The Logic Off Topic list

The term psytrance always reminds me of psyops - psychological warfare. I 
wonder how long it will be before some CD is released for these many kids in 
a trance with subliminal messages "War is good. Resistance is futile. Abstain 
from sex. Pay more taxes. Support George Bush."

Maybe some of this debate could be eased by the notion that dance music is 
sound composing, while music is melodic and harmonic composing? Its like we 
are trying to a judge a new type of entity which doesn't really fit the 
traditional definition. It might be like other digital dilemmas - are 
webpages art? is sampled music composing? is eavedropping on email ethical? 
Is it cheating to download a term paper?

Take the last one for a second. At first you say "Of course its cheating to 
download a term paper for a school project rather than compose an original 
one". But the cheater may say that this demonstrates his ability to use new 
technologies to do research, and to sort from the various fake papers and 
choose the best (quality control), and then to know how to copy and paste it 
into wordperfect and put his name on it. And given the record of Stephen 
Ambrose, he is following in the footsteps of giants. 

But clearly something is still lacking in oiur minds (at least mine)...just 
as we might feel that calling the writers of dance music "composers" is not 
quite right. Surely it take tremendous talent to get the right sounds and 
grooves, and so forth. Much like the classical musicians who dismissed the 
Beatles as simplistic - but were unable to write their own hit songs loved by 
the world, perhaps its a similar situation.