1′15″ to 1′25″ is the best…the guy on the left is super cool rocking!
This is a task for the dreammaker: where can I get more of their music?
Save the Trucks
I found something that disturbed me recently and thought some of you might like to know about it.
LA County Supervisors may be passing a law that puts more restrictions on Taco Trucks. This means, for some ridiculous reason, they would be subject to different traffic laws than other vehicles. In addition, there are restaurant owners who are complaining that these trucks have an unfair advantage — if customers don’t go to them, the trucks can go to the customers.
This is what I think. First, I’m ok with these trucks being subject to the same health inspection regulations that every other restaurant here is. Second, since these are trucks, they should be subject to the same traffic laws. But to impose further restrictions because business owners are complaining they’re taking away from business or that people don’t like the food and think it’s unclean?
We all have a choice here. I have a choice whether or not I want to eat from the Taco Truck. They have a choice in how they operate their business. We’re all subject to some laws because of where we live, and no one should be an exception. If there is a demand for the Taco Truck, let it drive free. If you don’t want to eat the food, then don’t. Laissez-faire, people.
Anyway, I’m urging my friends, if they agree with how I feel, to go to www.SaveOurTacoTrucks.org.
What I’ve been reading…
A few books at the moment. Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth by Buckminster Fuller. There’s a visionary for you, that book was written in the 60’s. Also The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which was adapted for the screen recently. Can someone find me the original French text? Would be fun to brush up on my French and get it from the source.
Oh, and I didn’t write this, but I like it.
Moral Values Without Religion
By Peter Schwartz (Post-Tribune, IN, June 2, 2005)
Does morality depend upon religion? Most people believe it does, which is a major reason behind the appeal of the religious right. People believe that without faith in a supernatural authority, we can have no moral values–no moral absolutes, no black-and-white distinctions, no firm demarcation between good and evil–in life or in politics. This is the assumption underlying Justice Antonin Scalia’s recent assertion that “government derives its authority from God,” since only religious faith can supposedly provide moral constraints on human action.
And what draws people to this bizarre premise–the premise that there is no rational basis for refraining from murder, rape or anarchism? The left’s persistent assault on moral values.
That is, liberals characteristically renounce moral absolutes in favor of moral grayness. They insist, for example, that criminals should not be reviled, but should be seen as tragic products of their “social environment”–that teenage mothers are just as entitled to welfare checks as wage-earners are to their paychecks, and that to deny welfare benefits for a child born into a family already receiving welfare is, as the ACLU declares, to “unconstitutionally coerce women’s reproductive decisions”–that America is morally equivalent to its enemies, with our own policies having provoked the Sept. 11 attacks and our “unilateralist” actions in Iraq being no different from any forcible occupation of one nation by another.
Repulsed by such egalitarian, anti-”judgmental” absurdities, many people disavow what they regard as leftism’s essence: secularism, and turn to religion for their values.
But this is a false alternative. Secularism is simply a viewpoint that disclaims religion; what it embraces, though, may be rational or not. And the absurdities of the left stem precisely from its irrationality–its pervasive emotionalism, its insistence on doing whatever “feels right,” its contention that there are no fixed truths, its credo that morality is anything one wishes it to be. The left maintains that no objective principles exist to validate moral judgments. From its multicultural equalization of all societies–savage or civilized–to its belief in an indefinable, “evolving” Constitution, the left rejects the logic of objective standards and enshrines the arbitrariness of subjectivism. Thus, what the left’s opponents should disavow is not secularism per se, but rather the replacement of a religious variant of unreason–blind faith–with a secular variant: blind feelings.
The real alternative to the leftist claptrap is a morality of reason. Such a morality begins with the individual’s life as the primary value and identifies the further values that are demonstrably required to sustain that life. It observes that man’s nature demands that we live not by random urges or by animal instincts, but by the faculty that distinguishes us from animals and on which our existence fundamentally depends: rationality.
With reason as its cardinal value, this code of individualism espouses fixed principles and categorical moral judgments. It demands, for instance, that the initiation of force–the antithesis of reason–be denounced and that an unbridgeable moral chasm be recognized between the criminal and the non-criminal.
Since life requires man to produce what he needs, productiveness is a moral value–thereby making moral opposites out of the industrious worker and the parasitic welfare recipient. Since life requires man to use his own judgment rather than submissively accept the assertions of others, independence is a moral value–making moral opposites out of the person (or nation) acting on his own rational convictions and the one deferring to the consensus of his neighbors (or the U.N.). Since life requires the mind, man’s political system must allow him to use it, i.e., freedom is a moral value–making moral opposites out of America, the defender of liberty, and America’s enemies, who seek liberty’s destruction.
A morality of reason counters the relativism and the undiscriminating “tolerance” of the left.
It also counters a morality of faith, and establishes a genuine “culture of life.” Individualism upholds your sovereignty over your life–and refuses to subordinate the preservation of that life to, say, the preservation of embryonic stem cells in some petri dish. Individualism defends your inalienable right to your life, including your right to end it–and evaluates, say, opposition to assisted-suicide as a desecration of human life, since forcing someone to live who wishes to die is no less evil than forcing someone to die who wishes to live.
There is indeed morality without religion–a morality, not of dogmatic commands, but of rational values and of unbreached respect for the life of the individual.
Peter Schwartz, author of The Foreign Policy of Self-Interest, is a distinguished fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand–author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.
Music in the Podcast World
I’ve had this link on my blogroll for a while, but this time I’m highlighting because they’ve honored me with using my music for this week’s episode, “All These Things.” Look forward to more collaboration with The Dirtbag Diaries in the future.
Enjoy!
Dance to it
Today I had a day off. And today I wrote a song for my friend Cassie who is working on a dance piece based on the opening and bloming of a tea flower. So this is my first draft.
Sit back, relax, have some tea, close your eyes.
Reworked
Among a few other things I’m working on, I’ve remastered and added some bass tracks to some of my older material. (’Magnet’ now has bass!) I’ve put these up in the BAZAAR section. I’ve deleted a few items there, as I will be reorganizing my material into categories that will make a little more sense: songs, instrumental, music for film & TV, etc.
As always, drop me a line and tell me what you think.
Oh, and I found out that the Tamale Guy’s name is Raphael.
Just in…
While working on a new song “Dirtbag” I had this little repeating bass line that I ended up throwing a song around. I’ve got some lyrics for it, but no vocals recorded for this yet. (no microphone at the moment.) This one came really fast…pretty much started and finished it in about an hour. Kind of repetitive, but it’ll be better with the vocals.
Spector
In The Hole
My friend Garen took my new song, “In the Hole” and added a sweet twist to it. I’ve put both versions on here. Let me know what you think!
My Version
Garen’s Mix
Appetizer Sampler Platter pt.1
Hey y’all. In anticipation of some new material I’ve been working on, I’ve provided you this sampler of some of the new works. I’d love any and all feedback either on here or in private, kennethchristianson@gmail.com. All of them except for “Somewhere” are without vocals, but each has enough to give a taste of what’s to come.
In no particular order:
“Dirtbag”
“Bury it Deep”
“Distant”
“Either Way”
“For Granted”
“Groupie pt. 1″
“Groupie pt. 2″
“Hard Earned”
“Hate”
“Home Like This”
“Mine” (this is the whole song, sans vocals)
“More”
“She Likes”
“Somewhere”
