[ExI] new entry from symphony of science

[spike]

From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Damien
Broderick
Subject: Re: [ExI] new entry from symphony of science

On 11/24/2010 8:32 PM, Mike Dougherty wrote:

>> And I wish this "effect" had never been invented.  It is like nails on 
>> chalkboard...

>Yeah, it's hideous. And in this case tacky, sort of acoustic Jesus in
pastel on black velvet. Sorry, Spike.  Damien Broderick

Oh these comments are far too pessimistic my friends.  Do let me offer
another perspective.  Think of popular musical genre(s?).  We of my age, now
in our late youth, enjoyed from our childhoods rock and roll, later called
rock.  The subject matter of that body of music is generally about romance:
how guys feel about their sweethearts mostly.  Some other stuff thrown in,
drugs for instance, but romance in some form is over half of it.  I like
love.  Romance is good.

We had disco, which is about dancing mostly.  Dancing is a way of having
fun.  Disco isn't very deep, because it is about dancing.

Country Western music is partly about bad luck, but still mostly romance.

Somehow we managed to get hip hop and rap.  I am not sure what it is about,
for I confess I don't really understand the lyrics.  But I have heard there
are a number of rap and hip hop stars with the term ice, such as Ice-T,
Vanilla Ice, Ice Cube, and perhaps several others you hop hipsters know way
better than I do.  The term ice is sometimes used as a substitute for
murder.  "Ice-em" means to slay the prole.   So we have a quasi-musical
genre which has as its subject... murder.  Do let us hope they refer to the
alternative definition, diamonds.  I can't tell from what few words I
understand, from a genre that sounds to me like men arguing in a foreign
language.

There have been attempts to express scientific notions in rap, but it didn't
work for me.  Sounded too much like those guys who write rhythmic poetry
about murder (or possibly jewelry?)

So now in music we have romance, drugs, dancing, bad luck, murder, perhaps
jewelry.  I like love, the rest of it they can have.  Please.

So how can we express really meaningful commentary in music?  Can we write
music about science?  Using people who have actual brains, talking about
something we care about?  How?  I am open to suggestion, but I suspect any
way we do it, we end up with something that sounds a lot like symphony of
science.

spike