text:
The Problem Is Civil Obedience
NONVIOLENCE, 20 May 2019
Howard Zinn | Zinn Reader – TRANSCEND Media Service
By the latter part of May, 1970, feelings about the war in Vietnam had become almost unbearably intense. In Boston, about a hundred of us decided to sit down at the Boston Army Base and block the road used by buses carrying draftees off to military duty. We were not so daft that we thought we were stopping the flow of soldiers to Vietnam; it was a symbolic act, a statement, a piece of guerrilla the after. We were all arrested and charged, in the quaint language of an old statute, with "sauntering and loitering" in such a way as to obstruct traffic. Eight of us refused to plead guilty, insisting on trial by jury, hoping we could persuade the members of the jury that ours was a justified act of civil disobedience. We did not persuade them. We were found guilty, chose jail instead of paying a fine, but the judge, apparently reluctant to have us in jail, gave us forty-eight hours to change our minds, after which we should show up in court to either pay the fine or be jailed. In the meantime, I had been invited to go to Johns Hopkins University to debate with the philosopher Charles Frankel on the issue of civil disobedience. I decided it would be hypocritical for me, an advocate of civil disobedience, to submit dutifully to the court and thereby skip out on an opportunity to speak to hundreds of students about civil disobedience. So, on the day I was supposed to show up in court in Boston I flew to Baltimore and that evening debated with Charles Frankel. Returning to Boston I decided to meet my morning class, but two detectives were waiting for me, and I was hustled before the court and then spent a couple of days in jail. What follows is the transcript of my opening statement in the debate at Johns Hopkins. It was included in a book published by Johns Hopkins Press in 1972, entitled Violence: The Crisis of American Confidence.
I start from the supposition that the world is topsy-turvy, that things are all wrong, that the wrong people are in jail and the wrong people are out of jail, that the wrong people are in power and the wrong people are out of power, that the wealth is distributed in this country and the world in such a way as not simply to require small reform but to require a drastic reallocation of wealth. I start from the supposition that we don't have to say too much about this because all we have to do is think about the state of the world today and realize that things are all upside down. Daniel Berrigan is in jail-A Catholic priest, a poet who opposes the war-and J. Edgar Hoover is free, you see. David Dellinger, who has opposed war ever since he was this high and who has used all of his energy and passion against it, is in danger of going to jail. The men who are responsible for the My Lai massacre are not on trial; they are in Washington serving various functions, primary and subordinate, that have to do with the unleashing of massacres, which surprise them when they occur. At Kent State University four students were killed by the National Guard and students were indicted. In every city in this country, when demonstrations take place, the protesters, whether they have demonstrated or not, whatever they have done, are assaulted and clubbed by police, and then they are arrested for assaulting a police officer.
Now, I have been studying very closely what happens every day in the courts in Boston, Massachusetts. You would be astounded-maybe you wouldn't, maybe you have been around, maybe you have lived, maybe you have thought, maybe you have been hit-at how the daily rounds of injustice make their way through this marvelous thing that we call due process. Well, that is my premise.
All you have to do is read the Soledad letters of George Jackson, who was sentenced to one year to life, of which he spent ten years, for a seventy-dollar robbery of a filling station. And then there is the U.S. Senator who is alleged to keep 185,000 dollars a year, or something like that, on the oil depletion allowance. One is theft; the other is legislation. something is wrong, something is terribly wrong when we ship 10,000 bombs full of nerve gas across the country, and drop them in somebody else's swimming pool so as not to trouble our own. So you lose your perspective after a while. If you don't think, if you just listen to TV and read scholarly things, you actually begin to think that things are not so bad, or that just little things are wrong. But you have to get a little detached, and then come back and look at the world, and you are horrified. So we have to start from that supposition-that things are really topsy-turvy.
And our topic is topsy-turvy: civil disobedience. As soon as you say the topic is civil disobedience, you are saying our problem is civil disobedience. That is not our problem…. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is the numbers of people all over the world who have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. And our problem is that scene in All Quiet on the Western Front where the schoolboys march off dutifully in a line to war. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world, in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem. We recognize this for Nazi Germany. We know that the problem there was obedience, that the people obeyed Hitler. People obeyed; that was wrong. They should have challenged, and they should have resisted; and if we were only there, we would have showed them. Even in Stalin's Russia we can understand that; people are obedient, all these herdlike people.
But America is different. That is what we've all been brought up on. From the time we are this high and I still hear it resounding in Mr. Frankel's statement-you tick off, one, two, three, four, five lovely things .~ about America that we don't want disturbed very much. But if we have learned anything in the past ten years, it is that these lovely things about America were never lovely. We have been expansionist and aggressive and mean to other people from the beginning. And we've been aggressive and mean to people in this country, and we've allocated the wealth of this country in a very unjust way. We've never had justice in the courts for the poor people, for black people, for radicals. Now how can we boast that America is a very special place? It is not that special. It really isn't.
Well, that is our topic, that is our problem: civil obedience. Law is very important. We are talking about obedience to law-law, this marvelous invention of modern times, which we attribute to Western civilization, and which we talk about proudly. The rule of law, oh, how wonderful, all these courses in Western civilization all over the land. Remember those bad old days when people were exploited by feudalism? Everything was terrible in the Middle Ages-but now we have Western civilization, the rule of law. The rule of law has regularized and maximized the injustice that existed before the rule of law, that is what the rule of law has done. Let us start looking at the rule of law realistically, not with that metaphysical complacency with which we always examined it before.
When in all the nations of the world the rule of law is the darling of the leaders and the plague of the people, we ought to begin to recognize this. We have to transcend these national boundaries in our thinking. Nixon and Brezhnev have much more in common with one another than – we have with Nixon. J. Edgar Hoover has far more in common with the head of the Soviet secret police than he has with us. It's the international dedication to law and order that binds the leaders of all countries in a comradely bond. That's why we are always surprised when they get together — they smile, they shake hands, they smoke cigars, they really like one another no matter what they say. It's like the Republican and Democratic parties, who claim that it's going to make a terrible difference if one or the other wins, yet they are all the same. Basically, it is us against them.
Yossarian was right, remember, in Catch-22? He had been accused of giving aid and comfort to the enemy, which nobody should ever be accused of, and Yossarian said to his friend Clevinger: "The enemy is whoever is going to get you killed, whichever side they are on." But that didn't sink in, so he said to Clevinger: "Now you remember that, or one of these days you'll be dead." And remember? Clevinger, after a while, was dead. And we must remember that our enemies are not divided along national lines, that enemies are not just people who speak different languages and occupy different territories. Enemies are people who want to get us killed.
We are asked, "What if everyone disobeyed the law?" But a better question is, "What if everyone obeyed the law?" And the answer to that question is much easier to come by, because we have a lot of empirical evidence about what happens if everyone obeys the law, or if even most people obey the law. What happens is what has happened, what is happening. Why do people revere the law? And we all do; even I have to fight it, for it was put into my bones at an early age when I was a Cub Scout. One reason we revere the law is its ambivalence. In the modern world we deal with phrases and words that have multiple meanings, like "national security." Oh, yes, we must do this for national security! Well, what does that mean? Whose national security? Where? When? Why? We don't bother to answer those questions, or even to ask them.
The law conceals many things. The law is the Bill of Rights. ;'~ fact, that is what we think of when we develop our reverence for the law. The law is something that protects us; the law is our right-the law is the Constitution. Bill of Rights Day, essay contests sponsored by the American Legion on our Bill of Rights, that is the law. And that is good.
But there is another part of the law that doesn't get ballyhooed- the legislation that has gone through month after month, year after year, from the beginning of the Republic, which allocates the resources of the country in such a way as to leave some people very rich and other people very poor, and still others scrambling like mad for what little is left. That is the law. If you go to law school you will see this. You can quantify it by counting the big, heavy law books that people carry around with them and see how many law books you count that say "Constitutional Rights" on them and how many that say "Property," "Contracts," "Torts," "Corporation Law." That is what the law is mostly about. The law is the oil depletion allowance-although we don't have Oil Depletion Allowance Day, we don't have essays written on behalf of the oil depletion allowance. So there are parts of the law that are publicized and played up to us-oh, this is the law, the Bill of Rights. And there are other parts of the law that just do their quiet work, and nobody says anything about them.
It started way back. When the Bill of Rights was first passed, remember, in the first administration of Washington? Great thing. Bill of Rights passed! Big ballyhoo. At the same time Hamilton's economic pro gram was passed. Nice, quiet, money to the rich-I'm simplifying it a little, but not too much. Hamilton's economic program started it off. You can draw a straight line from Hamilton's economic program to the oil depletion allowance to the tax write-offs for corporations. All the way through-that is the history. The Bill of Rights publicized; economic legislation unpublicized.
You know the enforcement of different parts of the law is as important as the publicity attached to the different parts of the law. The Bill of Rights, is it enforced? Not very well. You'll find that freedom of speech in constitutional law is a very difficult, ambiguous, troubled concept. Nobody really knows when you can get up and speak and when you can't. Just check all of the Supreme Court decisions. Talk about predictability in a system-you can't predict what will happen to you when you get up on the street corner and speak. See if you can tell the difference between the Terminiello case and the Feiner case, and see if you can figure out what is going to happen. By the way, there is one part of the law that is not very vague, and that involves the right to distribute leaflets on the street. The Supreme Court has been very clear on that. In decision after decision we are affirmed an absolute right to distribute leaflets on the street. Try it. Just go out on the street and start distributing leaflets. And a policeman comes up to you and he says, "Get out of here." And you say, "Aha! Do you know Marsh v. Alabama, 1946?" That is the reality of the Bill of Rights. That's the reality of the Constitution, that part of the law which is portrayed to us as a beautiful and marvelous thing. And seven years after the Bill of Rights was passed, which said that "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech," Congress made a law abridging the freedom of speech. Remember? The Sedition Act of 1798.
So the Bill of Rights was not enforced. Hamilton's program was enforced, because when the whisky farmers went out and rebelled you remember, in 1794 in Pennsylvania, Hamilton himself got on his horse and went out there to suppress the rebellion to make sure that the revenue tax was enforced. And you can trace the story right down to the present day, what laws are enforced, what laws are not enforced. So you have to be careful when you say, "I'm for the law, I revere the law." What part of the law are you talking about? I'm not against all law. But I think we ought to begin to make very important distinctions about what laws do what things to what people.
And there are other problems with the law. It's a strange thing, we think that law brings order. Law doesn't. How do we know that law does not bring order? Look around us. We live under the rules of law. Notice how much order we have? People say we have to worry about civil disobedience because it will lead to anarchy. Take a look at the present world in which the rule of law obtains. This is the closest to what is called anarchy in the popular mind-confusion, chaos, international banditry. The only order that is really worth anything does not come through the enforcement … of law, it comes through the establishment of a society which is just and in which harmonious relationships are established and in which you need a minimum of regulation to create decent sets of arrangements among people. But the order based on law and on the force of law is the order of the totalitarian state, and it inevitably leads either to total injustice or to rebel lion-eventually, in other words, to very great disorder.
We all grow up with the notion that the law is holy. They asked Daniel Berrigan's mother what she thought of her son's breaking the law. He burned draft records-one of the most violent acts of this century- to protest the war, for which he was sentenced to prison, as criminals should be. They asked his mother who is in her eighties, what she thought of her son's breaking the law. And she looked straight into the interviewer's face, and she said, "It's not God's law." Now we forget that. There is nothing sacred about the law. Think of who makes laws. The law is not made by God, it is made by Strom Thurmond. If you nave any notion about the sanctity and loveliness and reverence for the law, look at the legislators around the country who make the laws. Sit in on the sessions of the state legislatures. Sit in on Congress, for these are the people who make the laws which we are then supposed to revere.
All of this is done with such propriety as to fool us. This is the problem. In the old days, things were confused; you didn't know. Now you know. It is all down there in the books. Now we go through due process. Now the same things happen as happened before, except that we've gone through the right procedures. In Boston a policeman walked into a hospital ward and fired five times at a black man who had snapped a towel at his arm-and killed him. A hearing was held. The judge decided that the policeman was justified because if he didn't do it, he would lose the respect of his fellow officers. Well, that is what is known as due process-that is, the guy didn't get away with it. We went through the proper procedures, and everything was set up. The decorum, the propriety of the law fools us.
The nation then, was founded on disrespect for the law, and then came the Constitution and the notion of stability which Madison and Hamilton liked. But then we found in certain crucial times in our history that the legal framework did not suffice, and in order to end slavery we had to go outside the legal framework, as we had to do at the time of the American Revolution or the Civil War. The union had to go outside the legal framework in order to establish certain rights in the 1930s. And in this time, which may be more critical than the Revolution or the Civil War, the problems are so horrendous as to require us to go outside the legal framework in order to make a statement, to resist, to begin to establish the kind of institutions and relationships which a decent society should have. No, not just tearing things down; building things up. But even if you build things up that you are not supposed to build up-you try to build up a people's park, that's not tearing down a system; you are building something up, but you are doing it illegally-the militia comes in and drives you out. That is the form that civil disobedience is going to take more and more, people trying to build a new society in the midst of the old.
But what about voting and elections? Civil disobedience-we don't need that much of it, we are told, because we can go through the electoral system. And by now we should have learned, but maybe we haven't, for we grew up with the notion that the voting booth is a sacred place, almost like a confessional. You walk into the voting booth and you come out and they snap your picture and then put it in the papers with a beatific smile on your face. You've just voted; that is democracy. But if you even read what the political scientists say-although who can?-about the voting process, you find that the voting process is a sham. Totalitarian states love voting. You get people to the polls and they register their approval. I know there is a difference-they have one party and we have two parties. We have one more party than they have, you see.
What we are trying to do, I assume, is really to get back to the principles and aims and spirit of the Declaration of Independence. This spirit is resistance to illegitimate authority and to forces that deprive people of their life and liberty and right to pursue happiness, and therefore under these conditions, it urges the right to alter or abolish their current form of government-and the stress had been on abolish. But to establish the principles of the Declaration of Independence, we are going to need to go outside the law, to stop obeying the laws that demand killing or that allocate wealth the way it has been done, or that put people in jail for petty technical offenses and keep other people out of jail for enormous crimes. My hope is that this kind of spirit will take place not just in this country but in other countries because they all need it. People in all countries need the spirit of disobedience to the state, which is not a metaphysical thing but a thing of force and wealth. And we need a kind of declaration of interdependence among people in all countries of the world who are striving for the same thing.
Howard Zinn (24 Aug 1922 – 27 Jan 2010) was an American historian, playwright, and social activist. He was a political science professor at Boston University. Zinn wrote more than twenty books, including his best-selling and influential A People's History of the United States. In 2007, he published a version of it for younger readers, A Young People′s History of the United States. Zinn described himself as "Something of an anarchist, something of a socialist. Maybe a democratic socialist." He wrote extensively about the civil rights and anti-war movements, and labor history of the United States. His memoir, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train, was also the title of a 2004 documentary about Zinn's life and work. Zinn died of a heart attack in 2010 aged 87. (Wikipedia)
From the Zinn Reader, Seven Stories Press, 1970
Go to Original – thirdworldtraveler.com
Tags: Activism, Civil Disobedience, Civil Obedience, Civil society, Civilization, Culture, Democracy, Government, Howard Zinn, Justice, Nonviolence, Politics, Power, Solutions, USA
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One Response to "The Problem Is Civil Obedience"
[…] The short video with Matt Damon is also quite good. Thanks to Transcend for providing this today. — JR https://www.transcend.org/tms/2019/05/the-problem-is-civil-obedience/ […]


text: Mark Rijpkema studied chemistry at the Radboud University of Nijmegen, where he graduated in 1996 with two majors: Pharmacology and Microbiology. After graduation he worked at the department of Radiology of the University Medical Center Nijmegen, first as junior researcher, and later as PhD student in close collaboration with the department of Radiotherapy. He obtained his doctoral degree in 2003 with his thesis 'MR imaging and MR spectroscopy to guide treatment selection for patients with tumours in the brain and head-neck region'. Subsequently, he worked as a postdoc at the University of Utrecht. In 2006, he moved back to Nijmegen to work at the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience of the Donders Institute, where he started a research line investigating the genetic underpinnings of brain structure and function (Brain Imaging Genetics project), in close collaboration with the Human Genetics department of the Radboud University Medical Center. In 2011 he returned to the field of oncology at the department of Nuclear Medicine (TRACER group) and started his own research group working on molecular imaging in translational research, focusing on intraoperative fluorescence imaging and multimodal image-guided surgery.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Easy Slow Cooker Comfort Food
Apple Cinnamon Overnight Oats
Mornings are made for comfort food, so this simple apple cinnamon slow cooker oatmeal recipe is a wonderful way to start the day.
It is so nice when your family can wake up to the aroma wafting through the house.
It will smell as if an apple pie is baking in the oven, but it is, indeed, breakfast.
Oats are an excellent choice for breakfast, since they are good fuel for the day.
They also taste delicious, especially when cinnamon, apples and pecans are added.
This recipe has apples mixed in for the duration of the cook time, so the flavor permeates the oats.
Then additional apple chunks are added just before serving, which makes it extra delicious.
Make sure you use steel cut oats in this recipe, since they will give it a nice texture that isn't too mushy.
I generally avoid lining my crock pot, but in this case a slow cooker liner definitely makes sense.
Without a liner, clean up is a bear. With a liner, it is really easy.
Enjoy these overnight oats!
Apple Cinnamon Slow Cooker Oatmeal Recipe
Prep time – 10 minutes
Cook time – 6-8 hours
Serves – 4-6
3 cups Water
1 cup Apple Cider
1 cup Steel Cut Oats
2 Apples, cored and diced
1 ½ T Agave Nectar
1 t Ground Cinnamon
½ t Ground Allspice
½ t. Ground Nutmeg
Salt to taste
1 Apple, cored and diced
½ cup Pecans, chopped
Maple Syrup (optional)
Slow Cooker
Slow Cooker Liner
Chef Knife
Measuring Cups
Measuring Spoons
1) Line slow cooker. Then, fill with water, apple cider, oats, agave nectar, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg and salt. Stir to combine.
2) Put the lid on the slow cooker and cook on low for 6-8 hours. Cook time can vary, depending upon the slow cooker. If you are familiar with your slow cooker, you'll have a good idea of whether you will be closer to 6 or 8 hours.
3) Spoon oats into bowls and top with freshly chopped apples and pecans. Add maple syrup, if desired.
Following are a few of my other delicious breakfasts:
- Applesauce Belgian Waffles
- Cast Iron Fig Scones
- Layered Berry Overnight Oats
- Pita Breakfast Pizza with Egg and Asparagus
Then take a look at the rest of my vegetarian recipes, so you can have even more delicious fun in the kitchen!


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Athletes and bodybuilders strive for perfection when it comes to their bulky frames and superhuman strength. Therefore they never settle for anything less. Yes, it's an age-old conflict that has cost many people their health and their lives in the quest to be better than the competition in terms of appearance and performance.
For the most part, our capacity to grow has always been constrained. To help themselves, these athletes and bodybuilders have long turned to potentially lethal steroids. Anabolics are quickly losing their appeal as performance enhancers and/aesthetic drugs. And we owe a debt of gratitude to the performance-enhancing drug industry for introducing SARMs, or synthetic anabolic steroid receptor modulators, which are much safer alternatives of selective androgen receptor modulators for sale.
What is the significance of Rad 140?
There are rad140 SARMs are short for Selective Androgenic Receptor Modulators, which work similarly to steroids in promoting mass gain and performance enhancement. Fortunately, they don't have the bad reputation that steroids do for their deadly adverse effects.
RAD-140, commonly known as Testosterone, is a popular SARM that has risen to the top. Testosterone, a research-stage SARM created by Radius Health, Inc. to prevent muscle loss, is being developed by the business. However, it is still in the research stage, with researchers anticipating that it could one day treat diseases like breast cancer.
RAD-140 picks the androgenic receptors with care, like the other drugs in its class but not traditional steroids. Testosterone guarantees that each of these hormones performs well on its own because they are found in the body's muscle and bone tissues.
For reasons that can be traced back to biology, men's bodies make more androgens, including Testosterone. So-called male hormones help develop masculine characteristics while controlling the creation of secondary reproductive organs by regulating androgens, also known as the male hormones. For this reason, a spike in testosterone levels can change everything. Bodybuilders and strength trainers who want to excel may find that low levels of Testosterone are a significant roadblock.
Or RAD-140, which mimics androgen activity by binding to androgen receptors. SARM's popularity is rising due to its potency and effectiveness, which can produce pretty convincing engorging and strength boosting effects.
There are several advantages to using RAD-140 for you:
- The androgen receptors are targeted, which promotes anabolic activity. Taking this strategy encourages muscular growth, development, and strength.
- It increases the body's testosterone levels. If a man takes in extra Testosterone, his sexual desire, virility, and relaxation ability will all improve.
- For its capacity to increase muscle mass and density, the SARM is well regarded.
- The chemical also aids in the reduction of belly fat. It eliminates stored fat in the body, resulting in razor-sharp chiseling results.
- In the gym, it gives a sense of drive and skill to perform more complex and more prolonged because of increased physical force. It accelerates healing, even more, making it much easier for weight lifters to maintain a regular training schedule.
- It doesn't have any aromatizing properties at all. Consequently, gynecomastia and water retention are avoided.
- It reduces amyloid-ability beta's to attach to brain cells, which encourages the creation of new ones. As a result, your memory and other cognitive abilities, such as your capacity to learn, are enhanced.
- It hurts the production of ESRI, which promotes breast cancer research.
What is the mechanism of RAD-140 SARMs?
Although RAD-140 lacks androgenic properties, its effects are similar to those of steroid and hormone anabolic compounds such as Testosterone. As a result, Testosterone is well-suited to bulk and strength gainers in search of potent anabolic effects without compromising their health in the process. RAD-140 boosts protein synthesis efficiency by producing effects similar to those of Testosterone.
Muscle growth and development is primarily a protein synthesis-dependent process. Bodybuilders lose protein as a result of their strenuous training and workouts. Furthermore, they require effective repair of injured muscle fibers as a foundation for muscle growth.


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Navigating the sidewalks of New York City in the rain is unpleasant enough, but after your favorite white sneakers get drenched in dirty runoff water and your thrifted silk blouse gets water stains all over it, it becomes tough to not dread the next thunderstorm. Unfortunately, the spring rainy season is upon us, making it that much harder to formulate outfits that are both suitable for the weather and fashionable enough to be seen in traipsing around the city.
Luckily, a few ever-stylish NYU students shared a few solutions to the rain-related fashion riddle.
LS first-year Pierre Philippe Falcone explained his own aversion to the rain. As an Arizona native, having to worry about wet weather so often was a new experience. Falcone soon learned to use umbrellas to his advantage.
"I try to match my umbrella to my outfit," Falcone said. "For example, one of my umbrellas is yellow so I love to coordinate it with these really bright yellow Hunter rain boots that I have."
LS first-year Emily Glass agreed that umbrellas can actually elevate and complement an outfit in addition to protecting you from the precipitation.
"What can really make an outfit is a fun umbrella," Glass said. "If I'm not wearing a lot of color, I'll use my hot pink umbrella, but if my outfit is more bright I opt for a more muted one."
A bright pop of color is not only an easy fashion statement but can help remind us that it's still spring, despite the gloomy ambience. Stern first-year Daphne Cheng uses color to lift her own spirits, even during a downpour.
"I usually wear my rain jacket even when it's not raining," Cheng said. "It's a periwinkle North Face, and it's my favorite color."
By manipulating their umbrellas and coordinating bright colors, these students stay both dry and fashionable. Other students on campus manage by wearing trendy water-resistant shoes like Dr. Martens, and others wear snapbacks instead of umbrellas. As the dreary weather continues, keep your spirits up by staying stylish and staying dry.
Email Bella Gil at [email protected].


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Linking your survey to digital traces can be like asking everyone your questions at all times.
Asking generally comes in two main categories: sample surveys and censuses. Sample surveys, where you access a small number of people, can be flexible, timely, and relatively cheap. However, sample surveys, because they are based on a sample, are often limited in their resolution; with a sample survey, it is often hard to make estimates about specific geographic regions or for specific demographic groups. Censuses, on the other, attempt to interview everyone in the population. They have great resolution, but they are generally expensive, narrow in focus (they only include a small number of questions), and not timely (they happen on a fixed schedule, such as every 10 years) (Kish 1979). Now imagine if researchers could combine the best characteristics of sample surveys and censuses; imagine if researchers could ask every question to everyone every day.
Obviously, this continual, ubiquitous, always-on survey is a kind of social science fantasy. But, it appears that we can begin to approximate this by combining survey questions from a small number of people with digital traces from many people. I call this type of combination amplified asking. If done well, it could help us provides estimate that are more local (for smaller geographic areas), more granular (for specific demographic groups), and more timely.
One example of amplified asking comes from the work of Joshua Blumenstock, who wanted to collect data that would help guide development in poor countries. More specifically, Blumenstock wanted to create a system to measure wealth and well-being that combined the completeness of a census with the flexibility and frequency of a survey (Blumenstock 2014; Blumenstock, Cadamuro, and On 2015). In fact, I've already described Blumenstock's work briefly in Chapter 1.
To start, Blumenstock partnered with the largest mobile phone provider in Rwanda. The company provided him anonymized transaction records from about 1.5 million customers covering behavior from 2005 and 2009. The logs contain information about each call and text message such as the start time, duration, and approximate geographic location of the caller and receiver. Before we start talking about the statistical issues, it is worth pointing out that this first step may be one of the hardest. As described in Chapter 2, most digital trace data is inaccessible to researchers. And, many companies are justifiably hesitant to share their data because it is private; that is their customers probably didn't expect that their records will be shared—in bulk—with researchers. In this case, the researchers took careful steps to anonymize the data and their work was overseen by a third-party (i.e., their IRB). But, despite these efforts, these data are probably still identifiable and they likely contain sensitive information (Mayer, Mutchler, and Mitchell 2016; Landau 2016). I'll return to these ethical question in Chapter 6.
Recall that Blumenstock was interested in measuring wealth and well-being. But, these traits are not directly in the call records. In other words, these call records are incomplete for this research, a common feature of digital traces that was discussed in detail in Chapter 2. But, it seems likely that the call records probably have some information about wealth and well-being. So, one way of asking Blumenstock's question could be: is it possible to predict how someone will respond to a survey based on their digital trace data? If so, then by asking a few people we can guess the answers of everyone else.
To assess this empirically, Blumenstock and research assistants from Kigali Institute of Science and Technology called a sample of about a thousand mobile phone customers. The researchers explained the goals of the project to the participants, asked for their consent to link the survey responses to the call records, and then asked them a series of questions to measure their wealth and well-being, such as "Do you own a radio?" and "Do you own a bicycle?" (see Figure 3.11 for a partial list). All participants in the survey were compensated financially.
Next, Blumenstock used a two-step procedure common in data science: feature engineering followed by supervised learning. First, in the feature engineering step, for everyone that was interviewed, Blumenstock converted the call records into a set of characteristics about each person; data scientists might call these characteristics "features" and social scientists would call them "variables." For example, for each person, Blumenstock calculated total number of days with activity, the number of distinct people a person has been in contact with, the amount of money spent on airtime, and so on. Critically, good feature engineering requires knowledge of the research setting. For example, if it is important to distinguish between domestic and international calls (we might expect people who call internationally to be wealthier), then this must be done at the feature engineering step. A researcher with little understanding of Rwanda might not include this feature, and then the predictive performance of the model will suffer.
Next, in the supervised learning step, Blumenstock built a statistical model to predict the survey response for each person based on their features. In this case, Blumenstock used logistic regression with 10-fold cross-validation, but he could have used a variety of other statistical or machine learning approaches.
So how well did it work? Was Blumenstock able to predict answers to survey questions like "Do you own a radio?" and "Do you own a bicycle?" using features derived from call records? Sort of. The accuracy of the predictions were high for some traits (Figure 3.11). But, it is always important to compare a complex prediction method against a simple alternative. In this case, a simple alternative is to predict that everyone will give the most common answer. For example, 97.3% reported owning a radio so if Blumenstock had predicted that everyone would report owning a radio he would have had an accuracy of 97.3%, which is surprisingly similar to the performance of his more complex procedure (97.6% accuracy). In other words, all the fancy data and modeling increased the accuracy of the prediction from 97.3% to 97.6%. However, for other questions, such as "Do you own a bicycle?", the predictions improved from 54.4% to 67.6%. More generally, Figure 3.12 shows for some traits Blumenstock did not improve much beyond just making the simple baseline prediction, but that for other traits there was some improvement.
At this point you might be thinking that these results are a bit disappointing, but just one year later, Blumenstock and two colleagues—Gabriel Cadamuro and Robert On—published a paper in Science with substantially better results (Blumenstock, Cadamuro, and On 2015). There were two main technical reasons for the improvement: 1) they used more sophisticated methods (i.e., a new approach to feature engineering and a more sophisticated machine learning model) and 2) rather than attempting to infer responses to individual survey questions (e.g., "Do you own a radio?"), they attempted to infer a composite wealth index.
Blumenstock and colleagues demonstrated the performance of their approach in two ways. First, they found that for the people in their sample, they could do a pretty good job of predicting their wealth from call records (Figure 3.14). Second, and ever more importantly, Blumenstock and colleagues showed that their procedure could produce high-quality estimates of the geographic distribution of wealth in Rwanda. More specifically, they used their machine learning model, which was trained on their sample of about 1,000 people, to predict the wealth of all 1.5 million people in the call records. Further, with the geospatial data embedded in the call data (recall that the call data includes the location of the nearest cell tower for each call), the researchers were able to estimate the approximate place of residence of each person. Putting these two estimates together, the research produced an estimate of the geographic distribution of subscriber wealth at extremely fine spatial granularity. For example, they could estimate the average wealth in each of Rwanda's 2148 cells (the smallest administrative unit in the country). These predicted wealth values were so granular they were difficult to check. So, the researchers aggregated their results to produce estimates of the average wealth of Rwanda's 30 districts. These district-level estimates were strongly related to the estimates from a gold standard traditional survey, the Rwandan Demographic and Health Survey (Figure 3.14). Although the estimates from the two sources were similar, the estimates from Blumenstock and colleagues were about 50 times cheaper and 10 times faster (when cost in measured in terms of variable costs). This dramatic decrease in cost means that rather than being run every few years—as is standard for Demographic and Health Surveys—the hybrid of small survey combined with big digital trace data could be run every month.
In conclusion, Blumenstock's amplified asking approach combined survey data with digital trace data to produce estimates comparable with gold-standard survey estimates. This particular example also clarifies some of the trade-offs between amplified asking and traditional survey methods. First, the amplified asking estimates were more timely, substantially cheaper, and more granular. But, on the other hand, at this time, there is not a strong theoretical basis for this kind of amplified asking. That is, this one example does not show when it will work and when it won't. Further, the amplified asking approach does not yet have good ways to quantify uncertainty around its estimates. However, amplified asking has deep connections to three large areas in statistics—model-based post-stratification (Little 1993), imputation (Rubin 2004), and small-area estimation (Rao and Molina 2015)—and so I expect that progress will be rapid.
Amplified asking follows a basic recipe that can be tailored to your particular situation. There are two ingredients and two steps. The two ingredients are 1) a digital trace dataset that is wide but thin (that is, it has many people but not the information that you need about each persons) and 2) a survey that is narrow but thick (that is, it has only a few people, but it has the information that you need about those people). Then, there are two steps. First, for the people in both data sources, build a machine learning model that uses digital trace data to predict survey answers. Next, use that machine learning model to impute the survey answers of everyone in the digital trace data. Thus, if there is some question that you want to ask to lots of people, look for digital trace data from those people that might be used to predict their answer.
Comparing Blumenstock's first and second attempt at the problem also illustrates an important lesson about the transition from second era to third era approaches to survey research: the beginning is not the end. That is, many times, the first approach will not be the best, but if researchers continuing working, things can get better. More generally, when evaluating new approaches to social research in the digital age, it is important to make two distinct evaluations: 1) how well does this work now and 2) how well do you think this might work in the future as the data landscape changes and as researchers devote more attention to the problem. Although, researchers are trained to make the first kind of evaluation (how good is this particular piece of research), the second is often more important.


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The sport of axe throwing is an activity that is appreciated all year round in the patio. For a long time Native Americans and Mountain Men have utilized axes for hunting, chopping kindling, and to protect themselves, now they might be used for recreation fun. Utilizing these essential abilities, you can figure out how to hurl everything from an axe to a machete, which isn't really advised. Before you start throwing your axe, you'll require a decent target. The best way to make a target is to cut logs and heap them in the shape of a pyramid. If the target is large, it will be easier to learn how to throw the axe. The wood ought to be delicate, so the sharp edge of the axe can "stick" in the logs; subsequently old wood is better to use.
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26-year-old Shailene Woodley became another Hollywood beauty, who collapsed to dramatic changes for the sake of the role.
The actress was able to lose weight in the shortest time. Shailene had to sit on a strict diet under the supervision of doctors. The actress consumed only 350 calories a day:
"For two weeks, I ate only a small slice of salmon, steamed broccoli and two egg yolks a day. It's 350 calories. It was terrible! I could not sleep, so I drank a glass of wine before going to bed".
In this extreme way, it's better not to lose weight. This is not only warned by Woodley herself, but also by doctors.
The actress presented her new work - the painting "In the power of the elements." Shailene played a girl who was in the open ocean for two weeks.
After filming the actress was glad to return to the usual diet.


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How to find website vulnerabilities in Kali Linux 2017 - Uniscan
How To Scan a Website For Vulnerabilities (XSS & Sqlinjection)
All the tricks and tips that TechTrick provides only for educational purpose. If you choose to use the information in TechTrick to break into computer systems maliciously and without authorization, you are on your own. Neither I (TechTrick Admin) nor anyone else associated with TechTrick shall be liable. We are not responsibe for any issues that caused due to informations provided here. So, Try yourself and see the results. You are not losing anything by trying... We are humans, Mistakes are quite natural. Here on TechTrick also have many mistakes..


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Grateful Dead drummer percussionist Mickey Hart has pursued a long career as an avid recorder of world music—and more. Starting in the late '60s, he began making state-of-the-art recordings of everything from classical Indian music to Koranic recitation to West African drumming, powwows and the multiphonic chanting of Tibetan months. Hart is now in the process of turning over his audio archives to Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, which has just released the 25-volume Mickey Hart Collection, drawn from releases that first appeared between 1988-2002, distributed by Rykodisc. For more on the recordings, and to download titles from these 25 volumes at mickeyhart.net. In October, 2011, Afropop's Banning Eyre spoke with Hart about the collection and his life in recording.
Mickey Hart: Banning, how are you?
Banning Eyre: Busy, but happy.
M.H.: One of the things is to be happy you have to be creative, and to be creative, that makes you happy.
B.E.: I spent a good part of the summer in Egypt, and I thought of you because we were exploring a lot of Nubian music, and one of the real touchstones for me in discovering Nubian music is your Hamza El Din Eclipse record, which is still one of my favorite things to listen to at night.
M.H.: You are absolutely right. It's the soft side. Hamza had a real touch. He was the desert. And you know, when I went with him to Komombo, to Nubia, I brought my tar there—the single membrane drum. It was just filled with the most amazing harmonics, things that you never hear normally when you play the instrument. I had to play it in the desert. I had never heard the drum sound like that. It was so intimate. It was like a part of me. It was going back to its birthplace, you know. That really was an ear opener.
B.E.: Well, we miss Hamza. But Nubia remains. We didn't get all that much into the remote areas, but we found some great Nubian music in Cairo. And it's interesting in the context of the revolution. Traditional music is finding new homes in the city. There's a bit of a resurgence of a cultural Revolution going on, because a lot of traditional music has been traditionally marginalized there.
M.H.: Yeah, yeah. I know that a lot of the Bedouin music is being practiced now in the cities. The nomadic music has come to the city. That's what I've heard, anyway. That there's something of resurgence now. They're picking up on it. Picking up on the power of desert music. That's really gratifying. Because I always loved that music.
B.E.: I think that's true. That music has some real champions now. There is a new cultural centers one called Makan, and another called El Mastaba. Zakaria Ibrahim from Port Said has El Mastaba, and he has a stable of acts, including an excellent Bedouin band. It's making the music more accessible to urbanites, and also international visitors. So that's exciting, kind of a cultural subtext to the political revolution.
M.H.: It's all part of it. Those kinds of music have a purity to them that resonates. There seems to be a need. You know how music is. It has to serve a purpose in order for it to be viable. That was all about freedom, self-expression, all about celebrating the joys and lamenting the sorrows, all the real things of life, as opposed to manufactured music, which is derivative.
B.E.: Yes. And Egyptian pop music has been in something of a doldrums for a while now.
M.H.: Well, perhaps they didn't know how to deal with the electric thing.
Grateful Dead Play at the Pyramids of Giza 1978 (photos courtesy of ukrockfestivals.com)
B.E.: Yeah, plus they've concentrated on a lot of very sappy love songs and the industry is largely controlled by big business interests, some from the Gulf. It's not very creative.
M.H.: Totally superficial. And that's why this older music is so important, indigenous music in general. There's a certain kind of resurgence, in a way. They're not necessarily practicing the old forms, but there are parts of the old forms that they are practicing. Like in Indonesia they call it kreasi baru, using the old gamelan, you know, slonding, the old iron gamelan, but with new composers composing on the ancient instruments.
B.E.: Oh, I love that.
M.H.: Slonding, they call it, the iron gamelan that had faded out. Well, no, not faded out, it was ripped away from them by the war. When I found the Fahnestock music, I just fell in love with slonding, and all the iron gamelan music. Then when the music made it way back into their culture, I went there to record The Bali Sessions...
B.E.: Which are amazing.
M.H.: Yeah, that's about as good as it gets. And I asked Pak Dibia, "Please give me your five greatest recordings." Pak Dibia is the ethnomusicologist at the Institute of Music in Denpasar. One of the recordings he gave me was Music of the Gods. My heart was beating out of my chest. He gave me back the music that I had curated at the LOC from his culture. Oh, my God!
B.E.: Oh, I remember that story. That's wonderful.
M.H.: It just came full circle. But at the time he didn't know it was mine. I just looked at him and thought, "Should I say something?" My heart was pounding. I had a big lump in my throat. I told him, "This is one of my recordings from the endangered music series at the LOC. I did this for the Library of Congress." And he just grabbed me, he hugged me, brought me in like a family member. I was no more like a visitor anymore. I felt like I was one of them, because I had given back, repatriated their precious music. This was one of their long-lost cultural treasures. The music goes back, and then the next generation picks up on it and takes it a step further, and then they take the essence from it that they lost, the music dreams are important and serve a purpose in their lives.
B.E.: That's incredibly moving to feel like it's making a difference back at the source.
M.H.: That was really one of the moments.
B.E.: So let's back up a bit. Tell me exactly what's happening with the Smithsonian. You're giving them these 25 sessions. But I understand there's a lot more in your archive. So give me a sense of what exactly you're turning over to the Smithsonian at this point.
M.H.: I wanted all my remote recordings to live in one place. You know what I mean? They're all finding a good home. And I want it preserved forever. You know, record companies' come and go. I don't want a record company. Smithsonian Folkways will be there for a long long time. Folkways was the collection that piqued my interest years ago in the world's music. When I heard the Mbuti Pygmies. That was what started me out when I was a kid. Moe Asch then gave the collection to the Smithsonian. Back in the 1980's I was called in by Anthony Seeger, to clean it up, to take the pops and clicks out using a signal processor called sonic solutions that we had in our studio. So this is like full circle. Then Howard Cohen my co-manager mentioned that I should do something with the collection, because it was out of print. Rykodisc had gone out of business. I thought, "Hey, the artists are not getting paid now. It's out of print. You've got a search around for it." I was now on the board of Smithsonian/Folkways again, and it just made sense. So I thought, "Perfect."
So this is the first 25. If this release goes well, which I'm sure it will, I'll open up the rest of the collection. I've got hundreds of recordings in the vault from around the world.
B.E.: You have lots of stuff that has never been released.
M.H.: Oh yeah. And, you know, this is the place for it, because they're treating it the way I would treat it. First class. If you want a hard copy you can get it, if you want a download you can it as well. I'm sitting here in front of me with my hard copies. It's beautiful.
B.E.: I remember the old packages. They were beautiful.
M.H.: These are clean. They aren't multi-colored things like the reek releases, but they don't have to be. It's like sepia. It's lovely. It's just elegant. They all look like they are a matched set, and they are. They did a great job. I'm up there with the best songcatchers. Laura Bolton, Azevedo, Fahnstock, the lot of them. Think of it, Banning. These are the greatest song catchers in the world. All of these amazing heroes and heroines that have circumnavigated the world to bring this music back. It's not just about the music, it's also about the amazing stories how that music was recorded, and all the incredibly dangerous, vile conditions that they had to endure to bring the music back. I mean, in a tropical rain forest, in the desert. Imagine recording with a Presto Disc-cutter in the rain forest! Unbelievable.
B.E.: I hear you. These people are heroes.
M.H.: Heroic! I mean, you're talking about Marco Polo types. Facing disease, loneliness, the elements, and bandits. And hauling the gear out on schooners, on donkeys, and having to take all those acetates, all the wire, all the wax. You know, with every form of recording material, there is a problem. When you take it out of the studio, into the field, then you become a real artist. It's the dogs barking. It's the insects biting. There's the rain, the humidity, the heat, the cold. You name it. Everything is the enemy. You know, to be amongst them... [LAUGHS] Wow! So, there's a lot. And also, these artists will get their royalties back. The monies go primarily back to the cultures that spawned them.
B.E.: That's tricky. How do you figure out who to give the money to all these years later?
M.H.: Right. When you're a nomad, well, I can't find the nomads. So what I did was, whatever they asked to get paid for their performance, I would double it. That was my rule. They would discuss the fee amongst themselves for a while and then come back with a fair fee. I knew I would never see them again so I double it, wherever it was.
B.E.: That's great. Probably also a way to guarantee a good recording. You establish good will.
M.H.: If there's no way to get the money back to them for instance you offer to put light bulbs in the Cairo Museum, or something creative. Hamza gave the money from Egypt to a drum school near Aswan. Or, with Steven Feld, all that money for Voices of the Rain Forest went back to the Kaluli and to also to their music programs in their community. We also have sent books and cds to their libraries, That's how we do it.
B.E.: That's very smart.
M.H.: It's very cool. I never wanted to be a pirate. This was supposed to set the pace for future recordists.
B.E.: And like you just said, you really have to work not to be a pirate. Especially with old recordings. Because if the artist is dead, even if you go back to the village where the guy lived, there's no telling that the person whose hands you put that money in is good to do the right thing with it.
M.H.: If you can find the actual artist, that's one thing. If you can't, you try to do some good with it in the culture. That's a real hassle sometimes, but that's all part of this. I really wanted to set the pace with this. I really wanted to make this as an example for all recorders in the future, that they don't copyright the music in their name like many of the old timers did, to honor these traditions, and release these voices. For instance, anyone who wants to work on a project for the Gyuto Monks, it's for no fee. If they don't give their services for free, then they just don't work on the project. Expenses yes, but making big money off the monks, no way.
B.E.: And Smithsonian is down with that.
M.H.: Yes. I just made it very simple. If you want to make more than your expenses, and a standard rate for doing the business then this project is not for you. So it was very simple. That was a way of weeding out anybody who wanted to be a profiteer, or to monetize the music. The cds were never meant to make money other than for the monks and their rightful ownership and royalties go to them. So those were the reasons I wanted to put the collection back into circulation. The Smithsonian agreed to take care of all of the royalties, and that was another thing. In the past I had to maintain all of the records, and that is a serious burden.
One of the things that Moe always did, even if it was tree frogs, was he always had one copy available of everything, all 2600 of them. That's one of the things that made Moe so amazing. Even if it was tree frogs which no don't was not a best seller, there would be at least one copy in print. His whole catalog was always in print. That's one of the reasons that Moe gave it to the Smithsonian. The Smithsonian agreed to keep it all in circulation, every last one of them.
B.E.: Beautiful. Of course, now with digital technology, that's much more doable.
M.H.: Yes, and that's another reason I gave the music to the Smithsonian, because they agreed with me and of course with Moe Asch, who I modeled this after. Moe was a big hero of mine. Everything has to be in circulation, even if it only sells one copy a year. I must say to see the whole body of work in front of me is very impressive. I am personally taken aback by the scope of it all. I've never seen them all in one place. It's really beautiful, and there's a lot more behind this. Like with the Bali recordings. I released three CDs, but I've got 12 more hours behind those three CDs that could come out someday. This is just the beginning, and if everything works well, and people appreciate it, and Smithsonian Folkways do what they say they will do, then I'll start opening the rest of the vault up, and let these voices be heard.
B.E.: That is exciting.
M.H.: Yes, it's really exciting.
B.E.: So let me take you back to the beginning for a moment. I'm curious to know how this all started. I understand that hearing the pygmies was a real inspiration for you. And then later, all these great world artists started turning up in San Francisco. But how did you get the bug to start actually recording them yourself. What was your ah-hah moment for that as a personal endeavor?
M.H.: Well, Owsley was a major inspiration. Because Owsley... You know whom I'm talking about?
B.E.: Yes I do. [Stanley Owsley, Bay-Area, 1960s counter-culture figure who designed the Grateful Dead sound system, among other distinctions.]
M.H.: Yes. You know, when he first started recording the Grateful Dead on the mono Nagra, he was recording at the highest possible quality in the field. But what he was really doing was creating a sonic notebook. He was just trying to prove his theories, his microphone placement technique and how the band sounded using his soundscape theories. I would have long talks with him; he started describing sound like it was a landscape. He was calling it a soundscape, which we know more of now from Murray Schafer's book. I began to notice there was so much wild sound in the world, sound that could not easily be fit in a studio situation.
B.E.: You guys did all right in the studio on a few occasions; I'd have to say.
M.H.: Right. But its strength was in the moment. Not to degrade the studio records. But the recordings never really lived up to the magic that you could make on stage. It was a beast that could not be totally caged.
B.E.: Sure. There was a particular thing that happened on stage that was never going to happen in a studio.
M.H.: That became a real challenge. Also, the noise of the world and all the sound that was so attractive to me lived outside the confines of a controlled situation like a studio. I think the first thing that happened was Weir and I... Weir, I have to give him a bit of credit here. One day in '67, he said "Let's go to the zoo and record the animals, it's a full moon." You know, we had just taken some acid and it sounded like a brilliant idea at the time.
I went over to Owsley's house, and he gave me his mono Nagra. I had never recorded before, and just thinking back on it for Owsley to have given me that mono Nagra, he must've felt something. It must have been an act of faith or something. I can't even imagine him doing this. He gave it to me. And he gave me 40 feet of mic line for a 2-foot job. That was the thing. "Okay, here's the mic and all I have is like 40 feet of mic line." So he plugged it in, he put some tape on the nagra, showed me the meters and then said, "Okay, all you got to do is put it in record, and don't let the needles go into the red. Keep it between here and there, and just point it at what you want record." I walked out the door, got Bobby, and we went out to the zoo, and we started climbing the gates. And we were laughing so hard; the mic line got caught on the top of the gates of the zoo and impaled me.
B.E.: Really!?
M.H.: So we were there laughing trying to climb the gate, and the guards came. And, of course, they escorted us unceremoniously out of the zoo. I had just landed on the other side of the gate when the guards came running up with their flashlights. And sure enough, the animals were completely silent anyway. So much for my first recording experience.
B.E.: But did you record the guards?
M.H.: No! We didn't have time to get it in record!
B.E.: Oh dear.
M.H.: I mean, it was one of the few times I've failed to record something in the field. But that moment really tweaked my interest. The idea of how hard it was to get into the zoo to record. I mean, that was like the beginning of it all. So then, as you said before, all of a sudden, here's Ali Akbar Khan, and I'm taking lessons from Allah Rahka, and then all of a sudden, there's Sultan Khan and then Zakir Hussein. And Ravi Shankar, and all of these great maestro musicians. And you see, there was no PA for them to use then. There was nobody with a PA. They couldn't afford a PA, and they were playing just acoustically. And they only played in living rooms, homes that people would invite them over for dinner and a small concert. They couldn't play large concerts, you couldn't hear it. So I went over and asked Owsley for some speakers. Dan Healey was a very important player in these early days. He was a real engineer and knew how to make this happen. I watched and studied his technique. He was my teacher and fellow traveler back then, he made these early recording happen. This was before Alembic. It was a Heil driver and a 15-inch JBL in a custom box "the bear" built. Oh yes, and we took two Mac 75 amps, two microphones, and a little board. We made a nice little PA for them. Then we started doing the PAs for these small gatherings, you know, living rooms and so forth. It was a tiny little PA, and then it got a little bigger.
The deal was we were running Nagra master curve, recording at 15 inches per second. No one was running at 15 in./s recording "third world music". I mean that was just a waste of tape they all thought. This was before the Nagra's had big reel extenders.
B.E.: So, how much time would you get on a reel?
M.H.: I think I got about 22 minutes. Way too short.
B.E.: Especially for Indian music.
M.H.: Oh, no, no, no. It had gaps in it, and all that stuff, until I found another mono Nagra. And then I was doing the leapfrog thing with the Nagras. The deal was... "Look, all I want to do is hear this incredible music in my studio, in the barn on great speakers." I used to love to drink cognac, back in those days. Smoke a joint, a little cognac, sit back, and listen to the world's greatest music ever on the master tape at 15 in./s. That was happiness. That was the world. So I said, " I will give you a copy of the performance. If you want to do business with it, do business. Sell it, whatever you want to do. All I want to do is listen to it in the privacy of my home." I always listened to it alone, I didn't want to be distracted. We will supply the PA. It was an offer they couldn't refuse. They get the best recording that could be made of their music to do whatever they wanted to do with it. If they wanted to make a proper recording I would provide the original master. I knew the master would be safe and well cared for in my vault.
B.E.: Right, at that time the audience here was pretty undeveloped.
M.H.: And I got to listen to the Nagra master curve. So this was the great treasure. It was like finding gold.
B.E.: Is that how the Hamza El Din record, Eclipse, was made?
M.H.: No, that was a multi track recording. That came later. That was in the studio. That was when I got the first 16 track MM1000. The musical trade winds just blew the right to my doorstep, and here I was sitting in front of the greatest music that I had ever heard, and it was going unrecorded. Sometimes I'd make a cassette of the music for a friend, or give it as a gift to someone who was having a baby, or getting married. And more often than not, the cassette would be there on the kitchen table when they left. You know, I couldn't even give it away.
But it was a treasure. So that's how it started. And then, Don Rose and Arthur Mann, who headed up Rykodisc, came into the picture. They started up this CD-only company. CDs were less than 1% of the market at the time. They called it RYKO DISC.
B.E.: I remember that. You were one of the first things they put out. I just started writing just at the time, the dawn of CDs.
M.H.: Yeah, Yeah. So I saw this little ad in a billboard magazine. CDs ONLY. Don Rose left me a message on my answering machine. He had heard a cassette of The Diga Rhythm Band recording. That's how it started. He had heard a live Diga recording. But anyway, he called me and then he said, "Look, I really would like to put out this music that you are recording. What do you want?" I said, "I'll call you back. Let me think about it." And then I sort of went to the mountaintop. What do I want?
B.E.: That gets your attention.
M.H.: He said he wanted to put out my recordings. He didn't go so far as to say he was going to finance everything I anted to do, but that's what I wanted really. I wanted a home for all my work, whatever it was. So I took a walk, and a day or two later I called him back. I thought I'd take my best shot. I thought his guy is out of his mind, you know, crazy. The president of a company that sells only cds? This was when you couldn't find CDs anywhere. I liked him right away. This guy is on the edge. So I said, "Okay, here it is. I want a home for all these recordings. Whatever I do, I would like you to release it. And I want you to treat it like we would treat a Grateful Dead record. Package it first class." Bill Graham always said to me, "If you put a diamond in a brown paper bag, people won't understand its value. They won't think it's valuable. If you put a diamond in a really nice case, people can see not only the worth of the stone, the beauty of the stone, but they know that the way you presented it was first class, it has great value." It's like the music was a diamond. So I always remembered that. And I took that forward.
And Don said, "I'll do better than that. Not only will I release everything you do, but I will pay for it." In those days, it was my dime, you know. Whatever it costs to bring equipment there and back. It wasn't much. I owned the equipment, and Owsley gave me the machine. That was before I bought my own. It was nothing really. And this guy made me this offer I couldn't refuse. I said to him... I wanted to see if he was real. So I said, "Okay, I want to record the Koran and the Torah, the Talmud. I want to record a 14 CD set, 2 14 CD sets, one of the Koran and one of the Talmud." And he said, "Okay, you got it." I had thought I was throwing this guy a hard ball and I wanted to see if he would choke. And so whatever I did, whether it is Music to be Born By, the heartbeat of my son, or Hamza, or the monks, or Olatunji, or Indonesian music, he was there. Not only that, he did it with a smile. And packaged it as well as it could be done.
B.E.: I have those originals. They're really nice.
M.H.: Yeah, they're beautiful. So that's how it started. I have to give the credit to Don and Arthur, and their great vision. The thing about an artist, one of the things that many people forget, is that artists create. And many times an artist will create, create, create but never be able to publish, for one reason or another, because he doesn't have an outlet. So then you get artistically constipated, and you stop creating because you can't share it with the world. So they were offering me something very valuable, an outlet to the world, and also giving back to these cultures. I have to say, turning Jerry on to the monks was the biggest thing. When I heard the monks I thought, "Oh, wait until Garcia hears this." He was a true lover of sound. I beat it on home back from Amherst College when I heard them. And said, "Jerry, you're not going to believe this. It's one monk, he sings three notes simultaneously with the low note at 70 cycles." He goes, "You got to be kidding." And I said, "No, I'm gonna bring them out here to Berkeley Community Theater, and we're going to sponsor them, take them around the world, and support them in exile." And he goes, "Cool!" And so that's how all the tours of the monks got started.
(Hamza El Din with Hart)
B.E.: So that all happened during the Ryko period?
M.H.: Yes. The monks. That happened during the Ryko years. I got turned on to the monks by [Robert] Hunter, who had recorded a KPFA broadcast of Huston Smith's recording made in 1965. His recording of the Gyuto monks in exile in Dharamsala. Huston was over there to study the their religious rituals. He heard the monks one morning as he woke, and he realized then what he was there for, and brought it the choir's amazing sound back to the USA, and in '67 he played it on KPFA. Hunter had a microphone in front of the speaker, recorded it and then he gave me that cassette. I listened to it for two years before I knew what it was. I listened to it almost every day, when I was coming down or just to relax. I would just deep listen to it. I had no idea what it was, until I saw Lewiston's 1970 recording of the monks, his stereo recording from Dharamsala. On the back of the LP, the story was all laid out. Chanting monks with the capacity of singing three notes simultaneously, a vocal miracle. And then I go, "Holy shit!" I called Hunter said, "You know what this is?" Hunter had just said, "You have really got to hear this." He just gave me the cassette unlabeled.
B.E.: He didn't know it was?
M.H.: No! Well, he might have. Hunter just happened to be there with another cassette machine, and an RE-15 at his house. For some reason he recorded it, and he just gave me that cassette. You know how those things used to be. In the middle of the night, someone would just give you something and then walk out of your life and never say another word about it. I didn't say anything to Hunter. And so I listened to it, and that's what put me on to the monks.
And then when I found out that Robert Thurman, Uma's dad, who's a Buddhist scholar, brought the monks in to the USA; I think it was in 1980. He was sponsoring the monks. And through Fred Lieberman, I found out that they were going to be there. And we were researching Drumming on the Edge. The grateful Dead were on tour. So Dan Healy and me went to Amherst College with the Nagra, which I always carried with me on the road. We had tea with them and recorded them at Amherst College. It was a puja, just a little sit down prayer. And I heard them for real, and I said, "Oh my god!"
They were just chanting in people's homes. I said, "Oh no, no, no, no, no. Come to the West Coast. My friend has got to hear this." And so I held a press conference on the steps of Berkeley Community Theater. Joe Selvin was there. The press just looked at me like I was from another planet. "The tri-tone! Each monk has the ability to sing a chord!!" It went way over their heads. But we filled Berkeley Community Theater and wrote a check to them for $80,000 that very night. John Meyer [pioneer of sound reinforcement] was in on it, he supplied the sound system and we were off and running. We gave them the Grateful Dead board live mix, in the hall, and put them through a real sound system for the first time. And that was the beginning of our sponsorship of all of their tours over the years.
B.E.: Was that the CD you eventually released?
M.H.: No. I don't think we released that. That one I never released. That's somewhere in the vault.
B.E.: I see. The CD came later.
M.H.: Yes, that one was done at Skywalker Sound.
B.E.: Okay, I think I remember this. That was a very high-tech recording, wasn't it?
M.H.: George Lucas and I came back from Joseph Campbell's funeral in Hawaii, and he was telling me about this big room he had built. And I said, "No way, George." You know, we're on the plane. "No, no, no. It's so big I don't know what to do with it." And I go, "Okay, George, I got to see this." So we went up to Skywalker, we walked in, and I saw this huge room. And I said to George, "Wow, You built this for me!" Then I called Tom Flye, my engineer, and said "Tom, (this is a like one in the morning.) "Tom, get up. Go get McCunes's, remote truck and bring it here at 10 o'clock in the morning. We must record the monks in this magnificent room." George and I had gone from the airplane to the soundstage, you know. He had no machines, it was just a just a shell. But the monks were in town. It was the first time they were in town on tour. So that's when we recorded the CD.
So, one thing led to another. I got into recording indigenous music not only in the studio, but also in the field. And it became like a real adventure. You know, I don't vacation very well, Banning.
B.E.: I have that problem too. There's has be a reason to go somewhere, right? A project.
M.H.: Yeah. So when I go places, I've always got my remote unit with me. My wife figured it out about 20 years ago, so it's not as easy as it used to be. But we made a deal. She said, "Okay, here it is. No more of this recording on all our vacations. I'm not placing the microphones anymore. I'm not going to Thailand and Bali to be a mic slave anymore. What we'll do is for every six days of real good vacation, you can have 24 hours, one day of recording." I said, "You got it." So that was the deal, at least when I take her on vacations. We do six days of legitimate, happy vacationing. And then I get 24 hours. Seemed like a fair deal. So far it has worked just fine.
So when we spent three weeks in Bali, I had three 24-hour periods.
You know what we did on our honeymoon? We went to Hawaii, and I rented a little house on the water. I was recording the surf gently flowing on the beach. It was a beautiful, quiet little harbor. I had two microphones, U87 Neumanns running directly into the stereo Nagra. By this time I had reel extenders. We were rolling tape. We were on earphones, and we were making love, listening to the surf. We each had headphones on. And all of a sudden I could hear the surf getting closer and closer. "Okay! Time to move the microphones." We ran out to the beach to move the microphones another three or 4 feet in so the surf didn't get them. Back under the headphones, make love some more. We did this all night. This was our honeymoon. She should have gotten the idea that I was an addict recorder that night, but it was sooo romantic and it just was the right thing to do at the time.
B.E.: That's hardcore.
M.H.: Yeah. That's hardcore, you know what I mean? So you ask me how serious it is. It's a habit. It got to be a serious thing. Is there a rehab called Recordists Anonymous?
B.E.: There might be, an elite club.
M.H.: "I am a Recordist. My name is Mickey Hart. I am an addict."
B.E.: So are you still doing this? Do you have plans?
M.H.: Oh yes. My next plan is the Golden Gate Bridge. I'm sonifying the bridge. Also, I have been working in the cosmos, recording from radio telescopes, from the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago, through many of the epic events of the universe. I am presenting this DVD at the Smithsonian IMAX Theater next year. I'm working on transferring light waves into sound waves. So you talk about remote recording? That's remote recording. What has happened is I've gone galactic, I've gone stellar, and I've gone cosmic. Now I'm working with these fundamental sounds of the universe. I have been doing this for 2 1/2 years.
But the next sub-lunar project I have is the Golden Gate Bridge's 75th anniversary, and I'm taking feeds off the seismic instruments, the accelerometers. I'm transferring them into our range of hearing and creating a symphony around the sounds of the Golden Gate Bridge. John Meyer will be doing the sound on shore, and celebrating the bridge. So the bridge will be singing its signature song. You know, it's a giant wind harp. We will be on the shore listening to its song and having a musical conversation with it…how cool.
B.E.: Okay, sure.
M.H.: I tried doing this in the 70s. I went out on the bridge in the middle of the night with my rubber hammer trying to excite the bridge and record the sounds with my Nagra. The first time they kicked me off, the second time they cuffed me.
B.E.: Really?
M.H.: Yes. They almost put me in jail in 1974. So I dropped it. And then this year I realized, it's the 75th anniversary of the bridge.
B.E.: Time to try again.
M.H.: You know, Mickey Hart, hippie madman recordist. Everything's changed quite a bit now. Now I have a little bit more cred, cachet, if you will. So, anyway, now we've gone past the bridge authority, and the Golden Gate Authority and are clear to go.
B.E.: Now, you are an honored guest. You wait long enough...
M.H.: Now, I'm an honored guest. That's the next major sound sculpture. The Golden Gate Bridge.
B.E.: That's fantastic. I want to take you back for a minute to the Egypt adventure, because we have Egypt on the brain these days having just returned from there. I know the Grateful Dead performed in Egypt. Was your recordings made around that concert?
M.H.: Yes, after we played, I spent about three weeks going up and down the Nile.
B.E.: What year was that?
M.H.: 78? 79? Something like that. I went up to Alexandria and recorded the Bedouins. Then I went down to Aswan. I recorded the café music, up and down the Nile, which I never released.
B.E.: Oh, I would love to hear that stuff.
M.H.: Me too. I haven't heard it since I recorded it. Then I went down to Aswan and recorded the Aswan boatmen. The band went home, and I packed my Nagra up and went into the desert. Three weeks. That was great. That was really a moment. Then Hamza took me to his village in the Sudan.
B.E.: You knew him by then.
M.H.: Yeah. It was so sweet. The Nubians were so soft, such beautiful people. They played drums. My kind of people. Many of them had rattles and drums and sang. This would be a good eternity. It could be a good destination.
B.E.: I hear you. I'm dying to get back there and get more into the hinterlands.
M.H.: No, I'm talking about Musical Heaven.
B.E.: Hamza's music is pretty close to that.
M.H.: Yeah, and here was a whole bunch of Hamzas. You know, what Hamza did is he dropped me off in his village. He went off to grieve for his dad who had died months before. He went with his mother out into the desert and they just cried to the memory of his father. He left me alone in the village. I'm sitting there, in the middle of the desert; there are no real roofs on the houses. Only about half of the houses have roofs, because there's no rain there, I don't speak a word. They are fanning me, feeding the dates, and the kids are coming around pointing, and laughing, just really happy and smiling. I could only take about 20 or 30 minutes of that. I went out, looked in my car and pulled out my tar and started playing. Everybody came out of his or her houses, and then they all started playing drums. The women had beads on and they were all shaking the beads, jumping up and down in perfect rhythm patterns and the men were playing drums. There were about 40 of us.
And then Hamza comes walking down with his mom; he had this look on his face, wide-eyed. His eyes were wide open. And he said, "There hasn't been music in this village all year because we've been in mourning for my dad. And it's really great that you brought the music back. Thank you so much." So this was a kind of spontaneous eruption of music. They had suppressed the music for all these months, it was time. Hamza never told me about any of this. He just plopped me down in a chair, gave me some water, and left with his mom.
I have recorded in the Arctic Circle, which I haven't released yet -- the Arctic tapes. When the Grateful Dead played in Anchorage, I peeled off to kotzebo. As a matter of fact, my remote team was all under 12 years old. I took Ramrod's son, Kreutzman's kid, and my stepson, who were 12, nine, eight at the time. I bought them parkas, knives sunglasses and goggles.
(Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzman 1969)
B.E.: Everything they would need...
M.H.: We flew up to the Arctic Circle with the Nagra and the mic stands, mic lines, tape, etc. That is when I deputized them, gave them the oath, you know, the MERT oath. [mobile engineering and recording team] "I will record more than I erase." I made up this code as we flew above the Circle. We went up there and stayed in igloos, then we recorded the Inuit. Whenever the Grateful Dead went someplace I broke away from the pack and recorded something interesting, like with Tom Vennum. We were playing up there in Wisconsin, and there was the powwow and that recording became Honor the Earth.
B.E.: I remember that recording.
M.H.: I went to the powwow with my son Taro. We rolled tape all day and all night. Then after that came the "American Warriors" cd. The war songs of Native Americans who fought for the USA in many of our wars. From World War 2 to Korea, to Desert Storm. Those were two amazing Native American recordings. One thing just led to another, Banning. A lot of it had to do with me being physically around the world with the Grateful Dead, and my desire to bring back this music at the highest resolution, the highest fidelity. Because, you know, there is nothing like a Nagra. It weighs a ton. It's built like a tank and made like a Swiss clock. Most people don't realize how difficult this all is. They think it's really romantic, and it is in a way. But you really have to love doing it.
B.E.: They don't realize what a heavy load is.
M.H.: Oh, you know how heavy a Nagra is. If you are out there in the field, you bring the Nagra into the bathroom with you. If you go into a bar, the Nagra is wrapped around your foot. You don't leave it in the hotel. Without your machine, you are nothing. It's always around my feet, around my shoulders. Batteries! You know how many batteries there are in a Nagra? How much the gear weighs. Oh! You know what I mean.
B.E.: I must say, I do appreciate how light and small the current digital gear is. It may not have the romance of the Nagra, but it sure makes things easier in the field.
M.H.: I wouldn't take the Nagra out into the rain forest now. I would use a digital machine. But the other thing is, the Nagra will play in the Artic, and it will play in the rain forest. That's the other good thing about it. Bernie Krause [of Wild Sanctuary] and I, we tell Nagra stories. Of course, Bernie, he exaggerates sometimes. You know, like, "I found a Nagra in a glacier once. All I had to do was replace the rubbers. "Come on, Bernie!" "I dropped the Nagra out of a helicopter at a 40 feet. And when we landed the helicopter, I put the Nagra into record and it worked." And I go, "Okay, Bernie. Yeah. Okay." You know what I mean? It is like a drinking club or something. We both have earned bragging rights about the Nagra.
B.E.: That's great.
M.H.: Yeah, you know, you fall in love with your machine. My machine sits proudly in a place of honor on my shelf to this day. I will never sell it, part with it. And it's still calibrated, and tweaked. If I need it, it's always there. It's always has a shell it in the chamber. Well that's not a good analogy.
B.E.: Well, I get your point. Thank you so much for sharing all this.
M.H.: Thank you. I really got energized talking about this stuff. I don't get to talk about this world very often.
B.E.: It's wonderful to hear all this. And we'll get it up on the web soon. I'm still up to my ears in Egypt transcriptions.
M.H.: How long did you stay?
B.E.: A month.
M.H.: That's great.
B.E.: And we were busy morning till night, a lot of music sessions, and a lot of interviews.
M.H.: What kind of machine did you use?
B.E.: Just a digital Marantz PMD660, and a Shure VP88 stereo mic, just a hand-held mic, but it does a great job.
M.H.: That's great. I've got a Sony.
B.E.: It's difficult when you've got singing and drums, to get the balance right with just one microphone. We were just two people. One of the best things we did was we went to a Sufi saint celebration in a small town. It's called a moulid. There's a singer, and a violinist, and a flute player, and three percussionists, and the melody instruments are playing through octave pedals into systems where there are like five or six separate power amps going to separate speakers around the town. Everything's slightly out of phase and you're getting all these crazy effects. And we're up on this podium with a singer and the musicians, and there's this crowd of thousands around at night under all these lights, like Christmas lights, and they're just going into trance. It was completely ecstatic. And the singer was extraordinary, really one of the best singers I heard the whole time.
M.H.: You've got to turn me onto that.
B.E.: I will. If you go to afropop.org you'll find a short video of this. And more coming. We're going to do five programs up with this Egypt stuff.
M.H.: I might have you on my radio program. I'm going to do a few shows on Grateful Dead radio. Where are you living now?
B.E.: I live in Connecticut, but I'm often in Brooklyn, where we produce the show.
M.H.: Maybe I can bring it down to New York City.
B.E.: Perfect. I'm there a lot.
M.H.: Let's find a date. Because you're talking about great shit here.
B.E.: It is rich. Very interesting.
M.H.: I will mention this to Howard. We do a retrospective on the Egyptian soundscape. Let's do it, because Egypt is really in the news. The Arab Spring! Let's do this.
B.E.: I'm game. Thank you so much, Mickey.
M.H.: Thank you, Banning. It's great talking with you.


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If you've ever gone to a bar or a night club, the bouncer typically stamps an "X" or some sort of identifying mark on your hand. Oftentimes the stamp indicates whether or not you're old enough to drink or it acknowledges your ability to sit in VIP.
Unfortunately, none of these scenarios were the case for Louisiana State University (LSU) freshman, Taylor Ward. When she decided to patronize Reggies, a bar in Baton Rogue, Louisiana, Taylor had the "N-Word" stamped on her hand.
When she brought it to the attention of the bar manager he was allegedly nonchalant about the situation, "It's [just] a stamp,' he said.
However, to Taylor, the blatant act of creating such a racially insensitive marker is the issue. "It was obvious that the design of the stamp was intentional," reports Clutch Magazine.
Taylor also said there were several other bar patrons that had been branded with the word. "I just don't understand why we're still having to deal [with] racist incidents like this in 2015," she tweeted.
Once the photo went viral, Taylor received an influx of negative comments, prompting her to delete the original photo. She's received tweets saying she shouldn't be surprised something like that happened in Louisiana as well as she should have known better than to step into an establishment with a confederate flag.
"The stamp spelling out "nigger" backwards was intentional, whether y'all want to admit it or not…don't come in my mentions telling me it's upside down & backwards. The point is that someone had to do that on purpose," she said on social media.
Commentators have also replied to Taylor's incident with a list of other bars that she could have patronized within the area.
The young woman should be able to eat, drink and be merry wherever she chooses. She shouldn't have to pick and choose places based on the likelihood of encountering racism. Our heart goes out to you Taylor!
Harvard Law Students Say 'Professors Are Scholars, Not Teachers' & Racism Persists
College Student Gets The 'N-Word' Stamped On Her Hand At La. Bar was originally published on hellobeautiful.com


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The hubs and I are hosting Thanksgiving for our colleagues. I've wanted to host Thanksgiving for years, but I've generally been overridden by family members with bigger houses and larger dining room tables. I'm really excited to finally get to have a house full of guests and yummy Thanksgiving aromas.
Well, hopefully my house will be filled with the usual aromas. See, some of the traditional American products are hard to find over here, making the typical dishes (read: dressing and green bean casserole) a lot harder to prepare than they should be.
A few of the things that are going to require a little extra searching: marshmallows (pork products are illegal, you know. google it.), celery, condensed soups (a la cream of mushroom and others), Jiffy corn bread mix, and any sort of cooking wine/sherry/alcohol at all.
Luckily, I don't think my guests will mind. All of the residents of the house are invited, including our Thai neighbor with mad skills in the kitchen. We're also inviting another family from down the street, and the matriarch is Mexican--tamales, anyone? Add to that our new boss and her billionaire husband, both Saudis, who have offered to bring a dish. I asked for the most authentically Saudi dish they could muster. It's going to be a very international Thanksgiving, and half the guests aren't going to miss the traditional dishes anyway.
While I might not be able to have the candied yams or the mashed potatoes with bacon bits, I'm pretty sure the first Thanksgiving I host around my table will be one for the personal history books.
Vicariously yours,


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With summer finally arriving, people all across the country can look forward to those hot summer days, filled with plenty of sunshine and activities. While summer days are something most people look forward to all year long, hot summer nights can sometimes make it difficult to get a restful sleep. Whether you have air conditioning in your home or not, the humidity can build, as can the heat, and this makes sleeping conditions less than ideal.
If you want to be able to wake up feeling refreshed all summer long, giving you the energy you need to enjoy your days, then these tips can help make it happen. Here are some ways that you can improve the quality of your sleep, even on the hottest of summer nights.
Invest in a Mattress that is Breathable and Can Stay Cool
Mattresses have come a long way in the past decade or so, and unless you've gone mattress shopping recently you probably aren't aware of the latest technology and advances.Today, you can find mattresses that are actually made of materials that allow for the maximum amount of breathability and even have the technology to stay cool, which makes a massive difference in the summer.
Mattresses that have a gel layer to them are known for these stay-cool properties and are becoming quite the trend. Take, for example,a Nectar mattress, whichis made up of four layers including a quilted memory foam layer that is gel infused. You can check out a Nectar mattress review here to learn more about its pros and cons.
Install a Ceiling Fan in Your Room
A ceiling fan, or even a box fan that you plug in, can make a huge difference in the temperature in the room. It can help to cool you down and ensure airflow all night long, making for a more comfortable sleep. Just be sure to look for a fan that is quiet since you don't want it keeping you awake.
Get Rid of the Comforter
Summer is not the time for a comforter or heavy duvet. Instead, use just sheets. Linen, cotton, and bamboo sheets are usually the best option, as they are lightweight and breathable.
Start Showering Before Bed
If you're the type that typically showers first thing in the morning, it may be time to change your ways. Having a quick cool shower right before bed is a great way to feel refreshed. This will instantly cool you down and make you more comfortable as you get ready to fall asleep.
Choose Loose Fitting Pyjamas
When it comes to choosing your PJ's for summer, you want to go with something that is loose and lightweight. Anything that is too clingy or tight will only make you feel hotter. Again fabrics, like linen, cotton, and bamboo are your best bet.
By using each of these tips, you'll be able to stay nice and cool all night long, which means you'll get a way better night's sleep.