text:
Emily Doesn't Care If You Listen
Technology evolves at such a fast pace that it is often difficult to discuss a new innovation critically without fearing that the argument will be anachronistic before the discussion is even complete. Yet we must consider the software and hardware around us as they relate directly to the moment we live in, for any attempts at trying to write about the evolution or limitations of the technology of the future is a folly. To date, there is very little by way of critical analysis of David Cope's computer programs "Emmy" and "Emily Howell" outside of the relatively esoteric field of research into artificial intelligence, and thus I hope to offer one as best as 2011 will allow.
"Cope remembered that Bach wasn't a machine—once in a while, he broke his rules for the sake of aesthetics. The program didn't break any rules; Cope hadn't asked it to."
—Ryan Blitstein, "Triumph of the Cyborg Composer," Miller-McCune, February 22, 2010.
Technology evolves at such a fast pace that it is often difficult to discuss a new innovation critically without fearing that the argument will be anachronistic before the discussion is even complete. Yet we must consider the software and hardware around us as they relate directly to the moment we live in, for any attempts at trying to write about the evolution or limitations of the technology of the future is a folly. To date, there is very little by way of critical analysis of David Cope's computer programs "Emmy" and "Emily Howell" outside of the relatively esoteric field of research into artificial intelligence, and thus I hope to offer one as best as 2011 will allow.
Emmy (a play on EMI—Experiments in Musical Intelligence) is software, capable of creating original music when given certain parameters. If Bach's six Brandenburg Concerti are uploaded into the program, a new work "in the style" of the Concerti will appear. If Mahler's Ninth Symphony, Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht, and Zemlinsky's Lyric Symphony are synthesized by Emmy, a work of distinctly late 19th-century Vienna will be produced. As a strong proponent of computer sciences as they relate to music, Cope felt the desire to go further with artificially intelligent composition and put aside the program that merely synthesized the works of previous composers to create a new, dynamic platform, "Emily Howell." Emily only uses musical sources produced by Emmy, which include everything from Navajo Songs to Mahler, and (officially) the only living composer whose work is present in the database is Cope's.
The implications of these programs are tremendous. For musicians and audiences alike, the progress and even nature of music could be fundamentally changed. If a computer program could create new music with the push of a button, customizable to anyone's taste and without distinct intellectual copyright issues, it would revolutionize the way music is produced and consumed in everyday life.
Yet there are technical, philosophical, and practical issues which must be considered when weighing the value of Emmy and Emily Howell in society. How does Emily potentially affect music from the perspectives of composers, performers, computer programmers, classical music fans, and the general public? Does Emily live up to Cope's claims regarding Howell's capacity?
What is Music? The answer might seem obvious, but it is important to define what music is before it can properly be discussed. Leonard Bernstein argued in his 1973 Norton Lectures (later titled The Unanswered Question) that based upon Noam Chomsky's analysis of languages, syntax, and grammar, music functions as a language. By extension, it suggests that music is just a root—as the Phoenician and Cyrillic alphabets offer basic structures for languages to be built, so can music be parsed in various ways to offer many languages. Thus music is not a universal language. Contrary to romantic notions that music transcends nation, culture, and status, any Western listener who has ever sat down to traditional Tibetan chants can attest that what one culture considers sacred, another would consider cacophonous. Tritones (and their surrounding microtones) are considered harmonious in many of these musical languages, while Western classical music referred to the tritone as "the Devil's Interval" for a significant period of time—not only unpleasant but, by association, immoral.
Languages also inherently evolve over time; while Chaucer wrote in "English," it is virtually unintelligible to the modern speaker. A mid-point can be seen in Shakespeare—certainly understandable to an English speaker, but syntactically far removed from our present language. Each musical language evolves as well. During the Renaissance, Western classical music revolved around modal harmonies, with the Ionian and Aeolian (major and minor) scales rarely used. From the Baroque until midway through the Romantic Period, Ionian and Aeolian (tonal) harmonies were the principal musical dialects. Toward the end of the Romantic period, tonal harmony began to disintegrate and a slew of new harmonic structures were used. Music then can be said not only to function as a language, but to evolve as one as well. While not immediately capable of relaying concrete ideas (i.e. "Go take out the garbage!"), it is nonetheless a form of communication: A poetic communication, with grammatical and syntactical rules guiding its usage and comprehensibility as the language evolves.
Ultimately, the discussion involves intention. A language is a collection of sounds, organized into roots, expanded into words, and then governed by grammar to take otherwise incoherent tones and give them meaning. Neither "hjew wejklf jjeih" nor "anatomical shelf run quarry" conveys anything, because they are not following the basic rules of the language used to write this essay. Is a birdcall music or literal language? To a bird, it communicates a specific idea (danger, mating, etc.) and thus should be considered a literal language. The average human lacks the ability to understand the intended message, yet we can reconceive it and render it into a musical concept. A powerful and congruent example of this can be seen in Olivier Messiaen's fascination with birds and his usage of their songs in music and ornithography. He spent a significant portion of his life cataloging birdcalls, using musical notation only as a medium for documentation. Yet in the composition of his Quartet for the End of Time, he utilizes birdcalls interpretively, using the free harmonic language of the nightingale to conjure an image of an Eden-like heaven. In doing so, he removes the literal meaning of the birdcalls for the picture he is painting in tones—and it becomes music.
As we relate this back to computers attempting to communicate, why aren't there any computers creating works of literature, either in the style of a specific author or in their own, unique style? Would the general public want to consume a book written by a computer? Would it have any substance?
At the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, scientists have made a noble attempt. Their program, "Brutus," can produce simple stories, based upon certain paradigms of contemporary struggle and conflict. The researchers state:
We use Brutus.1 in support of our philosophy of Weak Artificial Intelligence—basically, the view that computers will never be genuinely conscious, but computers can be cleverly programmed to "appear" to be, in this case, literarily creative.
(—From the website for Brutus;
examples of the literary output can also be read there.)
While it is fascinating to observe a computer able to use algorithms to analyze the basic elements of human interaction and mimic them, the end result is, at least at this time in computer development, lacking in the originality of insight into a human issue. A computer can only generate responses based upon previously programmed ideas. This "Weak Artificial Intelligence" can only mimic the process of learning—its ability to learn is confined to the parameters it already understands. Profound literature is created through a unique perspective, conveyed through language in a way that resonates with readers. By definition, a computer cannot have a unique perspective or original idea until it is able to achieve true artificial intelligence—specifically, self-awareness.
So why then has Emily Howell gained a certain amount of popular acceptance through live performances and record sales while her literary counterpart remains an academic novelty?
Music is mystical. Or more appropriately, its composition is romanticized. Most people "compose" text on a daily basis, whether for mundane or creative purposes. Comparatively few compose music so prolifically. Improvisational music can be viewed as the one field of composition that captures the same freedom and immediacy in the use of a musical language, but it requires a certain amount of training, both in the grammar of a musical language and in the technical execution required to perform it on an instrument. So the composition of music is left to "talented" or "gifted" individuals, while the majority of society remains content simply to consume the products. This is where the Turing Test becomes a significant factor.
In 1950, the English mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing proposed a test for determining true artificial intelligence. It proceeds as follows: a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with one human and one machine, each of which tries to appear human. All participants are placed in isolated locations. If the judge cannot reliably tell the machine from the human, the machine is said to have passed the test. In order to test the machine's intelligence rather than its ability to render words into audio, the conversation is limited to a text-only channel such as a computer keyboard and screen. To date, no computer has won the Loebner Grand Prize, an ongoing challenge for a computer to pass the Turing Test. (There is an annual prize for the computer "which is most indistinguishable from a human," thus attempts are regularly made.)
The most popular story about Emily Howell suggests that she does indeed pass the Turing Test. A 2009 article by Murad Ahmed published in The Times (London), offers an un-cited and un-attributed anecdote from Cope about a professor who came to him a break in the middle of a lecture performance at UC Santa Cruz, where both professors teach. After the piece was played, the "professor came to me and said this was one of the most beautiful pieces he'd heard in a long time." Then, after listening to the lecture and learning that it was written by a computer, he was reported to have said, "From the minute it started I could tell it was computer-composed. It has no guts, no emotion, no soul."
Cope's anecdote extends the parameters of the Turing Test to music, offers that Emily has passed it, and implies that academia is reluctant to acknowledge his brilliant discovery. Yet looking more carefully at his statement, a serious question of judgment arises. Who was this professor? The reader is lead to believe that he is a professor of music—otherwise why mention his status within the school. More importantly, why would this "professor," who presumably knew Cope's work, go to a lecture recital, feel inclined to make such strong statements in support of the work, only to make a contradictory statement, insulting Cope's achievement, shortly after?
There is no question that Cope, in devoting himself to his science, has anthropomorphized Emily and is fighting to gain recognition for her1, but to what extent? Music is a poetic, interpretive language, not a literal one, thus the standards for the Turing Test cannot be directly applied. Many works by living composers, such as Pierre Boulez's Structures 1a, would more readily be accepted as the music of computers than Howell's, but the intention behind Structures 1a was to give way to an intricately conceived, emotionless canvas. As an academic deeply involved in the world of artificial intelligence (he has written seven books and twenty articles on the subject of music as it relates to computers, with three of the books and nine of the articles dealing specifically with AI, as well as a creator of Artificial Intelligence Poetry Program), Cope's attempts to suggest that computer music can be judged by the Turing Test don't adequately consider the basic elements of the test as they relate to musical languages, as well as the limitations of the linguistic test itself.2
In many ways, this conversation is directed towards the producers of music—both the composers and the performers who devote their lives to the creation of music. Emily Howell is an extension of the iTunes "Genius Function," and the "Personalized Recommendations" function utilized by Netflix, Amazon.com, Pandora, and a host of other media outlets that try to predict human desires to increase sales. Most consumers of this media appreciate the "Personalized" results, as it offers them suggestions as to what they will want to purchase next, giving them something new without straying too far from what they already know. The popular dating site eHarmony.com acknowledges the limitations of its algorithm, and after a 30-minute personality test, informs as many as twenty percent of its potential clients that they do not fall into a specific category, and are thus "unmatchable."3 While this might be disheartening to a single individual in search of love, it suggests that human preferences cannot be simply reduced to a series of parameters.
As producers of music, it is important to understand the limitations of assuming that groupings or categories of sounds will elicit specific emotions. While a minor key often implies a more somber mood in Western classical music (obviously with exceptions), the effective usage of a key is different from composer to composer and piece to piece. At this moment, artificial intelligence cannot understand the subtle gradients, or their reception without a human intermediary.
Emily Howell has proved effective at mimicking a composer fairly well. The entire project was created when David Cope, struggling to complete an opera commission, designed a program that understood his music idioms, tendencies, and syntax, and then produced new material in his style. He used this basic material as a guideline to complete the opera. After this, Cope began to expand the parameters, inputting works of other composers into Emmy, trying to create a program that would offer something as authentic as the original. The idea itself was not new—Fritz Kreisler performed many "lost" works of the baroque era, only to later reveal that they were of his own pen, and Remo Giazotto used the bombing of Dresden to "uncover" several works "by Albinoni," most famously the Adagio in G Minor. Yet there is a notable difference: while Kreisler and Giazotto were able to pass off the works as originals because of their fame, closer analysis of the works show distinct signs of musical influences other than the supposed original composer. Emmy's output proved to be mediocre examples of the original composer, with no uncharacteristic elements, but also none of the "brilliance." In the section of his website devoted to "Experiments in Musical Intelligence," Cope describes Emmy's process as:
(1) deconstruction (analyze and separate into parts)
(2) signatures (commonality – retain that which signifies style)
(3) compatibility (recombinancy – recombine into new works)
This process created a composite of the functional norms, and by his own admission, the results were rather uninspiring.
In "Creative Writers and Daydreaming," Freud described the creative process as "the suspension of rational principles." A computer can create an infinite number of random possibilities, but the concept of suspended rationality has yet to be attainted by a computer. As Cope explains in "Experiments in Musical Intelligence," it was the lack of "errors," or intentional breaking of the rules, that made Emmy's work plastic. As nuanced as the programming can be, the difference between irrational and random (or intentional breaking of the rules for an aesthetic reason versus arbitrary straying because a certain amount of unpredictability is required) is what separates creation from amalgamation.
There is no question that musical borrowing and referential passages play a significant role in composition. The Western classical tradition teaches composition through the study of the canon. Nadia Boulanger, the famous compositional pedagogue, explored a new composer each week with her class, analyzing pieces of the composer and then requiring her students to write a piece in that composer's style. Yet, as Igor Stravinsky famously remarked, "A bad composer borrows, a good composer steals." This suggests that to be influenced by another, one cannot simply break down the process and imitate, but must incorporate it into their own personal language. Boulanger's methodology taught her students to understand the creative process of historical figures to enrich their vocabulary—teaching them grammar that they would then mold into their own voices—as seen in the multifarious careers of her pupils (Aaron Copland, Roy Harris, Virgil Thomson, Elliott Carter, Quincy Jones, Philip Glass, etc.). But Emily cannot generate her own style, because, as limited by a lack of self, she cannot interpret the works of others; she can only analyze them.4
There is something to be said for the sheer technical achievement that is Emily Howell. In a way, she is a work of art. From the technical perspective, she is on par with the most advanced forms of artificial intelligence currently in production, and more so because her product can mimic "human" music to the extent that listeners don't assume that it is computer music. Yet having had the opportunity to review two scores (of six total works) by Emily Howell and compare them to the official recordings supervised by David Cope, I stumbled upon a fascinating issue: the music used for the recording has been edited from that which was originally produced by Emily Howell. Specifically in Land of Stone, Opus 3, passages are modified, instruments and parts are added and rhythms, octaves, and dynamics are changed. Also, comparing the score markings in Land of Stone to From Darkness, Light, Opus 1, there are significant differences in the quantity of markings. While From Darkness, Light is very loosely annotated (in the style of Bach, as seen below), the later work, for a chamber orchestra, is mired by articulations, stylistic directions and various dynamic and tempo markings.
I have broken down the changes into four categories: additions or subtractions; modifications (excluding passages that could conceivably be attributed to player error—in the last major section, from measures 165-263, the rhythms become complex and the accuracy of the recording suffers in this section, thus only pitch, register, and additions are considered there); errors (i.e. passages that are impossible or that contain incoherent markings); and passages that can reasonably be assumed to have stylistic markings not originating from the computer. There were at least 12 additions or subtractions, 29 modifications, 68 edits, and 17 errors in the 275 measures that comprise this piece.5
This lead me to contact Nicole Paiement, the music director of Ensemble Parallèle, the group that recorded Land of Stone for Cope's commercial recording. She confirmed much of what I had inferred regarding the active editing of the work. When asked if and how the piece changed, she said:
There was more of an evolution of the piece prior to the performance. As we started to work on the piece we adapted things that were not working as well… So it was as if [Cope] sort of became the computer-composer. So he would listen, and most times he agreed, and at times he said, "we would keep that," but generally speaking David was very agreeable to doing the changes that would make the piece a better piece.
Where then does this leave Emily Howell's work? Aside from its inability to properly grasp the capacity of the instruments in the orchestra (i.e. asking a harp to crescendo and decrescendo with a single struck note, as in measures 12-13, writing out of the range of an instrument, such as the D5 written for the contrabass in measure 185), it is clear that Cope felt free to edit and modify "Emily's" work as he saw it fit. In most every case of an addition (i.e. mm. 65-85, the addition of the harp and glockenspiel outlining the suggested harmonies in the bassoon and clarinet, various examples of instruments moved 8va or 8vb because the range it was written in was not conducive to the mood, the flute introduced a measure before each of the "bell-like" sections, measures 138, 149, 154), there is a good musical reasoning for it. Furthermore, specialized stylistic additions turn theoretical structures into quasi-lyrical passages, such as the addition of Senza Tempo at measure 57, allowing the pianist to freely explore a somewhat random twelve-tone quasi-aggregate6 phrase:
So while Cope states in his program notes for Land of Stone that:
My role with Emily is to provoke her to compose good music, and once composed, act as her impresario—her agent —to obtain performances, recordings, and so on…
It is clear that he is integral to the compositional process. Despite his assertion that Emily Howell produces "good music" on her own, the interference with the program's output, both through his editing and Paiement's critiques, suggests that his claim of computer-composed music is still a distant vision.
Emily is a testament to the nature of music: by parsing compositions down to their bare elements, she offers definitive proof of music as a language. She can rapidly produce composite works, changing the way à la carte music is created for daily consumption, but let's not confuse these experiments in mass-produced Muzak with human attempts to create art.
As this discussion moves toward the perspective of the audience member, an important question arises: Do people need a relationship with a composer?
To illustrate this question regarding audiences and their expectations, I offer the prostitute metaphor. A prostitute is paid for by friends of a particular person without his knowledge. She is instructed to approach him at a party as if she were genuinely interested in him. The man cannot believe his good fortune—she is the paradigm of what a woman should be. She is beautiful, intelligent, and finds him witty and humorous. The man brings her home and wakes in the morning to find her gone. Disheartened, he calls his closest friend to recount his brief encounter with love, only to be told that all of his perceptions were ill-conceived. He made the assumption that when she approached him at the party, she found him attractive. He then further assumed that she was enjoying the time spent with him as they conversed and flirted. As he went to sleep that night, he most certainly assumed that she would at least be there the next morning.
Does this man's discovery that his conception of the relationship was based on a lie change his appreciation of the event? I believe he might be forced to see it as nothing more than a mechanical act, destroying his concept of the presumed relationship.
There is an argument that music is nothing more than notes on a page. In theory, it is. It can sit in a cabinet for centuries and be as irrelevant as the dust that collects upon it. Yet once it is performed, there are inherent implications; including the assumption that this is an interaction between a composer and a listener. Only Emmy and Emily Howell can truly be impartial to music, breaking it down to its elemental roots without any response to the composite sound. As human beings, we have been exposed to music, and "understand" the language (although different dialects and varying degrees of "literacy" and natural sensitivity exist).
Another issue to take into account when considering the public: Who owns Emily Howell's intellectual property rights? First, the issue of her sources needs to be discussed. Cope says of her musical sources:
In January of 2003, I retired my Experiments in Musical Intelligence program (Emmy).
My reasons were many, but mostly this retirement resulted from my desire to get on with my life. I had for years envisioned a new program which, unlike Emmy, included many aspects of computational creativity that Emmy did not include (I discuss this in depth in my book Computer Models of Musical Creativity, MIT Press, 2005). I call this new program Emily Howell.
Interestingly, the database for Emily Howell consists mainly of music composed by Emmy, thus linking this new program with my previous work in rather explicit and intimate ways. Emily's style, a hybrid of the many styles which Emmy emulated during her twenty-year career, has fits and starts of Ivesian-sounding pastiches. My goal involves her creating a completely new style — a composite of those that most effectively complement one another.7
Emmy was intended solely to create additional material in the style of a previous composer, so her musical sources were (officially) the great composers of the past, as well as works by Cope. Yet theoretically, any composer could be plugged into the program to produce something similar. Assuming an orchestra wanted to perform a piece by Copland, but didn't want to pay the rental fees, they could plug several pieces of Copland into the program and title the work Hommage à Copland. Unscrupulous composers could freely exploit works by their colleagues, using Emily Howell to create a work using sources from several pieces still under copyright. Or it could cheapen contemporary composition altogether, as Cope freely suggests in his original reasoning for creating Emmy—writer's block.
These aspects should be troubling to anyone in the field of music. If the cost of producing "new" music through Emily is exponentially lower and the product created faster than through traditional composition, there is no question that it would be widely used. Yet the previously established inability of Emily to create truly original work will prevent music from evolving. Living composers, already struggling to exist outside of academia, simply won't have the ability to compete, and Milton Babbitt's vision of composition as a science completely removed from the real world, summarized in his article "Who Cares if You Listen?,"8 will be a reality.
Something which I had initially hope to explore further was Emily Howell's ability to set text. Specifically because Cope said he originally used Emmy to complete an opera, and one of Emily Howell's five works is From the Willow's Keep, Op. 4, I requested this score from Cope with the hopes of offering a critical analysis, but was only provided with Land of Stone and From Darkness, Light. At the same time, there is no documented text in the English language with the phrase "From the Willow's Keep," so the text for his piece may have been produced by Cope's "Poet Program."9 As it relates to contemporary popular composition, the setting of text would be immensely important. Cope alluded to a "well-known pop group" inquiring about utilizing Emily Howell,10 thus the practical applications in popular music must be considered. "Emily Howell is adaptable and egolessly self-modifying in her ability to respond to audience criticism."11 This is an audacious claim, both as it relates to classical and popular music. First, how is Emily able to evaluate and respond to audience criticism? Is she evaluating based upon "hoots and hollers?" Can she distinguish between a hoot and a holler? Presumably, she is responding using a decibel meter—but this cannot really compare a room full of jeers to a room full of cheers (or more likely a combination of both). Possibly in the future, each member of the audience will be connected to a device measuring serotonin levels, and a "Matrix"-esque construction of the auditory experience will be a reality. Furthermore, since standard concert etiquette suggests that audiences only show signs of approval or disapproval at the end of a piece, how exactly does this egoless self-modification occur? How does she "realize" that a certain note, passage, or even section was disliked? This again is a romanticized notion of Emily functioning without the help of Cope. Yet going further, her egoless state means she fundamentally has no artistic integrity. Right now she produces "pretty" music. Warren Riddle, editor for the popular tech magazine Switched, ended his optimistic article on Cope's work with the bombastic tirade:
The current offerings (of Emily Howell) may be limited, but they're definitely more appealing than the soulless, conformist tripe that so-called "humans" are currently regurgitating at an alarming rate.
Is there nothing to stop Emily Howell from churning out "soulless, conformist tripe"? She is nothing but a computer program, and can be utilized in a myriad of ways.
Regarding the practical application of Emily Howell to popular music, it could be the device that ultimately ends professional music on any level. Guitar Hero, Rock Band, and any number of other music simulation games offer people with no prerequisite capacity for music the opportunity to feel like they are creating it. If Emily Howell were widely distributed, anyone could mix their favorite five songs together to create a composite they would feel is theirs. In theory it is "music for the masses," no holds barred, but in reality, once the computer becomes the originator instead of facilitator, communication ceases to happen, and the product reverts back to irrelevant sounds.
There may come a time when computers achieve true artificial intelligence, at which point, much of this argument will be moot. I am hesitant to stand in the way of progress, and historically some of the greatest inventions of our time were eviscerated by critics of their time for being the downfall of some great legacy. I believe, however, that the benefits of Emily Howell and other computer-composed technologies are currently exaggerated and little more than novelties, and as we explore this new frontier of computer-assisted composition, we should be wary of potential negative consequences.
[Ed. Note: In addition to the comments and references cited below, Noah Stern Weber, the author of the present article, wanted to cite Andrew Aziz's article, "Algorithmic Style Analysis," a history and evolution of artificial intelligence as it relates to music analysis and composition, which focuses on Cope quite a bit. According to Weber, "The article is fairly technical, but is the best discussion of the actual compositional process that is shorter than a book. It may be too esoteric for a general audience, but I found it very helpful as I began my research for this article. I believe it would be of interest to those who want to learn more on the subject."—FJO]
1."Unfortunately, I fear that she, like all of us involved with the making of new art, faces a hellish uphill battle, for all too often, performers, reviewers, and audiences rely on the proven rather than on the risky, and choose to repeat rather than initiate our creative experiences. What a shame that Emily's music, like the music of her human counterparts, will most likely find itself buried in complacency, never having the opportunity to be heard and appreciated in her time."—Excerpted from the Introductory Notes to the Emily Howell CD From Darkness, Light, Centaur 3023 (2010))
2. The Loebner Competition, an annual test of a computer's capacity to pass the Turing Test is limited to a five-minute discussion. The computer's best course of action was summarized by three time "Most Human Computer Award" Winner Richard Wallace as engaging in "stateless" conversation. "Experience with [Wallace's chatbot] ALICE indicates that most casual conversation is 'stateless,' that is, each reply depends only on the current query, without any knowledge of the history of the conversation required to formulate the reply." The programs that do best in the Loebner Competition tend to speak like a teenager through text-message, preprogrammed with stock responses, pop-culture references, and innocuous jokes. When it does not know how to respond, it abruptly changes the subject. (For a discussion on the Loebner Competition and AI, see: Brian Christian, "Mind vs. Machine," The Atlantic, March 2011.)
3.A standard unmatcheable message from eHarmony: eHarmony is based upon a complex matching system developed through extensive testing of married individuals. One of the requirements for it to work successfully is for participants to fall into our rigorously defined profiles. If we aren't able to match a user well using these profiles, the most considerate approach is to inform them early in the process… Our matching system is not suitable for about 20% of potential users, so 1 in 5 people simply would not benefit from our service.
4. This returns to the idea of suspended rationality. Howell's algorithms only allow for an averaging of the discrepancies between a work and her core knowledge. If ten Emily Howells were given the task of analyzing the same series of works and producing something with that composite, the output would be very similar. Humans will be drawn to different elements of the series and will produce markedly different works. Our learning is idiosyncratic; it is what differentiates personalities and dispositions. We valuate new ideas by combining our past knowledge with our personal aesthetics and tastes. A person can be fundamentally changed by a concept that challenges their preconceived notions of a subject—Emily Howell's algorithm can only weigh it against what it already knows.
5.Because of size constraints, I could not highlight the vast majority of these issues, but a copy of the score with each discrepancy can be downloaded at noahsweber.com/supplement.htm.
6.This cycle repeats every two measures: Nine of the twelve tones are used repeatedly, avoiding the last three. The missing tones are played simultaneously by the accented piano and the clarinet (later the flute), completing the aggregate, at which point the sequence begins again.
7.Excerpted from the introductory notes included in the score of Land of Stone.
8."The attitude towards the indisputable facts of the status and condition of the composer of what we will, for the moment, designate as 'serious,' 'advanced,' contemporary music. This composer expends an enormous amount of time and energy—and, usually, considerable money—on the creation of a commodity which has little, no, or negative commodity value. He is, in essence, a "vanity" composer. The general public is largely unaware of and uninterested in his music. The majority of performers shun it and resent it. Consequently, the music is little performed, and then primarily at poorly attended concerts before an audience consisting in the main of fellow 'professionals'. At best, the music would appear to be for, of, and by specialists." ("Who Cares if You Listen?" High Fidelity, VIII/2 [February 1958] pp38-40, 126-7.)
9.Cope has written a program similar to Brutus.1 which composes poems.
10.Warren Riddle, " A Robo-Symphony: David Cope Composes 'Human' Music With A.I." Switched, February 27, 2010.
11.Surfdaddy Orca, "Has Emily Howell Passed the Turing Test?," H+ Magazine, March 22, 2010
Noah Stern Weber is the Founder and President of Burning Bayreuth, a concert series devoted to innovative presentation of classical and contemporary music. He has degrees in clarinet and conducting from the Peabody Conservatory of Music and the Bard College-Conservatory of Music, and has served as assistant conductor for the Center City Opera Theater, the Luzerne Music Center, the Gulf Coast Symphony and École d'Art Americaines de Fontainebleau.


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You may have heard of a little company called Google. They invent cool stuff like driverless cars and elevators into outer space. Oh: and they develop massively successful applications like Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Maps. It's safe to say they know a thing or two about successful application development, right?
They're also the pioneers behind a growing movement called Site Reliability Engineering (SRE). SRE effectively ends the age-old battles between Development and Operations. It encourages product reliability, accountability, and innovation – minus the hallway drama you've come to expect in what can feel like Software Development High School.
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PORTALES — Freshman forward Brook Serrano tallied two goals and the Eastern New Mexico University women's soccer team pulled away in the second half Thursday for a 6-1 victory over Wayland Baptist at the ENMU pitch.
The Zias (2-3) scored six unanswered goals after Wayland opened the scoring on a tally by Kathleen Stewart less than eight minutes into the contest.
ENMU tied it with 17 minutes left in the half on a goal by freshman Maurisa Jones and went in front less than 4 1/2 minutes later when Kimberly Luna found the back of the net.
The Zias hit the Pioneers (1-3) with a four-goal splurge midway through the second half, including both of Serrano's tallies. Justyne Tydings had a goal and an assist for ENMU.
ENMU drops LSC volleyball opener — LyGene Traylor had 11 kills and four block assists and Texas Woman's turned back ENMU 25-23, 25-20, 27-25 Thursday night in the Lone Star Conference volleyball opener for both schools at Greyhound Arena.
Junior middle blockers Stacey Main and Kristen Beck led the Zias (5-5) with 10 kills apiece.
TWU (3-6) erased a 17-12 deficit with a 7-1 run and held on in the first game. The Pioneers led all the way through the second game, though never by more than six points.
The third set featured 14 ties and four lead changes. ENMU led 25-25 on Jessica King's ace, but the Pioneers got two kills from Traylor around an ENMU attack error to close out the match.
ENMU hosts Texas A&M-Commerce at 2 p.m. Saturday.


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Well I'll be darned!
Lucinda here, ex-pat from Los Angeles Metblogs! Who knew that after months of tinkering under the hood of our good ole' Metblogs jalopy, I woulda popped my head out to find I *finally* had access to the posting tools for my sister blog here in Atlanta–the city to which I have recently relocated–only to find myself back in LA for the holidays at the very time the engine does its first reluctant, full turn-over. And leave it to an LA girl to whip out an overwrought car metaphor like that one there! I suspect you'll be hearing much more from me in the coming months, but right now I'll sign off from this late-night (even for the west coast!) post by saying, "Thanks for visiting Atlanta Metblogs, and y'all come back now!" Thanks MUST go to Joz & Jason, who have worked so hard to keep Metblogs a viable reality,that this here site will NOT be going silent (and for doing the high-wire Internet acrobatics required to grant me posting access to this blog). We hope for this to become not only a destination for many with thoughts about the city, but a place for like-minded folk to come together and lend their voices to the multitude of human narratives that have long sought to paint at least a partial picture of Atlanta and the south, its many different realities, its transformations and its sense of place.


text: Somehow we overlooked this in our morning report on Jason Sudeikis remaining with Saturday Night Live, but Lorne Michaels made arguably a far more important fake-political announcement: After four years of enduring barbs for having Fred Armisen impersonate Barack Obama, the job has finally been handed to Jay Pharoah, an actual black man. "I just thought it might be time to shake it up," Michaels told the New York Times, two years after he first hired Jay Pharoah and everyone on the Internet pointed out that he did a solid Obama, and that maybe it would be worth handing it over, considering Armisen's impression primarily consists of pausing a lot, and that Pharoah has little else to do whenever Denzel Washington, Jay-Z, or Will Smith can't be awkwardly wedged into a sketch. Anyway, this transition of fake-power will take place in the fall, with Armisen—whom Michaels calls "the backbone of the show now"—now reduced to starring in every other sketch.


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The good news from Washington is that plans to extend the debt-ceiling farce into 2014 are moving forward on a bipartisan basis. The chances that the U.S. government may soon resume its functions temporarily and that there'll be no default on U.S. sovereign debt for as much as several months appear to have improved.
Talk about defining success down. It's almost enough to make you believe in American Decline. Granted, despite everything, the United States is still having a better recovery than Europe, so things could be worse. The trouble is, if the country's political class keeps this up, they will be.
Nobody denies that government by recurring fiscal crisis puts the productive parts of the U.S. economy under stress and is damaging in itself. But it's also a distraction from other issues that simply can't wait. While politicians in Washington have their hands full failing to keep the government running and calling the nation's creditworthiness into question, everything else is allowed to slide. In some cases, this is a grave error.
One wonders how many U.S. political leaders have even bothered to look at an authoritative new survey that says the U.S. is failing – and failing abjectly – in an area of policy that is crucial for prosperity. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has just published the first results from an exhaustive international survey of skills. It's the most authoritative project of its kind – a huge undertaking, comparing adults' proficiency in literacy, numeracy and problem- solving across the organization's member countries.
In effect, the survey measures the quality of human capital, one of the crucial drivers of long-term economic success. The U.S. performance in these rankings isn't just poor, it's pitiful.
The average literacy score for Americans ages 16 to 65 places the United States 18th out of 22 participating countries. In numeracy, the U.S. ranks 20th out of 22. In 'problem-solving in technology-rich environments' – a measure of the capacity to interact productively with computers – the U.S. comes in 14th out of 19.
Those results are actually quite good when compared with the performance of adults ages 16 to 24. In literacy, young Americans rank 20th out of 22; in numeracy, 22nd out of 22; and in problem-solving, 19th out of 19.
The only glimmer of good news in these figures, if you can call it good news, is that U.S. standards of literacy, numeracy and problem-solving aren't falling in absolute terms as fast as the poor relative performance of U.S. youngsters might suggest. Young Americans have slid to the bottom of the rankings mainly because young adults in other countries are doing much better than their predecessors did, whereas their American counterparts aren't. The fact remains, the capacities of the U.S. labor force are consistently well below average, and those of the youngest segment rank (on two out of three measures) dead last.
The range of ability in the U.S. is unusually wide, too, which tells you something about the roots of economic inequality. The U.S. gap between highest and lowest scores in numeracy is bigger than in any other participating country.
The more closely you look, the more startling the U.S. skills deficit appears. For instance, the study defines numeracy in levels one through five. At level one, adults 'can complete tasks involving basic mathematical processes in common, concrete contexts where the mathematical content is explicit with little text and minimal distractors. They can perform one-step or simple processes involving counting, sorting, basic arithmetic operations, understanding simple percents, and locating and identifying elements of simple or common graphical or spatial representations.' Roughly 9 percent of American adults fail to achieve even this level, compared with roughly 1 percent in Japan. Only about 8 percent of Japanese adults are at level one or below; the figure for the U.S. is 29 percent.
One striking if not especially surprising result in the study is that skill, or lack of skill, in numeracy, literacy and problem-solving tend to go together. A disturbingly high proportion of young Americans therefore lacks the ability to break out of a vicious circle of incapacity. If you struggle to read, do simple arithmetic and interact with the Internet, your possibilities for meaningful self-improvement are minimal.
America's elite universities are the best in the world and as yet face no serious challenge. They'll continue to produce exceptionally able young workers who will go on to reap commensurate rewards. But an anomalously large proportion of the population – and especially of young Americans – stand at the bottom of the advanced-economy human-capital league, and suffer from such acute poverty of skills that they're likely to stay there. The tectonic economic forces that have widened inequality to date are unlikely to improve their prospects, because basic literacy, numeracy and problem-solving are also measures of adaptability to change. Lack of these essential proficiencies condemns them to economic insecurity, long-term unemployment and low wages.
This is what a grave economic problem – a clear and present danger to U.S. prosperity and social cohesion – looks like. Perhaps when Washington tires of dealing with a crisis entirely of its own devising, it might give the real thing a moment's thought.Clive Crook is a Bloomberg View columnist.


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Self-reliance is a thing of the past
Fifty years ago, in the summer of 1962, America was a far different place from what it is today. President John Kennedy was presiding over Camelot, and despite fouling up the invasion of Cuba, his approval rating hovered at around 80 percent. Unemployment was 5.2 percent, with the average family income at $6,000 a year.
Most Americans did not have much money but made do. Millions bought Elvis Presley's record "Return to Sender" and went to see "Lawrence of Arabia" in movie theaters. At home, "Wagon Train" was the top TV show.
Years later, the film "American Graffiti" featured the ad campaign "Where were you in '62?" I was on Long Island, hanging around. During the day, we swam at the Levittown pool and played stickball in the street, and in August, my father took us to a lake in Vermont. Also, we went to Jones Beach and baked in the sun without block while secondhand cigarette smoke engulfed us on the blanket.
My folks had little disposable income, certainly not enough for air conditioning or a color television set. But again, there was little whining in my working-class neighborhood. We had fun with what was available. Most everybody worked. Nobody was on welfare.
In fact, just 6 percent of Americans received welfare payments in 1962. Now that number is 35 percent. More than 100 million of us are getting money from the government, and that does not count Social Security and Medicare, programs workers pay into. This is a profound change in the American tradition.
Also, we now have close to 9 million workers collecting federal disability checks. In 2001, that number was about 5 million. Here's my question: Is the workplace that much more hazardous than it was 11 years ago? Is our health that much worse?
The answer is no. What we are seeing is the rise of the nanny state.
Self-reliance and ambition made the United States the most powerful nation on Earth. But that ethic is eroding fast. Instead, many Americans are looking to game the system, and the philosophy of "where's mine?" has taken deep root. About half of American workers pay no federal income tax, leaving the burden to be shouldered by the achievers. As The Edgar Winter Group once sang: "Come on and take a free ride. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!"
Presiding over and joyously encouraging this societal shift is the purveyor of social justice President Barack Obama. His entire campaign is now built around making the rich "pay their fair share." And where will that money go? To those in need, of course. And those legions are growing larger every single day.
Fair-minded people do not begrudge a safety net for Americans who, through no fault of their own, need help. A compassionate society provides for those battered by life. But what is happening in this country is far beyond a helping hand. We are creating a dual society. In one corner: Americans who work hard to succeed. In the other corner: folks who want what you have.
And the second corner is the growth industry.


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Top Things To Do This Weekend: Nov 7-10
Special Events
Siren Nation Festival
Nov 7–10, various venues
The seventh year of the Siren Nation Festival celebrates women in arts with a killer musical lineup, a showcase of the best female comedians in the Northwest, a visual art show with fantastic Northwest artists, and an arts and crafts sale. The full schedule of not-to-be-missed performances includes THEESatisfaction on Friday night and The Shook Twins on Saturday, both at the Alberta Rose Theatre.
MusicBill Frisell's Big Sur Quintet
Nov 9, Aladdin Theater
Well known as one of the best guitar improvisers of his generation, Frisell has also used music to probe the soul of Americana, blending jazz with blues, country, rock, and folk. With the Big Sur project, he turns this signature style to sonically paint the sun-drenched stretch of California coast. Check out our interview with the legendary innovator about how he turned ten days of seclusion on the iconic stretch of coastline into the new album.
Neo Boys Presents: A Benefit Concert for Rock and Roll Camp for Girls
Nov 10, Crystal Ballroom
In celebration of their new release, Sooner or Later, a double-LP of songs recorded between 1978 and 1982, pioneering all-female Portland punk band Neo Boys presents a benefit concert for Rock and Roll Camp for Girls. The concert will also feature Cold Beat, the Ghost Ease, and the Vandies, among many others. Read members of Neo Boys' musings on Portland vintage style on our Look Book blog, excerpted from a longer interview for an upcoming print feature on Portland's history to no shortage of controversy...
Nov 8–24, Studio Two
This new production from the Portland Experimental Theater Ensemble takes on the form of a classical Greek tragedy—including a chorus of 45 women—to explore our contemporary relationship to death and grieving, as well as the relationship between our personal struggles with mortality and global patterns of extinction and environmental degradation in the modern world. Somewhere in that Herculean-sounding project, someone drinks blood, apparently.
The Outgoing Tide
Through Nov 9, CoHo Theatre
It's closing weekend for CoHo Theatre's production of Bruce Graham's The Outgoing Tide, a play about a family grappling the issues presented as their patriarch slips into dementia. "Although the contemporary end-of-life issues which The Outgoing Tide deals with may not resonate with some viewers, the play's timeless story of family—and CoHo's superb staging—make this a tide worth catching before it goes out for good," says our reviewer Jonathan Frochtzwajg. Read his full review.
Northwest Filmmaker's Festival
Nov 8–17, Whitsell Auditorium
NWFC's annual showcase of our region's best new cinematic work celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. More than 400 filmmakers asked to screen their films at the fest, but guest judge Mike Plante, Sundance's senior shorts programmer, winnowed the invite list to just the finest 40 or so films. For more, check out his awards and our picks for the fest.
Books and Talks
Nov 7–8, Mission Theater
This weekend brings us another edition of Mortified, the performance phenomenon begun in LA in 2002 that invites participants to share writings and other deeply embarassing documents from their past before a live audience. It's a celebration of the pain of adolescence and its retrospective comedy that has spread to eight U.S. cities as well as Sweden, and has spawned a documentary that had its world premiere last week at the same venue which hosts its Portland chapter.
Joe Sacco and Randy Gragg
Nov 10, Powell's
Cartoonist/journalist Joe Sacco is no stranger to stories of war and violence, but his new "book" is his most ambitious yet. The Great War, a single, 24-foot-long illustration, depicts the first day of World War I's bloody Battle of the Somme. Sacco talks here to Portland Monthly's very own Randy Gragg.
Cappella Romana: A Patriarch's Chants
Nov 8, St. Mary's Cathedral
Forget those regular world premieres; how about a modern-world premiere? That is, the Athenian virtuoso cantor Achilleas Chaldaiakis will return to lead Cappella Romana in a program of recently unearthed Byzantine chants by the early-18th-century Archbishop of Constantinople that have never been heard by modern ears. You could be among the first!
Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Chamber Ensemble
Nov 8, Kaul Auditorium at Reed College
A select group of principals from London's Academy of St. Martin in the Fields—the most recorded orchestra in history—saws through sextets and octets by Dvorák and Mendelssohn at the invitation of Friends of Chamber Music.
Garfunkel and Oates
Nov 8–9, Helium Lounge
This deceptively charming duo, comprised of Riki Lindhome and Kate Micucci, wages guerilla warfare in barbed comic pop songs with absurd quips like "Pat Robertson once said it's a long downward slide that will lead to legalizing sex with ducks. God, I hope he's right!" and "I wanna be a nun, so I can marry a priest and we'll have a baby and call it Jesus." Fortunately, when you're singing twee-style tunes behind smooth ukulele riffs, you can get away with a lot. Check out our collection of Garfunkel and Oates quotes to see what else the cheeky twosome gets away with.
Visual Art
November Gallery Guide
Whether you're heading out to the monthly First Thursday gallery crawl tonight (the weather can't decide if it's going to rain like a carwash or be sunny) or looking for an art fix later this month, here're some shows to see:
PDX Contemporary
Rarely do two unrelated shows play so well together in one gallery. Eschewing his past text-focused work, Tad Savinor creates small, tongue-in-cheek sculptures where dainty bronze castings, like a tree sprouting from a spoon called "Sustainability," sit on lacquered displays, heirlooms of industrial-state absurdity. Anna Grey and Ryan Wilson Paulson also skewer the modern industrial world with photos, cement cairns, graphite drawings like "Inside the Totalitarian Onion," and a Rapunzel style towel printed with "We Already Quit" over and over that hangs in the gallery, as well as out of the third floor of an office building into a dumpster in a photo.
Elizabeth Leach Gallery
As its title suggests, the MacArthur "genius" Ann Hamilton's The Reading investigates the relationship between reading and writing, text and textile, using videos, prints, and sculpture.
Froelick Gallery
Wander Benny Fountain's monochromatic still life explorations in oil paint, from washes to furrows, to Rick Bartow's bewitching pastels and paintings of spirits part human/part animal—a flurry of teeth, eyes, beaks, and hair—that are so vibrantly colored they sear into your brain like a dream half understood. Unsurprisingly for the Newport-based Native American artist, whose sculpture We Were Always Here was recently commissioned by the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, almost all are already sold.
Augen Gallery
Sally Cleveland's collages are postcard-sized studies in color that stand in contrast to Anne Hirondelle's stoneware studies of shape. If you missed his show last month, make sure to honor Jim Riswold's "Fairy Godmother of Medical Research (Portrait of Mary Lasker)"—a pop painting of cancer scourge Lasker as a doll in a commemorative postcard. If only!
Hartman Fine Art
Harry Callahan was one of the most influential photographers of the twentieth century. Don't miss these silver prints of some of his best known work.
Eutectic Gallery
For this ceramics gallery's show, Art Out Of War, four military veterans capture their combat experiences in clay—or at least try to. "I would like my work to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the world," says artist and Gulf War vet Ethran Tool. "That's a lot to ask of a cup."
Portland Museum of Modern Art
Never heard of the great midcentury artist Mr. Otis? Label yourself a newcomer. His satirical riffs on modernism earned him infamy—at least among the wryer Portland cognoscenti who knew him as the alter ego of notorious journalist Stewart Holbrook. To get the maximum tongue-in-cheek, consider pairing with a trip to Portland Art Museum's modern galleries.
Art Gym
This internationally exhibited artist Fernanda D'Agostino remakes the Art Gym into a multimedia, interactive video and sculpture installation looking back over her three-decade career.
Hoffman Gallery
The homegrown painter and printmaker Stephen Hayes gets and gives his due with 30 years of evocations of people and landscape, aptly titled Figure/Ground. The evolution in his landscapes are particular gripping, from bare, obscured representations to thick, rich abstractions.


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2006 Annual Report Highlights
2006 Annual Report Highlights
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
In its unique role as deposit insurer of banks and savings associations, and in cooperation with the other state and federal regulatory agencies, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) promotes the safety and soundness of the U.S. financial system and insured depository institutions by identifying, monitoring and addressing risks to the deposit insurance fund.
The FDIC promotes public understanding and the development of sound public policy by providing timely and accurate financial and economic information and analyses. The Corporation strives to minimize disruptive effects from the failure of banks and savings associations. In addition, the FDIC assures fairness in the provision of financial services and the sale of financial products.
The FDICs long and continuing tradition of excellence in public service is supported and sustained by a highly skilled and diverse workforce that continuously monitors and responds rapidly and successfully to changes in the financial environment.
|Last Updated 05/22/2007


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My Memories of a Future Life
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The Undercover Soundtrack – Leah Bobet
Posted by Roz Morris @Roz_Morris in Undercover Soundtrack on June 26, 2013
'Melancholy, softly-haunted halls'
Once a week I host a writer who uses music as part of their creative process – perhaps to tap into a character, populate a mysterious place, or explore the depths in a pivotal moment. This week's post is by award-winning urban fantasy author Leah Bobet @LeahBobet
Soundtrack by Matthew Good, PJ Harvey, Chris Cornell, Gregory and the Hawk, The Von Bondies, Nine Inch Nails, Madrugada
Before I was a writer, which feels like eleventy billion years ago at this point, I was a musician. I played classical piano, guitar, and French horn, but my real instrument was voice, and my ambition, all through high school, was to get into the Performance Music program at University of Toronto and become an opera singer.
(Yes, an opera singer. Weren't there any nice garage bands to join, Leah? Not any that had that swooping, visceral power behind each note.)
Obviously, this didn't happen. Memo to future aspiring mezzo-sopranos: Do that theory homework or else. But it built an intimate relationship between music, and lyrics, and making for me. From the day I sat down at the keyboard and started messing around with fiction, I've never written without music — and never without the right music for the mood and cadence of a scene. And that music slowly became intertwined with every word I put to paper.
Above's roots are tonal. It started with a Matthew Good song.
Well, it started with a lot of things: A book of essays on living as a queer, blue-collar person with a disability; a nagging desire to pick a fight with the 1980s Beauty and the Beast; wanting to write a story where the people with the disabilities were the heroes, instead of the assistants; and the question of when you stop trying to save someone and just let them fall. But the thing that clicked all those thoughts together was Matthew Good's The Fine Art of Falling Apart, and an April night when it just set me off bawling.
If this song I'd heard a thousand times was suddenly making me burst into tears, there was a story inside it. So I had to find out why.
Metaphors that find you
They grew together almost immediately: I have a habit of pulling ideas or metaphors from lyrics, ones that don't quite explain themselves, and then explaining them into story. The second verse of The Fine Art of Falling Apart quickly turned into Ariel, a furious-frightened girl who turns into a bee, and whose wings change back last – in some ways, the linchpin for the whole novel.
Its grave, mourning resolve set the tone for her relationship to Matthew, Above's narrator and protagonist; the reason they stayed together came clear when I heard Gregory and the Hawk's Boats and Birds on Internet radio a few weeks later.
Above's antagonist, and the people its protagonists risked becoming, appeared the moment I attached PJ Harvey's Who Will Love Me Now? to the soundtrack.
But most of the book was written to the Ghosts album: Nine Inch Nails's first instrumental. It came out while I was writing, and the sombre, melancholy, softly haunted halls of the opening tracks fit perfectly with the abandoned asylum halls and sewer tunnels and histories Matthew and Ariel navigated together. I spent the spring waiting until nightfall, lighting a candle on my desk, turning out the lights, and writing to Ghosts I. Its mood, its regret and acceptance, slowly nudged the tone of the novel into shadowier places. It made the book a different kind of music.
By the time I hit the Von Bondies's C'mon C'mon and Madrugada's Majesty near the end of the manuscript, those questions still weren't answered. But I had 90,000 words of them being asked.
So in a sense writing, for me, is still opera: bits of story brought forward by music, by its tone and lyrics, and then there's me, writing the recitatives that go between them so this jumbled collection of songs makes a coherent sense. Everything on the Above soundtrack was a found object. What made it into a novel, and the novel that it is, was searching for the way those songs connected, and stringing them together into a symphony.
Leah Bobet's first novel, Above, was nominated for the 2013 Andre Norton Award and the 2013 Aurora Award. She lives in Toronto, Ontario, where she edits Ideomancer Speculative Fiction, picks urban apple trees, and works as a bookseller and civic engagement activist. Her second novel, On Roadstead Farm — a literary dustbowl fantasy where things blow up—will appear from Clarion Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in late 2014. Visit her website, or find her on Twitter at @leahbobet.
Above, American fantasy, Andre Norton Award, Aurora Award, authors, Chris Cornell, Clarion Books, Desert Island Discs, drama, dustbowl fantasy, entertainment, Gregory and the Hawk, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Ideomancer Speculative Fiction, Leah Bobet, literary dustbowl fantasy, Madrugada, Matthew Good, music, music for writers, music for writing, My Memories of a Future Life, Nail Your Novel, Nine Inch Nails, On Roadstead Farm, PJ Harvey, playlist for writers, Roz Morris, speculative fiction, The Undercover Soundtrack, The Von Bondies, undercover soundtrack, urban fantasy, Women Writers, writers, writing, writing to music
- The Undercover Soundtrack is a series where writers - and occasionally other arty folk - reveal how music shapes their work.
- It began as a companion to my first novel, My Memories of a Future Life, and now thrives as a creative salon in its own right. Pull on your headphones and join us.
- If you're curious about the novel that started it all, click the image below.
- Join 15,016 other subscribers
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Email merozmorriswriter at gmail dot com
- All content copyright Roz Morris 2011-2023. Nothing may be reproduced without my express permission in writing beforehand. Photography: Bonnie Schupp Photography, gcg2009 and Roz Morris
What is The Undercover Soundtrack?Sleeve notes here
For the soundtrack of My Memories of a Future Life, you'll need Chopin's Sonata in B Minor, Rachmaninov preludes, lashings of Grieg's piano concerto in A minor and The Clash's Rock the Kasbah (they go together well).
You'll also need Samuel Barber's Dover Beach on piano, although that doesn't actually exist so do the best you can.
And the novel's undercover pieces. You can find them here
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Please remember that our challenges are always themed around the sentiment. We had to disqualify a few entries from our previous challenge due to not using a sentiment based on our theme
using Little Easter Bunnies
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Last month AIN reported on the disturbing increase in reports of GPS interference and deliberate jamming and raised the question of continuing GPS reliability if these incidents (attributable to small portable jammers used by truckers to obfuscate their whereabouts) increase in numbers and transmitted power. We didn't touch on larger, coordinated cyberwarfare attacks from, say, a foreign adversary, although South Korea has reported these as being transmitted from its northern neighbor. More likely, we can expect local jamming attacks, such as, for example, harassment incidents by domestic insurgent groups against a sitting government, or pirate GPS denial actions in high-density commercial shipping areas, to become more common in certain parts of the world. And since aviation is a worldwide activity that is becoming dependent almost exclusively on GPS and its equally susceptible regional GNSS equivalents, such local, often spontaneous events are growing into an international concern for the aviation industry, including corporate operators.
Directive for GPS Backup
In March, the FAA published an updated 200-page report titled "Concept of Operations for NextGen alternative positioning, navigation and timing (APNT)." The need for an alternate PNT has been part of DOT policy since 2003, when the requirement for a GPS backup was formalized under a Presidential Directive, following the DOT Volpe Center's 2001 warning of GPS vulnerability to interference. A similar directive was issued for the Department of Homeland Security.
Since that time various groups of government and industry specialists have studied the issue, and a wide range of defensive measures have been examined. The current report brings the final conclusions and equipage recommendations (in the field of electronics, of course, there is never a final solution as long as engineers continue to develop new concepts). In this case, therefore, the FAA document is offered as a solution to specific NextGen needs out to 2025, and some unspecified period thereafter.
Essentially, the FAA APNT group proposes that the primary GPS backup be scanning DME, preferably supported by onboard inertial reference systems, and assisted in places by low-powered GPS-like pseudolites and wide-area multilateration. This is seen as a workable combination, and the National Airspace System (NAS) could continue to function with it, albeit at much lower efficiency and the risk of extensive delays, particularly in high-density airspace, and in adverse weather conditions that dictate extensive radar vectoring. And, of course, individual aircraft equipage would determine the probability of mission completion. That is, a DME/DME/IRS-equipped aircraft could have reasonable success in mission completion, and one with DME/DME but without IRS would have only a slight disadvantage.
Unfortunately, in a GPS failure event those without DME/DME could only fall back on VOR for navigation. Some aircraft, of course, still carry single DME, installed before the FAA decreed that with the coming of GPS, DME was no longer required, and these would be useful. As for VOR, the FAA has already decided to drastically reduce their numbers, to a minimum operating network ensuring that, when cruising above 5,000 feet agl, an aircraft should be able to receive at least one VOR within 100 miles.
The new report provides a detailed analysis of how the variously equipped–iDME/DME/IRS, DME/DME and VOR–aircraft would operate in the different phases of a flight, from being parked on the ramp, to taxiing out, taking off and continuing through each consecutive phase to being parked at the destination. The analysis is performed for two routes: one goes from an unspecified location to Miami International, and the other goes from the unspecified location to the mountain-ringed airport at Hailey, Idaho.
Unquestionably, the procedures described are correct, and perfectly safe, and would probably be self-evident to the more experienced pilots flying better equipped aircraft. For the VOR-only pilot with only modest flight experience, the procedures could appear pretty daunting. Also, of course, there would be the need to have individual written procedures for every airport presenting any complexity, reminding one of the handwritten notes and sketches that Capt. Elrey Jeppesen made for his mail flight colleagues in the 1920s.
Aviation-specific PNT Appears Unlikely
Does the FAA report reflect future reality? Will its parent Department of Transportation be inclined to invest money in building a unique NextGen aviation PNT infrastructure, which includes, according to some industry experts, installation of at least 50 more DMEs and the upgrade of many others, along with the re-siting of many VORs? And are corporate operators and U.S. airlines with overseas operations ready to invest in the DME upgrades that some feel would be necessary? Surprisingly, the FAA report does not mention costs, which appears to be a serious omission.
This is where the FAA appears to be looking at the problem through the wrong end of the telescope. We have all probably seen the pie diagrams that show the relative sizes of the GPS user community. Aviation owns a pretty slim slice of that pie. By far the largest segment is in vehicles and other surface transportation modes, including commercial shipping, followed by cellphones. And in most of the world outside the U.S., including Europe, the local aviation slice is even thinner. Consequently, major investment in a unique PNT solution for one small segment of a region's total GPS community would be hard for governments to justify at the best of times.
The conclusion seems to be that any GPS/GNSS backup will inevitably have to be multi-modal, unjammable, provide GPS-like timing, have signals extending from the ground up to all altitudes, be unaffected by line-of-sight restrictions and, preferably, have reasonably long range to keep down the number of transmitting stations required.
In the current absence of any other demonstrable technology, eLoran meets all those requirements. Unfortunately, many believe that Loran dropped out of sight in the late 1900s when, not surprisingly, it was superseded by GPS, just as NDBs were superseded by VORs, which are themselves now gradually fading away. The big difference is that Loran engineers continued to develop the system, overcoming the aircraft precipitation static problem and, more important, moving from the previous regional "chain" configuration to a GPS-like "all in view" deployment where eight to 10 strategically located transmitters could cover the entire U.S. at RNP 0.3, which in turn can be improved upon by Waas-like differential corrections.
The only thing that eLoran lacks is a vertical component, so it is limited to non-precision approaches. But as a backup in a GPS outage, RNP 0.3 would be adequate, And, currently, there are no eLoran airborne receivers. In fact, there may never be a "stand alone" eLoran airborne receiver with its own controls, since electronic integration in avionics has steadily moved away from black boxes dedicated to individual functions. Consider that a tiny chip smaller than a dime serves as a fully functional GPS receiver now integrated into millions of cellphones. Hook it up to the cellphone's battery, display and equally small antenna, and you're ready to go.
Could eLoran become the recognized GPS backup? It's possible, but the fact that its predecessor, the long-running Loran-C system, was cancelled by non-technical federal bureaucrats against the strong recommendations of technical specialists, including GPS leaders, could make it a politically tough sell. Foolish as it sounds, maybe the first move would be to find a substitute for the Loran part of its name.
Bob Pilley (not verified)
May 2, 2012 - 8:19pm
Yes, jamming is a real issue, I've experienced it myself years ago. Just recently, jamming was experienced in Asia and created problems for commercial air carriers. In today's world of terrorists and military adversaries there will always be 'hostiles' that will deny the use of GPS, one of mankind's greatest achievements. Hence there will be the need for a back-up or warning systems in life critical applications.
This situation has been know about for many years and should have been addressed years ago. But, anything that increased cost and delayed schedule was met with opposition. The key is whether another level of complicated specifications, procedures and equipages will further confuse and limit true progress that facilitates a seamless aviation CNS environment from gate to gate.
Personally, any back-up system should be at least as capable as GPS, albeit not as accurate as enhanced GPS, that is: geo-referenced 3-D position, 3-D velocity and precise time. Putting in 2-D back-up makes no sense at all.
Unfortunately, for everyone, this will not be a simple or cheap deployment, unless the FAA rides on the coattails of the mass communication and positioning markets.
Just some thoughts
Kraig Hayner (not verified)
August 27, 2012 - 9:48pm
I am biased towards LORAN. In 1970 we were dropping bombs in a very small CEP targets with F-105's and LORAN-D at the Tactical Air Warfare Center at Eglin AFB. (T-Stick II Program) eLORAN with DGPS and DLORAN corrections would be as accurate as LORAN-D. With monitoring stations adjusting for the velocity coefficient of the earth and going from Hyperbolic to Rho-Rho (DME-DME) and UTC synced pulse will greatly enhance the equations. Modern DSP chips and FFT will increase immunity and the "H" field (last improvement to Omega) will reduce P-Static interference. Dr. Lilly demostrated that years ago at Ohio University. I could go on, but this isn't your fathers interference prone LORAN-C. Reference to Jamming LORAN-C. It is extremely if not impossible to Jam a 1 Megawatt Pulse from a mobile antenna. Just the radiation efficiency at 100 khz from a short antenna would not radiate at all. Then giver the Square Law calculation, I doubt any one could detect it at 20 miles away. So the Point is it is a backup. I used it in my car all the time until they shut it off. Oh ya, 3D. We use Altimeters for RVSM right now. And lets remember the decent tables for airspeed and stop watches in the cockpit. Verticle profiles with altimeters and even radio altimeters are not that hard. Having maintained CAT III ILS's (ground) and being certified on B7X7 aircraft for Avionics, CAT 1 or a non-precision approach is not that hard. Besides, if you co-mingle the GPS information with the eLORAN the result gets better for eLoran until the GPS gets Jammed. It sure would be better than Doppler Nav, Omega or Celestial Navigation or less costly than a Ring Laser Gyro Inertial Platform.........A Little Humor.
John Manobianco (not verified)
January 23, 2013 - 3:45pm
Curious who makes the GPS chip and antenna shown in the figure. Thanks.
John Manobianco


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SAP Trends Any Executive Should be Aware of
In my role as COO at NTT DATA Business Solutions, I have a comprehensive view of both sides—the customer perspective and the SAP perspective as a leading software vendor. As you might know, because they are stressing this strapline rather frequently, SAP's vision is to make the world "Run Simple." They are pushing technology into the business world to pursue this vision. Since the business environment is evolving more and more into an integrated network with sophisticated process landscapes from shop floor to the customer doorstep (or far beyond), it is quite challenging to catch the immediate use of trends that are driven by SAP. For this reason, I would like to introduce you to some of the key trends of 2017 that any executive should be aware of.
The technology itself is not that new, but its importance is skyrocketing. SAP's goal is to forcefully move customers from their on-premise architectures to the cloud. Indeed, cloud solutions gives access to flexibility and innovation. Flexibility and agility is key for IT – volatile markets challenge any sort of business and technology is in the majority of the cases the driver of that change. Cloud solutions are scalable, faster to implement and avoid huge upfront investments with monthly or quarterly subscriptions. Customers benefit from the latest software innovations by regular updates and functional extensions. A good example is SAP's new flagship product, SAP S/4HANA. New innovations in S/4HANA will be shipped each quarter to its cloud customers first before the new on-premise release comes to the market one time per year.
Digital Business Processes
Digital processes enable vertical as well as horizontal process integration. That's a fact. So, open platforms and standards has become a vital characteristic of all modern ERP solutions. SAP worked hard on this issue. With the SAP Cloud Platform, they are providing a platform that connects everyone and everything that is part of your value chain. Think of co-innovations as a result of deep collaboration with business partners to meet future customer requirements. Or digital services that complete your portfolio and allow your revenue to keep growing. Note that SAP, itself, is a co-innovator. In this year alone, they announced collaborations with Google, Apple, Microsoft and IBM.
How many days per week do you spend at your desk at the office? How much permanent information do you need to make decisions or to act proactively? Mobile access to information from anywhere at any time supports you in performing those tasks with excellence. SAP developed the Fiori UX, Lumira and Screen Personas to provide a user experience that is as desirable as the apps you are used on your mobile phone or tablet. One example of this is the direct capturing of orders in the field at the customer site. No more handwritten notes for internal sales employees to decipher and no more entering orders manually in the system. The customer benefits from near-time quotes and the avoidance of content failures due to media disruption.
Simulate finance scenarios, predict cases of failure of machines sold, and much more. The whole predictive topic is about to transform business models and processes. Ground for this source of information builds the analysis of tons of data. SAP HANA is an in-memory, technology-based database management system that has the capacity to deal with these amounts of data. Edge computing in cooperation with Hadoop is even possible. Some people say that data is the new oil. I believe that a smart approach to using data is of vital importance for the coming years.
According to the World Economic Forum, 10% of GDP will be stored through Blockchain by 2027. We are talking about the way the world will conduct transactions in the future. Blockchain is leveraging the distributed ledger technology that records data, e.g., files, information and transactions. Today, it is popularly known as the protocol for digital bitcoin currency. Over the next few years, experts expect that businesses will apply Blockchain to digitally-based international operations documentation, e.g., to validate customs documents, contracts, and so on. SAP offers BaaS (Blockchain as a Service), and focuses mainly on four key areas: supply chain, public sector, energy utilities, and financial services. The major benefit is that it offers a secure way to transfer valid data across sites and countries in near real-time. SAP says that a Blockchain-assisted money transfer takes only 20 seconds.
Transform Trends to Results
As an executive, you have to look at the challenges that will affect your business tomorrow. Your success is manifested in acting proactively. Take the trends listed above as inspiration and feel free to breathe life into them.


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GOP Gun Raffle in Giffords County 'Stupid,' 'Successful'
Republicans in Pima County, Ariz., where Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head eight months ago, had a brilliant idea for a fundraiser: Let's raffle off a gun! Who cares if it's the same brand as the gun used in the Giffords shooting?
Well, a lot of people. But proving once again why Arizona is #1, the scrappy Republican party managed to stop commenting on YouTube just long enough to make the fundraiser so successful the party had to add a second gun:
The Pima County Republican Party's controversial gun raffle fundraiser was such a success that they ended up raffling off another weapon.
The notoriety fueled such demand, said interim Chairman Mike Shaw, not only did the raffle for the Glock pistol sell out, but they subsequently raffled a deer rifle as well.
Republican City Councilman Steve Kozachik described the raffle as "incredibly stupid." Oh yeah, "Steve"? Is the second amendment "incredibly stupid"? GOP executive committee member Mike Ebert said the raffle did "exactly" what it was intended: "Anytime you want to challenge First and Second Amendment rights, it's going to get conservatives off their butts."
[AP/Arizona Daily Star; picture of Arizonan Jeff Miller via AP]


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I have covered a few things related to the Vatican, mostly because they seem to have prophetic significance to me. We saw the Ukrainian children release doves that were attacked by a sea gull and then killed by a raven… You see what is happening there now.
We looked at tomorrow's global broadcast in 3D by the current Pope for some purpose, later revealed to be the canonization (declaring sainthood) of two deceased Popes. The actual result remains to be seen, but there is an interesting related development…
John Paul II crucifix crushes man in northern Italy
A 21-year old man has died after being crushed by a crucifix erected in honour of Pope John Paul II in northern Italy.
Marco Gusmini was killed instantly and one other man taken to hospital, Italian media reported.
Part of the 30m-high (100ft) sculpture collapsed at a ceremony ahead of the Pope's canonisation. John Paul II and his predecessor, Pope John XXIII, are due to be declared saints on Sunday.
The crucifix commemorates the Pope's visit to the area in 1998.
The installation, near the town of Cevo, was designed as a large curved cross with a statue of Jesus Christ, weighing 600kg (1,320lb), fixed to the top.
A group of children was reported to be in attendance at the time.
The cross was designed by sculptor Enrico Job and was created for John Paul II's visit to nearby Brescia.
The two popes will be declared saints at the Vatican on Sunday.
It is not the first death caused by a falling crucifix in Italy.
In 2004, the Associated Press reported that a 72-year old woman had been crushed to death by a 7ft-tall metal crucifix in the town of Sant'Onofrio in the south of the country.


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Early Symptoms of Dehydration
Symptoms and signs of dehydration can be minor, such as increased thirst, or severe and life-threatening, depending on the extent of the dehydration.
The early symptoms of dehydration are
- thirst, and
- reduced urine output and darkening of the urine.
As dehydration progresses, other symptoms develop, including
- dry mouth,
- lightheadedness,
- muscle cramps, and
- palpitations.


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Oregon State won't overlook Eastern Washington
Oregon State learned its lesson two seasons ago.
That's when Sacramento State came to Reser Stadium for the opener and shocked the Beavers with a 29-28 overtime victory. With that inauspicious start, Oregon State finished 3-9 and out of the playoffs.
The Beavers rebounded dramatically last season, going 9-4 and earning an Alamo Bowl appearance against Texas. It was the biggest turnaround in school history.
''You can't take anything for granted, and we're playing Eastern Washington, a team that has been very good on a national level. I think it's about how your team approaches every game,'' Oregon State coach Mike Riley said.
Oregon State is ranked at No. 25 going into this season.
Eastern Washington is certainly better positioned for the upset than Sacramento State was two years ago. The Eagles are ranked No. 4 in the preseason FCS poll and third nationally in the coaches' poll. The Eagles finished 11-3 overall last season and were the Big Sky Conference co-champions. They played in the FCS playoffs, losing to Sam Houston, 45-42, in the semifinals.
This is the third straight season the Eagles have faced a Pac-12 opponent. They lost to Washington State last season and Washington in 2011. Eastern Washington hasn't defeated a Pac-12 team in nine tries.
''For us to go to a Pac-12 stadium is an opportunity. I love the idea of a challenging schedule. Even though we have come up short the past two years, I would not trade getting the chances to compete against WSU or the University of Washington,'' Eagles coach Beau Baldwin said.
Here are five things to look for when Eastern Washington visits Oregon State:
MANNION's THE MAN: After a drawn-out fall camp competition, Riley named Sean Mannion his starter. Mannion and senior Cody Vaz went back and forth last season. Mannion threw for 2,446 yards and 15 touchdowns in 10 games. Vaz threw for 1,480 yards and 11 touchdowns in seven games. Riley said the Beavers are lucky to have two capable quarterbacks, but there was no intention of using a rotation this season. ''Sean's the starter and we'll go into the game like that,'' he said.
ADAMS ADVANCES: Quarterback Vernon Adams started nine games last season for the Eagles and won FCS Freshman of the Year honors. He threw for 1,961 yards, 20 touchdowns and eight interceptions. ''He has stepped up as a leader. I have watched him inspire people even when the situation doesn't go great. That is the definition of a leader. He can bring people up, bring people going forward and keep their heads up when things are not going well,'' Baldwin said.
COOKS TAKES OVER: Last season Markus Wheaton and Brandin Cooks made up one of the most dynamic receiving tandems in the Pac-12. Wheaton caught 11 touchdown passes and averaged 95.7 yards receiving a game, while Cooks caught five TDs and averaged 88.5 yards a game. Wheaton moved on to the NFL and now Cooks is a junior ready to take the lead role. Richard Mullaney and Obum Gwacham will also contribute.
KUPP'S DEBUT: Eastern Washington is expected to start redshirt freshman Cooper Kupp at wide receiver. Kupp is something of a football legacy: His grandfather, Jake Kupp, played at Washington and had an 11-year career in the NFL, making the Pro Bowl as a guard for the New Orleans Saints. His dad, Craig Kupp, was a quarterback who was with both the Arizona Cardinals and the Dallas Cowboys in 1991.
WOODS `N' WARD: Storm Woods and Terron Ward have both vowed to run for 1,000 yards this season. If they both get there, it would be the first time a pair of Oregon State running backs reach the milestone in the same season. Last year, Woods had 192 carries for 940 yards and 13 touchdowns. Ward, whose older brother is Cleveland Browns safety T.J. Ward, finished with 415 yards rushing and six TDs.


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1. Plastic bags -- don't leave home without one. There's no excuse for not cleaning up after your pet.
2. Let working dogs work. Don't ask the handler of a service or guide dog to keep the animal out of your home or office. Do always ask the handler before petting or feeding the dog.
3. Have your dog sit before you introduce him. A jumping pooch may be well-meaning, but he's also annoying and might even seem scary to children or those who are timid around animals.
4. If your home or car is covered in pet hair, try to clean before anyone visits or travels with you; at the very least, warn prospective riders or guests -- they may have allergies.
More From Good Housekeeping
5. Don't ask if you can bring Fido to someone's home. If he's welcome, your host will let you know.


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How can i become a mod
The IRC chans are so inactive, you have to do recruitment drives now?
But if one day we meet together while I'm drunk, I promise you to draw a big group sex picture including a lot of forumites.
I have to say there are periods when it is totally inactive but usuall Asor or SpeedD is there to save the quietness....I'm going on now to see if Asor or SpeedD are on, Asor always has a conversation to be had and SpeedD has a funny side to him (suprising i know )EDIT: almost forgot to mention Raiden the best hoster ever ^_^EDIT2: refic is also ftw!!
If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always gotten.
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