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I recently discovered the Serpent. This is a musical instrument vaguely similar to a tuba, but developed in the late 16th century for the purposes of church music. The idea was apparently to create an instrument which sounds similar to a low male voice, so as to enhance the lower ranges of plainsong. Opinions on the instrument are mixed, to put it tactfully:

It is blown with a cup shaped mouthpiece which is very similar to that of a trombone or Euphonium/Baritone. Played softly, it has a firm yet mellow tone color, or timbre. At medium volume, it produces a robust sound which seems to be a cross between the tuba, the bassoon, and the French horn. When played loudly it can produce unpleasant noises reminiscent of large animals in distress. [source]

Over the past four centuries, other writers have been far nastier. And it sounds like a nightmare to play:

The Serpent really requires a totally unique approach and playing technique….Because it is not possible for the basic Serpent to be vented properly, the instrument does not conveniently resonate at the desired pitches the way modern wind instruments do….

Since the Serpent does not center accurately on most notes, the player must be able to ‘sight sing’ the music much like a singer must look at a given note and produce the correct pitch without mechanical assistance. Once the player has the specified pitch in mind, he must then produce the required vibration with his lips, forcing the instrument to go along even if it cannot actually resonate at that frequency.

There must, somewhere, be groups of people dedicated to playing the oddest of instruments. Ideally together.

Bruce Sterling’s state of the world: actually pretty dull so far. But he has form, and I have faith.

The Asia Times has a two-part article by Michael Flynn on the military-media complex.

He takes the surge as an example of military policy-laundering. As Petraeus said:

“far more important than the surge of 30,000 additional US troops was the surge of ideas that helped us to employ those troops”

. Laundering (not Flynn’s term) because the policies originate from the military, but need the imprimateur of the think-tanks to win over the administration:

“Petraeus knew that the [George W] Bush administration’s credibility was low, that it was going to have trouble selling the surge,” said Finel in an interview, so he hand-picked a number of civilians who he knew were behind this policy and helped turn them into media “experts”. This effort sidelined critics of the surge, says Finel, who were viewed as “outsiders, people without access, and thus not to be believed”.

It’s a bit like the classic consulting scenario. The managers know what policy they want to introduce, but don’t have the authority to impose it themselves. So they hire external consultants, who (knowing which side their bread is buttered) produce glossy reports in favour of the policy. This enables the managers who hired them to win over other power centres within the corporation. Replace corporate factions with branches of governments, consultants with think-tanks, and the comparison is pretty exact.

One difference is how the public sphere gets twisted about as result. Since the media’s capacity for independent analysis has withered away, it is vulnerable to being contorted by such internal power-plays. In the absence of journalists with the time, competence or inclination to compare stories to reality, “all that is solid melts into PR” [k-punk]. We lack the resources to figure out. We’re left in Plato’s cave, sharing at the shadow-play as pundits talk to pundits, unequipped to glance at the real world outside.

This isn’t unique to the military. So many small inofficially-political groups are funded by the EU, DfiD and the like, I presume often with the (carefuly unstated) hope that they’ll influence public debate.

But the military is bigger — I recall reading that the Pentagon’s PR budget is larger than the entire budget of the state department

Like library_keeper, I’ve been playing with Google’s new ngram tool. This is supposed to show the historical frequency of word usage, based on Google Books. It’s briefly fun and utterly unreliable — in other words, it should be perfect for the internet.

But, after tinkering, I can’t really find much that’s both unexpected and even mildly believable. Waves of subcultures are marginally interesting, although you should porbably discount the goth revivals of 1860 and 1880. [the long and mutating history of ‘punk’, on the other hand, is genuine]. Or you could have a graph of years (1920,1930, etc), which seems to show more recent years being forgotten more quickly. And you can play off science against religion, duty against freedom, or all the isms against one another.

But basically, I’m stumped. There must be

something

interesting in there, but I can’t find it. Can anybody else do better?

Tube strikes make the unions pretty unpopular.

What if the unions instead had a (publicised) day of turning a blind eye to fare-dodgers? That would still cost their employers plenty of money, but would presumably fill the public with enthusiasm rather than hatred.

The main problem would be that while there’s plenty of legal protection for strikes, there’s much less for employees refusing to perform some part of their job. Doubly so since London Underground undoubtedly already has disciplinary procedures in place for staff who help fare-dodgers. Also I’d imagine many tube employees not being too keen on people who don’t pay.

Still, it’d be a nice change from strikes. Have any transport unions tried this kind of thing, elsewhere in the world? What was the result?

Wobbly in the Shell:

The army of production must be organized, not only for the everyday struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.