4/20 in Vancouver 2014: A Review.

4.20PM- The Fog of War.

For those of you that don't already know 4/20 is a day of the year on which many people protest the illegalisation of weed. A quirk of the backward North American date system means that the month goes before the day and as such 4.20 PM is the time of the day when the crowd lights up for the peak of the festivities. 

Festivities!

A relatively small offering.

The event was quite incredible. The crowd was vibrant and consisted of many different kinds of people, at least in appearance. It was very interesting to see a small police presence in conjunction with street vendors trying to sell MAMMOTH bags of weed- the legality of weed seemed more like a clerical error than an ethical issue that had ever been thought about. Wandering around the stalls was good fun, there was a lot of energy, a lot of people and it was all a great novelty.

I spoke to a few people that were very nice and interesting people, at the same time there were many people that were evidently dead behind the eyes. I think, at least metaphorically, this observation is representative of the two pro-weed parties. I don't know what the relative size of each demograph might be but I think there is group that seeks legalisation more for ethical reasons and a group that seeks legalisation for eventual personal gratification.

The legal status of marijuana is an important one. It represents more than just getting high but I fear that concept is lost on most of the people attending the event.

"ROOT'IN FOR PUTIN" ?
Your guess is as good as mine. This wasn't the only mixed message at the event.

The musicians on stage were great. I was expecting boring, predictable reggae but in fact they were fun and exciting. There were volunteers on stage dressed as spliffs, dancing and smoking at the same time- they looked great. It was funny. But when anyone came on stage and started some simplistic diatribe on drug law I became quite embarrassed. I couldn't see the point in getting the crowd to shout brain dead slogans, and the whole shouting at Harper (the prime minister, who was not present) made the whole event seem like a child in its parents clothes. The very presence of the event and the public flaunting of the law is message enough.

All in all the event was fun however I think the message was well and truly swallowed up by an immature sense of rebellion. I am in favour of the legalisation of weed- there's no point making criminals where there logically wouldn't seem to be any- but I do find the sometimes moronic weed culture to be a huge turn off.

To me the injustice of the War on Drugs does not originate from the quashing of an individuals "rights" to get high. The injustice is the consistent placement of opinion over science by governments either because they are uninformed or because they know that voters are uninformed. In the arrangement of Vancouver's initial 1995 4/20 event a proposed whole day affair was shunned by one of the founders as "decadent"- that word is an excellent descriptor for what was essentially a protest.

If this had been a celebration of weed in itself then the tone would match the message but campaigning for a change of law in this way, bearing in mind the personalities of those that hold the law in their hands, is not a prudent way to effect change. I leave you with the musical culmination of the event, I think it explains the past two paragraphs better than I can in words. See below for lyrics.

Lyrics-

I like smoking pot 'cus it makes me feel good

My First 10km Race.

How Long does a 10k Take?
Well, it varies for everyone, of course. Compare yourself to the below paragraph to get an idea of where you lie.

I had a standard base level of fitness before I started training about 10 days before the race. I could already climb a flight of stairs at a quick pace without getting significantly out of breath and in the 10 days before the race I went for 4 runs, the longest being about 7 kilometers. Before those 10 days I didn't really run any long distances. Maybe the 500m or so from the bus stop to home.

I finished the race, which was mostly flat, in 59 minutes. Also, I ran in boots because I am poor and can't afford trainers.

Any kind of race is a test for the mind and body. You need to be able to manipulate your limbs into some sort of running motion and you need to be able to do that motion for longer than 10 minutes but beyond that I would say running is mainly a mental exercise. Here are some tips!

Eat Food! (Just Not Too Much)
When things get uncomfortable it is your brain that will get you to keep running, not your legs. It is important to remember that and take care of your mind before a race. That means eat something light- if you're like me you might get angry when you are hungry... hangry, if you will- this is something you would do well to avoid. If, like I did, you were to eat way too much before running, leading you to feel like throwing up for a lot of it, you could do with...

Getting More Sleep!
Another compounding factor is sleep. The amount of sleep you need is genetically determined and you cannot alter your normal sleeping time without sustaining losses to your concentration. Get enough sleep before you run! I did not get enough sleep before the race and as a consequence my focus waned severely throughout. I had a slight injury, felt sick and was VERY aware of it because I wasn't able to concentrate on running. Instead, for a lot of the race I had to put most of my attention towards keeping my amygdala in check in order to avoid giving up.

Though my case study is not an exact science the below actual scientific article (as presented by the mainstream media) is as close as you can get! Check it out and at the very least read the last paragraph. It is VERY important to understand that sleep is a limiting factor of ability perhaps as much as sunlight is a limiting factor for plant growth.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sleep-t.html?_r=0

Feel Da Rhthym, Feel Da Rhyme...
During the race me and my running partner were passed by many people that were listening to music. We eventually passed them breathing very heavily, heads down, slowing down. I hypothesise that they were running to a beat that was too fast for them to keep up with. If you don't listen to your body- your breath, your heart rate, your stride length and feet- you will be unable to adapt and optimise. It's like ignoring a "check engine" light in your car.

Sure, it might get you pumped but in the end if you aren't able to keep up with your "best of drum and bass" playlist you are only hurting your own efforts. I prefer to run without music as you are able to find your rhythm. Rhythms have to be able to change! If you're going up a hill you might not be able to keep up with your stride or you might have to break your one breath every two strides rule but that's good! It means you are doing the best that you can.

The bottom line is by all means push yourself but remember there is a difference between pushing yourself and being pushed. That goes for trying to keep up with that obviously better trained runner too. Set a goal and be ready to move beyond it if you can.

Get On Up, It's Bobsled Time!
I hope the above is useful to you, whoever you are. If you are thinking of running a race then my best advice is just give it a go. Make sure you don't box too far above your weight in case you hurt yourself. Be ambitious if you would like and just give it a go. If you are trying to be aware of what your body is doing then you are on an excellent track.

The best thing I have gained from doing this race is that the things that I learned carry over into many other areas of life. I hope your experience is as positive as mine.

Good luck.

Josh.

Why Can't We All Just Get Along?

I don't mean the title in the hippy kind of way where love makes the world go around but rather in a cold pragmatic kind of way.

It used to be my opinion that working in groups made everything harder. This thought was influenced in many different ways through my life in education. Team sports mostly resulted in competitiveness within the team and group class activities resulted in freeloading and arguments over tasks that could be accomplished by one person quite easily. Most importantly the standard of teamwork, or rather tribalism, was set by petty political leaders and teenage cliques.

HOWEVER, I now live in a house of 20 something's (and a 40 something landlord) and working together makes things easier for everyone. Just doing a favour for someone, like cleaning their dishes or giving them a beer results in equal, sometimes greater, payback. There is something to be said for that feeling of not having to do something because a friend did it for you. Actions can speak louder than words and in this case they most certainly do.

This favour economy only really works for people that like and respect each other. I can't see it really working with strangers or as some sort of grassroots revolution to change the world however I think it is still important to remember or even consider that kindness does pay- not in a karmic, bullshitty sort of way but if you are nice to those who know you or those you would like to know (hey, sometimes even strangers) you will probably get something back at some point and more importantly it's easily traceable- not hippy bullshit.

Most importantly with small favours and mutual respect you garner the efforts of your friends for those big moments and favours, when you really need another human being to help. You can buy that help with money or pleading but it really is awesome when someone helps you move out, or get to a job interview on time, or dispose of a body because they want to, not because it would be easier to do so than put up with your complaining. I think that kind of friendship is often put down to being cool or admirable enough to deserve it but I am coming to understand it as being deserved by the actions in-between the egos.

I dunno, if you think you're around people that respect you feel free to give. You might (hopefully(?)) be surprised.*

Josh.


*This prooooobably won't work if you are in high school. Most people are only just learning that people other than themselves even exist but it's really good practice and as long as you make sure that you're not taken advantage of it's pretty good practice for the future. Take it from someone that lives life with a healthy dose of misanthropy.

Part 2- How Music Works!

Still with me? Excellent! Let's crack on.

Keys and Scales
What is a key? A key in its simplest and perhaps least precise definition is a sequence of 7 notes. This sequence makes up the primary notes that a piece of music will be composed from. There are both major and minor keys- both having a formula to construct them with. As with animals all notes are created equal but once you put them together some are more equal than others- there is a sort of hierarchy between the notes of a scale- meaning that some notes will work "better" in different contexts than others. Hopefully this sounds interesting as I will be writing about it in a subsequent post.

The first thing you need to know is what a semitone (halfstep) is. If you remember from the last episode it is one fret on a guitar-like instrument, an adjacent key on a piano and more of a mystery on a viol family member. A tone (wholestep) is one more fret/key/mystery than a semitone. The difference is the Jaws theme and Frere Jaques.

I include the arrows to emphasise that the (semi)tone is the distance between the notes. These gaps are referred to as "intervals".

So, if you were to start on any note on your instrument and followed the formula above you would be playing a major scale and at the same time sketching out the notes of a key. Keys and scales are almost one and the same. You might want to think of a scale as a tool to make music and a key as a way of describing or describing music if the dualism first strikes you as confusing.

The above is the formula for a minor key.

So, what can you do with this information? Well, most pieces of music most of us are likely to encounter are written in one definite key that might change throughout the piece. If you know what notes make up a key and if you know where the notes of the key fit in on your instrument you are theoretically able to improvise, compose or at the least better understand the music that you are playing or listening to.

So how do you get to learn the keys and by extension their scales? I will elaborate in the next post!

Josh.

The Future Of Media: Part Deux!

How do you know if a film is old? The picture may be black and white. Everyone might speak with a received pronunciation. The oranges might be too orange, the CGI might be poor or non existent; maybe if you're a master of film you might notice that certain shots and compositions are used more often than others.


There will come a point in our not so distant future- in some of our lifetimes- when the quality of video will plateau. Then how will you know if the porn actress/actor you are entertaining on your screen is dead or not?


"But I like retro porn as it is!" Well good for you sir, but pray tell, if you found out that the girl next door that you harmlessly became aroused by, as you spied her from your bedroom window, naked, reclining on her bed had in fact just passed away in her sleep; would you feel weird about being aroused?

Maybe, maybe not and I can understand both arguments but I know one thing for certain: In the future there will totally be a specific fetish for pornstars that are no longer living and, if I may expound on my theory, I know that if ducks could use computers they would totally be in to that too. Do you want to occupy a future full of necrophillic ducks? Didn't think so.

Is this what you want?

Now go and google the sexual habits of ducks and dare to come back and tell me that homosexuality isn't "natural".

Stay sassy my non-existent readership.

Josh.

P.s. The filename of the picture is "ducks-make-history-450x162.jpg" and I didn't even change it!

P.p.s. Even Cane Toads are into it. Skip to 2:30 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqCQO_cRypg

The Future of Media!

If you could pick a point in time to live in, when would it be? Unfortunately you're probably wrong regardless of what you answered. Too far back and it's unlikely that you will be able to eat or drink anything with that feeble 21st century immune system that you're styling. Go even further back and you're just asking for trouble- you don't know how to hunt!

So, what about the future? Well, there is the chance that things will continue to get worse. Drug resistant pathogens may win out in the immunity arms race, global warming might make it hard to support our current population. North Korea might only pretend to be comedically hermetic because they are secretly technologically advanced; fearing that other countries would use their technology for war; but are unfortunately found out by a certain superpower that nukes the world back into the stone age. What was I on about? Oh yeah, well, assuming that doesn't happen and first world problems continue to exist here's one you haven't considered. There will be way too much media.

Think about it. Look at a list of 100 critically acclaimed films from the past 100ish years of commercial cinema. In the lifespan of one generation that list would double. Then consider how your favourite film, say, the first live-action "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" movie might not even be on that list. As a matter of point, how can you discount the incredible entertainment value of films that would be on the inverse list? Films such as "Carnasaur", "Dungeons and Dragons" and "Titanic"?

How large is your itunes library? Assuming you actually like all of that music and, unlike me, you don't have music that you only put on for comedic value (you know, Scatman John, Rick Astley etc.) that's probably a lot of music that you like. Multiply that by a bajillion- there's already thousands of bands that you would probably like but haven't heard of. Music's a lot easier to produce than films at this point in time, and thanks to the internet anyone can distribute it. Popular recorded music has been about since the early 1900's with wax cylinders but, like populations, recordings have exploded in number over the years. What's the big deal you think? Don't we have this situation when it comes to books?  To that I say: "I dunno, I don't think so.".

Yes, the written word has been around for a very long time. The Egyptians had one of the earliest written languages and they were around 5000 years ago (just think about that for a second). Even before the invention of the printing press when all documents were replicated using the now antiquated monk.0 software system there were a lot of very culturally significant things being written down. Haven't we already reached the point of too much literature based media and isn't the effect of this negligible?

I don't think it's the same. When it comes to literature we have many summations. Literature, though indispensable, is quite a bulky way of recording information- this is because it can be impeccably precise. It's the high resolution image of data storage, I suppose. Whether its a natural human pursuit or a modern development I do not know but the streamlining and want to make more efficient is a prevalent impulse. Literature is a very time consuming medium so I think humans continuously trim the ephemera from it. Like a bustling hive mind we store what is important and discard what is, well, ephemeral. This might be because the application of literature is so much more prominent in our consumption of the medium compared to film and music. Film is mostly in my opinion a feast for the eyes and is augmented through sound. Music is food for the ears. Literature is food for the brain. Everything is simulated; the onus is heavily placed on the consumer and if you decide that the "author is dead" it results in a book being highly ambiguous and therefore a highly intellectually stimulating task should you choose it to be.

Furthermore books are very well labelled. They tend to be about a certain subject or idea. Though the same could be said about films and music the director or producer or advertiser does not or cannot make that subject as clear as a front cover, title, authors note and blurb can. Language is precise like that.

Maybe I'm right, I personally think that I'm striking the nail with glancing blows. Perhaps my literature vs. other media argument is flawed but the point remains- in the future (depending on how far you go of course) there will be many many more hit films and musicians than there are now. How many films can you truly "see before you die" and will we lose anything when eventually films such as "Shawshank Redemption" or "The Deer Hunter" or "*that film you really like*" are left on the wayside of cinematic history? What about when the standard increases so much that Nirvana and The Beatles are comparatively close in impact and message?

Looking for more food for the brain? Tune in for Part Deux!

Part 2-  http://heywhateveridunno.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-future-of-media-part-deux.html

Josh.

Buildings: More Like People Than We Thought?

I don't have any formal knowledge of architecture or any delusion that I do so don't worry, this isn't one of those write-ups. I just learned something that I thought I would share. tl;dr? The points in paragraph 4!

So, one of my jobs is in construction. I core concrete. That is, I make really big holes in walls and floors with a really big drill. Why? Because people fuck up alllllll the time on building sites by filling in places where there should be holes. I really don't enjoy construction work. I could go into it but I would summarise it as unstimulating. Regardless I try to keep an ear and eye out for things that are interesting.

The other day we were working on a building in downtown Vancouver. The concrete that the building is made from is very poor. There are gaps of air in the concrete and It turns to sand with great ease. The building is both old and poorly built.

Whilst waiting on the floor below the hole to make sure nobody got brained by the core that was about to fall down the guy that usually works on the building and addressed something that I had thought about everytime we worked there. Surely if this building is poorly built already doing these kinds of renovations won't help anyone. Turns out, that's totally true! You can only renovate so many times before the building needs to be demolished and rebuilt. It's like how each time a cell replicates itself it's not as good as the cell that went before it.

On a more sombre note it is disconcerting seeing a building of such poor quality. Vancouver is supposedly due for a huge earthquake. I am dubious about the predictability of earthquakes and saying that Vancouver is 50 years overdue really doesn't mean much to me. Geological stats, man! How long is 50 years really? And how reliable are the movements of tectonic plates? Are they really so repetitive? Regardless, a building that is made from hard shelled bubbles is not a favourable place to work at in a quake danger zone.

Good luck Vancouver.

Josh.