Chris Robinson vs Taylor Swift or Blues Rock vs Country Pop

In reaction to this from One-STDV, regarding this from Chris Robinson

The Black Crowes were 90’s rockers. At that time, the sought-after quality in music was originality. The music and musicians had to be genuine. The true test of a song or artist was the “Unplugged” performance. The worst thing a band could do was to “sell-out”. Artists had to stand for something and it lead to a whole lot of proselytizing and revolutionary talk a la Rage Against the Machine. It culminated with Cobain blowing his head off in a move that even he would admit was an obvious cliché far beneath his level of talent.
The movement was, in part, a reaction and antithesis to the glitz and glam of the Pop genre that the music industry was pushing in the like The New Kids on the Block, Bon Jovi and Janet Jackson. Pop music continues the same as always because there is an endless supply of young, immature people out there to lap up these re-packaged clichés because to them, it is new. What’s really new are adults actually going as crazy as their kids for these, well, kids. Even I, though, have to admit that Justin Beiber has quite a lot of charisma and seems very talented.
So 90’s grunge began to wind down almost as soon as it started for several reasons. First, the politics began to ring hollow, especially as the economy began to turn around and things just looked better making all the whining sound trite. Also, there just weren’t enough decent musicians who could come up with something new, meaningful and catchy. Finally, it became obvious, that the lifestyle was unsustainable (See: Shannon Hoon).

End The Embargo on the Canada's Renewable Resources

There is a natural resource that is found on the North Eastern shore of North America. Every year, the resource comes to the shore where it can be harvested by brave rugged who have relied on this resource for generations to support their families and communities, living in harmony with nature. Carefully managed, this resource can continue to supply revenue and food to these communities indefinitely.
This harvest is used to make oils, nutritional supplements, fine clothing and food.
But all is not idealic in these communities. The way of life is under attack by outsiders bent on ending the industry. The harvesters are beseiged by activists, some who even helicopter out to the ice flows to produce propaganda urging governments to take every effort to stop them. In fact, one of the largest world governments was coerced through misinformation to place a trade embargo on the products.
Why are people so intent on stopping this eco-friendly, sustainable practice?
Look into those eyes. Are you crying yet?



Why do we transfer human sympathies onto animals? Why do we those emotions get in the way of clear thinking?


Look at the blood in this video. This is meant to disgust you just like pictures of holocaust victims or Hiroshima footage. BUT THESE ARE NOT HUMANS.

Nobody likes looking at animals being slaughtered, but that is life. No one is making you club a seal, so don't act like the "sins" of these people will make you go to hell.

Animal Rights Fundamentalism is blind, has no basis in reality and has NOTHING to do with environmentalism.

Feminists Attack Trans-Gendered Film

I'll probably never see this movie but I read this OP about it on one of my favorite skewed-opinion websites. I don't know what it is about feminists, but I've always been fascinated with them in the same way that I'm fascinated with religious people the difference being that I find it even harder to hold my tongue with feminists than with traditional religious believers which is why I read the articles. Many are interesting, some are disturbing.

I decided that this piece posted by someone named Jos required a response. However, my registration seems to be taking to long so I'm posting it here.

Luna has claimed he didn't know the word is an offensive slur -- a clear sign he is not someone we want making a film about trans women.

Fortunately, "you" don't choose who makes a film about anyone. Nobody holds a copyright on the identity of trans women. If you want to create a character, please go ahead. Then nobody can make a movie about her without your approval. By your logic, as a white, married father, I should protest the makers of just about every sitcom in the last 10 years for portraying us as lazy, unintelligent slobs. What a hurtful stereotype.

Censorship is dangerous. It is not acceptable to attempt to silence other's opinions because they don't conform to our own. Even if they are expressed in a way that you think makes light of a serious subject.

Last week, the word Transgender was a proper term and this week you changed the rules "('transgenders' is not accurate or accepted terminology)" so now the director is ignorant? Last check, it's still included in the ever-growing Acronym-from-hell, LGBTTIQQ2SA.

You are far better off, continuing your criticism in a constructive way or better yet, writing, producing and/or financing a movie that meets your standards. My guess, is that it will be a lot more boring than TTWK. This whole idea that all art must present a positive image of whatever group is represented is harmful and counterproductive

Science is a Whore

If you're like me, this is just an obvious statement. However, everywhere in the media, science is portrayed as this community of dedicated professionals seeking the truth about the universe. People who question anything portrayed as scientific are labelled wackos, heretics or even worse Naturopaths.
Don't think an H1N1 shot is necessary? You're ignorant of science.
Don't believe that Global Warming is the harbinger of Armageddon? You're a right-wing stooge for big business.
In reality, there is no community voice from science. In order to make money, scientists must find a company willing to pay them for data manipulation or a university willing to fund their research. The justification for any scientific work is always money or politics. Pure science is simply a tool for selling a product or an idea.
Want to prove that your party's position is justified? You simply pay for a scientific poll. But how scientific can an opinion be? Doesn't matter as long as the sample size is big enough to make the results accurate to within +-2% 19 times out of 2o.

Just listen to this science fiction writer's account of trying to make a living as a marine biologist.
He spent ten years getting a bunch of degrees in the ecophysiology of marine mammals (how's that for unbridled optimism), and another ten trying make a living on those qualifications without becoming a whore for special-interest groups. This proved somewhat tougher that it looked; throughout the nineties he was paid by the animal welfare movement to defend marine mammals; by the US fishing industry to sell them out; and by the Canadian government to ignore them. He eventually decided that since he was fictionalising science anyway, he might as well add some characters and plot and try selling to a wider market than the Journal of Theoretical Biology.

There is much more but I'm neither a writer nor a scientist for a living. I can only squeeze blog entries between coaching soccer practice and carting kids to friends for play dates. This idea will be explored further but for now I'm off to change a rear-facing car seat to front-facing for my growing boy.

Cul-De-Sac's Arch Nemesis

The Cul-De-Sac hero has been noticing a draining affect on his powers of late. His force field has not been as powerful and his boundless strength has been waning when he needs it most. Maybe it was the late night crying of his children who can't seem to have simultaneous nights of complete sleep. However, it is looking more and more like a malicious force has been reaching out from the depths of the city core to undermine the real estate values and political power of the suburban empire.
I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I was unaware of the menace before, but it's just hard to get through the important pages of a newspaper on a 40 minute train ride to get to the pages where the menace thrives. The "Life" and "Arts" sections where diatribes of this phantom have been flourishing.
Of course, now that I've been alerted to his presence by one of my favourite author/bloggers, other superheroes have already started the fight. Unfortunately, I've been focusing on my day-time persona a little too much to really be much of a force in the fight to save the land of cul-de-sacs. I'll just have to add my two cents and leave it at that.
The menace has a name, Richard Florida. He has a purpose: to collect large salaries and consultants fees for waxing ideologically in print media, government reports and classroom settings. What ideology? The ideology of "The Creative Class" or the "Creative Age". As if the other ages were the result of people who couldn't tap into their creativity. I wouldn't dare call inventors of steam engines, phonograph records and cotton gins creative, would I? Didn't they simply apply basic science in novel (gasp... creative) ways to solve problems and enhance life as we know it? Wow, what a disaster. Now look at the mess we're in - all these tools, houses and infrastructure.
The whole point of this movement, is that the economy is transforming into one based on creativity rather than the laborious industrialized economy that we're stuck with right now. You know, the one with carpenters, welders and factory workers that build us those things we barely use anymore like um.... houses, bridges, trains and cars. So, all of those people are supposed to drop their um hammery-weldy thingys and pick up one of those cool new laptops - the Mac ones, not PC's - and become a copy writer or graphics designer or something "creative" to use their full "creative capital".
The principle on which Florida bases his new ideology is that every human being is creative and has the right, and thereby, duty to use his "full talents and creative abilities." I have met a lot of people and while some are definitely creative, I'm sure that not everyone wants to stand up and present the outcome of their full creativity to their company's board of directors. If any company allowed all of their employees to simply be creative, there would not be much real capital to share with investors. The sad truth is that not all people should be allowed to be completely creative. Most people, I find, are happy being given a task and a time frame. Be the time frame a 60 second assembly line window or a 6 month IT project, people like guidelines.
I was once an energetic, idealistic, young recruit full of ideas that would revolutionize the industry until a few rude awakenings taught me that things are done a certain way for a reason. Not all creative capital is good at creating real capital.
The corporate structure isn't perfect, but it does help to filter out some of those cockamamie ideas brought up by young foolish kids fresh out of school. Some cockamamie ideas from the experienced staff still get pushed through, of course, but we're all human.
Maybe my creative capital was not developed enough which is why I'm now a jaded mid-level office worker with a blog-writing super-hero alter-ego. Maybe, if I hadn't been stifled, I would already be an highly paid executive consultant, marketing my creative problem solving skills and living the neo-bohemian, bourgeois lifestyle, raising a family from a two-bedroom, plus den condo in the core. Or maybe I would have just bought a bigger house in the suburbs. See, the problem with all these creative beatniks and gays that Florida thinks are the measuring stick of a city's health is that they don't breed. Well, some do breed but they immediately start to transform themselves into crossover-driving soccer moms and dads and look for a house with room to grow. They might even use some of their precious creative capital to decorate it.