Essay by Rob Sheridan

For quite a long time I’ve been intending to post some sort of commentary on the music industry – piracy, distribution, morality, those types of things. I’ve thought about it many times, but never gone through with it, because the issue is such a broad, messy one – such a difficult thing to address fairly and compactly. I knew it would result in a rambly, unfocused commentary, and my exact opinion has teetered back and forth quite a bit over the years anyway. But on Monday, when I woke up to the news that Oink, the world famous torrent site and mecca for music-lovers everywhere, had been shut down by international police and various anti-piracy groups, I knew it was finally time to try and organize my thoughts on this huge, sticky, important issue.

For the past eight years, I’ve worked on and off with major record labels as a designer (“Major” is an important distinction here, because major labels are an entirely different beast than many indie labels – they’re the ones with the power, and they are the ones driving the industry-wide push against piracy). It was 1999 when I got my first taste of the inner-workings of a major record label – I was a young college student, and the inside of a New York label office seemed so vast and exciting. Dozens of worker bees hummed away at their desks on phones and computers. Music posters and stacks of CDs littered every surface. Everyone seemed to have an assistant, and the assistants had assistants, and you couldn’t help but wonder “what the hell do all these people do?” I tagged along on $1500 artist dinners paid for by the labels. Massive bar tabs were regularly signed away by record label employees with company cards. You got used to people billing as many expenses back to the record company as they could. I met the type of jive, middle-aged, blazer-wearing, coke-snorting, cartoon character label bigwigs who you’d think were too cliche to exist outside the confines of Spinal Tap. It was all strange and exciting, but one thing that always resonated with me was the sheer volume of money that seemed to be spent without any great deal of concern. Whether it was excessive production budgets or “business lunches” that had nothing to do with business, one of my first reactions to it all was, “so this is why CDs cost $18…” An industry of excess. But that’s kind of what you expected from the music business, right? It’s where rock stars are made. It’s where you get stretch limos with hot tubs in the back, where you get private jets and cocaine parties. Growing up in the ’80′s, with pop royalty and hair metal bands, you were kind of led to think, of course record labels blow money left and right – there’s just so much of it to go around! Well, you know what they say: The bigger they are…

In those days, “piracy” was barely even a word in the music world. My friends and I traded MP3s in college over the local network, but they were scattered and low-quality. It felt like a novelty – like a digital version of duping a cassette tape – hardly a replacement for CDs. CDs sounded good and you could bring them with you in your DiscMan, and the only digital music you could get was as good as your friends’ CD collections, anyway. It never occurred to any of us that digital files were the future. But as it turned out, lots of kids, in lots of colleges around the world, had the same idea of sharing MP3 files over their local networks, and eventually, someone paid attention to that idea and made Napster. Suddenly, it was like all those college networks were tied together, and you could find all this cool stuff online. It was easier and more efficient than record stores, it was powered by music fans, and, well, it was free. Suddenly you didn’t have to pay 15 to 18 bucks for an album and hope it was good, you could download some tracks off the internet and check it out first. But you still always bought the CD if you liked it – I mean, who wants all their music to be on the computer? I sure didn’t. But increasingly, more and more people did. For college kids, Napster was a Godsend, because you can all but guarantee two things about most college kids: They love music, and they’re dirt poor. So it grew, and it grew, and it started to grow into the mainstream, and that’s when the labels woke up and realized something important was happening. At that point they could have seen it as either a threat or an opportunity, and they, without hesitation, determined it to be a threat. It was a threat because essentially someone had come up with a better, free distribution method for the labels’ product. To be fair, you can imagine how confusing this must have been for them – is there even a historical precedent for an industry’s products suddenly being able to replicate and distribute on their own, without cost?

For quite a while – long after most tech-savvy music lovers – I resisted the idea of stealing music. Of course I would download MP3s – I downloaded a lot of stuff – but I would always make sure to buy the physical CD if it was something I liked. I knew a lot of musicians, a lot of them bewildered at what was happening to the industry they used to understand. People were downloading their music en masse, gorging on this new frontier like pigs at a troff – and worst of all, they felt entitled to do so. It was like it was okay simply because the technology existed that made it possible. But it wasn’t okay – I mean, let’s face it, no matter how you rationalized it, it was stealing, and because the technology existed to hotwire a car didn’t make that okay, either. The artists lost control of distribution: They couldn’t present albums the way they wanted to, in a package with nice artwork. They couldn’t reveal it the way they wanted to, because music pirates got the albums online well before the actual release date. Control had been taken away from everyone who used to have it. It was a scary time in unfamiliar territory, where suddenly music fans became enemies to the artists and companies they had supported for years. It led to laughable hyperbole from bands like Metallica, instantly the poster-children of cry-baby rich rock stars, and the beginning of the image problem the industry has faced in its handling of the piracy issue. But still, at the time, I understood where they were coming from. Most musicians weren’t rich like Metallica, and needed all the album sales they could get for both income and label support. Plus, it was their art, and they had created it – why shouldn’t they be able to control how it’s distributed, just because some snotty, acne-faced internet kids had found a way to cheat the system? And these entitled little internet brats, don’t they realize that albums cost money to create, and to produce, and to promote? How is there going to be any new music if no one’s paying for it?

On top of that, I couldn’t get into the idea of an invisible music library that lives on my computer. Where’s the artwork? Where’s my collection? I want the booklet, the packaging… I want shelves and shelves of albums that I’ve spent years collecting, that I can pore over and impress my friends with… I want to flip through the pages, and hold the CD in my hand… Being a kid who got into music well past the days of vinyl, CDs were all I had, and they still felt important to me.

It’s all changed.

In a few short years, the aggressive push of technology combined with the arrogant response from the record industry has rapidly worn away all of my noble intentions of clinging to the old system, and has now pushed me into full-on dissent. I find myself fully immersed in digital music, almost never buying CDs, and fully against the methods of the major record labels and the RIAA. And I think it would do the music industry a lot of good to pay attention to why – because I’m just one of millions, and there will be millions more in the years to come. And it could have happened very, very differently.

As the years have passed, and technology has made digital files the most convenient, efficient, and attractive method of listening to music for many people, the rules and cultural perceptions regarding music have changed drastically. We live in the iPod generation – where a “collection” of clunky CDs feels archaic – where the uniqueness of your music collection is limited only by how eclectic your taste is. Where it’s embraced and expected that if you like an album, you send it to your friend to listen to. Whether this guy likes it or not, iPods have become synonymous with music – and if I filled my shiny new 160gb iPod up legally, buying each track online at the 99 cents price that the industry has determined, it would cost me about $32,226. How does that make sense? It’s the ugly truth the record industry wants to ignore as they struggle to find ways to get people to pay for music in a culture that has already embraced the idea of music being something you collect in large volumes, and trade freely with your friends.

Already is the key word, because it didn’t have to be this way, and that’s become the main source of my utter lack of sympathy for the dying record industry: They had a chance to move forward, to evolve with technology and address the changing needs of consumers – and they didn’t. Instead, they panicked – they showed their hand as power-hungry dinosaurs, and they started to demonize their own customers, the people whose love of music had given them massive profits for decades. They used their unfair record contracts – the ones that allowed them to own all the music – and went after children, grandparents, single moms, even deceased great grandmothers – alongside many other common people who did nothing more than download some songs and leave them in a shared folder – something that has become the cultural norm to the iPod generation. Joining together in what has been referred to as an illegal cartel and using the RIAA as their attack dogs, the record labels have spent billions of dollars attempting to scare people away from downloading music. And it’s simply not working. The pirating community continues to out-smart and out-innovate the dated methods of the record companies, and CD sales continue to plummet while exchange of digital music on the internet continues to skyrocket. Why? Because freely-available music in large quantities is the new cultural norm, and the industry has given consumers no fair alternative. They didn’t jump in when the new technologies were emerging and think, “how can we capitalize on this to ensure that we’re able to stay afloat while providing the customer what they’ve come to expect?” They didn’t band together and create a flat monthly fee for downloading all the music you want. They didn’t respond by drastically lowering the prices of CDs (which have been ludicrously overpriced since day one, and actually increased in price during the ’90′s), or by offering low-cost DRM-free legal MP3 purchases. Their entry into the digital marketplace was too little too late – a precedent of free, high-quality, DRM-free music had already been set.

There seem to be a lot of reasons why the record companies blew it. One is that they’re really not very smart. They know how to do one thing, which is sell records in a traditional retail environment. From personal experience I can tell you that the big labels are beyond clueless in the digital world – their ideas are out-dated, their methods make no sense, and every decision is hampered by miles and miles of legal tape, copyright restrictions, and corporate interests. Trying to innovate with a major label is like trying to teach your Grandmother how to play Halo 3: frustrating and ultimately futile. The easiest example of this is how much of a fight it’s been to get record companies to sell MP3s DRM-free. You’re trying to explain a new technology to an old guy who made his fortune in the hair metal days. You’re trying to tell him that when someone buys a CD, it has no DRM – people can encode it into their computer as DRM-free MP3s within seconds, and send it to all their friends. So why insult the consumer by making them pay the same price for copy-protected MP3s? It doesn’t make any sense! It just frustrates people and drives them to piracy! They don’t get it: “It’s an MP3, you have to protect it or they’ll copy it.” But they can do the same thing with the CDs you already sell!! Legal tape and lots of corporate bullshit. If these people weren’t the ones who owned the music, it’d all be over already, and we’d be enjoying the real future of music. Because like with any new industry, it’s not the people from the previous generation who are going to step in and be the innovators. It’s a new batch.

Newspapers are a good example: It used to be that people read newspapers to get the news. That was the distribution method, and newspaper companies controlled it. You paid for a newspaper, and you got your news, that’s how it worked. Until the internet came along, and a new generation of innovative people created websites, and suddenly anyone could distribute information, and they could distribute it faster, better, more efficiently, and for free. Obviously this hurt the newspaper industry, but there was nothing they could do about it, because they didn’t own the information itself – only the distribution method. Their only choice was to innovate and find ways to compete in a new marketplace. And you know what? Now I can get live, up-to-the-minute news for free, on thousands of different sources across the internet – and The New York Times still exists. Free market capitalism at its finest. It’s not a perfect example, but it is a part of how the internet is changing every form of traditional media. It happened with newspapers, it’s happening now with music, and TV and cell phones are next on the chopping block. In all cases technology demands that change will happen, it’s just a matter of who will find ways to take advantage of it, and who won’t.

Unlike newspapers, record companies own the distribution and the product being distributed, so you can’t just start your own website where you give out music that they own – and that’s what this is all about: distribution. Lots of pro-piracy types argue that music can be free because people will always love music, and they’ll pay for concert tickets, and merchandise, and the marketplace will shift and artists will survive. Well, yes, that might be an option for some artists, but that does nothing to help the record labels, because they don’t make any money off of merchandise, or concert tickets. Distribution and ownership are what they control, and those are the two things piracy threatens. The few major labels left are parts of giant media conglomerations – owned by huge parent companies for whom artists and albums are just numbers on a piece of paper. It’s why record companies shove disposable pop crap down your throat instead of nurturing career artists: because they have CEOs and shareholders to answer to, and those people don’t give a shit if a really great band has the potential to get really successful, if given the right support over the next decade. They see that Gwen Stefani’s latest musical turd sold millions, because parents of twelve year old girls still buy music for their kids, and the parent company demands more easy-money pop garbage that will be forgotten about next month. The only thing that matters to these corporations is profit – period. Music isn’t thought of as an art form, as it was in the earlier days of the industry where labels were started by music-lovers – it’s a product, pure and simple. And many of these corporations also own the manufacturing plants that create the CDs, so they make money on all sides – and lose money even from legal MP3s.

At the top of all this is the rigged, outdated, and unfair structure of current intellectual property laws, all of them in need of massive reform in the wake of the digital era. These laws allow the labels to maintain their stranglehold on music copyrights, and they allow the RIAA to sue the pants off of any file-sharing grandmother they please. Since the labels are owned by giant corporations with a great deal of money, power, and political influence, the RIAA is able to lobby politicians and government agencies to manipulate copyright laws for their benefit. The result is absurdly disproportionate fines, and laws that in some cases make file sharing a heftier charge than armed robbery. This is yet another case of private, corporate interests using political influence to turn laws in the opposite direction of the changing values of the people. Or, as this very smart assessment from a record executive described it: “a clear case of a multinational conglomerate using its political muscle to the disadvantage of everyone but itself.” But shady political maneuvers and scare tactics are all the RIAA and other anti-piracy groups have left, because people who download music illegally now number in the hundreds of millions, and they can’t sue everyone. At this point they’re just trying to hold up what’s left of the dam before it bursts open. Their latest victim is Oink, a popular torrent site specializing in music.

If you’re not familiar with Oink, here’s a quick summary: Oink was was a free members-only site – to join it you had to be invited by a member. Members had access to an unprecedented community-driven database of music. Every album you could ever imagine was just one click away. Oink’s extremely strict quality standards ensured that everything on the site was at pristine quality – 192kbps MP3 was their bare minimum, and they championed much higher quality MP3s as well as FLAC lossless downloads. They encouraged logs to verify that the music had been ripped from the CD without any errors. Transcodes – files encoded from other encoded files, resulting in lower quality – were strictly forbidden. You were always guaranteed higher quality music than iTunes or any other legal MP3 store. Oink’s strict download/share ratio ensured that every album in their vast database was always well-seeded, resulting in downloads faster than anywhere else on the internet. A 100mb album would download in mere seconds on even an average broadband connection. Oink was known for getting pre-release albums before anyone else on the internet, often months before they hit retail – but they also had an extensive catalogue of music dating back decades, fueled by music lovers who took pride in uploading rare gems from their collection that other users were seeking out. If there was an album you couldn’t find on Oink, you only had to post a request for it, and wait for someone who had it to fill your request. Even if the request was extremely rare, Oink’s vast network of hundreds of thousands of music-lovers eager to contribute to the site usually ensured you wouldn’t have to wait long.

In this sense, Oink was not only an absolute paradise for music fans, but it was unquestionably the most complete and most efficient music distribution model the world has ever known. I say that safely without exaggeration. It was like the world’s largest music store, whose vastly superior selection and distribution was entirely stocked, supplied, organized, and expanded upon by its own consumers. If the music industry had found a way to capitalize on the power, devotion, and innovation of its own fans the way Oink did, it would be thriving right now instead of withering. If intellectual property laws didn’t make Oink illegal, the site’s creator would be the new Steve Jobs right now. He would have revolutionized music distribution. Instead, he’s a criminal, simply for finding the best way to fill rising consumer demand. I would have gladly paid a large monthly fee for a legal service as good as Oink – but none existed, because the music industry could never set aside their own greed and corporate bullshit to make it happen.

Here’s an interesting aside: The RIAA loves to complain about music pirates leaking albums onto the internet before they’re released in stores – painting the leakers as vicious pirates dead set on attacking their enemy, the music industry. But you know where music leaks from? From the fucking source, of course – the labels! At this point, most bands know that once their finished album is sent off to the label, the risk of it turning up online begins, because the labels are full of low-level workers who happen to be music fans who can’t wait to share the band’s new album with their friends. If the album manages to not leak directly from the label, it is guaranteed to leak once it heads off to manufacturing. Someone at the manufacturing plant is always happy to sneak off with a copy, and before long, it turns up online. Why? Because people love music, and they can’t wait to hear their favorite band’s new album! It’s not about profit, and it’s not about maliciousness. So record industry, maybe if you could protect your own assets a little better, shit wouldn’t leak – don’t blame the fans who flock to the leaked material online, blame the people who leak it out of your manufacturing plants in the first place! But assuming that’s a hole too difficult to plug, it begs the question, “why don’t labels adapt to the changing nature of distribution by selling new albums online as soon as they’re finished, before they have a chance to leak, and release the physical CDs a couple months later?” Well, for one, labels are still obsessed with Billboard chart numbers – they’re obsessed with determining the market value of their product by how well it fares in its opening week. Selling it online before the big retail debut, before they’ve had months to properly market the product to ensure success, would mess up those numbers (nevermind that those numbers mean absolutely nothing anymore). Additionally, selling an album online before it hits stores makes retail outlets (who are also suffering in all this) angry, and retail outlets have far more power than they should. For example, if a record company releases an album online but Wal-Mart won’t have the CD in their stores for another two months (because it needs to be manufactured), Wal-Mart gets mad. Who cares if Wal-Mart gets mad, you ask? Well, record companies do, because Wal-Mart is, both mysteriously and tragically, the largest music retailer in the world. That means they have power, and they can say “if you sell Britney Spears’ album online before we can sell it in our stores, we lose money. So if you do that, we’re not going to stock her album at all, and then you’ll lose a LOT of money.” That kind of greedy business bullshit happens all the time in the record industry, and the consistent result is a worse experience for consumers and music lovers.

Which is why Oink was so great – take away all the rules and legal ties, all the ownership and profit margins, and naturally, the result is something purely for, by, and in service of the music fan. And it actually helps musicians – file-sharing is “the greatest marketing tool ever to come along for the music industry.” One of Oink’s best features was how it allowed users to connect similar artists, and to see what people who liked a certain band also liked. Similar to Amazon’s recommendation system, it was possible to spend hours discovering new bands on Oink, and that’s what many of its users did. Through sites like Oink, the amount and variety of music I listen to has skyrocketed, opening me up to hundreds of artists I never would have experienced otherwise. I’m now fans of their music, and I may not have bought their CDs, but I would have never bought their CD anyway, because I would have never heard of them! And now that I have heard of them, I go to their concerts, and I talk them up to my friends, and give my friends the music to listen to for themselves, so they can go to the concerts, and tell their friends, and so on. Oink was a network of music lovers sharing and discovering music. And yes, it was all technically illegal, and destined to get shut down, I suppose. But it’s not so much that they shut Oink down that boils my blood, it’s the fucking bullshit propaganda they put out there. If the industry tried to have some kind of compassion – if they said, “we understand that these are just music fans trying to listen to as much music as they can, but we have to protect our assets, and we’re working on an industry-wide solution to accommodate the changing needs of music fans”… Well, it’s too late for that, but it would be encouraging. Instead, they make it sound like they busted a Columbian drug cartel or something. They describe it as a highly-organized piracy ring. Like Oink users were distributing kiddie porn or some shit. The press release says: “This was not a case of friends sharing music for pleasure.” Wh – what?? That’s EXACTLY what it was! No one made any money on that site – there were no ads, no registration fees. The only currency was ratio – the amount you shared with other users – a brilliant way of turning “free” into a sort of booming mini-economy. The anti-piracy groups have tried to spin the notion that you had to pay a fee to join Oink, which is NOT true – donations were voluntary, and went to support the hosting and maintenance of the site. If the donations spilled into profit for the guy who ran the site, well he damn well deserved it – he created something truly remarkable.

So the next question is, what now?

For the major labels, it’s over. It’s fucking over. You’re going to burn to the fucking ground, and we’re all going to dance around the fire. And it’s your own fault. Surely, somewhere deep inside, you had to know this day was coming, right? Your very industry is founded on an unfair business model of owning art you didn’t create in exchange for the services you provide. It’s rigged so that you win every time – even if the artist does well, you do ten times better. It was able to exist because you controlled the distribution, but now that’s back in the hands of the people, and you let the ball drop when you could have evolved.

None of this is to say that there’s no way for artists to make money anymore, or even that it’s the end of record labels. It’s just the end of record labels as we know them. A lot of people point to the Radiohead model as the future, but Radiohead is only dipping its toe into the future to test the waters. What at first seemed like a rainbow-colored revolution has now been openly revealed as a marketing gimmick: Radiohead was “experimenting,” releasing a low-quality MP3 version of an album only to punish the fans who paid for it by later releasing a full-quality CD version with extra tracks. According to Radiohead’s manager: “If we didn’t believe that when people hear the music they will want to buy the CD then we wouldn’t do what we are doing.” Ouch. Radiohead was moving in the right direction, but if they really want to start a revolution, they need to place the “pay-what-you-want” digital album on the same content and quality level as the “pay-what-we-want” physical album.

Ultimately, I don’t know what the future model is going to be – I think all the current pieces of the puzzle will still be there, but they need to be re-ordered, and the rules need to be changed. Maybe record labels of the future exist to help front recording costs and promote artists, but they don’t own the music. Maybe music is free, and musicians make their money from touring and merchandise, and if they need a label, the label takes a percentage of their tour and merch profits. Maybe all-digital record companies give bands all the tools they need to sell their music directly to their fans, taking a small percentage for their services. In any case, the artists own their own music.

I used to reject the wishy-washy “music should be free!” mantra of online music thieves. I knew too much about the intricacies and economics of it, of the rock-and-a-hard-place situation many artists were in with their labels. I thought there were plenty of new ways to sell music that would be fair to all parties involved. But I no longer believe that, because the squabbling, backwards, greedy, ownership-obsessed major labels will never let it happen, and that’s more clear to me now than ever. So maybe music has to be free. Maybe taking the money out of music is the only way to get money back into it. Maybe it’s time to abandon the notion of the rock star – of music as a route to fame and fortune. The best music was always made by people who weren’t in it for the money, anyway. Maybe smart, talented musicians will find ways to make a good living with or without CD sales. Maybe the record industry execs who made their fortunes off of unfair contracts and distribution monopolies should just walk away, confident that they milked a limited opportunity for all it was worth, and that it’s time to find fortune somewhere else. Maybe in the hands of consumers, the music marketplace will expand in new and lucrative ways no one can even dream of yet. We won’t know until music is free, and eventually it’s going to be. Technological innovation destroys old industries, but it creates new ones. You can’t fight it forever.

Until the walls finally come down, we’re in what will inevitably be looked back on as a very awkward, chaotic period in music history – fans are being arrested for sharing the music they love, and many artists are left helpless, unable to experiment with new business models because they’re locked into record contracts with backwards-thinking labels.

So what can you and I do to help usher in the brave new world? The beauty of Oink was how fans willingly and hyper-efficiently took on distribution roles that traditionally have cost labels millions of dollars. Music lovers have shown that they’re much more willing to put time and effort into music than they are money. It’s time to show artists that there’s no limit to what an energized online fanbase can accomplish, and all they’ll ever ask for in return is more music. And it’s time to show the labels that they missed a huge opportunity by not embracing these opportunities when they had the chance.

1. Stop buying music from major labels. Period. The only way to force change is to hit the labels where it hurts – their profits. The major labels are like Terry Schiavo right now – they’re on life support, drooling in a coma, while white-haired guys in suits try and change the laws to keep them alive. But any rational person can see that it’s too late, and it’s time to pull out the feeding tube. In this case, the feeding tube is your money. Find out which labels are members/supporters of the RIAA and similar copyright enforcement groups, and don’t support them in any way. The RIAA Radar is a great tool to help you with this. Don’t buy CDs, don’t buy iTunes downloads, don’t buy from Amazon, etc. Steal the music you want that’s on the major labels. It’s easy, and despite the RIAA’s scare tactics, it can be done safely – especially if more and more people are doing it. Send letters to those labels, and to the RIAA, explaining very calmly and professionally that you will no longer be supporting their business, because of their bullish scare tactics towards music fans, and their inability to present a forward-thinking digital distribution solution. Tell them you believe their business model is outdated and the days of companies owning artists’ music are over. Make it very clear that you will continue to support the artists directly in other ways, and make it VERY clear that your decision has come about as a direct result of the record company’s actions and inactions regarding digital music.

2. Support artists directly. If a band you like is stuck on a major label, there are tons of ways you can support them without actually buying their CD. Tell everyone you know about them – start a fansite if you’re really passionate. Go to their shows when they’re in town, and buy t-shirts and other merchandise. Here’s a little secret: Anything a band sells that does not have music on it is outside the reach of the record label, and monetarily supports the artist more than buying a CD ever would. T-shirts, posters, hats, keychains, stickers, etc. Send the band a letter telling them that you’re no longer going to be purchasing their music, but you will be listening to it, and you will be spreading the word and supporting them in other ways. Tell them you’ve made this decision because you’re trying to force change within the industry, and you no longer support record labels with RIAA affiliations who own the music of their artists.

If you like bands who are releasing music on open, non-RIAA indie labels, buy their albums! You’ll support the band you like, and you’ll support hard-working, passionate people at small, forward-thinking music labels. If you like bands who are completely independent and are releasing music on their own, support them as much as possible! Pay for their music, buy their merchandise, tell all your friends about them and help promote them online – prove that a network of passionate fans is the best promotion a band can ask for.

3. Get the message out. Get this message out to as many people as you can – spread the word on your blog or your MySpace, and more importantly, tell your friends at work, or your family members, people who might not be as tuned into the internet as you are. Teach them how to use torrents, show them where to go to get music for free. Show them how to support artists while starving the labels, and who they should and shouldn’t be supporting.

4. Get political. The fast-track to ending all this nonsense is changing intellectual property laws. The RIAA lobbies politicians to manipulate copyright laws for their own interests, so voters need to lobby politicians for the peoples’ interests. Contact your local representatives and senators. Tell them politely and articulately that you believe copyright laws no longer reflect the interests of the people, and you will not vote for them if they support the interests of the RIAA. Encourage them to draft legislation that helps change the outdated laws and disproportionate penalties the RIAA champions. Contact information for state representatives can be found here, and contact information for senators can be found here. You can email them, but calling on the phone or writing them actual letters is always more effective.

Tonight, with Oink gone, I find myself wondering where I’ll go now to discover new music. All the other options – particularly the legal ones – seem depressing by comparison. I wonder how long it will be before everyone can legally experience the type of music nirvana Oink users became accustomed to? I’m not too worried – something even better will rise out of Oink’s ashes, and the RIAA will respond with more lawsuits, and the cycle will repeat itself over and over until the industry has finally bled itself to death. And then everything will be able to change, and it will be in the hands of musicians and fans and a new generation of entrepreneurs to decide how the new record business is going to work. Whether you agree with it or not, it’s fact. It’s inevitable – because the determination of fans to share music is much, much stronger than the determination of corporations to stop it.

This essay was originally published on Demonbaby on 10/24/2007.

View When Pigs Fly at Supraterranean

It was a rainy, mock-winter-early-autumn afternoon in Chicago as I sulked along the slick streets, slimy leaves of orange and brown clinging to my boots. Usually optimistic if not upbeat, stress and fatigue were consuming, and I had not cracked a smile all day. Suddenly, as I avoided an oncoming vehicle and its resulting puddle splash, the delicate process of memory resurgence blessed my weary soul, and I was treated to a flashback:

In a warm haze of smiles and summer I see a circle of people on my television screen, wearing clown noses and pointing at each other as they laugh maniacally, bubbling with mirth. I realize it is some kind of club for laughing, just as–

The flashback collapsed, and I was back in the misery of November, pondering this mirage of a memory and hoping such a club really existed.

Turns out, there is indeed a club for laughing, and the meeting I glimpsed on TV last summer was just one of hundreds worldwide. But by the time I finally spoke with Chicago Laughter Club founder Sandy Dorrian, I was sure that her club was nothing but a hokey scam looking to capitalize on the desperate demand for humor and stress-relief.

I was sure that her club was nothing but a hokey scam looking to capitalize on the desperate demand for humor and stress-relief.

* * *

It all began innocently enough. A quick online search after my rainy-day revelation located the website of the World Laughter Tour, organized by Ohio psychologist Steve Wilson, cleverly self-titled Cheerman of the Bored. An animated cartoon globe, clearly laughing hysterically, grinned aside the motto of Laughter Clubs International: “Think Globally, Laugh Locally.” A mission statement at the bottom of the page read, “Together we can lead the world to health, happiness, and peace through laughter.” Now this is what I had in mind! Get to laugh and achieve world peace? It seemed too good to be true! Of course my inner cynic suspected the futility of such a lofty goal, but it is always exciting to see people making an effort. I found contact information for a Chicago club and emailed the leader, Sandy Dorrian. In keeping with my crummy day, I learned I had missed a meeting held that very night, but, unwilling to wait another month to experience the “spirit of laughter” the organization promotes, I asked Dorrian to lead a private 45-minute laughter session at my sorority house the following weekend. This option, advertised at $125 for corporate clients, would only cost a nonprofit organization like us $75 and seemed well worth the money. When Dorrian said she could not make it but referred me to other Certified Laughter Leaders in the area, I should have known she was merely pawning me off in an underhanded attempt to make a quick dollar without having to work for it. At the time, I was just glad we could have a meeting.

Clint Phillips was, in short, a disappointment. In the week before his visit I had done a little research on the World Laughter Tour, but I still did not know what to expect from a meeting. I knew that laughter was supposed to lower blood pressure, reduce stress, and encourage unity. I had read about Dr. Madan Kataria, the man who founded Laughter Clubs International and started the first club in Bombay, India. I knew that Dr. Kataria considered laughter a form of ancient yoga not reliant on humor, and that psychologist Steve Wilson was so inspired by the Indian clubs that he launched the World Laughter Tour to spread the word. I also knew that to preserve the integrity of his clubs, Wilson presented weekend workshops across the continent to train bona fide Certified Laughter Leaders deemed qualified to lead meetings. I had seen the training brochure, which, for $339 (tax deductible), promised an impressive span of laughter theory, therapy, practice and leadership.

Spouting this information for a few days was enough to attract about 20 sorority sisters to our living room at 6 p.m. on a Friday, just after a hearty dinner of chicken wings with mac and cheese, and right before people headed out for the evening. Clint was tall with large muscles and a smooth, shiny head, sort of like Mr. Clean, except trimmer, and with wind pants. Well, and without the huge earring and bushy white eyebrows. So basically Clint looked like a personal trainer, which happened to be the case. Friendly but soft-spoken, he did not have a lot of command over the girls, who seemed quite capable of provoking their own giggles without his guidance. We watched a couple of short video clips, one a “warm-up” consisting entirely of individuals laughing solo at a camera, the second a snippet of a laughter club meeting in India held on the beach at dawn. Clint skimmed over the history of the clubs, dismissing the yoga element as an over-hyped gimmick used to garner interest. “My take on it is: it raises your mood, it makes you feel better, so do it anyway,” he said with a shrug. He explained how “the cause of happiness and the effect of happiness go together,” and warned that in the beginning, we might not feel like laughing. He told us to “fake it till you make it,” reminding us that we did not need humor to laugh. “You don’t laugh because you just heard a joke,” he said, “you’re laughing because you’re forcing yourself to laugh.” My friends looked confused.

Clint, while polite and accommodating, was far from this description, and at one point told us he had seen elderly women who were better at laughing than us. Something was not right.

But, confused or no, we headed to a common area cleared of furniture and prepared for forced fun. It was easy to follow Clint’s lead. The whole “workout” consisted of laughing in different contexts. First, the Missed-High-Five-Laugh: walk around the room pretending to give people high fives and snickering. Then, the Ice-Cube-Down-Your-Back-Laugh, where we screeched and quivered to imaginary chills. There was also the Pretend-You-Are-Driving-A-Bumper-Car-Laugh, the Act-Like-You-Are-Walking-On-Hot-Sand-Laugh, the Honk-Your-Horn-in-Traffic-Laugh, and, my favorite, the Point-Your-Finger-In-Extreme-Anger-But-Laugh-Instead-of-Curse-Laugh. So we laughed. Hardly anyone was comfortable at first, and not everyone became that way, mainly because Clint ended the meeting before we all loosened up. Just as the laughter began to sound genuine, he was out the door. It was a nice time, but more of a sample session than a $75 session. Dorrian’s website said the meeting would last 45 minutes; we started late and Clint was gone by 6:37 p.m., including a post-meeting chat I had with him where he likened the gradual relaxation process during a session to having a couple of drinks. The World Laughter Tour described an ideal Certified Laughter Leader as “stimulating, dedicated, passionate and compassionate, persuasive, compelling, energetic, vibrant, full-of-life, animated, whole-hearted, accepting and optimistic.” Clint, while polite and accommodating, was far from this description, and at one point told us he had seen elderly women who were better at laughing than us. Something was not right.

* * *

Sandy Dorrian emailed me a couple of days later. She said Clint told her the laughter meeting “went well” and included an address where I should send the check. I took this as her approval of our joke of a meeting and decided to hold off mailing the money until I could talk to her. Smelling the stench of corruption and deceit, I began to dig deeper.

But, being a student and not a private investigator, my unearthing of laughter club scandal was delayed by a pending English paper that resulted in a horrendous all-nighter. Naturally, it was during the last hour of frantic editing that Steve Wilson, founder of the World Laughter Tour, decided to return my phone call. It was 9:42 a.m. Monday morning, and my paper was due at 11 a.m. It was crunch time, not talk time, and I was in a foul mood when I heard his hearty hello. He sounded exactly like his picture on the website: robust and jolly, with an almost-audible eye-twinkling. I tried to re-schedule, suggesting in an edgy tone that perhaps this was not the best time, but he jovially insisted that indeed it was the best time. My growing skepticism manifested itself through a strained dialogue. I knew I was being given the party line; I could feel it. Every response sounded rehearsed, and his confidence was annoying. He chuckled at every question I asked and overused condescending precursors like “of course” and “naturally” while maintaining a light-hearted tone and positive attitude. He patiently provided a history of his work: An “aging hippy” who prescribed radical methods in his private psychotherapy practice, Wilson discovered scientific information on laughter in 1984 that changed his life. “It just resonated so deeply inside of me that this was a message I was meant to deliver,” he said. He politely defended his profit margins, saying that people are used to paying a fee and quoting Mother Theresa’s statement of “no money no mission.” After all, he said, “if you take this on as your work, why shouldn’t you get paid?” This seemed fair, but I was still thinking of our $75 when I asked how each club was funded. He was quick to remind me that the World Laughter Tour does not organize clubs; it only trains laughter leaders, who are completely independent and have no financial connection to the World Laughter Tour. In fact, the tour has recently formed the Laughter Arts and Sciences Foundation, which is a nonprofit organization. Realizing I would have to take my financial suspicions elsewhere, I asked Wilson to explain the physiological benefits of laughter, as Clint had neglected to do so. He gave me a book title and referred me to his website for related articles. But when I checked the site later, 23 of the 36 “News Articles” were written by Wilson himself, dealt mostly with case studies, and were titled things like “Taking Humor Seriously” and “Try it, You’ll Like it! Humor, Coping and Healing.” A link to “Field Reports” would presumably have scientific information, but it did not work. Despite his medical background, science did not seem to be Wilson’s focus within the laughter clubs as much as world peace. Wilson has taken the liberty of altering the original Indian clubs to include a spiritual component, which he defined as “practices that increase the influences of certain values in your life.” The system is this: Mondays are for compliments, Tuesdays are for flexibility. Wednesdays are for gratitude. Thursdays are for acts of kindness and Fridays are for forgiveness. Finally, weekends are for….chocolate! (Chocolate = relaxation and restoration.) Wilson said these practices “harmonize mind, body, and spirit” and that by following the “six simple steps” of self-care strategies, “each person will think less about war.” Riiiight. But if I thought this was a stretch, I was really in for a treat as Wilson elaborated on how laughter brings world peace:

Wilson: What do you get when you squeeze an orange?

Me: (pause) Um, orange juice?

Wilson: Precisely. And why is that?

Me: (pause) Um, because it’s an orange?

Wilson: Exactly! You don’t get orange juice when you squeeze a watermelon. The only thing that can come out of people is what’s in them. What you see in the world around you is what’s coming out of people.

Through this logic, he explained that if people become more positive through self-care strategies and laughter, little by little the world will become a better place. I think I know what he meant, but was left thinking about squeezing people for juice. (Would this juice be tasty? Marketable perhaps?)

Though his theorizing came off as somewhat zany to me, he was at least able to explain why there were no jokes at the meetings. “You’ve been brainwashed to think that you have to have a joke,” he informed me. In fact, humor is personal and subjective, “a psychological phenomena defined by beliefs,” whereas “laughter is a physical act that is universal with specific physiological effects that can be measured.” Laughter in the clubs, he said in a slow, soothing voice, “is induced by the decision to laugh for the enjoyment of laughing.” So that is what Clint meant when he told us we were laughing because we were forcing ourselves to laugh. Same message, poorly put.

The people involved in these clubs are just people who want to make a difference in their communities, global or otherwise, and what better way to do it than through laughter?

My hostility had all but dissipated as Wilson told me why he is still working with the tour at the age of 72. “You’re not here for a long time, you’re here for a good time,” he said. “If 51 percent of your days are happy, you’re ahead of the game. And I don’t think you can be happy in life if you’re not laughing.” As I thanked him for his time, he wanted to know why I had requested the interview. I started to explain my rainy-day flashback experience, but he interrupted, apparently satisfied that my own interest had provoked me. “I don’t know what you call it, cosmic, whatever,” he said, informing me that my interest was due to the “spirit of laughter.” “All of the people who come to be laughter leaders are drawn to it, sometimes unexpectedly, they’re just called to it,” he said. Personally, I think the “spirit of laughter” was more present for me when I got the grade back for that English paper I did not finish editing.

* * *

At any rate, I now had mixed impressions of the whole laughter industry. Our laughter meeting was sheisty, but Clint had been really nice; maybe the guy was just tired, or maybe he was uncomfortable amidst a throng of women (as unlikely as that seemed). Still, $75 for half an hour? Then there was the Steve Wilson paradox. Despite his cheesy demeanor, his steadfast self-assurance was convincing; this man really believes that laughter is the key to world peace, and has dedicated his entrepreneurial and emotional life to passing along that message. He clearly was not in if for the money, but then, how could he certify a laugh leader who was? Because this obviously all came down to Sandy Dorrian and her sham of a laughter club. It was not Steve Wilson’s fault we were being charged $75, and for that matter, it was not Clint’s either. He was just a pawn in this sick game of money. But I would get to the bottom of this–my sorority was, after all, on a budget.

So I called Sandy Dorian, prepared for my attack as I dialed the telecommunication office where she is a training manager. I would play ignorant, get her version of answers I already had, then spring with an accusation.

The woman who greeted me was neither deadpan like Clint nor boisterous like Steve Wilson. She was more than willing to share her story. Like me, she first learned about laughter clubs from a television feature, and like me, she decided to search online for a Chicago chapter. Except in 2001 there was not one, so she took it upon herself to get trained and start a club. Originally consisting of six relatives and neighbors in a local park, a year-and-a-half later the club sometimes attracts over 30 members. She explained that a typical meeting consists of a 20-minute warm-up and at least 40 minutes of laugh exercises, interspersed with historical and physiological facts. She said the club was more than just a hobby to her, “it’s something that has truly taken on a life of its own.” She described it as an “avocation.” She said she was excited to find an organization that aligned with her own positive beliefs about the world. “I’ve always internally had the philosophy the laughter club espouses,” she said.

By now I had an inkling that my financial suspicions were unfounded, but there was no turning back. How much does she charge members? Nothing. (I am taking my shoe off.) Why does she charge outside organizations? To pay the rental costs of club spaces and to hire speakers for meetings. (I am taking my sock off.) How does she determine her rates? Well, she didn’t want to say it was arbitrary, but she pretty much just looked around at what other therapeutic organizations were doing and thought about the time and effort that goes into leading a session. (Foot, entering mouth.) It was becoming rapidly apparent that this woman was neither evil nor money-grubbing, and part of me wanted to just drop the whole $75 issue. But I had a budget to consider, and so I fumblingly mentioned that I wanted to talk to her about how much we should pay, because we did not warm up for 20 minutes like she said she did in her meetings, and that our whole session was in fact about 20 minutes.

Immediately her pleasant tone dropped into one of dismay and atonement. She was extremely sorry to hear that. Twenty minutes was certainly not enough time; she had not gotten to speak with Clint in detail and did not realize he had not led a full session. I had not expected such a prompt concession. I faltered, because, after all, Clint was really nice, just kind of disappointing. Which is what I told her, adding that we appreciated his time and effort and that we would pay something, just preferably not $75. She said she would not charge us at all. She sighed apologetically, explaining that the organization is very laidback and that they communicate mainly through email, but that if we ever wanted to have a real session to please call her and she personally would come out and do it for us. And I believe that she did not say that because she was loathe to lose $75. She seemed genuinely upset that our expectations had not been met. I told her we were interested, because we are. After all, the people involved in these clubs are just people who want to make a difference in their communities, global or otherwise, and what better way to do it than through laughter?

My doubts assuaged, I asked if there was anything else about her club she thought I should know. Her voice became exuberant. “Did you know we were on television last summer?” Feeling sheepish, I told her I vaguely remembered.

This story originally appeared on Supraterranean in November 2008.

View A Laughing Matter at Supraterranean

Video by Andy Dick

This hyper Techno Kitty sure knows how to move to the beat!

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Think Feel Pictures presents: Youthful Days – Skiing and Snowboarding at Park City.

The song is Undercover Martyn by Two Door Cinema Club off the album Tourist History. twodoorcinemaclub.com

The video features some amazing skiers and snowboarders in the King’s Crown terrain park at Park City Mountain Resort.

tfpictures.com

View Youthful Days at Supraterranean

I walked outside with my duffel bag, my eyes squinting though the sky was a pale overcast. The steady din of the highway crept between the buildings of the dense apartment complex. It was around noon on a Thursday in early December, and for the past hour or two I had been pacing through my ground level, two-bedroom apartment, gathering necessities for a long weekend trip.

As I set down the bag, I heard a faint noise coming from nearby. At first it was only discernible as a human utterance; I thought it might have been a baby squealing. I moved back towards my entry door and heard it again, in the first floor apartment just north of my own. And now the source was more clear: a woman moaning, loud enough to recognize on the sidewalk outside.

I rushed back through my apartment door and turned into the bedroom, not quite confident in my own auditory acuity. I shut off the oscillating fan and slowly, cautiously, put my ear against the north-facing wall. Already my heart was pounding, as if the vague possibility of hearing a woman in that state had triggered an automatic biological response within me.

And there it was again, a soft, drawn out “ohhhhhhhh,” undeniably the result of sexual arousal. I could see how that might be mistaken for a baby’s cooing. There are obvious parallels between the two – both are powerful, alarming, consuming, but also vulnerable, angelic, transitory. Wars break out over this noise.* It grips men by the throat, explodes their sensibilities – so men try to dampen it, cover it up, or lock it away.

I remembered my animal behavior classes in college, when we studied certain species of monkeys and apes that gather information about sex by watching other individuals in the act.

After all, I was completely controlled by the hormones flushing through my system as a result of these sound waves crossing the drywall barrier. But I liked it, so I kept listening. I’ve been so disconnected from the social realm. Suddenly I felt close to people, admitted into their most private moments. I was startled by the excitement! I heard more from the woman, a repetitive call of “yeah, yeah, yeah, ohhhh.” The man, he was quieter, so I could only hear a low moan behind the more invigorated female calls.

I imagined how they might have been situated. From the frequency of the cyclical clapping sounds, I thought she must be propped on hands and knees, with the man kneeling behind her, thrusting. I remembered my animal behavior classes in college, when we studied certain species of monkeys and apes that gather information about sex by watching other individuals in the act.

Our evolutionary ancestors must have used auditory information as well, I thought to myself. Why else would I be listening to my neighbors have sex?

While thinking about that I began to feel ashamed, partly because of my prudish upbringing – especially the various times I was disciplined over sexual matters: pornographic photos in seventh grade, an explicit story in eighth grade, the single condom in my wallet in tenth grade. I also wondered what my girlfriend would think if she came home from work and saw me this way. Maybe she’d be thrilled, too. If she had come home I would have used telekinesis to dissolve her clothes. I wanted to hear those same noises within inches of my ears, to feel, at the same time, her warm breath on my neck.

So I felt ashamed, but not guilty. It did, however, make me wonder if people have listened to us through the walls – the walls we shared with three other apartments. More than that, I wondered what we sounded like. This sex seemed better than any I’ve had, but I do have what experts might call an “overactive imagination.”

Maybe I should close my eyes more often, and just listen to the sounds, I thought. I wonder if that alone could intensify the tactile perception.

In neuroscience class, I recalled, we learned the vast biochemical differences in sensory processing. That must be why each produces such a distinct kind of stimulation. But this isn’t why most people close their eyes or turn off the lights. Too often it’s an attempt to imagine being with somebody else…

I began to wonder why I wasn’t masturbating. It seemed like other people would have done that. Perhaps I was too frozen, trying not to move in the dim grey light of the room, as our two dogs watched me in confusion from their kennels. Suddenly the woman next door became louder, and her calls shifted in tone to something sharper, a more agitated scream.

It brought to mind my short time living in Chicago three years earlier. Sitting down to eat lunch in the living room on a Sunday afternoon, I overheard my roommate and his girlfriend producing the same clamor in their bedroom. That was the first time I heard other people having sex. It was strange, like the barrier between me and pornographic videos had suddenly been broken. My trauma was worsened because I hadn’t felt the intimate touch of a woman in almost a year.

The sounds from the other apartment quieted down, and in a way I felt disappointed. Listening to the two of them was utterly invigorating. I felt absolutely alive, pulsing with an energy I hadn’t known in some time. Leading up to this, the forces of the world had started to become really overbearing. I’d recently finished grad school, yet had no job nor any real friends. But this was a fresh shot of life!

I heard the shower turn on, and I figured one or both of them must have engaged in this act right after waking up. Then I heard someone open their apartment door, followed by a car door. I lifted a single strip of the venetian blinds and was surprised at what I saw. The woman, who looked to be about 5’3” and in her early twenties, wore jeans and a red pea coat. This brunette looked rather normal, not at all the sexual predator I had conjured in my mind. She lifted a small suitcase out of the trunk of her sedan and walked back towards the door. Winter break had just begun for colleges, so I figured she must be visiting her long-distance boyfriend; hence, the explosive vocalizations that come with delayed gratification.

I tried to compose myself, to finish packing for my own trip. I breathed deeply and reveled in the awareness that such a strange experience had injected me with a new sense of optimism, something I’d been lacking for half a year. More than anything, it made me look forward to the future.

* This sentence was unconsciously adapted from a line in the book Desolation Angels by Jack Kerouac. I realized the similarity only after publishing this short story. Still, I felt that an acknowledgment was in line.

View Noises Through the Wall at Supraterranean

Daughter of Bedlam
You roam the market bleeding
Your sweet and sticky blood drops
Fertilize the dawn and bone dry pastures

Our eyes tease wonders from your ashes
The flesh you solicit provokes our doom
Your hair untied sends comets flying
But we still take refuge in your tomb

Sister Bedlam, Disorder’s daughter
You show up late for every slaughter
Your graveyard dancing brings life to order
Drowning forest fires in torrential waters

Mother Bedlam, the dreamlord’s bad gene
You taint the half light with the dread of night
Your tireless fingers jam fatal triggers
And draw out voices from brain-dead singers

Your widow’s wisdom resides in hearts made cheaper
In the germ fed brains of wall street bankers
You tour the vaults and drive the galleys
Homeless vagrants wear your face in city alleys

Bedlam brought forth by cemetery prowlers
No one doubts your impenitent will
It is not our right to rule your weather
We peak only to wither with every thrill

Bedlam driven to boredom by hope and freedom
Someone calls out to your waiting shadow
He whispers his cold winter song of exaltation
And you arise like a black sun, a shiny new catastrophe
For the wandering hordes of exiled nations

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It disgusts me that people ask you for help
That they think you may have the answers
That you could somehow help them

But you’d sit there and watch them die
Probably Without shedding a single tear
Since you’d be so content in the comfort
of knowing it’s them and not you

I don’t need to wish harm upon you though
Because human suffering is inevitable
I do wish that when your time comes
You can truly understand what it is to be alone

You need to understand what it is to feel vulnerable
To know that you can’t save yourself
To know that you can’t sacrifice someone else
Just like you used to make things right

No, instead you’ll need to be saved
Some human being on their own free will
Will need to decide to pull you out
Somehow your life is of some value

You wouldn’t do that though
So I’d take comfort in knowing
You could have been rescued
But you weren’t worth it

View You Disgust Me at Supraterranean

This post was submitted by Dave Kowalski.

Religious fundamentalists who still espouse belief in a geocentric Universe are now met with ridicule and scorn; not due to discrimination but a lack of evidence for their cause. Unfortunately, the same can not be said about the 40-50% of Americans who, despite a near unanimous consensus among scientists, refuse to accept the theory of evolution. Ever since Darwin published The Origin of the Species in 1859, the idea of common descent has been hard for many religious individuals to swallow. The refusal to accept anything as truth that contradicts the Biblical account of creation has resulted in a massive war of misinformation waged by anti-evolutionists in our courts, schools, and places of worship. Operating under the banners of Creation Science and Intelligent Design, religious individuals have managed to confuse the public about evolution and its supporting evidence while sneaking theology into science classrooms. By educating ourselves about the truth behind evolution, we can put a stop to this degenerative sleight of hand.

Claim: Evolution is only a theory, and therefore uncertain.

In the context of science, the word theory does not imply uncertainty. It is basically defined as a set of general propositions used to explain a class of phenomena. If the fact that evolution is “only a theory” is objectionable, then creationists should be calling into doubt the theory of gravity, atomic theory, and the germ theory of disease — to name a few. The theory of evolution is a package of ideas used to describe how the observable fact of evolution functions, much as the theory of gravity describes how the observable fact of gravity functions. The fact that evolution occurs was recognized well before Darwin’s time. Darwin’s theory only sought to explain that fact. Today less than 0.15 percent of American scientists working in fields relevant to evolution are creationists. In other industrialized nations, that number drops to less than one tenth of one percent.

Claim: Evolution cannot be directly observed and therefore cannot be proven.

While it is impossible to prove anything with absolute certainty, high degrees of certainty can be reached. Evolution has reached a position of near-certainty among scientists because of vast amounts of data from a diversity of fields supporting it. While listing all of the observable evidence of evolution would take volumes, we can briefly document some of the most compelling supportive evidence. All life shows a fundamental unity in the mechanisms of replication, heredity, and metabolism. The fossil record shows species appearing in a chronological order, demonstrating change consistent with common descent over hundreds of millions of years and inconsistent with sudden creation. Evolution predicts that new biological structures adapt from existing structures, thus the similarity between structures should fall along the lines of evolutionary history and not function. This is precisely what has been observed. For example, human hands, bat wings, horse legs, whale flippers, and mole forelimbs all have similar bone structures despite their different functions. The wings of birds, bats, pterosaurs, and insects all have different structures but similar functions. Many organisms even possess rudimentary, vestigial characteristics, such as sightless eyes or wings useless for flight. Microevolution within species is virtually undeniable and thoroughly documented (Darwin’s finches, etc.), however, even macroevolution or speciation has been observed in isolated ecosystems. If you are interested in learning about more about the extensive factual backup for evolution, please visit your local library.

Claim: Transitional forms are missing from the fossil record.

As good fossilization requires a number of very precise environmental factors, it makes sense that finding a fossil of any specific species, especially a short-lived species, should be extremely rare. Evolution is often misconceived as a constant, slow and gradual process, but this is far from what’s been observed. When a species migrates into a new geographic location, evolutionary changes can take place relatively rapidly and then stabilize once an optimal adaptation has been achieved. As such, transitions do not often show up in the fossil record. Sudden appearances in the fossil record simply indicate that an existing species moved into a new region. Other gaps are due to environmental factors, such as erosion and periods unfavorable to fossil preservation. Nonetheless, there are still many fossilized transitional forms that clearly demonstrate the evolution of one species into another over time. These include: Fossils demonstrating human ancestry; transitions between species of Phacops (a type of trilobite); appearance of the horns of titanotheres (extinct Cenozoic mammals) in progressively larger sizes, from nothing to prominence; fossils of the diatom Rhizosolenia that show a continuous record of almost two million years which includes a speciation event; Gryphaea (coiled oysters), which become larger and broader but thinner and flatter during the Early Jurassic; dinosaur-bird transitions; transitions between fish and tetrapods (vertebrates with four limbs); transitions from condylarths (land mammal) to fully aquatic modern manatees; Haasiophis terrasanctus (a primitive marine snake with well-developed hind limbs); and the list goes on and on.

Claim: The second law of thermodynamics says that everything tends toward disorder, making evolution impossible.

The second law of thermodynamics says no such thing. It says that heat can not spontaneously flow from a colder body to a warmer one, or that the total entropy (a measure of useful energy) in a closed system will not decrease. This doesn’t prohibit evolution because the Earth is not a closed system, meaning entropy can decrease within it. Further, entropy is not the same thing as disorder. Sometimes they correspond, but sometimes order increases with entropy. Entropy can even be used to produce order, such as in the sorting of molecules by size. As the only physical processes necessary for evolution to occur are reproduction, heritable variation, and selection — all of which are seen to occur constantly — obviously no physical laws are preventing evolution from occurring. You can see examples of increasing order occurring in nature all the time. Snowflakes, cloud formations, dust devils, ripples in sand dunes, and eddies or whirlpools in streams are some of these.

Claim: The Universe/Earth is only 6,000 to 10,000 years old, so there hasn’t been enough time for evolution to occur.

Measurements based on the brightness of supernovae and galaxies indicate distances of up to billions of light-years, which means the Universe must be at least billions of years old for the light to have reached us. Some white dwarf stars have been found to be twelve to thirteen billion years old, based on their cooling rate. In the case of the Earth, radiometric dating shows it to be 4.5 billion years old. (Despite claims to the contrary, radiometric dating has been consistently proven to be reliable — unless misused by creationists to intentionally yield bad results.) Radiometric dating is consistent with the length of time geologists give for the formation of the geological column. Geological formations also indicate an old Earth. For example, Loess deposits (wind-blown silt) in China are 300 m thick and give a continuous climate record for 7.2 million years. Varves (annual sediment layers that occur in large lakes) are simple to measure, account for millions of years, and correlate well with other forms of dating. Some formations contain millions of annual layers, such as the five million layers found in Lake Baikal and the 20 million layers in the Green River. Known climate cycles occurring at 400,000-, 600,000-, and 1,000,000-year intervals are accounted for in geological strata. Creationists who argue that the Universe and Earth were created with an “apparent age” are basically asking us to believe that God intentionally deceives us.

Claim: (Fill in the blank) is too complex to have occurred naturally, and therefore must have been designed/created.

This argument, also referred to as the “god of the gaps,” is implicit in many different creationist arguments, particularly today’s claims of intelligent design. What is being claimed is “I can’t conceive that blank happened, therefore God did it.” In reality, others might be able to find a natural explanation. Because nobody knows everything, it is unreasonable to conclude that something is impossible just because you do not know it. Gods were responsible for lightning until we determined natural causes, for infectious diseases until we found bacteria and viruses, and for mental illness until we found biochemical causes. The “god of the gaps” is confined to those parts of the Universe we do not know about, and that keeps shrinking. Complexity is poorly defined by creationists, and occurs in natural systems all the time without the need for an “intelligent designer.” In the sort of design we know about, simplicity is the end goal. Complexity arises through carelessness or necessity, and this is very different from what we see in biology.

For more information on debunking the claims of creationists, please visit the extensive index of creationist claims at www.talkorigins.org.

This essay was originally published in Thirdeye Magazine on 9/4/07, and was reprinted here with permission. The essay originally appeared on Supraterranean in June 2009.

Jason Glover is a native of Traverse City, MI, and a resident of Portland, OR. He is a co-founder of Thirdeye Magazine and the owner of Thirdeye Publications. Glover can be contacted at info [at] thirdeyepublications.com.

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Acrylic on Canvas, 18×24, painted entirely in B&W

This painting originally appeared on Supraterranean in July 2009.

View Lone Barren Tree at Supraterranean

Photo by Jason A. Samfield

This photo was taken on May 20, 2010 in San Marcos, Texas, using an Olympus C4100Z,C4000Z.

View Flux at Supraterranean