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We often host Mr.Malinowski’s work here on the Friday Musical Interlude. The musical animation he produces has been his life’s work and has brought it to the next level as he brings his digital animations to live performances. Note in this video that he is using an analog device to what I assume to be keeping the video synchronized with the performances.
“The subtleties and intricate patterns at the core of DNA of western classical music—which have enchanted and fascinated people for centuries—still challenge us today: how do we find our way into a musical language developed long ago and containing considerable structural complexities?
Musician and inventor Stephen Malinowski uses a simple visual approach to stimulate our ability to build expectations and thereby enhance our engagement with the music.
In this TEDx performance, Malinowski uses a newly-developed version of his Music Animation Machine software which allows him to synchronize his graphical score in a live performance. Violinist Etienne Abelin who collaborated on the development of this technology and pianist Dorothy Yeung play music of Johann Sebastian Bach.“
Steven Harper really enjoys floating trial balloons through his back benches. Another preemptive volley from the western conservative black hole of politics has made it the media. The poll, of course, has been skewed by the screwball forced birth advocating religious right in Canada so ignore the results. However, one comment on the poll caught my attention and thus is reproduced here.
The Supreme Court of Canada ruling on the Morgentaler appeal in 1988 confirmed as Chief Justice Brian Dickson wrote:
“Forcing a woman, by threat of criminal sanction, to carry a fetus to term unless she meets certain criteria unrelated to her own priorities and aspirations, is a profound interference with a woman’s body and thus a violation of her security of the person.”
This confirmed a woman’s Charter right to choose.
It has served us well over the last 25 years and the notion of creating a new law is only to serve the interests of those who will *never* accept a woman’s right over her own body.
My thoughts exactly. You can frack-off forever my forced birth advocating friends, women are treated as people here in Canada, get used to it.
The military, like any defined group in society, has a distinct set of extrinsic and intrinsic operational guidelines. Misogyny is still rather prevalent in the system as an article from wired.com points out:
“The Pentagon has talked a lot about putting a stop to sexual abuse and harassment in the military, including abuse carried out by general officers. Yet a new report from the investigative arm of Congress finds it’s mostly that — talk. It catalogs how the military still hasn’t fixed a host of systemic obstacles that contribute to sexual assault and make it less likely for survivors to get help.”
The rest of the article details the glacial progress toward something resembling a reasonable policy regarding institutional sexual abuse in the military. Note that this should be a “slam-dunk”, but isn’t. Consider why this is. Then consider why Feminism is still necessary in society today and for the foreseeable future.
It is nice when the anti-woman, fetus-fetish brigade starts getting worked up. The thin veil of “protecting life” is torn away leaving only the desperate misogyny that is so typical of the anti-choice zealots. This from the Feel that pro-life love! Tumblr.
damnsoprochoice:
jojobear11:
J: Lol, people who think bodily autonomy is more important than the right to life.
DPC: Lol, people who think it’s okay to use someone’s body against their will and think that anyone will benefit from forced pregnancies and birth. Lol, people who think think that an embryo is more important than a grown person. Lol, people who think being born is a right.
DPC: I can lol all day.
J: Forced pregnancies and birth? Hahaha don’t get pregnant then asshole. No one said the unborn were more important, but keep putting words in someone’s mouth to make yourself look less like the stupid selfish cunt that you are. Saying being born isn’t a right doesn’t make any sense. You’re just making up stupid shit now.
DPC: Oh shit happens, peopel get pregnant. Abortion is a legitimate way of dealing with it.
DPC: And oooh, name calling. Fiesty.
DPC: But I’m not putting words in your mouth, you are making the embryo more important than the born person because you don’t give a fuck about how hard and debilitating a pregnancy can be for people, and you certainly think people should suffer through just so that itty bitty baby can be born and solve nothing. Just so that you in 20 years can go “I don’t have to provide for you, go fucking work or something you lazy ass”.
DPC: Being born isn’t a right, it’s a privilege. Now go kiss your mother for suffering for you.
DPC: Not just “name-calling”, but an insult that implies that being a woman and not self-sacrificing is a horrible thing. Unsurprising considering who it’s coming from.
Internet wisdom is notoriously hard to find. When you find it, share it.
Ah yes, the perennially wrong anti-choice, forced birth lobby loses again, and again and again. You never get to ignore the bodily autonomy of women and this comment from Pharyngula details precisely why.
“I’ll tell you why I hate those hypothetical near-birth abortion scenarios. It’s not that they’re stupid, or that they never happen, or even that there’s a real world problem of them encouraging the antichoicers to think of this nonsense as a real thing. All of which are true, too, and seriously annoying. But [that’s] not why I get the white-hot HATE.
The hate is because the hypothesizer is just so damned keen to find some way, some very very special exceptional circumstance, in which it’s OK to remove my bodily autonomy. It’s very much like asking me when is rape OK.
Never? Really never? Ok, supposing she were the last fertile woman on earth… Or maybe there was a ticking time-bomb nuke and raping this woman would totally prevent it because a secret code has been tattooed on the inside of her vagina by some crazy mad supervillain in invisible ink and only your special semen can reveal the antinuke codes…
Awww c’mon, pretty please, surely there must be ONE situation in which a woman can be reduced to a piece of livestock?
NO. FUCK OFF. IT IS NEVER OK.
Why are you being so meeeeean to me for just asking?
Why are you so damned insistent on finding that one special circumstance when it’s morally OK for you to do something horrific to me? Why is it so unacceptable to you that I have bodily autonomy in all circumstances? NO, there isn’t a circumstance that makes you the rightful owner and master and torturer of me.
Just stop it right now.
Oh and another bit from the same thread.
“On the off-chance that there are any “I’m pro-choice, BUT I feel the need to qualify this position so that I can cast judgment on women who make choices I don’t approve of”, I’d like to say the following:
Dear “I’m pro-choice, BUT I feel the need to qualify this position so that I can cast judgment on women who make choices I don’t approve of”:
Fuck off.
Wait, I should probably make it a little more clear about what kinds of people I’m talking about, so that they know that this message is for them.
You might be a “I’m pro-choice, BUT I feel the need to qualify this position so that I can cast judgment on women who make choices I don’t approve of” person IF:
1. You think that, in some cases, women need to “take responsibility” for their actions. By this, you mean that women choose to have sex, and therefore they cannot choose NOT to be pregnant as a result of that sex. You think, or at least your attitude displays, that women who choose to have sex, women who choose to have a lot of sex, women who don’t always have safe sex, women who have sex in circumstances that you consider “iffy”, are “sluts”, and therefore need to be “taught” something so that they can mend their slutty, wicked ways.
2. You think that some women make the “right” choice for them, but that other women make the “selfish” choice. By this, you mean that you feel you are qualified to judge the appropriateness of someone else’s decision about a potentially life-changing situation, without actually being that person. A woman who chooses to have an abortion so that she can keep barely feeding her existing children – sad, but the “right” thing to do. A woman who is young, sexually promiscuous (for whatever “promiscuous” means to you), and seems more “care-free” than you think she should be – not sad, well-deserved, and the selfish bitch could use some “settling down”.
3. You think that some women might carry a pregnancy almost to term and then randomly decide to have an abortion. By this, you mean that a woman who has endured eight months, three weeks, six days and twenty-three hours of pregnancy has the potential to be flighty and impulsive enough to demand that someone kill her fetus.
Are we all clear on who I’m talking about now? Yes? Good.
I say again, fuck off.
My cousin nearly died last night. She went into eclampsia, in the last month of her pregnancy. She’s nineteen. She’s not married. She takes drugs. She’s unemployed. She’s had multiple sexual partners in her life.
In short, she is exactly the kind of person that people talk about (but never actually KNOW) when they say, “I’m pro-choice, BUT”.
You think she’s sexually promiscuous. Let me tell you that it’s hard to develop a healthy sexual attitude when your 20-year-old “boyfriend” coerced you into having sex when you were fourteen.
You think she’s irresponsible. Yeah, not having a firm support structure will do that to you. Not being allowed to grieve the death of your mother will do that to you. Being told of your mother’s sudden death due to side-effects of medication and then being told, “Okay, now go do your homework” will do that to you. Having your father emotionally abuse you and practically abandon you will do that to you. Being passed around from extended relative to extended relative, not having a stable home for more than a couple of years will do that to you. Being the youngest child in a family where all of your siblings are living far away, leaving you alone in a small, impossible-to-leave-town will do that to you. Living in a town that is mostly white, while you’re an adopted woman of color, will do that to you (along with all the judgments that go along with the “hypersexuality” of women of color). Having your own mother, before she passed, speak of adopting black children as if they were litters of puppies, will do that do you.
You might even try to seek comfort in bad places. You might accept the friendship of bad people, just so you won’t be alone. You might try to make some of your pain go away by taking drugs.
You might do that.
But you know what? “Sluts” die from pregnancy, too. Drug addicts die from pregnancy, too. Pregnancy is a medical condition. It doesn’t care what your circumstances are. It sure as hell doesn’t mete out “justice” or “punishment” for your actions and decisions. It kills “good” women as well as “bad” women.
But my cousin never had a choice. Not a real choice. She had no money for an abortion. She had no family that would help her if she did. It was all arranged – they would find an adoptive couple, and she would give the baby up. There was no discussion. My cousin didn’t have a say – after all, she brought this on herself, didn’t she? She can’t make choices about what happens to her own body when she depends on other people, can she?
No real choice for her, and she very nearly paid with her life. She started having seizures. The doctors did an emergency C-section (the baby is small, but should be fine) and continued surgery to try to save my cousin’s life. We don’t know yet if she will have brain damage as a result of those seizures.
So, to all of you “I’m pro-choice, BUT”:
Fuck off.
Who’s the one placing a value judgment on human life, here? Is it me (unequivocally pro-choice, abortion on demand)? Or is it you (I’m pro-choice, BUT)?”
And of course, the arguments that forced birth advocates refuse to answer and repeat what about the baaaaabY! Again.
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A bit of a different tack today on the Sunday Disservice, but I think you’ll like what you see. One of the selling points of religious belief is the “spiritual-transcendental” angle; being a part of something that is bigger than you and yet speaks to you in a very special way in your heart. The deluded would like you to believe that they have cornered the market on this experience. As usual, the reality-challenged have it wrong.
Benjamin Zander, explores the idea that classical music has this very same quality, to bring us the big picture experience that is in tune with our hearts, but instead of using magic and the Oooga-booga, he uses Chopin.
The TED talk that Zander hosts has nothing to do with the anti-religious preamble I’ve raised, but I’m thinking that Chopin and other classical music, is a great short cut for experiencing an important part of spiritual life without all the frippery associated with dedicated religious belief.
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
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