In record time - my first music CD!

**The folks at RPM Challenge sure know how to motivate. My son heard a story about this bold experiment on NPR. The gist of it is to "record an album in the month of February 2007."

BACKGROUND: I had recently unearthed boxes of old reel-to-reel tapes of songs I'd written back just after the earth cooled, in the late 60s thru mid 70s. With some ridiculous brute force techniques I got an old Wollensak monophonic tape machine to play some of those tapes and remembered what I'd long suppressed: I had wanted to be a songwriter! Lots of material in those miles of reddish-brown ribbon, and I wanted to save it in some other medium. I happened to have an analog-to-digital conversion box and so set about to digitize some of those old recordings.

Then Pete, my son, told me about the RPM Challenge and urged me to sign up for it. In fact, he went so far as to attempt to sign me up himself but didn't have enough info at the time. I told him I'd do it - this was around February 11. So I had just 17 days to complete the project.

Fortunately there are lots of great tools available today, so the old impediments of professional studios, musicians, tape, etc just don't exist today. Everyone can be a music producer. Here's what I used:

• GarageBand 3.0
• M-Audio Keystation 49e keyboard
• Clavinova CVP-103 synthesizer
• Fender DG22CE electro-acoustic guitar
• Various loops and digital instruments
• A rat's nest of mixers, cables, adapters, etc

And so, the rest of February has been almost non-stop recording, re-writing some songs, and even singing them myself (always a challenge for both singer and listener - but there are tools to ease that pain too). The result is the disk pictured above. RPM will make the audio available on their site. If you're interested, look up "For the Record," the only "band name" I could think of at the time of registration. What you'll hear is what I call "30-year-Oldies," an eclectic collection of ballads, blues and rock that was my music world - and life - at the time.

The important thing is that this challenge has helped me get closer to my own roots, and get a more complete sense of myself after more than 30 years of disowning this essential element.

PS: Here's a little video about "The Making of..." of this album:

The problem with testimonials

A common technique used to sell an idea to present accounts of how its use has been successful. It's an old technique for promoting products, political candidates and even religious beliefs. But too often it even sneaks into supposedly objective science, as one of my heroes, Richard Feynman, observed in 1974. Here's an excerpt from the address where he describes the strange phenomenon known as "cargo cults" that has occurred in isolated South Sea island communities. It's really about honesty, which can be compromised when we are partisans for a particular point of view. Be suspicious of any system that does not publish its mistakes and failures along with its successes.

Cargo Cult Science

In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head to headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas -- he's the controller -- and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they're missing something essential, because the planes don't land.

Now it behooves me, of course, to tell you what they're missing. But it would be just about as difficult to explain to the South Sea islanders how they have to arrange things so that they get some wealth in their system. It is not something simple like telling them how to improve the shapes of the earphones. But there is one feature I notice that is generally missing in cargo cult science. That is the idea that we all hope you have learned in studying science in school -- we never say explicitly what this is, but just hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific investigation. It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and speak of it explicitly. It's a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty -- a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid -- not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked -- to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.

Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can -- if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong -- to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition.

In summary, the idea is to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgement in one particular direction or another.

How to get support for any war

"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."

-- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials

You may be breaking a lobbyist-written law

Having some people over to watch the Super Bowl on your big screen TV? Bar the door! The cops may be coming for you to nail you for copyright infringement! Interesting article from techdirt tells how copyright holders think they have so much control over their trademarks they can arrest you for even saying "Super Bowl" without their permission. You're especially vulnerable if you have a TV larger than 55" because it's considered a "public performance."

What I am working for

In Salon.com interview, my favorite philosopher Daniel Dennett answers a question as I might answer it today:

In an interview with Alan Alda, you said the key to being happy is to find something larger than yourself and work for it. What are you working for?

Truth and freedom. These are terrible times and our ability to destroy the planet has never been greater. But if we can educate each other, listen to each other and learn more about each other -- and as long as we can preserve the free-society traditions of informed political discussions -- I think we have some hope.

I have yet to find the means for accomplishing this, but I am looking.