This Is Rock/Math!

A short post with some videos, about 10 minutes all together, that makes/alludes to the connection between math and music. "Math has long been at the foundation of music. In fact, in ancient Greece, 'music' referred to the study of numerical ratios, and around the time of Plato, 'harmony' originally emerged as a branch of physics." (The video is under the June 30 entry.)

And check out this video starting at minute 12 Also check out this video about string theory. There is a connection between math and music. What makes a collection of sound noise or music? Is modern rock music considered noise or real music? The videos are interesting.

The Devolution Of America's Society.

Compare the three music videos below to see the devolution of our society being manifested. It began with Elvis shaking his hips and has led to simulated sex music videos of today and rock stars jumping around on stage in disjointed and contorted manner. Our grandparents were in an uproar over Elvis and his shaking hips and said that it would lead to far worse. Notice how the music in the Spears video mimics the beat and rhythm of sexual intercourse. I like Allan Bloom's observation in his book "The Closing Of The American Mind" on music in American culture:

Picture a thirteen-year old boy sitting in the living room of his family home doing his math assignment while wearing his Walkman headphones or watching MTV. He enjoys the liberties hard won over centuries by the alliance of philosophic genius and political heroism, consecrated by the blood of martyrs; he is provided with comfort and leisure by the most productive economy ever know to mankind; science has penetrated the secrets of nature in order to provide him with the marvelous, lifelike electronic sound and image reproduction he is enjoying. And in what does progress culminate? A pubescent child whose body throbs with orgasmic rhythms; whose feelings are made articulate in hymns to the joys of onanism[ withdrawl of the penis in sexual intercourse so that ejaculation takes place outside the vagina; coitus].or the killing of parents; whose ambition is to win fame and wealth in imitating the drag-queen who makes the music. In short, life is made into a nonstop, commercially prepackaged masturbational fantasy.

Is there any connection between the deterioration of our culture and and the deterioration of our nation? I think the two are very closely connected on a very deep and fundamental level. This is why complaining about the current state of our nation and the world is pointless as it does not address the root cause: the deterioration of our culture. Unless the American culture is changed on a very deep and fundamental level the direction we are traveling won't change. (On a more serious subject of our nation's finances, "Nominal debt will peak in 2013 at 106 percent of the economy before dropping to 105.2 percent in 2015 and 2016, though only if the economy booms." The Republicans are not doing anything but talking, and being deceptive, about addressing the very serious situation our nation's economy is in.)