Xelebes
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Posts posted by Xelebes
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Lou reed and laurie anderson doing jazz, wut. I haven't been keeping up.
Ozric Tentacles i remember as v cool but having little to do with jazz.
I like horns.
OT, like many examples of krautrock is a post-rock, post-jazz fusion thingy. I put them in the jazz group because their music doesn't fit within the confines of rock.
Lou Reed has always been known to make jazz alongside his rock.
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I like the ancient stuff. Doesn't get better than old school. 1890-1945. :3
Of the newer stuff: Bill Evans Trio,
, and for fusion, Ozric Tentacles is fun.Edit: is there anyone else who loathes horn solos in jazz? Wood or brass, the only solo wind I can stand is flute.
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Some early post-millenial (2000-2005) acid techno from New York.
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Huh, my friend was just talking about this sort of stuff last night during table top. I wonder if she watched these? Anyway, video games have always kinda given ladies the short end of the stick and still continue to do so.
Edit: ...First of all, ugh freaking emoticon... second of all, oh, I thought this was a broader feminism topic. Nevermind my silliness!
It. . . kinda is. Gaming and the ladies, more specifically.
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I haven't stated why I think Blank Slate does not look promising because I have not read the book itself. I think it's useless to spend much energy constructing an argument that is based merely on synopses. Maybe the authors of the synopses are biased. I'll let Pinker make his argument.
But if I were to give comment as to my problem with the synopsis, it is describing his assertions are founded by simplistic treatment of what others have said and a shaky grounds on which he hopes will demonstrate the naturalistic fallacy. Again, I will have to read his book to give a proper reading. However, I'm reminded of another time when he involved himself in commentary of current events: On the Myth of Violence
My main critique of that video is that Pinker lacks key insights into eras and movements. Primarily, he does not factor in economic causes (The Great Moderation that occured from 1950-2005, there are questions as to whether or not the Great Stability has ended) as well as environmental reasons (heavy metal pollution led to a surge in First World crime from 1950-1995.) The real problem Pinker has is deciding that the world is just going peachy, gliding over the fact that violence is in fact cyclical, and is often the result of economical and environmental reasons. He does a lot of glossing over of historical events which is discomforting as he often does not spend the time to investigate what mechanisms create the effects that he talks about.
Let's not kid ourselves. He is a gifted linguist. However, matching his gift in linguistics to what he does in psychology to events that are currently happening is at best haphazard. And often throughout the whole lecture, he states or frames many specific issues as if they are inconsequential or they are the domain of inconsequential people. Example:
There's guilt about our treatment of native peoples in modern intellectual life, and an unwillingness to acknowledge there could be anything good about Western culture.That is what comes across as a political motivation. Because there is a possibility that we are mistreating them and not allowing them to put their own spin on modern culture. It simply comes across as "Western Culture is simply the best and it is foolish for them to try to do anything different." That is a simplistic and offensive take on what he has to say, but the biggest problem is that he doesn't correct himself and acknowledge his own limitations on his own knowledge.
As for the Natural History of Rape, it is a book free on its own. If you take it simply without the critique to go alongside it, you merely get a manifesto that has the possibility to attract others who agree with you. Another classic example is Tom Flanagan's "First Nations, Second Thought" (not evolutionary psychology but bear with me), where he lays down a nakedly racist work that eventually gets a lot of people reading it and have it inform party platforms. It has a tangible effect on the political decisions those in power make. The biggest problem is that feminists do not regard (please cite which feminists do, if in fact they do regard) rape as having any sexual elements, but that rape before the law is to be considered, in all practicality, an act of violence and not an act of sex. All feminist literature I have seen elaborate on this to demonstrate the distinction. So yes, it would be considered a strawman argument.
And yes, I will call a strawman argument a strawman argument. Sometimes I have time to deliver a fully reasoned response, sometimes I don't and that is something that can be levelled against me.
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I just cited specific examples from this thread. Whether or not you can "think of any feminist" is immaterial, as we are not using the "Who can Xelebes think of?" standard of proof...
You're the one talking about "bullshit" and "cow patties" - obsessed with fecal imagery much? - without actually offering ANY tangible examples of what you consider as such.
And yes, he is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Pinker
Read this: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/debate05/debate05_index.html
Read The Blank Slate... twice.
Actually, everybody reading this thread should read The Blank Slate. I can't recommend it enough.
Tangible examples of people using evolutionary psychology for political purposes.
A Natural History of Rape by Randy Thornhill and Craig T. Palmer
Satoshi Kanazawa - largely now discredited but for a while was considered credible and influential.
I have yet to secure a copy of Blank Slate, but the synopses do not make it look promising.
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I'm pretty sure that was all nonsense.
If that suits you, then it is your problem.
I won't need to be anything, and your own level of specificity - as per the above meandering reply about aggressors re: objectification - was about as vague as it gets. Also, it's nice to say "strawman" and illustrate that you know what a logical fallacy is, but you do need to apply them in the right scenarios. In this case, the point can be seen in Andy's expectation that there be an exactly equal number of websites with hot pictures of men as there are women. The RPS article also talks about "balance" quite a bit. There seems to be a notion that in a just world, all forums would naturally tend toward equilibrium. I think the gaming industry needs some diversity, no argument there, but I reject notions that it or any other field will only be devoid of sexism when a 50/50 ratio (or corresponding to population diversity) is attained.The strawman argument here is that because you believe Andy's sole or main objection to the hotlist is the lack of a 50/50 split. That is how you worte that down. As for my meandering bit, the cause and effect must be followed. I'm sorry if I'm not gifted in articulating the observed chain of events that I have seen.
And you're telling me *I* need to be more specific? That sentiment's meaning is nearly inscrutable. I cannot respond to it because as far as I can tell it is bereft of relevancy.Well, here would be an opportune time for someone who actually experiences this to speak on those experiences. It would be really odd for me to speak for someone on that.
Cow-patties? Really? "every discourse needs to remove themselves from the omphaloskepsis of their discourse" - this is a sentence that should never have happened.For the benefit of others: Steven Pinker.
Every discourse hs their jargon. Many heavily involved in their discourse are not able to communicate without escabing jargons. There are some accounting theorists who cannot escape the inclusion of some terms as debits and credits.
Your previous comment about them "preaching to the choir" is of the similar vein of thought and I would characterise that as accurate. That is a problem.
As for the bullshit that besieges evolutionary psychology, you will have to spend a bit more time to see where the whopping cow-patties lay. As for Steven Pinker, I have some of his books. They are books on linguistics, not on evolutionary psychology. Is he really an expert on evolutionary psychology?
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It would be interesting to dissect what these arguments are.
- Attitudes towards objectification that instantly equate it with sexism and condemn it outright
This is an argument that is grounded in sexuality. It is difficult to be expected to be the aggressor in a sexual relationship and not know the fine line between accepted aggression and unwanted aggression, which can be distorted in interpretation to mean objectification. The best course to seek amelioration is to be the aggressor. However, not every women has the confidence to be the aggressor. Does the aggregate art forms contribute to suppressing this confidence?
- Attitudes about the sexes that operate from a position that any activity, role, institution, etc. that is not comprised equally of both sexes is inherently sexist
Um. . . strawman argument. You will need to be more specific with your wording here.
- Attitudes about the consumption of media that attempt to make concrete statements about cumulative subconscious psychological impacts
The issue centres around esteem, hopes and achievement. If those are not the scope of what women are to do then. . . eh, yeah, no.
- Attitudes about gender roles that ignore any aspect of evolutionary pscyhology whatsoever and chalk up nearly all differences between the sexes to "social construction" and "the patriarchy"
Okay, I do loathe the vocabulary that feminists cloister themselves with, but ultimately I find that with every discourse needs to remove themselves from the omphaloskepsis of their discourse to have the content of that discourse disseminated. However, I find that you might be attributing too many things to evolutionary psychology, a field that suffers from too many MRA trolls and other bigots, as a defensive measure. If we are going to cite evolutionary psychology, I want to see which authors you are citing from so that we can clarify which is plausible and which is reactionary cow-patties.
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So far this thread is FAR LESS of a time sink than that other one.
Was it crazy of me to think that it would be a bunch of women in here debating the male tropes?
Maybe.... just maybe... this shows how silly that other thread is.
Something tells me you don't want to read women discussing the issue in the other thread either.
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My biggest complaint about hotlist in IT is that:
A) it's a publication that puts it forward. A publication with its reputation on the line from which it extracts money. What law publication, what writer publication, what educator publication is this also done in? Are their reputations on the line?
Furthermore, what is that publication trying to suggest? What is its message? Hey, look! There are hot girls who work in IT? Is this something novel to the industry? Are the hot men in IT lists a reaction to the hotlists focussed on women?C) Who is the market for these hotlists? How will they receive that message? How have you seen the audience receive that message?
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Yes, I'm sure that is what the intent of the list was. Hot chicks successful in IT, with some of the profiles using words focusing on their appearance. As the RPS author points out, you simply don't see the same sort of thing for men. By definition, that's sexism. If you don't think sexism like that is bad, okay, we disagree on that. But I don't see how you could characterize it as anything but sexist, unless you know of a "Hottest Guys in IT" list.
Or let's put it this way: Is there a hot list for lawyers? A hot list for accountants? A hot list for engineers? A hot list for educators? If there isn't, why is that the case?
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I appreciate this Jimquisition video because it actually goes through the effort to assert that this treatment of women is a norm, and that this norm is harmful. Having to battle with publishers over the role of your game's character *based specifically on their gender* is strong evidence that some sort of gender discrimination is going on. Now, not all gender discrimination is harmful -- I don't think a gynecologist should have to see both males & females, for example. But when Jim shows that a leading or co-leading female character either gets relegated to the back-of-the-box *because of what the publisher sees as gaming norms*, or that the developer must raise hell to see them put in their deserved prominent position, it's a lot easier to conclude that this is a harmful discrimination.
Additionally, I appreciate Jim's reflections on the complexity of the problem: is it chicken or egg? Are the publishers too sensitive to perceived preference, or are these actual community preferences? Where exactly is the blame to be placed: with the makers, the marketers, the gamers, or a combination of all three?
Anita's video on the other hand seems to skip over all these subtleties and launches straight for a "harmful & pernicious" bashing of a single trope which she does not satisfactorily establish as a norm. There are no useful statistics given about how many games feature this damsel in distress. Nor, in her videos, does she give strong evidence that female characters have been forced into this role as a matter of norms. We are given the Krystal in Star Fox Adventures example. But Anita merely states that she does become a damsel in distress, nowhere stating that Krystal was forced to conform to it as a norm. And this single data point cannot be extrapolated to a trend. Mentioning several other games does not make it a trend either, as how many thousands of games have been released since the Atari? I have to bring in my PERSONAL experience, psychologically biased memory, to surmise that yes this probably is an overused trope. I'm not saying that damsel in distress isn't a trend -- but merely that Anita never adequately demonstrates it's symptomatic.
We never even get to hear if the damsel is used in the majority of games which feature a female. Just stating this one statistic -- the percentage of female-featuring games which use one as a rescue trophy -- could make or break the argument. If it's a low percentage, then it's difficult to attack this trope unless you wish to ban telling those kinds of events altogether, but if it's the majority, we can definitely see the need to reflect on game industry practices and make more frequent use of other story types. But when we don't hear any such decisive statistic, instead a long string of anecdotal examples or just straight up logical leaps, jumping right into the trope's harm feels like quite an overreach. Overall, I think we should expect better reasoning from Anita, even if these videos weren't as heavily funded.
Again, I'm not saying that games -- and probably all media -- don't have harmful stereotypes regarding women. The ease alone of writing stereotypical roles makes that absurdly unlikely. I just wish Anita would give a better argument than she does, instead of leaning so heavily on the "female stereotypes = bad" attitude prevalent in modern Western culture. In addition, I'd really love to see someone explore the harmful male stereotypes in media. Male, female, or other, we're all in this life thing together and I really hate to hear one gender attack another, no matter what for.
My issue with that assessment is that it raises the question as to what level of exposure does Jim there have than Anita does not. Is Anita solely in the consumer side, only able to express her frustration as a consumer and only involves herself in the consumption of the game. What Jim seems to do is diving deeper into the media releases that are ancilliary to the games, going beyond mere consumer, to glean a different depth of the problem. There are others who can provide production side criticism, as Jim is able to reference but unable to provide. It is wise to include the producers and the consumers in this debate.
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From work:
A bottle of wine, four gift cards
From family:
A book, a sweater, a gift card, a cheque.
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Good Yule and hope you had a Blessed Mothernight!
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Uh... maybe I don't get what's so great about this, it's like trying to read sheet music from a piano roll rotated 90 degrees.
Eh no, it's the piano roll in the correct orientation.
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It is possible to have a score that compliments the visual medium where the visual medium is devoid of a narrative. In this case, it is mostly about enabling the immersion into the visual medium that will allow it to get the accolade.
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Also to second the o.g. Dr Who.
Yep, nothing beats the Delia Derbyshire classic.
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I think the article is spot on. The "gear" fetish is so widespread that many people feel like they can only make good music if they have the most expensive equipment ever made. They won't consider any other options first.
And then there are these people who frown upon others who don't use the latest version of FL Studio for example. Of course you can have new features in an upgrade and all that, but in the end practice makes perfect and nothing else will do the talking on that matter.
I remember FruityLoops 2.7. I don't want to go back to that. Please?
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What is the colour of 34?
Purple.
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For the aggressive stuff, Shock One's works are the only ones I can listen to - like Adachigahara's Theme. For the mellow stuff, only Burial has been consistent. Mind you, I think I'm getting a bit old because breakcore and Bristol techno doesn't appeal to me like it once did.
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Alright, specs:
Windows 7 SP1
Intel i5 chip
M-Audio Delta 1010LT Soundcard
Issue: I've found other sites name a similar problem but never actually offer solutions to the problem. No one ever actually identifies the problem and the fix which is absolutely odd. Anyways, using Winamp or WMP I pause a file to take a break (I listen to a lot of mixtapes over individual songs) and when I return to it, it looks like WMP or Winamp can't find the file, can't find the location where it paused or indicates that it can't play the file by not even offering a timer (WMP) or having the timer just remain at the time paused or zero (WinAmp.) This also sometimes happens when just starting a file after stopping (not pausing) a file.
Now I'm thinking it might be a problem with using a soundcard designed for 32 bit (Delta 1010) or it is a chip issue (buffer issue.) Now before I go mucking with my hardware, has anyone ever had a similar problem and been able to properly concoct a solution?
Also, this problem stops ALL sound but not video playback. Sometimes, removing Winamp Agent and audio programs from the task manager helps the issue but it is only ever a temporary solution before the antics start happening again.
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A space disco set by... it doesn't say. The title of the set is "Cosmic Ascension."
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I just finally got myself an XBox 360 a couple weeks ago. Been trying to find games that I like.
Significantly more gameplay than cutscenes, please.
I like children games as much as adult. I have a nephew to share it with too, so yeah.
I've never met an RPG that I did enjoy playing, so it's likely that recommending an RPG will fall on deaf ears here.
Also, is there a way to play an XBox with a Qwerty+mouse so I can play FPSs and RTSs?
Jazz appreciation thread anyone?
in General Discussion
Posted
If I were to put my finger on it:
Tenor sax has this narrow confine between tone and squeal that soloists feel that they must use the squeal as the peak of their riff. Maybe it's cliched or maybe it's simply unpleasant to listen to.
Trumpets can be awesome if they are played softly. But that is not the point of a solo, apparently. That is probably another problem with the tenor sax and the alto sax.
Baritone and bass sax solos can be quite okay. Many of those soloists don't use the cliches of the tenor and alto sax, using the reedy harmonics of the lower notes to really carry their solos.
Trombones rarely get solos and maybe that is a good thing.