Water, Physics, Determinism, And Music I Probably Ought To Hate

That's Black Prairie. Three of them are out of the band "Decemberists," so they'd just as well have called it "Decemberists Ver 2.0." But they've got a new singer/violin player who puts a whole different spin on them. So I guess a rename was in order..

No, the song doesn't mean anything in particular. It's just what I'm listening to at the moment. More generally, I'm listening to their album "Feast of the Hunter's Moon."

That doesn't mean anything either.

It's just that they're so fucking good. 

If you don't like bluegrass/Romanian fusion combined with that particular whiff of Seattle/Portland slacker dweeb unique to the Northwest, it may not be your cuppa. It's damned sure not mine. I'm more Lynyrd Skynyrd (http://youtu.be/GcsROMfxNyY) (Live in Oakland - a great concert, by the way - I lusted after the backup singer on the far left. She paid me no slightest attention. Bitch. Wonder where she is now?)

Or maybe AC/DC (http://youtu.be/mu6GuWspdFk,) or Zeppelin (http://youtu.be/xbJQT2eDseA,) or the only Zeppelin tribute band I've ever had any use for, probably because I wish to do astonishingly crude, possibly embarrassing and likely illegal things to their drummer and/or lead guitarist, who vaguely reminds me for some not-very-well-defined reason of Paula (if you don't know her, don't ask) (http://youtu.be/xH-_9cwdLug.)

Or Black Sabbath (http://youtu.be/S8w4u-GbEw4.)Yeah, that's the ticket:

Can you help me, occupy my brain?
Oh yeah

I need someone to show me
the things in life that I can't find
I can't see the things that make true happiness,
I must be blind

Make a joke and I will sigh
and you will laugh and I will cry
Happiness I cannot feel and
love to me is so unreal

And so as you hear these words
telling you now of my state
I tell you to enjoy life
I wish I could but it's too late

Heh - good ol' Ozzy - you just don't get any angsty head-banging bullshit like that nowadays.

Hadn't really noticed before, but there sure are a lot of people dead of hard living in that list, although Ozzy is still cranking along, the head-fried, crazy ol' fart. The upside to marrying a redhead, doubtless.

Anyhow, if you really hated the Black Prairie thing, you probably won't like their version of "Red Rocking Chair," either. So don't listen to this: http://youtu.be/mM5ETQw-k6g.

I ought to just despise it. But they're so fucking good.

In Our Next Episode:I consider the concept of emergence as it applies to determinism. Using water. Did you know that we don't know why water acts the way it does? There is no quantum particle theory that allows reductionists to explain why water freezes at 32F or boils at 212F, or explains it's fluidity, or, for that matter, most of its properties, based on its components. In other words, if you have a pile oxygen molecules and a pile of hydrogen molecules, there is no theory that explains why or predicts that combining them results in the specific properties of water which did not exist before. Those properties are therefore called "emergent," since they emerge as a result of the combination. The question, then, is whether we cannot predict those emergent properties because they are irreducible, which means that they cannot be predicted by deterministic physics, or whether we just don't know enough yet to predict them, in which case the universe is deterministic after all. Is the redhead below posted on my blog because the deterministic universe started on that unchangeable path about .000000000000001 seconds after the big bang or because I made an actual decision to do it in an chaotic universe in which the emergent property of my redhead lust demonstrates that I exist independent of the pure physics required by this particular arrangement of strings or quarks? 

Also, as a bonus, a few words on the subject of "Focus."