Scratching Has Replaced Guitars (And Everything Else)

When informed I'm working on an album - alone - most people ask, "What instrument do you play?"

I see dead people.

And I'm embarrassed for them, revealing they understand so little about what's happened during the last 40 years. And, considering music production styles are changing - which means music (and the world) is as well - I know they're totally lost. And represent, to me, why things they've insisted on don't work.

An NHS hospital offering acupuncture has been slammed by watchdogs for making bogus claims about how the technique can cure a remarkable range of ills. 

The Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine (RLHIM), which offers alternative treatments from hypnosis to homeopathy, has been told to stop misleading patients. 

The hospital, which is part of the NHS, issued two leaflets boasting about the efficacy of the ancient Chinese therapy,  which involves inserting pins into pressure points on the body. 

It claimed that acupuncture could treat a long list of ailments, ranging from gynaecological and urinary disorders to fertility issues, stress, depression, back pain, asthma and high blood pressure. 

However, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) consulted medical experts and found there was no robust evidence to back up the vast majority of the cures claimed. 

It has ordered the hospital to withdraw the leaflets and to stop making claims for acupuncture that cannot be substantiated by good and independent evidence. 

The ruling raises questions as to why millions of pounds taxpayers money is being used to fund alternative health treatments where there is little or no evidence that they work.

Whether in music, politics, or spirituality, my job is figuring out what's what, and what doesn't belong, and doing so long before everyone else. You don't need an instrument for that. See DJ Shadow above? Every time he reaches into his record crate (at the right of the screen) that represents 6 months of his life, doing research, that even the "hip" crowd behind him was idle. Most DJs figure 6 months are about how long it takes them to discover a forgotten sample, figure out what's possible with it, and the correct pieces it might go with, where it might go within those pieces, etc.. All the while, their fans were in the club, on Twitter, or watching TV. Either that or plotting against each other.

Social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are a big draw for narcissists, but the ego-boosting tools are used in different self-aggrandizing ways by different generations, a University of Michigan study suggests. 

The study details how young adults of college age and their adult counterparts use social media in differing ways to bolster their egos and control perceptions of others.

"Control perceptions of others." Can you imagine? That's behind the "others" backs, of course. 

AKA The Cowardly Approach. 

Ann Althouse, Glenn Reynolds, Hot Air, James Taranto - they're talking about you!

But there's nothing cultish going on. Full support for Mitt Romney's cult or not, perish the thought. I'd love to read what those on "my side" have written about me, because I know they have - they're cultists by training. They gang together just like in South Central, Los Angeles. Want to be in Glenn Reynolds' clique? I bet - Stupidity's Stormtroopers Are Go! Go! Go!:

Libertarians: Still a cult 

Simply note libertarianism's fatal flaw and you'll get an enraged, hysterical response. They still don't get it

It's simply too much fun (and profitable) not to - they're building cults to fuck people over - not working for, or to define, to teach or expand the limits of freedom.

Ann Althouse assumed I wanted in.

But what I want sounds totally different,...