Wednesday, March 18, 2020

Mass Hysteria




Below is the full video. Take special note how Noam Chomsky, an influential Linguistics Professor at MIT, makes use of logical rhetorical devices in his argument.
https://youtu.be/hZnuc-Fv_Tc

Right now the internet is tightening up. Really, we weren't supposed to have it to begin with. It basically fell off the back of a government truck. It's cold war technology. It was made to be invincible; like the mythical Hydra, cut off a head here and two more grow back. Remove a video and many more spring up. Track something through their IP address, set up a VPN. Start putting together your own personal archive before it's all sent down the memory hole.

Throughout history humanities most fundamental fight has been for access to information. Priests translating bibles from Latin. Nathaniel Rothschild falsely reporting that Napoleon had bested Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo. And the lies told during the first case for National Security to be invoked:


America has not had a good president since Jimmy Carter.


And the last read president we had was JFK.




He begins his 'Pax-Americana' art at about 2:27 - this is powerful - shortly before his death JFK passed 3 Executive Orders:

1) to pull the Military Advisors out of Vietnam (who were there to help the French in controlling their colony)
2) Audit the Federal Reserve (which is as Federal as Federal Express - actually made up of 138 banks headed by BIS)
3) Shatter the CIA into 1,000 pieces and scatter them about the 4 winds (ultimately making them responsible to the Joint Chiefs, after refusing Air Support during the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion)

For assuming he was the actual President; beholden to the People, rather than perverse Special Interests, for such hubris, he was shot dead in the street like a rabid dog...


Anyways, I digress, back to Mass Hysteria...

https://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/stories/5-strange-cases-mass-hysteria

Right now, there is a culling of information on the internet as well as a potential population culling of the planet. But maybe they have our best interests at heart. The handful of billionaires that own more wealth than practically everyone. The Ruling Class, our Self-Appointed Betters who are currently hiding on some remote island, in a luxurious fall-out shelter, with their own personal physician...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/11/disease-dodging-worried-wealthy-jet-off-to-disaster-bunkers

There has never been a point in history where I've agreed more with the 1960's political slogan, 'Eat the Rich'...

Anyways, I digest...

Let me be clear, you have every right to challenge me on any of this. Just know, it's not enough to say that's not true because the government told me so.

For DISCUSSION:

Where did the COVID-19 virus come from?

What will tge future look like?


"Governments love crises because when the people are fearful they are more willing to give up freedoms for promises that the government will take care of them. After 9/11, for example, Americans accepted the near-total destruction of their civil liberties in the PATRIOT Act’s hollow promises of security.

It is ironic to see the same Democrats who tried to impeach President Trump last month for abuse of power demanding that the Administration grab more power and authority in the name of fighting a virus that thus far has killed less than 100 Americans.

Declaring a pandemic emergency on Friday, President Trump now claims the power to quarantine individuals suspected of being infected by the virus and, as Politico writes, “stop and seize any plane, train or automobile to stymie the spread of contagious disease.” He can even call out the military to cordon off a US city or state.

State and local authoritarians love panic as well. The mayor of Champaign, Illinois, signed an executive order declaring the power to ban the sale of guns and alcohol and cut off gas, water, or electricity to any citizen. The governor of Ohio just essentially closed his entire state.

The chief fearmonger of the Trump Administration is without a doubt Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health. Fauci is all over the media, serving up outright falsehoods to stir up even more panic. He testified to Congress that the death rate for the coronavirus is ten times that of the seasonal flu, a claim without any scientific basis.

On Face the Nation, Fauci did his best to further damage an already tanking economy by stating, “Right now, personally, myself, I wouldn’t go to a restaurant.” He has pushed for closing the entire country down for 14 days.

Over what? A virus that has thus far killed just over 5,000 worldwide and less than 100 in the United States? By contrast, tuberculosis, an old disease not much discussed these days, killed nearly 1.6 million people in 2017. Where’s the panic over this?

If anything, what people like Fauci and the other fearmongers are demanding will likely make the disease worse. The martial law they dream about will leave people hunkered down inside their homes instead of going outdoors or to the beach where the sunshine and fresh air would help boost immunity. The panic produced by these fearmongers is likely helping spread the disease, as massive crowds rush into Walmart and Costco for that last roll of toilet paper.

The madness over the coronavirus is not limited to politicians and the medical community. The head of the neoconservative Atlantic Council wrote an editorial this week urging NATO to pass an Article 5 declaration of war against the COVID-19 virus! Are they going to send in tanks and drones to wipe out these microscopic enemies?

People should ask themselves whether this coronavirus “pandemic” could be a big hoax, with the actual danger of the disease massively exaggerated by those who seek to profit – financially or politically – from the ensuing panic.

That is not to say the disease is harmless. Without question people will die from coronavirus. Those in vulnerable categories should take precautions to limit their risk of exposure. But we have seen this movie before. Government over-hypes a threat as an excuse to grab more of our freedoms. When the “threat” is over, however, they never give us our freedoms back."

By Ron Paul

We are truly living in Orwellian times



The only thing that is going to get us through this, through this Quarantine, through this Corruption, through this BULLSHIT

Is art...


Stop-Motion Animation
Comic Animation


Traditional Animation



Computer Animation


Try downloading: Inshot (free app with some pretty impressive capabilities)

Big Ideas are often best told this way...

Assignment: take something we've talked about or anything you're thinking about right now and make an animation about it; whether it be classical, claymation, or stop-motion...

In short; do something, blame no one.

Further reading:







Thursday, March 12, 2020

Language as Music

https://global-lingo.com/the-1000-words-challenge-how-to-learn-foreign-words/

Good Language is a kind of music...


And put to drums...



So what does English sound like to non-native speakers?





You can learn a lot from English songs... well maybe not all songs...



Some Good musicians/bands for learning English:

- Beatles
- Bob Dylan
-Johnny Cash
- Tom Waits
- Arcade Fire
Talking Heads
- Modest Mouse
- Vampire Weekend
- David Bowie
- Blues



Why are they good? Well, they’ve all got at least one of the following qualities:
  1. Repetitive – As Jason said, the more you repeat, the more you remember.
  2. Easy to understand – If you can hear the lyrics (song words) easily, you’ll pick them up quicker and learn quicker.
  3. Great storytelling – So much of speaking a language is about being able to tell a story. I’ve chosen some of these bands for their great storytelling.
  4. A link to culture and humour – Music, culture and humour (sense of comedy) are closely connected to language.
  5. Good use of idiomatic language – Idiomatic language (phrases, phrasal verbs, idioms, proverbs, etc.) are a key part of learning a language.
  6. Powerful “earworms” – This is a new word in English, borrowe from the Germans. It means that the song will stay in your head for a long time. If it stays in your head, you’re repeating it and learning faster!

And The Saddest Song ever Sung



VOCAL EXERCISES



BEAT POETS

HOMEMADE INSTRUMENTS

Tuesday, March 10, 2020

The Genius of Looney Tunes

Nowadays, most cartoons look something like this...





Which is a far cry from the Golden Age of animation where short cartoons, shown before movies, were hand drawn and hand painted by an army of animators, background illustrators, musical composers, voice artists, and gagmen writers. Planning and execution of these cartoons were meticulous and a six or seven minute cartoon required thousands of drawing to complete (typically when the action was slow 6 drawings per second was needed, and when fast 12 drawings per second)


The original Looney Tunes, created by Warner Brothers Animation Studio, numbered 1,002 shorts and ran from 1930 to 1969. Then came the budget cutbacks. The Studio created dozens of memorable characters including 

Bugs Bunny,

 Tweety

Tasmanian Devil

Daffy Duck,

Porky Pig

Marvin the Martian,

 Elmer Fudd,


 Pepe Le Pew, 

Sylvester, 

Speedy Gonzales,

 Foghorn Leghorn, 


Yosemite Sam,

Bugsy


Michigan J. Frog

Additional Characters: Bosko, Granny, Penelope Pussycat, Wile E. Coyote, Slowpoke Rodriguez, Miss Prissy, Barnyard Dawg, NAsty Canasta, Witch Hazel, Hector the Bulldog, Petunia Pig, Road Runner, Dr Henry Jekyll, Melissa Duck, Charlie Dog, Pete Puma, Sylvester Jr, Beans, Claude Cat, Shropshire Slasher, Cecil Turtle, Big Bad Wolf, Paul Bunyan, Beaky Buzzard, Henery Hawk, Nero, Blacque Jacque Shellacque, Little Red Riding Hood, Clyde Bunny, Hatta Mari, Ralph Phillips, Giovanni Jones, Cool Cat, Adolf Hitler, Neon Noodle, Hugo the Abominable Snowman, Buddy, Gabby Goat, Colonel Shuffle
----------------------------------------------

Wile E. Coyote would serve as a good subject for an analytical essay, school of philosophy or even Doctoral Thesis...



EPISODE TRANSCRIPTS FOUND HERE:


The inspiration for Bugs Bunny was drawn from Groucho Marx among others, and his accent is a mix of Brooklyn and the Bronx neighborhoods in New York. 

The person who voiced Bugs and Daffy, as well as most of the Looney Tunes characters, was Mel Blanc; the Man of a Thousand Voices...


He was even able to do characters impersonating his other characters...

 

Mel Blanc was a master at accent and regional dialects...






FOR FURTHER DISCUSSION: Warner Brothers banned 11 cartoons from distribution after 1969 - they are called the Censored 11...



Some of these cartoons also had adult humor snuck into them... cheeky devils...




All these characters are inspired by actual people....A talk about doing impressions...

Here's a (condensed) list found on my performance resume:

Dialects: Texan, Southern, Mid-Western, Bostonian, Californian, Canadian, Irish, Scottish, 
British (Cockney, RP, Upper Class), Australian, New Zealand, Indian, German, French, 
Russian, and others.

Impressions: Trump, Bernie Sanders, George W. Bush, Clinton, Reagan, Nixon, Walken, Pacino, Nicholson, Daniel Day-Lewis, Rodney Dangerfield, Clint Eastwood, Sean Connery, Bob Dylan, Winston Churchill, WC Fields, and others.

And here's a clip demonstrating dueling impressions:
TIP: Change your facial expression and body language.
Give it a try.

Friday, March 6, 2020

Great Debates for ESL Advanced Speaking Class

 WARM UP:






A little background... So I ran for Mayor of my hometown, Redondo Beach, back in 2013...


There were also some serious moments...





Nevertheless I lost, yet won 1,275 votes, 10.3% of the electorate. My friend Quinones, who helped out on the campaign remarked, "You know they've done tests and typically anyone who's running gets 10% of the electorate, I mean even if Satan is running, he'd get 10%
I shot back, "Yeah, but not 10.3%!"


I can't necessarily say that I wasn't a sore loser...



But that's not what we're talking about today... we're talking about THE ART OF DEBATE

First off, let's make it clear what we're not doing....



Or even this...



Unfortunately this is what now often passes for debate.... or this....






However, a long time ago the Romans had it figured out... here's from Reddit-

The Catiline Orations, by Marcus Tullius Cicero, are perhaps one of the earliest examples of great rhetoric being used in politics. It's not a debate as such, because it's mostly Cicero outlining his case that Catilina was planning to overthrow the Roman Republic. And the points he made were debated in the senate.
Topically, Catilina was seen as a populist, representing the poor and disenfranchised Romans, while Cicero was very much a man of the establishment.
Yet back then they had rules for debate, a barrier one shall not cross, they are called LOGICAL FALLACIES-















An impressive analysis of typical logical fallacies found in the Trump era can be found here-

And in those aforementioned debates-




This website goes into more detail:
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/

Since then debates have evolved or perhaps devolved...

Regardless, here are some notable exceptions in the ART OF ARGUMENT-

POLITICAL DEBATES

LINCOLN DOUGLAS DEBATE - 1858

The Abraham Lincoln - Stephen Douglas debates are definitely worth looking up. Really set a clear format for public political debates we still use today. Also known for bringing a little known lawyer from Illinois to national attention. Among the topics debated was the issue of slavery.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln-Douglas_debates

KENNEDY vs. NIXON DEBATE - 1960


This was the first televised debate. Oddly enough, people listening on radio thought Nixon won the debate, while people watching on television thought Kennedy won the debate. Kennedy went on to be gunned down in the street like a rabid dog, compliments of the CIA.



But I digress... It's not always politicians that go head to head. There have also been some remarkably civil and thought-provoking debates by notable writers and thinkers... 


Buckley, obviously defeated and on the ropes, finally lost it in another debate with Chomsky....



Flash forward- I don't know that things have gotten any more civil but it certainly seems they've gotten more pointed and determined... take the recent MUNK POLITICAL CORRECTNESS DEBATE....


For those pressed for time, here are the highlights....




So how does Peterson do it?



Know full well that people's minds are typically not changed in any given moment... rather, ideas are like a virus...


Get to know forms of debate dating back to the Romans...































Then again, what have the Romans ever done for us....


Today emotion often wins where the Roman's would have argued that logic ought to prevail...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmfVs3WaE9Y

This was later proven to be a hoax perpetrated by the daughter of a Kuwaiti diplomat as a pretext to invade Iraq back in 1991... Sadly, it doesn't end there....


Crocodile tears. As Voltaire said, "if you can get the people to believe absurdities, they will commit atrocities."

On the other hand, I have read that a good argument is typically 20% to 30% emotion, 60% to 70% logic, and 10% credibility. I think that holds up.

One other thing, these are always smart things to throw into a debate:

Shocking Statistic
Ask a question of the audience
Tell a personal story, annecdote
use Similies and Metaphors
Use Humor
Give a shit

Let's practice lateral thinking and being devil's advocate-
For example what is your opinion on GMO foods or population control?

Great. Now today's topic is Gun Control or the Prohibiting of Smoking in Public... Decision time....

Lastly, here are some examples from my past life, in chronological order...




Then onto District 3 City Council debates (Canidate's Forum) circa 2015...


And then there was 2017. coming in 3rd in a 5 way race... funny how (despite advice from friends) the less serious I got, the better I did... something about being true to yourself, I guess....


FULL VERSION  OF 2nd DEBATE

SNIPPET



FOOTNOTE: Here's a DOCUMENTARY about my first run for office (which initially was the purpose for doing so)...



Thanks

Didn't mean for that to be a lesson in egotism

Was instead just trying to show that if I can do it 

So can you!

Afterall...

I ain't that special

well...

maybe a little retarded...

I'm not saying nothing... I'm just saying I know a tad about debates...

I'll be running in the next election in 2021...

You've been warned...