under modern physics). No matter how far you go, this takes no time at all for those on board. But maybe takes a century (let's say the destination is 100 light years away). If you just come back at light speed, you'll arrive home 200 years after you left - not very useful.

Instead, let's say you travel back to the time machine (which we've built near our home planet). Go back in time 200 years, and then travel home - you arrive back home just after you left.

So you can build your star empire spanning the galaxy... it's just at your coloney 100 light years away will actually be happening 100 years after the galactic capital. And the coloney 200 lights away will be happening 100 year after that. Totally screws with your sense of what time means, doesn't it.

For this to work, every trip from A to B would require a stop at the time machine, so it would be a hoppin' place. You'd need some law enforcement folks to make sure the time machine wasn't abused - which would really make thing freaky. Would they be Time Cops?... Time Lords?

Well, I hope some aspiring science fiction writer will run with this an make a great story with it. (You can thank me in the Acknowledgement section, lol)

My stories come out in the form of songs, so I adapted a folk song to a little SF story based on the idea: Click Here for the Podcast