1984 Attracts

Interesting - and, as per usual, thought-provoking if not outright inflammatory (esp. re: 9/11!?!) - commentary today from Dinoscopus:

Eleison Comments XXIX

When in a small publication of the Society of St. Pius X in England -- circulation about 500 -- an article recently appeared describing the police-state fast closing in on Great Britain, the British authorities complained to SSPX headquarters in Switzerland! It gives one to reflect....

As people have today less and less religion, so they have less and less reason to control themselves. If I believe neither in God nor in any moral law, nor in any afterlife eternally rewarding or punishing my observance or non-observance of that law, why should I put any brake upon satisfying my selfish desires in this life? But a society of such egoists must turn into a jungle of human beasts devouring one another.

Therefore where the people have neither faith nor internal self-discipline, they must welcome any external discipline enabling their society to survive, e.g. (or i.e.) a police-state. As seminaries close, so prisons must open. Today, prisons can hardly be built fast enough.

Now in any such dissociety of course there will be villains fabricating reasons to impose and extend the police-state for their own nefarious purposes. 9/11 is a classic example. However, even in the case of 9/11 there might have been amongst the authorities some honest men who said, "Lies and fabrications are nasty, but how else can one govern a modern population ?" Alas, they would have had a point!

So the police-state may be a bad substitute for godliness, but where the people are godless, such a State may appear to be the only way to hold a society together, and whoever opposes it will then appear to be anti-social. In this respect the defenders of modern police-states may mean well, and not deserve blame. However, let them have no part in tomorrow's persecution of Christians towards which today's police-states are being steered! The Catholic Faith upheld by the SSPX is not in fact their problem, but it is of their real problem the true solution.

Bishop Richard Williamson Paris, France

Ave verum corpus

Ave verum corpus natum de Maria Virgine Vere passum, immolatum in cruce pro homine Cuius latus perforatum unda fluxit sanguine Esto nobis praegustatum mortis in examine O Jesu dulcis, o Jesu pie, o Jesu fili Mariae

(Thanks to The Anchoress.)

The End of the Music Industry?

From Robert Thompson's Daynotes Journal:

It seems that others, including the music industry itself, are finally catching on to what I've been saying for at least ten years. The music industry is dead, gone beyond any hope of salvage. The glory days are gone for good, killed by the Internet eliminating the artificial scarcity upon which the industry depended. The era of "superstar" musicians and groups is giving way to a new era in which many more musicians and groups will find a wider audience, while the platinum-plated superstars of the past find themselves earning middle-class incomes. Even The Economist is now sounding the death knell of the music companies: "IN 2006 EMI, the world's fourth-biggest recorded-music company, invited some teenagers into its headquarters in London to talk to its top managers about their listening habits. At the end of the session the EMI bosses thanked them for their comments and told them to help themselves to a big pile of CDs sitting on a table. But none of the teens took any of the CDs, even though they were free. “That was the moment we realised the game was completely up,” says a person who was there." The music industry is now well into its death spiral. CD sales have been declining year-on-year for years, and are now falling month-on-month. Fewer CDs being sold means retailers allocate less shelf space to CDs, which in turn means still fewer CDs will be sold, and the shelf space will be further reduced in a spiral that ends only when CDs are allocated no shelf space at all. Electronic sales of single tracks can't make up for lost revenues from declining CD sales, and anyway electronic sales appear to have peaked and begun to decline in real terms. Most people simply aren't willing to pay much if anything for music any more, and that's never going to change. Musicians will still make a living, of course, just as they did before the music industry was born. They'll make their livings by touring, by selling branded gear, and by selling CDs and electronic tracks directly to the fans who want to support them financially. Good musicians will probably make no more than middle-class incomes, and in fact Internet distribution means that it's likely that more musicians will be able to make at least a modest living than have ever been able to do so in the past. But the days of the top 0.01% of musicians earning millions are rapidly drawing to a close, as are the days when the music "industry" was able to insinuate itself between the musicians and their fans, taking the lion's share of the income.

A Brave New World

The media is telling us now that the economy is bad and going to get worse. Who knows? Confidence or lack of confidence itself can effect the overall economy, and these factors can be effect by media hype. I am not claiming media hype at the moment, but I do not generally trust the media (surprise) and for all the objectivity and independence of the media, it's amazing how often the same stories with the same spins appear. As important as the economy is, I think it pales in importance to the life issues facing our civilization, and I don't mean "just" abortion. I mean human cloning, chimeras, human-animal hybrids, fetal and embryo experimentation, euthanasia, genetic engineering, cyborgs, bio-medical science doing whatever can be done because it can be done. "Let's see what happens when we cross a human with a snake." We know we are in an ethical free-fall generally, (just look at our politicians and businessmen, in general, not all, of course); why should I trust "science" backed by billions of dollars to respect human dignity and the sanctity of life? I would favor a tough ban on a host of items--I don't know enough to list every one in detail, but I believe most of us think that the "frankenstein" factor is not well regulated. The 35th anniversary of Roe v Wade is upon us. Not long after that immoral ruling by our highest court, it became routine for many "doctors" to ask expecting mothers "do you want to keep 'it'?" We were assured that man's search-and-destroy mission in the womb would lead to a society in which children would be better off, always wanted, and women would be happier and healthier. The media loved it, promoted it. They lied, children died. James M. Kushiner - Touchstone

Off the Rails?

And here I thought some of the tech companies I've worked for had, ahem, issues ... but wow! ... if this on-going rant by Zed Shaw is any indication, I'm really, really glad I didn't pursue my interest in Ruby on Rails a couple of years ago.