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It’s Flag Day! Here in the States, this is the day that we … um … fly our flags, except that most of us are too lazy or don’t even have flags.

We’re so proud.

Anyway, it’s also the day when we take time out of our busy schedules to reflect on our country’s freedoms. For instance, is a proposed constitutional amendment against flag-burning vital to “to protect the ideals for which the flag stands”, as some would argue, or would such an amendment “strike at the very principles the Stars and Stripes symbolize”?

Or is the effort necessary for an amendment of this kind a colossally stupid waste of taxpayer money when we’ve got some real, serious problems?

Strangely enough, the first federal flag-desecration law in 1897 was passed not in response to flag-burning or any of type of defacement, but rather a reaction to the use of flag in tacky advertising — most notably beer.

You can read more about the history of our flag as a natural symbol in Marc Leepson’s Flag: An American Biography.

In the meantime, check out the Flags of the World site for lots of information about Old Glory, like the evolution of the flag’s desing from 13 stars through the ready-for-the-future 51-star (!) model. You can also read myths and lore about the Stars & Stripes, and some interestingfacts on some obscure American political parties, like the Mexica Movement and the Hip Hop Racial Unity Party.

Because it takes all kinds of people to make up a democracy.

Never forget that.

I had more links for my previous post than I could effectively use, so here is where the leftovers are popping up:

Finding the right words: Yesterday’s post was various music generators — but once you’ve done those, you’ll need words, right? The internet is full of sites to generate lyrics in the style of various artists, like The Smiths, Alanis Morissette, Foo Fighters, and Yes.

We got the beep: The previous post was about music generators that specialize in faking the sound of realcompositions; here’s an algorithmic music generator.

At least, that’s what it’s called — in truth, it’s more of a series-of-notes generator. To the brain, it’s no more music than a thousand words out of a dictionary is a story.

But it’s still interesting, on an intellectual level, since it derives the notes from numbers in mathematical equations (like Pascal’s Triangle and the Fibonacci Sequence) as well as from economic and biology.

I’m sure math geeks just eat this stuff up.

Critter notes: A more pleasing style of “random music” can be found when the randomness is controlled by multiple living beings — in this case, the movement of six hamsters, each on their own platform. In the Hamster Midi project, two rodents controlled each of the three synthesized instruments — one hamster for the speed of the notes, the other determining the musical tones from a pentatonic scale.

Personally, I really like the resulting music; it’s sort of like something Laurie Anderson would have come up with in her quirkier days.

And, since lots of thought went into the parameters of the output, it sounds very musical in spite of its randomness. Visit the link above to hear the samples for yourself.

Robotic rhythms: Mechanized music is nothing new, of course. Music boxes have been around for a couple of centuries, and piano rolls were the precursor to modern computer programming.

Director Peter Jackson has a mechanized ragtime band that has been programmed to play Beatles tunes (check out the video) and many other songs; check out a whole gallery of similar contraptions here.

And one of the largest collections of musical automata belongs, fittingly, to the Guiness family.

Bach to the Future: Speaking of ancient history, there was once a time in the dim, distant past when electronic synthesizers were not found in every home.

So it was a big deal when Robert Moog came along and perfected the concept of synthetic music, which was showcased in a groundbreaking album called Switched-On Bach.

And on a side note: Speaking of groundbreaking transformations, that album’s musician, Walter Carlos, is now known as Wendy Carlos.

I’m just sayin’ …

If you’re making videos of the family reunion to be seen only by your aunts and uncles, you’ll probably be safe ripping Norah Jones songs to use as the soundtrack.

But if your work has a wider audience, you’ll need to compose the score yourself, or get the rights to use pre-existing music — and that can cost money.

Now, though, through the miracles of technology, there’s another alternative: Use one of several music generation programs, which can offer up some surprisingly usable music for your online video, flash animation, documentary short film, or podcast theme song.

PC Magazine recently listed several of the best music generation programs: MuSoft’s “a Musical Generator”, Band-in-a-Box, Jammer Professional 5, Movie Maestro/Sonicfire Pro 3.2.

Sonicfire Pro got the Editor’s Choice award as the best of the bunch. According to the article, the program’s SmartSound technology “works only with specially encoded source material that has been divided into tiny slices and then assigned rules for how segments can be combined. When you specify a selection for your sound track, SmartSound figures out which sequences produce music of the right duration and then uses its rule base to decide which one is the most musical.”

Sonicfire includes two CD’s of music samples and access to an online music library and will drain your wallet of about $299. It also comes in a $50 version, called Movie Maestro, which starts with only 26 selections.

Wow. It sounds smarter than most people I know …

Jammer Pro ($129) “generates fully orchestrated MIDI compositions from scratch [...] and lets you get under the hood to tweak the chord progressions, voicings, transitions, fills, grooves, and individual riffs with which it creates musical styles and virtual musicians.”

The pro version of Band in a Box ($249) “ships with hundreds of music styles, a 300-song MIDI fakebook, a two-CD video tutorial, a Roland DXi soft synth, and 11 virtual soloists that improvise in the styles of musicians such as Bruce Hornsby and Lionel Hampton.”

I downloaded a demo version of BiaB a couple of years ago, but it was old (the interface looked like it was for Windows 3.1) and didn’t disclose its version number. I was so not impressed.

They might have upgraded the demo by now; if they want me to drop that kind of dough, they’re going to have to.

The cheapest of the bunch, a Musical Generator (a really not-smart name, by the way), the cheapest of the bunch at $29, “lets you create passable trance, ambient, and techno music by simply dragging mathematical objects onto four buttons that control the pitches, durations, start times, and volumes of notes. [...] The program’s weakest point is its primitive MIDI drum capabilities, which make the creation of convincing percussion parts difficult.”

I definitely need tocheck into some of these. I’ve been using Acid Music, but with all the work involved in finding loops and piecing them together, it’s awfully tempting to just sit back and let a machine do it.

I didn’t think I was gonna do this on the new blog, but I’ve been so busy tonight cleaning out the garage, trying to free up some space for my temporary Linux workshop, that I don’t have time to do either of the major posts I’ve been planning …

So let’s trot out the scrap box and see what’s inside:

Tim Russert Bingo: Apparently newsman Tim Russert gives a lot of graduation speeches — or rather, he gives the same one canned speech lots of times.

Last week, some students at Harvard, alert to this trend, looked up texts of his previous presentations of his single address, lifted key phrases, then printed them on bingo cards and passed them out to fellow graduates, who then would be heard to shout “Bingo!” when the journalist’s boilerplate phrases (like “Only 2300 weeks until you’re eligible for Social Security!”) filled out a line on their cards.

Really Old School Rock and Roll: Les Paul, the man largely responsible for the electric guitar being used as an instrument of entertainment and, later, rebellion, turns 90 today.

There have probably been times when he’s said … What the hell have I done …

‘Systm’ Information: Kevin Rose, formerly of G4TechTV’s Attack of the Show, left that channel to form his own project, System.org, — and that project has just released their second episode; download it here.

Okay, enough about ancestors and DNA markers. I need to catch up on stuff:

Wall to Wall: Check out this really cool, really HUGE collection of beautiful, HUGE photographic wallpapers. If you can’t find something to like in this enormous assortment there’s something wrong with your head.

I’m sorry to have to say that, but there just is.

Seriously though: I’m not actually posting this link for your benefit; I’m bookmarking it here to make it easy to find.

I mean let’s face it, after all these years my bookmarks are an out-of-control jungle of undergrowth. Part of what makes having a blog (or two) worthwhile is having better search capabilities for my stuff.

But anyway: Check out these wallpapers. They’re seriously cool.

(Link via one of my new favorite links sites, Look at This.)

God Bless You Please, Mrs. Robinson: More proof that I’m really behind in my posting: I haven’t mentioned anything about the death of Anne Bancroft. She was best known for The Graduate with Dustin Hoffman and The Miracle Worker with Patty Duke, but some some strange reason, I’ll always think of her cameo appearance (along with several other stars) in her husband Mel Brooks’ Silent Movie.

It’s strange the things you remember.

Farm livin’ is the life for me:: Speaking of dragging arse in my posting duties, I can’t let the death of Eddie Albert go by uncommented.

The main thing I wanted to say here was: He was ninety-freaking-nine! I had no idea he was up there in George Burns/Bob Hope territory.

He stayed active for a long time, too: As recently as eight years ago he was the voice of The Vulture in several episodes of the Spider-Man animated series.

Another note: He died just as an Adam Sandler remake of one of his last big films, The Longest Yard, hit theatres.

Was he trying to tell us something?

Runaway horse (or: Smack Attack!): Is it just me, or is every other headline these days about heroin? “Chicago water department housed heroin ring”; “Prescription Heroin? It just might work.”; “Bioengineered ‘Heroin Hoover’ may clean-up evil trade”; “Heroin threatens hard-won stability in Afghanistan”.

And these are just the most sensationalist of the headlines; see for yourself how much news old “Aunt Hazel” is making these days.

Clap Attack!: Ha! I can’t believe I ran across this: VD is for Everybody, a happy little anti-veneral disease PSA that they used to run when I was in high school and college. Definitely worth checking out — catchy little tune.

In case you’re just tuning in: In my previous post, I told about how I participated in the National Geographic’s Genographic Project, in which ordinary rabble like you and me could send off $100 and a cheek swab and get back a souvenir roadmap of the lands where our primitive ancestors drug their knuckles in their endless journeys trying to get away from each other.

If this doesn’t sound too exciting to you, it’s because you’re not adopted. Even ancient mammoth trails are better than nothing when you are your only known living genetic specimen currently on this planet.

As my results, I discovered that my people (”my people”! I’ve waited so long to say that!) enjoyed travelling about as much as I do — which is to say, not at all — since they averaged, in the 20 millenia since their particular genetic trademark emerged on the Arabian peninsula, about 0.05 miles of forward movement per year.

My people!

Anyway: The study showed them ending up in the Balkans, but said that I could find out more information int the study’s databases at FamilyDNA.com.

So that’s what I did, and here’s what I found out: Among the respondents in the study, the ones with exact matches to my “12-Marker Y-DNA” had ancestors that were distributed most heavily in these countries:

Scotland - 10
Iceland (!) -8
England - 5
Ireland -4
France - 3
Germany 3
Norway- 3
Unknown - 19

Hmm, ya think there’s a lot of other adopted people doing this?

So check it out: Scotland is in first place. That might explain my predilection toward the British Isles — and all things Celtic in particular. It might also explain why I have a soft spot for shelties and border collies.

I still get woozy at the thought of haggis, though, so maybe not.

Still … maybe I need to pick up one of those Utilikilts at next year’s Irish festival, just to see how it feels …

On second thought, maybe not . There’s such a thing as too much ventilation.

Anyway, I digress.

Look at second place: Iceland! I could have Bjorkish blood in my veins!

That’s a scary thought.

It really starts to get interesting when we get to the one-step-off matches:

England - 60 (!)
Germany - 12
Iceland - 11
Scotland - 10
Sweden - 6
United Kingdom (?) - 6
Unknown - 153

Wow, Jolly Ol’ England blows ‘em away in the second lap! Germany pulls slightly ahead of her previous position, just ahead of the former front-runners, with most of the rest of the world still back at the first turn (including Ireland, with only 1 match). (And what’s up with “United Kingdom”, since there are listings for England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales available? Do Shetland and Isle of Man have that many people almost matching my profile?)

But wait, there’s more! Let’s move on to Two-Step Mutations:

England - 106
United Kingdom (?) - 29
Scotland - 27
Germany - 20
Ireland - 17
Iceland - 11
Unknown - 233

Well! That tells me … um, I’m not sure what it tells me. I just know that exact matches are strongest in Scotland and Iceland, but in the near-misses, England comes on strong.

Does this mean that my ancestors were in Iceland, then migrated to England, then here? Or is it the other way around?

Or does it mean nothing of the sort?

I guess I have to do more reading on the subject.

Or if any of y’all out there know about this genetic science and can clue me in a bit, I’d appreciate it.

I’ll be continuing to post anything else I find out.

In the meantime … Cheerio, old chap!

There are definite advantages to being adopted. For one thing, I had my parents pre-qualified by a professional agency, to weed out any undesirables. The rest of y’all had to take your chances that you might wind up with any two yokels who thought they were capable of being parents just because they could fertilize an egg cell. (No offense, of course.)

Another advantage of being adopted is that when I was a teenager, my mother was never able to give me the old pain-of-childbirth guilt trip speech. The worst my mom could do was, “We had to ride six hours in a car to get you! With no air conditioning!”

The downside is that I feel like a tiny genetic island in an endless ocean. I had lots of family growing up — aunts, uncles, dozens of first and second cousins — but I would always see them having physical traits in comon, and would know that none of that applied to me. I have no offspring, and I’ve never seen any of my blood relatives, so I’ve felt like a genetic blip — an isolated incident with no known connection to any other living people.

That’s why, a month before my 50th birthday, when I heard about the National Geographic’s Genographic Project, where people could send in a sample of their DNA (and $100) and get back a map of their “Genetic Journey”, I didn’t hesitate a second. I sent off for a kit and sent back a cheek swab — and then I waited.

So what would I turn out to be? My adopted family is from Ireland, although I celebrate St. Patrick’s Day (and Celticism in general) more than all my cousins put together. Could it be that I actually am a genetic product of the Emerald Isle?

Or do I, as my wife suspects, have Jewish blood coursing through my veins? Or Native American? That would be so cool …

Then, last week, I got my results back. The verdict? It seems that I belong to “Haplogroup I (M170)”, shown in this picture as the people who branched off from their own ancestors and began populating the Balkan regions.

According to the Project report: “This Y-Chromosome marker first appeared in the Middle East. Its subsequent spread into southeastern Europe may have accompanied the expansion of the prosperous Gravettian culture. These Upper Paleolithic people used effective communal hunting techniques and developed art notable for voluptuous female carvings often dubbed ‘Venus’ figures.”

Yep, that’s my people, all right.

And as if I needed further proof, check out that same migratory path, outlined here in red, on the complete world map (click on the map for a larger view). This shows a path of about 1000 miles over the course of 20,000 years — my ancestors hated to travel as much as I do! Compare their global migrations to some of the other sub-races of mankind; my people were positively slug-like by comparison.

So that’s it: The site says that the largest concentrations of this genetic signature are in Hungary and Bulgary. Hmm — that’s an interesting heritage. And here’s something to ponder: Last December, when I challenged myself to do 24 posts in 24 hours on my old blog, I found myself scrambling for filler material. In desperation, then, I grabbed a handful of my Dad’s old National Geographic maps that I had brought back from my Mom’s house a couple of months earlier, and I pulled out one map at random and wrote a couple of posts on my findings.

The map I pulled out completely at random? “The Balkans.” Including Hungary and Bulgaria.

Coincidence? Or destiny, fate, kismet, zeitgeist, and any of another 100 words that I don’t quite know the correct meanings of?

You decide.

ALSO: One more thing in the report I got back: “The later spread of this lineage could be also be tied to the mid-first millenium B.C. Celtic culture.”

Woo-hoo! Close enough for me — I might be Irish after all!

Next: I did some more digging around in the DNA companies links on the Genographic page, and found some actual specific information — that is, real people who participated in the project, and where their families came from.

Now it REALLY gets interesting …

… but that’ll have to wait for another post …

I always find it interesting to notice which famous birthdays tend to cluster on certain days.

Today, for instance, Andy Griffith turns 79, and Alanis Morrisette is 31.

Phil the Bartender from Murphy Brown and The Equalizer both hit the Three-Quarter-Century mark today, and Odo from Deep Space Nine turns 65.

The late Cleavon Little — you know him from Blazing Saddles (”Pardon me while I whip this out.”) — would have been 66 today , and Marilyn Monroe would have been 79 (same as Andy!).

A few in-demand supporting actors were also born on this date: Jonathan Pryce (Pirates of the Caribbean, Tomorrow Never Dies) and Brian Cox (59; The Bourne Identity, Troy and X2), and Powers Boothe (56; Sin City, Deadwood, Nixon, The Story of Jim Jones).

It’s also the 58th birthday of Rolling Stone Ron Wood; tomorrow is not only the birthday of his bandmate Charlie Watts, it’s also the 30th anniversary of Wood joining the Stones.

Funny that after all this time he’s still “the new guy” … ha!

Last but not least: It’s the 25th birthday of CNN. Check out CNN’s own retrospective, including highlights from their first hour on the air.

Interesting that this anniversary falls on the day after the wrapping up of the 30-year-old Deep Throat mystery.

This is True News Convergence.