perfidy

Welcome to Carnival of Horror... No, Carnival of Gory Death... No, Carnival of Creep... No, Carnival of Music! Yes, that's it. Welcome to the nineteenth edition of the Carnival of Music. The Halloween edition, in fact.

Let's dive right in, shall we?

It's All Hallow's Eve

Wherein we learn about the use of music in film, and are subjected to butt-rock This edition of the carnival hits the interweb on Halloween. Therefore, it is only appropriate that we begin with some scary creepy stuff. Mark at Kaedrin has spewed forth a disquisition on music in horror movies, one with quotes and everything. People will start thinking he's serious or something. Along the same lines, but a bit outside the blog world is this survey of horror music by John Hübinette.

For all your horror music needs, one need go no further than right here. Of course, we will. Here is a collection, ripped straight from google, of low-rent horror metal bands. I think most of this is what Minister Johno would refer to as, "Butt-Rock." Suicide Solution, Dark Seclusion, The Others, Dark Autumn and of course, Rob Zombie. Lot of Darkness there. Not there's anything wrong with that.

Of course, the life of a horror metal band is not, to be sure, all sweetness and light. For some, it is misery and destruction. In this case, not self inflicted – everyone lend a hand to Antartica vs. the World, who lost all their gear in Hurricane Katrina.

The absolute best horror music link, I have saved for last. It Will End In Pure Horror. I have always been convinced that that is literally true. But if ending in pure horror meant being surrounded by this:

I might be a little more comfortable with the concept. I sent away for their free demo, Night of the Living Demo, and so should you.

Oh, and speaking of eldritch horror, what could be more soul-suckingly, achingly terrifying than cute thirteen year old singing Nazi twins?

Among a great multitude, my pal Murdoc offers some coverage of the Aryan Olsen twins.

Cronyism

Wherein the Ministry thrives on nepotism, and throws a bone to the little people

Because the Ministry not only supports, but actually thrives on nepotism, this section contains links to us, and to people we know. We'll begin with me. Mrs. Buckethead is one of three lead vocalists in a bluegrass/Americana/roots music/gospel/country blues band called Dead Men's Hollow. They recently released an album, which you can buy. It's funny, but ten years ago if you had told me that in the middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century that all I'd be listening to was death metal and hundred year old country music, I'd have laughed at you. Or hit you, depending on my mood. Yet here I am. Looking at the recently played list on my iPod, I see Doc Watson, Drowning Pool, Tool, Monster Magnet, Johnny Cash, the Kossoy Sisters (thanks, Johno) and "Oklahoma Stomp" from band called Spade Cooley and His Orchestra off a collection called Doughboys, Playboys and Cowboys that is mostly country swing from before WWII.

Dead Men's Hollow – well, let me let Johno do the music reviewing, because he's a professional:

DMH splits the difference between the ethereal rubato of the old timey singers and the in-time clarity of classical and good rock singers. However you're doing it, it's really freaking cool...I'll be putting it on my IPod immediately.

They're playing all around the DC area, so check the website to see when you can see them. And, in a few weeks, they'll be headlining a big show at Ft. Riley, Kansas for troops heading out to Iraq. I'll have more on this later, or again, check their site. And lastly, listen to this song.

Johno is the alpha music geek here at Perfidy. In fact we created a category just for him – Music Wonkery. Click that link to get access to hundreds of insightful, sage, and at times indelicate reviews. A lot of the musicians Johno writes of so knowledgeably, I had never heard of. Once I listened to their music, I wondered how I had ever missed them. Johno has produced two new reviews just for this carnival, you can see them here and here. Read them both. I have already ordered a copy of Cast King's album. It won't be the first album I've bought on Johno's recommendation, and it certainly won't be the last.

One last Johno note: over here, Johno has offered hand-crafted mix discs to anyone who reaches a hand into their pocket and comes up with $15 for charity. Johno's suggesting hurricane or earthquake relief, but I'm sure he'd accept anything short of a donation for the Free Katie Foundation.

Next up is Phil Dennison, founder and CEO of the blog November Musings. His band, the Fragments, is on a little hiatus thanks to their own personal stick in the eye to the zero population growth people. The band has recently spawned two kids, and another is on the way. So far, only Phil and bandmate Gene remain childless freaks. The Fragments play a heady style of power pop, and are well worth a listen. Phil, being the musician type guy that he is, has on occasion held forth on some musical topics.

Here is Phil peeking behind the curtain of Trent Reznor's musical past, complaining about the existence of Ashlee Simpson, and penning an encomium to fellow power-pop band, The Figgs. As an added bonus, here is Phil's Top Ten Underrated Guitar Solos List.

Phil also kindly recommends, for your reading pleasure, several music blogs, including Bob Mould's blog, Copy, right?, Fluxblog, Lost Bands of the New Wave Era and Mystery and Misery. Joe-Bob says check 'em out.

Next on our list of cronies, yes-men and yeasayers is Ted of the excellent blog Rocket Jones. Ted recommends the podcasts of the Simian Syndicate. Especially this one. Why? They'll tell you:

"We have a special treat in this show, something very unique, a recorded monologue by our buddy Stuart Swink. Stuart takes plenty of pictures for us and attends most of the Booze Monkey shows, he is a good friend. He created a monologue comprised entirely of Beatles song-titles. It is a very unique piece, and he graciously allowed us to share it, I hope you enjoy it."

That just can't go wrong. Simian's podcasts typically include music, typically of the bluesy nature. That, plus split your sides funny, is a hell of bargain when you consider that it's all free. Added bonus: Ted also recommends the blog RetroBabe. 

Princess Cat has run across an inspirational ditty from Ryan Shupe and the Rubber Band. A good band name, but not as good as my personal favorite band name ever, Special Ed and the Short Bus - who can be heard doing a great high speed cover of John Hardy over here.

Finally, another blogger with a band: Andrew Ian Dodge of the justly famous Dodgeblogium. I emailed Andrew to see if he had anything for the carnival (and to complain that he got a better logo from blogs in space than I did) and he replied in his unique idiom, "What jolly good timing. The band site has just had a face-lift (ala Joan Rivers) and the EP is finally f***ing finished!"

His band, Growing Old Disgracefully has only one snippet of music up, but hopefully we will soon be able to hear the EP, or even buy it from CD Baby. CD Baby, btw, is my personal favorite online music-getting thingies. Witness this email I received from CD Baby last time I ordered from them:

Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow. 

A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was in the best possible condition before mailing. 

Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy. 

We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved 'Bon Voyage!' to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, Tuesday, August 27th. 

I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did. Your picture is on our wall as 'Customer of the Year'. We're all exhausted but can't wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!

[wik] Returning as if from the dead, our own resident Canadian comes in with playlist a that has therapeutic overtones. 

Carnival of Submissions

Wherein we gingerly dip our toe into the wider world of music blogging

Barbara of Trying to Catch Up sends us a reminiscence of her time as a flute player, triggered by her son's taking up the saxophone.

BradRubenstein of Odd Quanta shamelessly plugs his own music festival. If you're in New York on Dec 4, check it the New York Festival of Song. Not music related, but he also links to a really cool idea for positional, rather than temporal, alarms. This can't be far, and whoever invents the killer app for this sort of thing will be rich, rich, rich.

The award for best blog name goes to Assimilated Negro. It's retro. It's PM. It's likely offensive to many. I dig it. Assimilated Negro blog is just over a month old, but he's already working the carnivals to get linkage. He's more assimilated than I am, as I just figured this out after two and a half years.

I will leave it again to Johno to provide the theoretical underpinnings and academic apparatus surrounding this. (Scroll to the bottom and press play. After you read the rest of the post, of course.) But hey, it was perhaps inevitable that blogs and hip hop were fated to collide.

Next week's host, Elisa Camahort, throws in a post regarding her iTunes music purchases. But it's not just a simple list, she provides us with reviews of the music, too. Check her other posts, too, she's got lots of links to cool music, like this one. 

Michelle of A Small Victory has given up the blog. We'll miss her music lists, though we can still follow her fiction, and the always amusing 100 Words or Less Nessman.

The Well-Tempered Blog (I just discovered what, exactly, well-tempered means just a month ago. From TV!) reports on an interesting thing: the Extensible Toy Piano.

And don't forget that Strongbad can sing.

Brian Sacawa has some thoughts on the effect of the web on music, especially of the classical variety.

Has anyone seen a trailer for the new Johnny Cash movie? I'm hopeful, and afraid.

Earlier, I mentioned that I recently learned what well-tempered means. I learned it from this series. Saw it on the Ovation cable network, they might show it again. Very well done series, and even my music education trained wife was impressed.

If you want to really get going on the music blog reading, go to the bottom of Carnival of Music #7. There's a big list that I am far too lazy to recreate.

Musical Perceptions has some interesting stuff on Singing Neanderthals, and trying to hear Bolero.

Here's an Online Mandolin Museum, courtesy of Lynn at A Sweet, Familiar Dissonance.

This guy maybe likes Batman too much.

And finally, if you really want to you know, delve, into the music blogging thing – go here.

The End

Wherein we blame the innocent, free the culpable, and frame the unwary

Thanks (from us) and blame (from you) should be directed to John of Texas Best Grok for allowing Perfidy to host this, the 19th Carnival of Music. Admiration and plaudits should go to previous hosts of the carnival, for we only see so far because we stand on the shoulders of giants. They can be found here, along with other needful and pertinent information regarding the Carnival of Music. Postdated thanks should also be directed to Elisa, who will host the next CoM.

I am turning on trackbacks for this post, so if you have a music related post, just do that thing, and I'll integrate it into the post. If it starts getting closer to next week, send submissions to Elisa so she has some material to work with.

Everyone who knows me (and who doesn't know me? I'm the cat with a bazillion friends!) knows that I really dig emanations from what Greil Marcus called "the old, weird America." Whether it's the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, the half-fried blues stylings of the late R.L. Burnside, or video footage of the great Bobby Rush taming the wild booty ooty ooty.

Cast King, a 79 year old native of Old Sand Mountain, Alabama - a place too small and remote to show up on maps readily available on the newfangled interweb - has been making music on his own for sixty-five years now. He toured extensively in the 1940s and 1950s with his band, "Cast King and the Country Drifters" and even recorded a few sides for Sam Phillips at the Sun studios in Memphis. But nothing really came of those sessions and King settled down to life on Old Sand Mountain, writing songs for the benefit of himself and those around him.

He was rediscovered, according to the presskit I have, when a musician named Matt Downer began making field recordings of local musicians in and around Old Sand Mountain, and on the recommendation of practically every other musician around tracked down Cast King and his "sackful of songs." Downer eventually persuaded King to sit down and record some of these in a shed next to his house, and the result is now an album, Saw Mill Man.

Cast King's debut is a interesting document, literally a transmission from the old weird America I treasure, something that sounds like a lost fragment of the Harry Smith or Lomax brothers collections. At 79, King's voice is soft and tremulous, which only adds to the fragility and plaintiveness of the songs he has written, every one of which is about drinking, death, heartbreak, or the futility of living on another day. (Now that's entertainment!) His homegrown style of songwriting has a great deal in common with the folk-infused country that eventually catapulted Johnny Cash to fame - a sound that has long transcended fashion and cliche to become part of the DNA of the American songbook. Some of the songs feature Matt Downer helping out on his Stratocaster to provide some ornament, but mostly they float past one by one, bouyed by the quiet strum of King's guitar and swaying lilt of his hoary voice.

Having developed over fifty years a unique conversational lyrical style, King has a knack for lining out a scene in a few well chosen words. Not every song is equally great, and some rely a little too much on cliche, but every so often an especially stark stanza reaches out of the speakers to smack you on the head. For example on "Numb," King sings

I don't care if your tears fall in my whiskey
I don't care if he hurts you more and more
I don't mind that drunken clown
Pushing that old man around
For I'm as numb as the knob on the door.

That's about as succinct as country weepers get. The best songs on Saw Mill Man hit with this same soft punch, especially "Cheap Motel," "Wino," and the miserable hard-luck song "Saw Mill Man." On "Long Time Now" and "Peggy," King raises the ghost of authentic rockabilly, the half-crazy kind that got kicked off the radio (or co-opted) by the rise of rock and roll. It's a hoot to hear a new recording in 2005 that could have come directly out of a Bobby Sisco session for Mar-Vel in 1955. Some, like the worst-party-ever vignette of "Wrong Time To Be Right" and the funereal murder ballad "Under The Snow" sound especially great in King's weary baritone.

Overall, what seems at first blush to be a slightly muddy set of moderately interesting old-timey country songs reveals itself after repeated listenings to be a set of archetypal country songs sung by a man who, if life had been just a little different, might have had a real shot at being on the Opry stage next to Carl Perkins and Buck Owens. I don't know if it's something in the water or something in the whiskey, but Cast King of Old Sand Mountain has made a bleak and affecting debut album. I hope there's more where this came from.

Cast King's Saw Mill Man is available directly from Locust Music

In January 1963, energized by a recent tour of Europe with former labelmate Little Richard, Sam Cooke took the stage at the Harlem Square Club in Miami to turn in an electric, electrifying set of sweaty, sanctified, manic and masterful soul music. The night was recorded for a live album called One Night Stand!: Sam Cooke Live at the Harlem Square Club which sat on the shelf for twenty years until it was released in 1985. Sony Legacy has remastered the album for a new reissue this year, and it is now obvious that One Night Stand completely overturns everything you think you know about the smooth and urbane maker of sweet soul music.

Along with Ray Charles, Sam Cooke arguably invented soul music with his great crossover hits of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Everything that came after owes in some measure to his alchemic blending of gospel, R&B, pop and standards, his bravura performances that split the difference between agape and eros. In his brand-new and excellent biography of Sam Cooke, Peter Guralnick lovingly details Sam Cooke's evolution from a young member of nationally-known gospel quartets to the urbane, good-looking, articulate, laid back and genial pop inferno that he became. Along the way, various personages from Atlantic Records' Jerry Wexler to singing peers like Harry Belafonte, Bobby "Blue" Bland, and Elvis Presley check in to attest to their admiration for Cooke's unbelievably facile voice.

And what a voice it was! Sam Cooke was blessed with a remarkable instrument, clear as a bell except when he wanted to make it gritty, high and proud and stunningly beautiful. His ability to use it to get right inside the most banal lyrics and project stark and affecting emotional content made him great, and once he figured out how to draw out the simplest words, "No-no-no-no," "I-i-i-i-i-i," in Coltranesque cascades of pure joy, nothing could stop him from killing an audience cold.

Live at the Harlem Square Club captures an amazing moment in Sam Cooke's career. Riding high off a nearly unbroken string of chart successes, he was yet to enter the great and terrible eighteen month perioud which would see his infant son die, see the recording of possibly his finest music, and end in his death. All that was in the future.

When Sam Cooke took the stage at the Harlem Square Club, it was with Little Richard's dirty sound in mind, the future out before him, and a songbook of pop, standards, and what we now call "soul." Imagine the scene: the big room sweating in the humid Florida night. Three shows, at 10:00, 1:00 and 4:00 in the morning. Sam Cooke, fresh off his European tour, with the rowdy King Curtis on sax beside him and a band of crack players behind him, energized, inspired, and ready to take the crowd as high as they want to go.

It is a little strange how dated some of Sam Cooke's songs sound today. With such strong roots in the pop of the 1950s, the I-vi-IV-V "ice cream" changes and uptempo R&B swing of his most famous songs tie him more securely to Frankie Valli and doo-wop than to his musical children like Al Green and Otis Redding. And surely, his clean-cut image was an artifact of his ambition, his intention to appeal to as many people as possible, white or black, rich or poor. But that night at the Harlem Square Club, Cooke strained against the urbane felicity and pop sheen that had made him famous and brought a roughness and grit to his voice that surely few in the audience had ever heard from him before.

In his biography, Guralnick dwells at length on the contraditions embodied in Sam Cooke. He was the American dream, a good-looking and well-mannered young black man singing music that transcended racial boundaries: he was "safe." He was the preternaturally talented, even arrogant architect of his own career, ruthlessly moving from one opportunity to another as he saw fit, leaving behind him a wake of disappointed compatriots and business partners. He was the most charismatic guy in the room, the ladykiller who made every one of them feel special, leaving behind him a wake of single mothers and dying hopes. That same charisma came through loud and clear on stage, on vinyl, and on camera, drawing audiences into the vortex of his personality through the sheer power and swing of his musical genius. He was the generous friend. He was the big spender. He was, from time to time, the source of towering rage and fury when his trademark savoire-faire was exhausted.

Every single one of these features of his outsize personality are on display on Live at the Harlem Square Club. The audience is delirious even before he takes the stage, and as Cook asks the crowd, "How are you doing out there? ... How ARE, you DOING, out THERE?" there is something powerful, smug, and almost cold behind his voice, as if he already knows the audience is his without even asking: he is really saying "you are mine." And so they were. As Guralnick writes,

There was nothing soft, measured or polite about the Sam Cooke you saw at the Harlem Square Club; there was none of the self-effacing, mannerable, 'fair-haired little colored boy' that the white man was always looking for. This was Sam Cooke undisguised, charmingly self-assured, "he had his crowd," said [guitarist] Clif White....

Indeed, everything Sam Cooke sang at the Harlem Square club took on weight. Lightweight teenybopper pop fare like Cooke's fad single "Twistin' The Night Away" becomes more serious, like the last party before Judgment Day. The lovely teen-romance crooner "Cupid" turns into an essay in joyous singing as Cooke takes flight all around the melody and sells the young love story it tells. Cooke calls on his gospel roots on the rowdy "Feel It (Don't Fight It)," riding the band hit by hit, exhorting the crowd higher and higher and walking a line between sanctified and sinful that conventional wisdom would maintain wasn't Cooke's to discover. The darker subject matter of Cooke's "Chain Gang" comes fully into its own with the band and backup singers digging into its groove, and Cooke bearing down on the chorus.

On the medley of "It's All Right" and "For Sentimental Reasons," you can hear the crowd singing along rapturously as Cooke scats in Coltranesque sprays of notes. In the liner notes to the album, Peter Guralnick (again!) writes about the importance of community to the chitlin circut, and this is where it all comes together. Cooke and the audience are one, trading energy, good humor, and the sweet melancholy of the songs between themselves fearlessly. By the time we come to the closer "Having A Party," a frantic five-minute workout, Sam Cooke and the band have transcended pretty, transcended slick, transcended easy, transcended everything Sam Cooke seemed to embody to the (white) public and taken the audience to a place blissfully like the white-hot crawl-on-the-floor frenzy of James Brown's classic Live At The Apollo.

The remastering has fixed the crowd noise at a level that is audible but doesn't get in the way of the incandescent performances of Sam Cooke, King Curtis, and the band. Between songs you can hear the crowd begging for mercy, begging for more. They, they cry, they scream for Sam Cooke to take them higher, and as the last notes of "Having A Party" fade into the smoky Miami night, you can hear them erupting in an ecstatic chaos that feels a little like afterglow.

Sam Cooke invented sweet soul music and then died too soon. In the years intervening, that mantle has passed to cofounder Ray Charles, to Al Green and Marvin Gaye, to the R&B crooners who I recently denigrated, and of course back to the world of gospel. Live At The Harlem Square Club is not only a very fine live album but a call for a drastic reassessment of Sam Cooke's legacy. With excellent and informative liner notes by Peter Guralnick (first written twenty years ago with a postscript added for this reissue), the entire package is a loving revival of an unjustly neglected moment in music history.

I really hate to say this twice in one week, but Live At The Harlem Square Club is one of the finest releases I have heard this millennium, worthy of standing next to James Brown's landmark Apollo Theater date (recorded just a month earlier) as one of the great moments in the history of soul music. Don't fight it, just feel it.

This review also appears at blogcritics.org.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am on my first vacation in, oh, five years or so. By vacation I mean a real vacation, sans family. Sure, it's only about 48 hours, but that's enough when the weirdo Protestant work ethic that has its tendrils wrapped around my medulla oblongata like the most relentlessly constructive tumor in the history of man has me busy busy busy nearly every working minute of every working day. (Usually just bullshit stuff like writing or piddling with my hobbies... otherwise I'd rule the world.)

So here I am in Vermont's northeast kingdom, way out here where the hoot owl rapes the chicken, with nothing to do, nowhere to be, and all the hippie-dippie handmade beer, cheese, and meat I can stand. Sure, Goodwyfe Johno has crap to do, but hey... I'm not her.

See you later, suckers.

I am now leaving for home. There, waiting in a small brown package, is the object of my lust. Civilization IV. Only an hour away. I have updated the countdown timer to reflect this new reality.

John bought himself a copy over lunch today, and GeekLethal finally got the Russian Mafia to pay him what they owed, and he'll be getting a copy tomorrow. That's the start of a good multiplayer game. Anyone else interested? Johno? Johno?

If you are unconvinced of the benefits of joining our little game, read this fictionalized but yet truer than true visualization by our own GL:

G33kL3th4l > I need iron. Who has iron?

John0 > I got 99 problems, but iron ain’t one.

G33kL3th4l > Wha u want trade for iron?

8ucketH3D > Johno, I’ll trade you not kicking your ass for not giving GL iron.

G33kL3th4l > wtf did I do?

John0 > You don’t know me I do what I want

8ucketH3D > J as soon as he has iron he builds Legions and he’s gonna march them up your ass

G33kL3th4l > wtf bitch let him trade what he wants and I can’t even build Legions yet and you have fucking ironclads fielded

[wik] I have it! Mwahahahaha!

[alsø wik] I have started my first Civ IV game. But not until having to...

[alsø alsø wik] If you are buying Civ IV, and you have an ATI Graphics card, prepare for some bullshit. I floundered around for far too long before checking the civ support site. I new that I had some graphics issues, as I recently built a new computer. I had gotten it so it worked, but I hadn't actually fixed it completely. So, when Civ bombed after I tried to run it and the error message indicated graphics problems, well, I just did some research and started reinstalling drivers. Reinstalled Civ and it bombed. Btw, if you're ever having problems, the diagnostic tool included in the game Black and White 2, which I bought a few weeks ago out of sheer frustation at my inability to play Civ, is actually rather fantastic.

Finally, went to the support site, and hey! There's a page just for my problem. It instructed me to uninstall Civ and delete all folders. Then uninstall every single bit of ATI software on the computer. Then, reinstall Civ and DirectX, start the game, let it bomb, then install the ATI drivers - but not any of the other software - then start the game, let it bomb, then unpack some art archive, move some files around, then start the game. That process included restarting the computer about ninety-four billion times and took about two hours altogether. But hey! my video driver problem is now really, really, solved.

[wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?] So, first impressions after running the tutorial? I think it will really kick ass. My initial concerns/peeves are limited to the main map. One thing I liked about Civ III was the fact that you could zoom out and still see units, and move them. That doesn't appear to be possible here - once you zoom out (with the scroll wheel, cool) past a certain point all the units disappear. On the plus side, there's a globe view option kinda like google earth that looks really nifty.

All of the screnes I saw in the tutorial were clean and elegantly designed. Navigation through the menus was easy and at least so far relatively intuitive. Graphics are cool, but it will take me a while to get used to them as the style is a bit different than in III. Lots of context information pops when you rollover items on the screen, which I really dig. The interface provides lots of information without being busy or cluttered. Some UI team deserves bonuses.

We'll see about all the nitty gritty details, but so far, color me impressed.

[see the løveli lakes...] The intro movie was also impressive, and the music is significantly less irritating than in previous editions. I had brought my iPod into the office with me just in case, but so far, I haven't needed it.

[the wøndërful telephøne system...] Looking at the manual... the American unique unit is the Navy SEAL. That sounds so much cooler than the nearly useless F-15 from III. The Romans now have the Praetorian, which seems to be just a Legionary, so I don't know why they changed it to a worse sounding name. On the whole, though, the naming of things seems to be a lot more, I don't know, precise or appropriate than in III. There is indeed a space elevator great wonder, which kicks all ass: but I was also impressed at some of the others, like the Hagia Sophia, Hollywood and Angkor Wat.

[and mäni interesting furry animals...] I am so ready to kick someone's ass on this game. wtf r nukes?

Gizmag, which to me has always sounded like an industry publication for the adult film industry or - worse - a union rag for the International Benevolent Order of Jizmoppers, has an in-depth article on the Snark VTOL UCAV. For those of you not up on your acronyms, that's a vertical takeoff and landin unmanned combat air vehicle.

The Snark is wicked cool.

Constructed mainly of Carbon Fibre and Kevlar, the Snark is light and fast (280 km/h), quiet (special rotor blades make it extremely quiet ), virtually invisible to radar or infrared detetection (it recycles its exhaust gases and emits little heat) and can carry a payload of 680kg, offering the ability to pack both massive firepower (enough to sink a ship) and surveillance equipment (such as high res infrared cameras with a magnification of 7500). But wait, there’s more, and this is the clincher. The Snark is the first UAV that runs on diesel fuel, which means it can be easily integrated into any military force – current UAVs require their own special fuel supply to be transported with them whereas the entire US Army plans to run on a single one fuel - diesel. Last and probably most importantly, the Snark can stay airborne for 24 hours at a time, offering an unprecedented loiter time for a machine of this capability.

As cool as its capabilities are, the really important thing to be understood about the advent of the Snark is the fact that it's being built by a company out of New Zealand, TGR Helicorp. Technology is not just advancing, but it is becoming cheaper and easier to make those advances. Computer technology, and the computer aided design software that runs on it, and the computer controlled machines that turn those designs into real objects are all becoming cheap. Before too long, any nation that wants to, and has a populace capable of understanding and operating the tools can become in short order a substantial power.

We are leaving the industrial age of warfare. For the last century or more, the limits of technology have encouraged the mass production of weapons, vehicles and the soldiers who use them. Any nation that lacked not just the industrial base, but the population would be doomed to being a second rate power at best. But before the industrial age, small nations were often great powers thanks to clever and efficient and disciplined use of military technology; but more importantly, the training of soldiers. Prussia was outnumbered and outgunned, but her well trained army often was able to fight off significantly large foes.

Training and technology will form the basis of the new balance of power. The United States is making a huge effort to stay at the forefront of this change - but our size is not really what's driving the expansion of our military power. It's highly trained troops and lethally clever hardware. Other nations could, and eventually will develop the technology that we are playing with now. Imagine a high tech city state like Singapore in fifteen years, fielding armies of armed drones controlled by a small but elite force of soldiers. Singapore, despite its small size could end up a significant regional power by virtue of its wealth, technology base and a certain amount of political will. Other small nations could leverage the potentials of the new weapons that are being developed to gain military power all out of proportion to their size - in much the same way that the Dutch used ship technology (and the power of stock markets and banking institutions that they had just invented) became a world power in the 1600s.

James at Outside the Beltway links an interesting piece in the Washington Post about a judge right in my backyard. It seems that maverick judge Ian M. O'Flaherty has tossed out as unconstitutional DUI cases that presume the guilt of the alleged. Naturally, the prosecutor in Fairfax county has issues with this sort of interference:

"We've been really racking our brains, trying to come up with some solution to it," said Robert F. Horan Jr. (D), the county's longtime chief prosecutor. "It's a crazy situation. He is, for all practical and legal purposes, the Supreme Court of Virginia in these cases, even though, on the Supreme Court, it would take four of him" to issue a majority opinion invalidating a statute.

The usual cries of endangering public safety have also been leveled at the judge. But some are sympathetic, pointing out that even though the laws allow the accused to rebut the charges, that unfairly shifts the burden of proof to the accused. Other courts have ruled as O'Flaherty has, and University of Richmond criminal law professor Ronald J. Bacigal said, "I think he's exactly right. There are U.S. Supreme Court cases saying you can't relieve the government of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, which is what a presumption does."

"The Fifth Amendment," said O'Flaherty, 59, "is an absolute protection against requiring the defendant to say or do anything in the course of a trial. . . . The Fifth Amendment means the defendant can sit there, not say or do anything, and at the end of the case say, 'Can I go home now?' "

No other judge in Fairfax -- or elsewhere in Virginia, as far as can be determined -- has joined O'Flaherty. But the judge said some other jurists have told him they agree with him. "I had one judge tell me, 'I'd rule that way, but I don't have the guts to,' " O'Flaherty said. "I told him, 'You should be driving a truck.' "

James points out the similarity between these cases and your average traffic stop. However, since most of these are civil cases, not criminal cases, the same standards of proof do not apply. It has always been my view that speed limits and the like are unconstitutional, as they are really a presumption of my incompetence by the government. I've seen plenty of people driving unsafely but under the speed limit. They're free and clear. But a highly skilled nascar driver going five miles over yet in perfect control of his vehicle is breaking the law and creating a public danger.

Another thing that should be ruled unconstitutional is DUI checkpoints. Smacks of fascism, if you ask me.

I think we should nominate O'Flaherty for the Supreme Court.

The Ministry is pleased to announce that by the application of violence, cunning, trickery, fakery and acting crazy, and then through the exceedingly tricky ploy of just asking, the Ministry has secured the right to host the Halloween edition of the Carnival of Music. Ministry operatives are even now scouring the interweb for fascinating nuggets of webby goodness to offer up for your perusal. However, this is not enough to satisfy the Ministry's insatiable lust for links. Therefore, you, you and, you - the unshaven one in the back there with the goofy look on your face, yes, you! - all need align your interests with the Ministry's interests. The Ministry wants a nonpareil Carnival experience. You want a nonpareil Carnival experience. Therefore, send music links to {encode="music@perfidy.org" title="the Ministry"}, so that we may include them.

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Speaking of movie lists, I found this list of the fifty most significant SF movies of all time over at Texas Best Grok. The list originates with SF author John Scalzi, who has composed a Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies.

The list itself is below the fold, where I have indicated those movies that I have seen with italics. You can assume that I want to see any movie that I have not, unless I indicate otherwise.

But first, some commentary on the list itself. Generally speaking, Zombie flicks and Superhero movies do not belong on a science fiction list. Even though the choices he makes are fairly good ones. The Incredibles, I find, is a bit of a borderline case. I can't really pin down a specific reason, but part of me feels that it should be on this list. Also, I think Scalzi has made some missteps in crafting this list. Movies that should have been on the list include:

• The first Terminator, maybe even entirely in place of the second. The second was no where near as important as the first, and no where near as innovative in terms of story. (It's a sequel, hard to be, really.) The only reason I would include the second would be for the ground breaking special effects.
• Altered States
• Andromeda Strain
• Charlie
• Gattaca
• Fifth Element
• The Time Machine (Early version)
• Soylent Green

Another recent movie that isn't earthshaking, but only because it got such limited exposure. Prime is a fantastic low budget time travel movie. Rent it at once.

So, on with the list:

• The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension! - I love this movie. Gonzo garage band style sf.
• Akira
• Alien - Classic horror in a thoughtful sf setting.
• Aliens - Arguably the best action adventure style sf movie ever made. More great lines in five minutes of this movie than in a whole summer of sequels.
  Alphaville
• Back to the Future - Silly, but pure fun.
• Blade Runner - Director's cut, naturally. Nothing like the book, really, but a masterful and beautiful film.
• Brazil - How many directors have two movies on this list?
• Bride of Frankenstein - A monster flick, but if we can argue that Frankenstein is the first sf novel, then we can legitimately argue that this is an sf film.
• Brother From Another Planet
• A Clockwork Orange - Much as I love this movie, I really can't watch it anymore. The violence is more disturbing than hundreds of Matrix showings.
• Close Encounters of the Third Kind - kind of silly, now, but that catchy little tune…
• Contact - A lot of people slagged this, but I dig it. Jodie Foster can't make bad movies, and despite Sagan's saccharine notions of alien intentions, much more thoughtful than your run of the mill first contact story.
• The Damned
• Destination Moon - Truly groundbreaking. It's actually kind of painful to watch now (though I own it) but this was made in the early fifties with all the tech supplied by Heinlein. More accurate than many movies made half a century later, and they had real space flight to use as an example.
• The Day The Earth Stood Still - Classic. Must see, if you haven't.
• Delicatessen
• Escape From New York - Perfect dystopian shoot em up. Too many dystopian movies and stories are depressingly philosophical. Thing is, if things go bad, they'll go bad.
• ET: The Extraterrestrial - Not violent enough. Hated the reworked version.
• Flash Gordon: Space Soldiers (serial)
• The Fly (1985 version) - Two words: perfect casting.
• Forbidden Planet - Another classic.
• Ghost in the Shell - I'm not into anime that much, but this was a good flick. We need a live action version of starblazers.
• Gojira/Godzilla - The platonic form of sf monster movies.
• The Incredibles - Pixar's best work to date.
• Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956 version) - You may call it a Cold War allegory. I call it a good explanation for the behavior of some of my coworkers and superiors.
• Jurassic Park - Magical. Even with the goofy kids. That scene with the velociraptors in the kitchen – imho, one of the best single scenes ever filmed.
• Mad Max 2/The Road Warrior - See comments for Escape from NY.
• The Matrix - When Trinity levitated and beat the crap out of those donut eaters, I turned to wife and said, this movie is gonna kick ass.
• Metropolis – I really, really, need to see this, especially seeing as they've released it with the original score.
• On the Beach – The book is fantastic, I need to see this one.
• Planet of the Apes (1968 version) - Seven words: "Damn you! Damn you all to hell!"
• Robocop - I'll buy that for a dollar. Verhoeven's only good movie. What fucktard, though. Starship Troopers still breaks my heart.
• Sleeper - The only Woody Allen movie that I unreservedly love.
• Solaris (1972 version)
• Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan - You had me at Ricardo Montalban's fake pecks. The best of the ST movies, though they stole the battle scene straight from Run Silent, Run Deep.
• Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope - Good,
• Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back - Better, and then shit for the next four movies. Damn you, George Lucas!
• The Stepford Wives The original is great, the remake was okay.
• Superman - Great movie, but doesn't belong here.
• Terminator 2: Judgement Day - See my earlier comments.
• The Thing From Another World
• Things to Come
• Tron - Goofy now, but amazing at the time.
• 12 Monkeys - One of my all time favorite movies. Brad Pitt's best performance – "Fuck the bozos!"
• 28 Days Later - One of the best zombie flicks ever, but not an sf movie really.
• 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - A classic.
• 2001: A Space Odyssey Except for the last twenty minutes, a truly great film. HAL is one of the best sf film characters ever.
• La Voyage Dans la Lune
• War of the Worlds (1953 version) Awesome.

Perfidy will be broadcast into deepest, darkest space.

Thanks to Andrew for the cool link.