You can justify nearly anything, but what you are ultimately doing is saying you are afraid of the consequences of voting your conscience, and that you would rather accept mediocrity than risk the possibility of what you PERCEIVE as greater evil.
In which case, the current system has won, it's just a question of what scares you more: the "liberal agenda", or the "conservative agenda", and you're right smack in the middle of the bullshit, wedge issue, framed debate you're being pushed into.
You equate the war, for example, with republicans. However, almost all the democrats in congress voted for the war without even reading the case for it. That's called "cognitive dissonance". you WANT to believe that they won't be as bad as the pubbies, but they are. The Dems are just pandering to one side now that things look tough, while the pubbies hold strong on "national defense". Hmm.
You're smack in the same, tired debate we always have. You selectively ignore the evils of the side you MOST identify with (not to say you fully identify with them, you just gloss over their evil) and focus on the evils of the side you least identify with.
Now, go to bumfuck texas, and you'll find you can do pretty much whatever your ROI calculator and oil buddies tell you to do.
You can make the argument that gore shouldn't have bought that particular house in that particular neighborhood, but you'd have to know why he was there to make that kind of determination. Generally, people determine where they want to live first, and where to live in that area second.
shares for the federal reserve are locked in, ok. (for what it's worth, you have taught me a lot about the fed in a short time and you are right to push the issue, thank you).
The federal reserve, however, just setup a massive bailout for a lot of major stockholders in a major financial institution (morgan stearns). That is a possible example of how power at the fed can be used to shield oneself and other "fat cats" from the results of their own greed. that is the "hypothetical" situation I was referring to, not the sell off of federal reserve shares or anything.
And the "special financing" they authorized is not voted on by anyone.. and if they make any even halfway plausible argument about "bank panic", it will likely go completely unchallenged other than by the typical free marketeer out there.
you're right, there are some rules it has to follow, just like the rest of us.
Now, who authorized the $30 billion in special financing?
Imagine, for one second, that the board of the fed might just happen to know lots of major shareholders in lots of major financial institutions... like morgan stearns... and speculate for one more moment on how much easier it would go on all of them if they could get something for their shares they would not have otherwise gotten. Make a vague claim about banking panic, and you're off scott free, because hey, you're the experts, right?
I'm not going to say I even necessarily believe this, it's more being a devils' advocate for the conspiracy theorists, but I do have little doubt that most people are biased toward the interests of themselves and the people they know and identify with. And when our very banking system acts to protect itself against its own folly as a result of its own previously successful push to reduce regulation... who pays for that?
it does seem to be a bit of a heads I win, tails you lose kind of situation if you step back a bit. while i would not say I know the truth of the matter, and I do not accept the conspiracy type theories as truth, I am certainly open to practices less than noble being the norm at very high levels of the game. witness, Enron, the savings and loans scandals, etc... it's not exactly unheard of stuff.
it's not property, it's an entity, as I said. Lots of private entities are compelled to do things by public statute, so what? I am compelling to present my state and federal governments with a big fat check every 3 months to cover taxes they EXPECT me to owe next year, and every year I have to report to the government where I got all my money from. by PUBLIC STATUTE. does that mean I am not a private entity?
$30 billion in "special financing" from the Fed for the a morgan-stearns buyout ring a bell? Or did you miss that one?
excess housing supply is also not an "unrelated" issue. it was a bubble. The bubble was fueled by inappropriate lending practices and irrational exuberance, combined with the sudden revocation of much financial sector regulation in the 90's. Funny what happens when I am given a loan by someone who has no interest whatsoever in whether I'll pay it back or not... I tend to get loans I couldn't have gotten ten years ago. and when everyone stomps off to buy houses, builders BUILD MORE. wow! that's a direct relationship! Quick, what's the response to greater demand for a manufactured product?
I'm not trying to make a college thesis here and I'm not really defending the GGP post.. I was really just pointing out that the GP post didn't really address the issues the GGP raised, that just because the banking industry isn't a part of our government that 'we don't have a system'. The fed is a part of our system, and is not a part of our government, and is the head of the banking industry in america.
I also don't think that I need to completely opt out of society in order to have an opinion on the economy and how it is managed by people who are not beholden to us via our government in any way, shape or form.
Much like the Fed itself. You know that's a private entity right?
Now, private banks have to circulate currency.. the GP was talking about this old boy network.. wait for it... yes, the old boy network runs banks!!!
I think I got it. The banking system is the system to perpetuate wealth in the hands of people who already have it.
and now we get to "bail them all out" while the homes they helped everyone buy depreciate in value. weird, eh? almost like we have this system that makes sure the ones with money get to keep it, even when they screw up.....
I am not advocating this position per se, but you might make an arguement that if you are not even right minded enough to defend your own life in that respect, then there isn't much you left to defend..
it's of course much more complicated than that. and I would never force it against someone's will. But neither do I necessarily think it is all wrong.
if it's a temporary circumstance I would feel very different, and in any case I would suggest clearing out the meds first would be an important step to making a "clear" decision. If it is just your mental faculties that are that deteriorated though.. well, that's kind of the quality of life issue I am talking about in the first place...
you could have a lifetime of facinating discussion on all of your points, but I will leave it at this: while all the rest is debatable, one thing should not be, IMHO. that the first and best indicator be the person's own attitude. Objective? No. But pragmatic, and respectful of the dignity of human life and of the individual spirit.
Once you start weighing the overall scheme, resulting in how a given philosophical stance would be implemented and inflicted on others regardless of their wills, then it becomes ruthless complicated as you say.
that's not to say you have to agree with someone if they express a wish to die. But neither should it automatically be rejected as crazy, weak, wrong-minded or anything else we tend to pigeonhole it into these days.
I wish people would differentiate suicide more often.
Whenever people talk about suicide, we typically picture some really depressed person in a funk offing themselves.
But what if life really isn't worth living anymore? What if you're slowly losing your mind? Terminally ill? Old and sick? A threat to others?
There are forms of suicide that are not the sudden, "Oh they had so much to live for" kind of trauma you're talking about. I wish that were acknowledged more often instead of this ridiculous "culture of life" crap out there that fails to acknowledge that quality of life is important too.
Personally, I don't see the point of saving up my entire life just to pay part of my medicals bills in my last year or two of life. I'd prefer to save up to enjoy retirement.. preferably early.. and when I start really failing, ending it all on MY terms.
Sure I might feel different then.. but I might not too;) time to do some research...
many modern psychologists would say if your desire to use drugs causes you to risk legal problems to obtain your high, you are by definition a drug abuser.
Obviously if you were rational, you would not risk jail, fines, or professional stigma simply to use drugs. You would minimize your exposure to those risks unless you placed some very high value on the drug usage, and they would see any such value as evidence of addiction.
I think it's a bit masturbatory of a definition, but it's an interesting thought.. that I disagree with, incidentally.
I have no idea, and I can say that I, for one, am really, really hot to make my desk top my actual computing desktop. Then, most of the piles of crap I have on it would disspear.
and, full size CAD with multi touch and hands-on drawing? awww yeah....
I think you're going to be surprised when you see how much stuff you would consider "america-hating propaganda" is filtered out by the corporate media... of course, in a world where you will be able to completely filter your own news input to only sources that agree with you, maybe you won't see it after all and very little will change for you.
italy driving guide, keywords, 5 seconds on amazon to get results, a few minutes of browsing to select likely prospects. algorithm did all the work of "promotion" based on all before me who had reason to evaluate aspects of the books there.
physically printing what I want from that list, there is no reason why that needs to be hard; it is trivial. This was not true in times past..but now, it is. Your catchall company "publisher" who is doing things other than physically producing books does more that is not trivial, but that's my point and you're missing it entirely. There is no need for a centralized repository of all the functions required to produce a book and get it into your car anymore.
who provides value in this "new" chain? The author, for creating the work. individual reviewers, to some degree. Amazon, for aggregating the reviewer's reviews and delivering them to me. The printing company (note my lack of use for the word "publisher" there), to physically produce the book... someday, entirely on demand, if not already, since there is little value to having racks of books waiting to be sold. Just in time delivery is the wave that drives all retail sales these days after all.
you could choose to hire editors or marketeers, you might need investors to get a book financed in advance, but again, these can easily be specialized functions carried out by specialists.. they don't all have to work for one monolithic company. Shit, you could hire an agent.
some people might still choose a monolithic, or vertically integrated "publisher" to handle all of the functions needed. Or, you might hire an agent to pull together all the pieces, or some of them. That would seem to be the best way to me; an agent beholden to the author, instead of to a company the author is trying to get to finance his/her project, would certainly, in the end, be most beneficial to the creators of works. But I guess that's "naive", to think that someone you hire to represent your interests might do so better than a "publisher".
Yes; I'm saying, it's an unnecessary layer of abstraction to some degree; secondarily, that the functions of reviewer, printer, and promoter by no means need to be conglomerated into one all-in-one company as they currently are. Perhaps there has traditionally been convenience in that, but now that communication is so much easier I don't see much value in it. Especially if you are able to only print the number of books you need! Then your front money requirements go down, risk for everyone goes down. Perhaps with the onslaught of additional content, the value of reviewers goes up, maybe that's what's bugging me after all.. it's about trying to see where the real value will lie in this chain in the near future for me at least.
As of this post, I am putting it on reviewers. Whether that is Amazon customers rating books, bloggers, or trade groups; that is where I think the primary value will reside, at least as far as the value outside of the author goes!
absolutely. Much as you let a variety of other sources filter your other media for you (news services, google, wikipedia), and writers would be wise to hire people to proofread their work. It does take a layer of expertise to sort and classify.
all I'm trying, unsuccesfully to say, is that those functions do not have to be tied to a company that physically prints books. Perhaps that's a nice all in one service, but if other companies can be competitive AND offer another avenue to access for writers that may be missed/misunderstood by established critics at the publishers... awesome. very awesome! I'm suspicious that a paradigm shift is in the works for most kinds of creative media, including books, music, and movies, in terms of the concept - creation - production - promotion chain changing heavily to be more individualistic at the beginning and less centralized/monolithic throughout.
perhaps that's just a "free market daydream" though.
Yes, that's what publishers do now. They act as filters and marketers. Much as "recording companies" do the same.
That aspect of their business has value and can survive, just as the analogs in the music industry will ultimately survive because it has value.
I think you're being a little narrow minded to think it can ONLY happen under the traditional auspices of a traditional publisher. Certainly the AMA can certify or even commission textbooks on medicine. Trade groups have a long history of commissioning texts. Science associations can't do the same? Word of mouth is the only mechanism other than a publishing company?
Printing isn't a bad thing, nor is your example. it's just a commodity service now. it's not where what we currently call "publishers" have value.
it's 1 am though and I'm probably just being pedantic.
why do you need a publisher to select for quality?
can't a reviewer, friend, or recommendation algorithm select for YOUR particular needs better?
as an end user, I don't give a fig for publishers any more than I can about "recording" companies. The act of printing is trivial now.
What you're looking for is a marketing department that specializes in book promotion and who's willing to take the risk for a cut of the profit. The "publishing" part of it is not where the value is.
I'm with you on the sexism thing, but I also think you have to give some points to the fact that when people don't like someone, they will grab every point they can that reinforces their belief, typically. Including sexist or poorly articulated arguments that they do not normally subscribe to.
the fact is I would love to have a woman president and may even vote for one this year (cynthia mckinney, assuming she gets a lock on the Green nomination).
But, I would never, ever vote for clinton. I see others who feel the same way, and some say she's too emotional, some say she's a robot, everyone has a reason.. ultimately, I think they are just reaching to explain, unsuccessfully, that she's not trustworthy, has no integrity, and that they are sick of politicians who say whatever sits best with a test group that week. She's a very skilled politician.. and that's the problem. I think it's more an underlying recognition of that fact.
it's a complex question though because the sexist rhetoric comes out so easy when the more nebulous reality is harder to articulate. It's not that she's too emotional or a robot.. it's that she is both, seemingly on command.
urgency is a great motivator. it's much easier to get "in the zone" in a pressure situation.
It's much harder when you're working on stuff without such urgency. Note that lack of urgency does not imply a lack of importance, just a lack of an immediate deadline or crisis.
Music is 50/50 for me. When I'm in the zone I don't hear it. Did it help me get there? Or hurt? hard to say. But I can't stand working without it, regardless. Luckily, I'm the boss. If we had to go to headphones though (as we may someday as we grow), I will need a way to make them cut out when the phone rings...
Slashdot Mirror
You can justify nearly anything, but what you are ultimately doing is saying you are afraid of the consequences of voting your conscience, and that you would rather accept mediocrity than risk the possibility of what you PERCEIVE as greater evil.
In which case, the current system has won, it's just a question of what scares you more: the "liberal agenda", or the "conservative agenda", and you're right smack in the middle of the bullshit, wedge issue, framed debate you're being pushed into.
You equate the war, for example, with republicans. However, almost all the democrats in congress voted for the war without even reading the case for it. That's called "cognitive dissonance". you WANT to believe that they won't be as bad as the pubbies, but they are. The Dems are just pandering to one side now that things look tough, while the pubbies hold strong on "national defense". Hmm.
You're smack in the same, tired debate we always have. You selectively ignore the evils of the side you MOST identify with (not to say you fully identify with them, you just gloss over their evil) and focus on the evils of the side you least identify with.
But it just seems so reasonable, doesn't it?
you go ahead and get soccer mom to strap into a roll-cage with a 5 point safety harness and helmet after her day at the salon.
Make sure she does the kids first.
Go ahead; we'll wait.
you go ahead and get a permit to do all that bush did on a historical home in gore's neighborhood.
go ahead. I'm sure no one will mind. Or will they?
Now, go to bumfuck texas, and you'll find you can do pretty much whatever your ROI calculator and oil buddies tell you to do.
You can make the argument that gore shouldn't have bought that particular house in that particular neighborhood, but you'd have to know why he was there to make that kind of determination. Generally, people determine where they want to live first, and where to live in that area second.
shares for the federal reserve are locked in, ok. (for what it's worth, you have taught me a lot about the fed in a short time and you are right to push the issue, thank you).
The federal reserve, however, just setup a massive bailout for a lot of major stockholders in a major financial institution (morgan stearns). That is a possible example of how power at the fed can be used to shield oneself and other "fat cats" from the results of their own greed. that is the "hypothetical" situation I was referring to, not the sell off of federal reserve shares or anything.
And the "special financing" they authorized is not voted on by anyone.. and if they make any even halfway plausible argument about "bank panic", it will likely go completely unchallenged other than by the typical free marketeer out there.
you're right, there are some rules it has to follow, just like the rest of us.
Now, who authorized the $30 billion in special financing?
Imagine, for one second, that the board of the fed might just happen to know lots of major shareholders in lots of major financial institutions... like morgan stearns... and speculate for one more moment on how much easier it would go on all of them if they could get something for their shares they would not have otherwise gotten. Make a vague claim about banking panic, and you're off scott free, because hey, you're the experts, right?
I'm not going to say I even necessarily believe this, it's more being a devils' advocate for the conspiracy theorists, but I do have little doubt that most people are biased toward the interests of themselves and the people they know and identify with. And when our very banking system acts to protect itself against its own folly as a result of its own previously successful push to reduce regulation... who pays for that?
it does seem to be a bit of a heads I win, tails you lose kind of situation if you step back a bit. while i would not say I know the truth of the matter, and I do not accept the conspiracy type theories as truth, I am certainly open to practices less than noble being the norm at very high levels of the game. witness, Enron, the savings and loans scandals, etc... it's not exactly unheard of stuff.
it's not property, it's an entity, as I said. Lots of private entities are compelled to do things by public statute, so what? I am compelling to present my state and federal governments with a big fat check every 3 months to cover taxes they EXPECT me to owe next year, and every year I have to report to the government where I got all my money from. by PUBLIC STATUTE. does that mean I am not a private entity?
$30 billion in "special financing" from the Fed for the a morgan-stearns buyout ring a bell? Or did you miss that one?
excess housing supply is also not an "unrelated" issue. it was a bubble. The bubble was fueled by inappropriate lending practices and irrational exuberance, combined with the sudden revocation of much financial sector regulation in the 90's. Funny what happens when I am given a loan by someone who has no interest whatsoever in whether I'll pay it back or not... I tend to get loans I couldn't have gotten ten years ago. and when everyone stomps off to buy houses, builders BUILD MORE. wow! that's a direct relationship! Quick, what's the response to greater demand for a manufactured product?
I'm not trying to make a college thesis here and I'm not really defending the GGP post.. I was really just pointing out that the GP post didn't really address the issues the GGP raised, that just because the banking industry isn't a part of our government that 'we don't have a system'. The fed is a part of our system, and is not a part of our government, and is the head of the banking industry in america.
I also don't think that I need to completely opt out of society in order to have an opinion on the economy and how it is managed by people who are not beholden to us via our government in any way, shape or form.
right, private banks.
Much like the Fed itself. You know that's a private entity right?
Now, private banks have to circulate currency.. the GP was talking about this old boy network.. wait for it... yes, the old boy network runs banks!!!
I think I got it. The banking system is the system to perpetuate wealth in the hands of people who already have it.
and now we get to "bail them all out" while the homes they helped everyone buy depreciate in value. weird, eh? almost like we have this system that makes sure the ones with money get to keep it, even when they screw up.....
I am not advocating this position per se, but you might make an arguement that if you are not even right minded enough to defend your own life in that respect, then there isn't much you left to defend..
it's of course much more complicated than that. and I would never force it against someone's will. But neither do I necessarily think it is all wrong.
if it's a temporary circumstance I would feel very different, and in any case I would suggest clearing out the meds first would be an important step to making a "clear" decision. If it is just your mental faculties that are that deteriorated though.. well, that's kind of the quality of life issue I am talking about in the first place...
you could have a lifetime of facinating discussion on all of your points, but I will leave it at this: while all the rest is debatable, one thing should not be, IMHO. that the first and best indicator be the person's own attitude. Objective? No. But pragmatic, and respectful of the dignity of human life and of the individual spirit.
Once you start weighing the overall scheme, resulting in how a given philosophical stance would be implemented and inflicted on others regardless of their wills, then it becomes ruthless complicated as you say.
that's not to say you have to agree with someone if they express a wish to die. But neither should it automatically be rejected as crazy, weak, wrong-minded or anything else we tend to pigeonhole it into these days.
I wish people would differentiate suicide more often.
;) time to do some research...
Whenever people talk about suicide, we typically picture some really depressed person in a funk offing themselves.
But what if life really isn't worth living anymore? What if you're slowly losing your mind? Terminally ill? Old and sick? A threat to others?
There are forms of suicide that are not the sudden, "Oh they had so much to live for" kind of trauma you're talking about. I wish that were acknowledged more often instead of this ridiculous "culture of life" crap out there that fails to acknowledge that quality of life is important too.
Personally, I don't see the point of saving up my entire life just to pay part of my medicals bills in my last year or two of life. I'd prefer to save up to enjoy retirement.. preferably early.. and when I start really failing, ending it all on MY terms.
Sure I might feel different then.. but I might not too
many modern psychologists would say if your desire to use drugs causes you to risk legal problems to obtain your high, you are by definition a drug abuser.
Obviously if you were rational, you would not risk jail, fines, or professional stigma simply to use drugs. You would minimize your exposure to those risks unless you placed some very high value on the drug usage, and they would see any such value as evidence of addiction.
I think it's a bit masturbatory of a definition, but it's an interesting thought.. that I disagree with, incidentally.
I have no idea, and I can say that I, for one, am really, really hot to make my desk top my actual computing desktop. Then, most of the piles of crap I have on it would disspear.
and, full size CAD with multi touch and hands-on drawing? awww yeah....
I guess that depends on the author ;)
I think you're going to be surprised when you see how much stuff you would consider "america-hating propaganda" is filtered out by the corporate media... of course, in a world where you will be able to completely filter your own news input to only sources that agree with you, maybe you won't see it after all and very little will change for you.
italy driving guide, keywords, 5 seconds on amazon to get results, a few minutes of browsing to select likely prospects. algorithm did all the work of "promotion" based on all before me who had reason to evaluate aspects of the books there.
physically printing what I want from that list, there is no reason why that needs to be hard; it is trivial. This was not true in times past..but now, it is. Your catchall company "publisher" who is doing things other than physically producing books does more that is not trivial, but that's my point and you're missing it entirely. There is no need for a centralized repository of all the functions required to produce a book and get it into your car anymore.
who provides value in this "new" chain? The author, for creating the work. individual reviewers, to some degree. Amazon, for aggregating the reviewer's reviews and delivering them to me. The printing company (note my lack of use for the word "publisher" there), to physically produce the book... someday, entirely on demand, if not already, since there is little value to having racks of books waiting to be sold. Just in time delivery is the wave that drives all retail sales these days after all.
you could choose to hire editors or marketeers, you might need investors to get a book financed in advance, but again, these can easily be specialized functions carried out by specialists.. they don't all have to work for one monolithic company. Shit, you could hire an agent.
some people might still choose a monolithic, or vertically integrated "publisher" to handle all of the functions needed. Or, you might hire an agent to pull together all the pieces, or some of them. That would seem to be the best way to me; an agent beholden to the author, instead of to a company the author is trying to get to finance his/her project, would certainly, in the end, be most beneficial to the creators of works. But I guess that's "naive", to think that someone you hire to represent your interests might do so better than a "publisher".
Yes; I'm saying, it's an unnecessary layer of abstraction to some degree; secondarily, that the functions of reviewer, printer, and promoter by no means need to be conglomerated into one all-in-one company as they currently are. Perhaps there has traditionally been convenience in that, but now that communication is so much easier I don't see much value in it. Especially if you are able to only print the number of books you need! Then your front money requirements go down, risk for everyone goes down. Perhaps with the onslaught of additional content, the value of reviewers goes up, maybe that's what's bugging me after all.. it's about trying to see where the real value will lie in this chain in the near future for me at least.
As of this post, I am putting it on reviewers. Whether that is Amazon customers rating books, bloggers, or trade groups; that is where I think the primary value will reside, at least as far as the value outside of the author goes!
absolutely. Much as you let a variety of other sources filter your other media for you (news services, google, wikipedia), and writers would be wise to hire people to proofread their work. It does take a layer of expertise to sort and classify.
all I'm trying, unsuccesfully to say, is that those functions do not have to be tied to a company that physically prints books. Perhaps that's a nice all in one service, but if other companies can be competitive AND offer another avenue to access for writers that may be missed/misunderstood by established critics at the publishers... awesome. very awesome! I'm suspicious that a paradigm shift is in the works for most kinds of creative media, including books, music, and movies, in terms of the concept - creation - production - promotion chain changing heavily to be more individualistic at the beginning and less centralized/monolithic throughout.
perhaps that's just a "free market daydream" though.
Yes, that's what publishers do now. They act as filters and marketers. Much as "recording companies" do the same.
That aspect of their business has value and can survive, just as the analogs in the music industry will ultimately survive because it has value.
I think you're being a little narrow minded to think it can ONLY happen under the traditional auspices of a traditional publisher. Certainly the AMA can certify or even commission textbooks on medicine. Trade groups have a long history of commissioning texts. Science associations can't do the same? Word of mouth is the only mechanism other than a publishing company?
Printing isn't a bad thing, nor is your example. it's just a commodity service now. it's not where what we currently call "publishers" have value.
it's 1 am though and I'm probably just being pedantic.
why do you need a publisher to select for quality?
can't a reviewer, friend, or recommendation algorithm select for YOUR particular needs better?
as an end user, I don't give a fig for publishers any more than I can about "recording" companies. The act of printing is trivial now.
What you're looking for is a marketing department that specializes in book promotion and who's willing to take the risk for a cut of the profit. The "publishing" part of it is not where the value is.
I'm with you on the sexism thing, but I also think you have to give some points to the fact that when people don't like someone, they will grab every point they can that reinforces their belief, typically. Including sexist or poorly articulated arguments that they do not normally subscribe to.
the fact is I would love to have a woman president and may even vote for one this year (cynthia mckinney, assuming she gets a lock on the Green nomination).
But, I would never, ever vote for clinton. I see others who feel the same way, and some say she's too emotional, some say she's a robot, everyone has a reason.. ultimately, I think they are just reaching to explain, unsuccessfully, that she's not trustworthy, has no integrity, and that they are sick of politicians who say whatever sits best with a test group that week. She's a very skilled politician.. and that's the problem. I think it's more an underlying recognition of that fact.
it's a complex question though because the sexist rhetoric comes out so easy when the more nebulous reality is harder to articulate. It's not that she's too emotional or a robot.. it's that she is both, seemingly on command.
anthrax.
use smoke signals.
You have to google for them, because unless you are a complete tool, you'll never get one "naturally".
I have been working on macs for ten years now. I have eight on my network right now. not one virus, ever.
how can I not be blase?
so basically, for any regular computer user, you just made the computer completely useless, but virus free. well done!
urgency is a great motivator. it's much easier to get "in the zone" in a pressure situation.
It's much harder when you're working on stuff without such urgency. Note that lack of urgency does not imply a lack of importance, just a lack of an immediate deadline or crisis.
Music is 50/50 for me. When I'm in the zone I don't hear it. Did it help me get there? Or hurt? hard to say. But I can't stand working without it, regardless. Luckily, I'm the boss. If we had to go to headphones though (as we may someday as we grow), I will need a way to make them cut out when the phone rings...