Four Weeks to Election Day …

Sometimes I think I ought to run for office
For mayor or senator, or even the local school board
Sometimes I think you’d be better off voting for me than anyone else
Especially if you want your faith in government restored!

Yes, it’s that time again! Time to consider whether you’re going to vote for an establishment candidate, an alternative candidate, or — if you’re really bold — the Anti-Candidate!

You may want to “throw the bums out,” but be careful you don’t vote a bunch of new bums in. At least this bum is honest about being a bum! And if you don’t believe me, take a listen to “I Think I’ll Run for Congress”.

Politics, that’s the life for me
It fits my arrogant, megalo-maniacal, personality
I’ll get my name in the papers and my face on your T.V.
And take good care of myself, my friends and my family — yes, that’s the life for me

I am the Anti-Candidate, and I wrote, edited, approved, and posted this message.

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Teenage Wasteland: Media Inaccuracy, or Something Else?

When is a 19-year-old not an adult? When it serves someone else’s purpose to label him a “teenager.”

Adults Only
(“Adults Only,” by Pam Morris, on Flickr under Creative Commons.)

According to CNN,

Before authorities arrested him at O’Hare International Airport and accused him of attempting to provide aid to ISIS, a teen from the Chicago suburbs left behind a letter for his parents.

Mohammed Hamzah Khan, 19, wrote that he was leaving the United States and on the way to join ISIS, according to a criminal complaint. He invited his family to join him in the three-page letter, which authorities found in the bedroom he shared with a sibling in Bolingbrook, Illinois. But he warned them not to tell anyone about his travel plans, the complaint said.

The headline — which seems disingenuous in the extreme, given the opening paragraphs — is, “Was arrested teen on his way to join ISIS?”

Throughout the CNN article, as well as on NBC and ABC and other outlets, the young man is referred to as a “teen.” Correct in the strict sense of the word, perhaps, but misleading: this was an adult, of legal age, despite being technically a teenager.

Someone casually reading the headline could make the honest mistake that this was a minor, rather than an adult responsible for his actions. To persist in calling him a “teen” is to imply that his choice to pursue affiliation with ISIS was some youthful folly, rather than a deliberate decision.

The correct news headline — the accurate news headline — would have been “Chicago Man Arrested on His Way to Join ISIS.”

I leave it to the reader to consider why journalists and editors might have made this choice.

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Does the Human Eye Prove that God Exists?

To answer the question right out of the gate, I’d say no, because no single phenomenon or example can “prove” that God exists.


(Someone is watching you ….)

The question comes from the headline of an article in The Telegraph — in the “film” section, no less — that discusses what a wondrous mechanism the human eye is, with its “astonishing inbuilt systems.”

Take, for example, a little trick called the vestibulo-ocular reflex (VOR). In short, it’s our own personal Steadicam — an inbuilt muscular response that stabilises everything we see, by making tiny imperceptible eye movements in the opposite direction to where our head is moving. Without VOR, any attempts at walking, running — even the minuscule head tremors you make while you read these words — would make our vision blurred, scattered and impossible to comprehend.

As one who finds very jittery camera work in movies (like District 9) and some video game action (like the rolling ball in Katamari Damacy) very disorienting — to the point of physical illness — I am very grateful for the VOR!

But that’s not all:

… researchers have discovered the retina is doing a huge amount of pre-processing itself – and that as light passes through the retina’s several dense layers of neurons, a lot of detail like colour, motion, orientation and brightness are determined.

When I took a laser safety course (many years ago), we were told that the retina was put together opposite the way an optical engineer would have designed it, because the rods and cones actually point backward, into the retina itself, instead of forward toward the lens. This newly-found pre-processing function may have something to do with that, though personally I wonder if turning the sensors around would make our eyes more susceptible to damage from very intense lights.

Things like that make the question of deliberate design vs. development by natural selection interesting. As the article puts it,

Even today, Christians and creationists believe that Charles Darwin himself was troubled by its existence — seizing upon an (oft-misquoted) aside in Origin of Species, where Darwin remarked that the whole idea of something so flawless “could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.”

The full Darwin quote, with the important next sentence, is:

To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree. Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real.

Thus something that seems absurd may still be possible, and even reasonable. The question is whether it matters. For instance, whether it matters to a believer that sufficiently different eyes can be understood by natural selection to lead to the human eye. Or whether it matters to an unbeliever that the believer attributes the eye’s complexity to the influence of a creative God.

The eye still exists, and some of us can praise God for it even though its existence is insufficient to prove that God exists.

And that’s okay. After all, faith is “the evidence of things not seen.”*

___
*Hebrews 11:1 (KJV)

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Reminder: Vote for the Pegasus Awards!

This is your public service announcement: It’s time to vote for the annual Pegasus Awards for Excellence in Filking — i.e., for excellence in science fiction and fantasy-related music. (Note that yours truly is not on the ballot.)

Pegasus Award Logo
(Pegasus Award Logo.)

So you can make an informed vote, the 2014 Pegasus Final Ballot includes audio snippets of each finalist in every category:

  • Best Filk Song
  • Best Classic (at least 10 years old) Filk Song
  • Best Performer
  • Best Writer/Composer
  • Best Adapted Song (2014 Rotating Category)
  • Best Song of Passage (2014 Rotating Category)

Just by virtue of reading this post, you should be eligible to vote, since anyone who has an interest in science fiction and/or fantasy music is considered part of the “filk community.” The award by-laws define “exhibiting interest” using such activities as filking at SF&F conventions, attending filk conventions or “house sings,” taking part in related on-line forums, and just “discussing filk and filk related issues with other filkers.” I’m willing to count this as a discussion if you are!

The last full day to vote is October 19th, so you have two weeks to get your votes in! The Pegasus Awards will be presented at the Ohio Valley Filk Fest, October 24-6, in Worthington, OH.

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The Musical Extravaganza That Was Dragon_Con

Dragon_Con 2014 was terrific! I’m sorry that it took me so long to put together this post about it. I’m also sorry that I’m not a better photographer with my phone … so I apologize that the pictures below are in general blurry and badly exposed.

This year’s Dragon_Con had a number of highlights — including the fact that a few people I didn’t know came to my solo concert! Overall, the convention turned out to be a musical tour de force. Mainstage groups like The Cruxshadows and Bella Morte get most of the attention, but thanks to the Dragon_Con Filk Track lesser-known groups like The Gekkos, The Ken Spivey Band, and Foot-Pound Force also got the chance to perform throughout the weekend.

Mikey Mason, the “comedy rock star” and “white trash geek,” had a number of shows:


(Mikey Mason, performing on the Hyatt Concourse.)

The Blibbering Humdingers also had several shows, in addition to putting on a standing-room-only medieval music workshop:


(The Blibbering Humdingers, and friends.)

One fantastic musical discovery of the convention was Pandora Celtica, who had been absent from Dragon_Con for a couple of years. I remembered catching snippets of their music before, but this time I was able to hear their marvelous harmonies several times.


(Pandora Celtica.)

In addition to their “Dragon_Con reunion,” the Brobdingnagian Bards — Andrew McKee and Marc Gunn — put on several solo concerts and workshops. Marc’s “Firefly Drinking Songs” concert overflowed the room, with dozens of people standing in the hallway to listen!


(The Brobdingnagian Bards. L-R, Andrew McKee and Marc Gunn.)

And Mikey Mason was paired with Tom Smith, “the world’s fastest filker,” for a comedy music duel:


(Mikey Mason and Tom Smith.)

Last but not least, Tally Deushane played some of her delightful songs in the filk room (and also came to my concert!) — I didn’t get the chance to ask her if she’s been working on a new album.

So, while Dragon_Con is a crazy, loud, confusing, hectic event, from a musical standpoint it was terrific! My thanks go out to Robby Hilliard, Amber Hansford, and Pat Var for their enthusiasm and diligence in running the Filk Track, and especially for inviting me to participate at a higher level. I hope to make it back next year!

___

P.S. If you want more information on any of my musical friends, check out their websites:
Andrew McKee
Brobdingnagian Bards
Foot-Pound Force
Marc Gunn
Mikey Mason
Pandora Celtica
Tally Deushane
The Blibbering Humdingers
The Gekkos
The Ken Spivey Band
Tom Smith

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The ISLANDS Audio Drama is Set to Debut September 19th!

Hey, you podcast listeners and lovers of radio drama! Tune in on Friday, September 19th to the Baen Free Radio Hour to hear the first part of our newest dramatic addition to the podcast: Islands, based on a novella by Eric Flint and adapted for audio by Tony Daniel.


(Islands poster — click for larger version.)

Islands is an alternate history story that takes place during the later days of a Roman Empire that has been vastly transformed by the early introduction of industrial age technology such as muskets, steam engines, and the telegraph.

The audio drama was produced with some wonderful actors from the Research Triangle region. Tracey Coppedge and Paul Kilpatrick star as Anna and Calopodius Saronites, and the story features Lex Wilson, Jeff Aguiar, Izzy Burger, Rika Daniel, Carter, Paris Battle, Samuel Montgomery-Blinn, Pj Maske, and Cokie Daniel. Yours truly also played several minor roles in the drama.

The Islands premiere will take place on Wednesday, September 17, at 6:30 p.m. at the Living Arts College in Raleigh, and will be serialized in four installments on the Baen Free Radio Hour starting that Friday.

We would all appreciate you listening in!

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Going to Dragon_Con

With a shout-out to my classmates who will be gathering for a multi-year reunion this weekend,* here’s my schedule for Dragon_Con 2014 — the largest science fiction and fantasy convention in the Southeast! — being held this weekend in Atlanta, Georgia.

While I will be attending as many of my writing and musical friends’ sessions as I can fit into the schedule, I’m taking an active part in these events:

  • Thursday, 7 p.m. (Dragon_Con Eve) — “Spaceships & Zombies,” a Baen Books launch party for ISLANDS OF RAGE & HOPE by John Ringo and A CALL TO DUTY by David Weber & Timothy Zahn — Peachtree Ballroom, Atlanta Westin
  • Friday, 8:30 p.m. — “Princess Alethea’s Traveling Sideshow,” hosted by Alethea Kontis (whose book of essays, Beauty and Dynamite, was recently re-released) — Room A707, Marriott Marquis
  • Saturday, 1:00 p.m. — SOLO CONCERT! — including songs from Truths and Lies and Make-Believe and the hopefully-soon-to-be-recorded new album … including the DEBUT of a new song based on Howard Tayler’s “Schlock Mercenary” webcomic — Baker Room, Atlanta Hyatt
  • Saturday, 2:30 p.m. — “Baen Books Slide Show and Prize Patrol!” with Baen Publisher Toni Weisskopf and the rest of the Baen crew — Regency V Ballroom, Atlanta Hyatt

Meanwhile, here’s an interview with yours truly on Andrew McKee’s “Everything is Filk” Podcast. Hope you like it!

If you’re coming to the convention, I look forward to seeing you! But whatever you do this Labor Day weekend, I hope you have a terrific time!

___
*I started a rumor that they picked Labor Day weekend because I was already booked.

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Swamped

I haven’t posted, haven’t sent out a newsletter, haven’t done much of anything since before our trip to the World SF Convention.

P5205540
(Image by Hunter Desportes, on Flickr under Creative Commons.)

I am still here, still working, just … swamped.

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On Reaching the Fifteen Percent Mark

As a bit of insight into the economics of independent music publishing, this weekend I broke the 15% mark in terms of CD sales.


(Image by Paul Cory Photography.)

To be precise, I reached the 17.15% point, which means that so far I’ve made back a little over 17% of the cost of recording, engineering, manufacturing, distributing, etc., the CD.

In other words, I’m still over 80% in the hole, almost a year after releasing the album.*

Maybe you didn’t even realize I had a CD out. In that case, at this link you can listen to all 10 songs of Truths and Lies and Make-Believe, which I call “a compendium of musical selections, inspired or influenced by science fiction, fantasy, life, and faith … a multitude of things.” If you decide to buy it, it’s $7 for a download or $10 — only $1 a song! — for a physical CD. (Though you can pay more, if you want to.)

So as I told folks at my concert this past weekend at ConGregate, if you’ve ever bought a copy of my CD, THANK YOU!

And if you like any of my songs, even a little bit, I’d be much obliged if you told a friend or wrote a review or otherwise helped spread the word.

And maybe next month I’ll crack the 20% mark!

___
*And yet I’m crazy enough to be thinking of starting to record a second one!

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Next Weekend I’ll Be at ConGregate, a New Convention in Winston-Salem!

A week from today I’ll be at the inaugural — yes, the first-ever! — ConGregate science fiction and fantasy convention.


(Greg-8, the ConGregate mascot.)

ConGregate has been put together by a wonderful team of experienced and talented convention organizers, so I anticipate it will start out as one of the best conventions going. I’ll actually be there all weekend and will be busy with a number of events, including a solo concert on Sunday morning where I will debut at least one new song:

Friday:

  • 8:00 p.m. — “Beyond the First Draft” workshop
  • 9:00 p.m. — Filk Collective

Saturday:

  • 2:00 p.m. — “Ask the Military” panel
  • 3:00 p.m. — Baen Books Traveling Road Show
  • 8:00 p.m. — “Beyond the Evil Goddess/God” panel

Sunday:

  • 9:00 a.m. — Non-Denominational Prayer Service
  • 10:00 a.m. — CONCERT
  • 1:00 p.m. — “Managing Your Finances as a Writer” panel

As usual, I will have copies of Truths and Lies and Make-Believe as well as “Another Romulan Ale” bumper stickers. Should be a lot of fun — if you’re there, be sure to find me and say hello!

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