A Current Crisis

After 3weeks of expert procrastination, I've finally decided to do my persuasive speech on auditing the Federal Reserve. The main reason was that I already have a research paper from last semester about it, but also because people seem to be so uninformed. This morning, while conducting some up-to-date research (a surprising amount of things change in just 5 months) I found an article explaining what was discovered when the newspaper won out in the Bloomberg vs Federal Reserve lawsuit last year. Basically, the Fed bailed out foreign banks in Libya. And now we've invaded Libya. Interesting turn of events. Also interesting how history repeats itself.

The Fed posted a defense on their blog, Liberty Street (there's a link on the site I'm linking to this post) and most of it was technical garble. But the basic idea I got out of it was that they bailed out Libya because otherwise other world currencies such as the Euro would crash. Ok guys, nice job prolonging the inevitable I guess. It just makes it so much clearer that the American dollar truly is the "blood donor" in every case where a country's currency fails, and then a war comes along. The English pound would have been long gone after the World Wars if it weren't for the Fed.

Sorry for going political, but this is too important not to post about. Read about the new bill for auditing the Fed, known as the Federal Reserve Transparency Act - it takes less than 5 minutes to read - Audit the Fed!
Also, this is the link for the article I'm referring to that covers the bailout: The Centerlane he cites everything.

For My Friends

This is old, but it's most likely one of the best bits I've ever written. After saying goodbye-for-now to yet another incredible cruiser friend back in 2008, I was inspired to write this one, For My Friends. I'll let it speak for itself.

Fair winds
And a following sea,
That's always the parting
For you and me
We've been in port
Now it's time to leave
Our days were short
Spent accordingly

Now I find
It's much too soon
I'd stowed my gear
Before I'd met you
I came to know
Our paths had crossed
And they would go
Just as the past

Maybe a letter
Perhaps a memory
Would let me remember
These days gone by
You went your way
I went mine
I'll look out for you
In the corner of my eye

That part of me gone
I look back to see
The land slowly fading from view
And the only thing
That's been left to me
Is our laughter
Fading to blue.

Dreams

I don't get the impact of women's choirs. Men's choirs are powerful and deep in tone, children's choirs are sweet and innocent, boy's choirs are sonorous and emotionally moving. But women's choirs? The deep tone that is meant to reside in the bassline is lost in the difficult range of the alto voice; the notes below middle C do not have the resonance they might if they were sung by a tenor.

Besides my initial dislike of the blend of voices in a women's choir, the text of this particular piece, The Beauty of Your Dreams, is decidedly lacking. It's extracted from a single quote, which perhaps isn't the exact problem. The song builds in tonal depth as phrases are repeated, in what I think is generally called a more pointillistic approach. But the actual text does not build in depth, and it fails to inspire me. It talks about believing in your dreams, casting out fear, and facing the unknown. Unfortunately it doesn't explain how to cast out fear or where that strength eminates from. What if your dreams are not philanthropic? What if your dreams are ugly? Of course the philosophical perspective of extreme humanism it comes from is rather radical (that would be dictionary-definition of 'radical,' not slang for 'cool'). I mean, for this text to be inspiring you'd have to believe we all have wonderful dreams to create a better society for all humanity, that we have minimal evil intentions and are not swayed by greed or lust, and apparently we have super powers for facing fear and conquering the unknown. It's just not realistic enough to pull your heart strings or strike a chord with the soul.

Maybe she's talking not about visionary dreams, but literal dreams! Except there are very few literal dreams I would ever want to believe in, or hope to come true. I rarely remember my dreams, but this week I haven't slept without them, or actually remembering them that is. They're all very frustrating, though. Some of my worst were being able to understand English, but only thinking and talking in German, and more recently searching for something or someone and I didn't know what it was and I couldn't stop till I found it or them, and it just went on forever. Never did figure out what or who I was looking for. That's a tangent, it really has nothing to do with the song...

I keep coming back to Robert Burns, and the way his writing touches everyone. If you get past the Scottish slang, he is the everyday man's man. He writes about falling, about picking ourselves up to struggle on with the human life, loving with the depths of our being, death and taxes. In essence he explains following your dreams, and the human battle for existence. For indeed, isn't existence the simplest of dreams? He is a different pot of ink altogether, but that is the kind of dream, the facing of fears and the unknown, the beautiful dreams that relate to every man. Those are dreams that I do believe are beautiful, and are actually worth believing in.

Stats

Beethoven was genius. Nothing is randomly thrown together; it's all thought out beforehand. He doesn't include something because it was popular, there's so much more to his process than that. He is "an unrestrained personality" according to Guerter. That doesn't denote alot of mystery to his process or his message.

If you're going to play some Irish songs, don't bring your fancy schmancy classical bowing and nonrhythmical accompaniment ideas - forget all that and fiddle like a peasant! Please, it would sound SO much better and stylistic.

Congratulations to Ukraine, Slovenia, Germany and the UK for being my top viewers after the US. And the Android users, who make up 11% of the systems used to view this blog. Haha

Molto Vivace Allegretto

I've learned some interesting things in psychology, many of them quite useful. One I've been thinking about lately has been a concept on the way we perceive human actions. If someone does something, you will view it differently than if you yourself were doing the exact same thing. Known as the Fundamental Attributes Error, this is when you take one action of someone else and you attribute it to their everyday nature (Dispositional Attribution) (normally this is something you assume for negative actions, like bad driving). However, whenever you commit an error yourself, you view it with Situational Attribution - it was the situation that caused your behavior, and not part of your personality. Thus, we call people idiots when they turn in front of us on the street or do other aggravating things, but when we do something we're not idiots. We don't act like that everyday, do we?

Next time I have an energy drink I need to time it better. It most definitely got me through the last rehearsal, but now I'm wondering how far into the wee hours it will take me...

I Love You

Somebody once told me I shouldn't say "I love you" to anyone unless I knew I was going to marry them. It doesn't seem like such a bad idea at first. But since then I've realised it doesn't make much sense at all. First, there is the definition of love:

Love is patient, and is kind; Love does not envy, it does not parade itself, it is not puffed up; Does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not easily provoked, thinks no evil; Rejoices not in inequity, but rejoices in the truth; Bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (1 Cor. 13)

Then we are commanded to love our neighbors and our brethren, and our enemies. Which is basically everyone we know, in generality. So if you're trying to love someone, why wouldn't you want to tell them at some point, especially if you actually care about them? Oh, well you say 'romantic love' is different. But is it? If you're referring to the world's interpretation of "love," it doesn't make sense to try and preserve something that is already corrupt and meaningless. So we are talking about the Christ-like love that actually means something, that we are called to do. I would never hold that back from anyone; what is the benefit? It seems almost selfish. I think I should say "I love you" while I can, because you never know which day may be their last.

How come they named a flower after him?...

The speed of technology really doesn't solve all the problems of communication. The same issues and frustrations are still there to be dealt with, and in some cases they are actually heightened. Its interesting, my friend mentioned that technology really in a way is simply clearing the path toward narcissism as a culture. Scary to think about, but all the elements are there. Interesting how history repeats itself...