perfidy

I will be going on holiday hiatus later this afternoon, returning after Christmas to (I'm sure) plaudits, laurels, and celebration. In the meantime: have a blast, kids.

Blogmatron Kathy Kinsley has an interesting piece up about how the Left (and, she admits, the right) in the US are "gripping." Gripping is, to wit, "If your way of handling a situation was to take a death grip on anything solid and hold for dear life, you were gripping."

I've seen the behavior on both sides of the fence (the marriage Amendment idea is a case in point on the other side). I linked this mostly because the concept is interesting. I've spent enough time on boats to know exactly what he means. I've also seen the reaction in cultural contexts (people living in other countries who speak only to fellow expats, preferably from their own country). Gripping when they should move with flow.

I think a lot of Americans, and not just the left, have been gripping since September 11, 2001. I've seen more stridency on both sides, less willingness to listen and more insistence on 'my way is the only true way™'. That is not a good thing. We need to learn from each other. We must adopt the best ideas from all sides. We must adapt to the changes, move with the ocean's swells. Gripping's just going to keep us white-knuckled in the same spot forever.

Absolutely.

In Cleveland, they're learning that an unregulated utilities market only works if the utilities sector behaves like a... um... market.

Ohio's lawmakers and energy policymakers once thought free-market competition would drive down electric rates as independent generating companies and power brokers competed against utilities for residential and commercial customers.

So the General Assembly in 1999 rewrote state law to eliminate the regulated generation rates under which electric companies had long operated as virtual monopolies.

Told to work out the details, state regulators created a so-called "market development period" that began in 2001 and is supposed to climax in January 2006 with the birth of a robust, competitive market.

But with three years down and two to go, only a handful of outside companies have entered Ohio to sell power.

And the promised deep discounts for residential and small commercial users who signed up with alternative suppliers have not materialized for most customers. In fact, commercial customers of FirstEnergy still pay some of the highest rates in the country.

How this happened is as complicated and thorny as deregulation itself.

Experts say the failure of California's wildly ambitious deregulation plan and the collapse of Enron Corp. helped thwart the growth of a national wholesale market as a source of electricity for power marketers.

The insolvency of nearly a half-dozen other energy trading companies further stunted the wholesale market's growth. That, in turn, made the creation of local retail competitive markets all but impossible.

Moreover, the lack of coherent federal policies spelling out what authority regional transmission organizations should exercise over utilities has kept the movement of bulk power across the nation's electrical grid expensive and unreliable.

Still another part of the problem, say some critics, can be traced to the design of the deregulation law itself and to the rules that state regulators wrote.

The law allowed the monopoly utilities - FirstEnergy Corp., American Electric Power Co., Dayton Power & Light Co. and Cinergy Corp. - to continue collecting for old construction costs, including nuclear power plants, until Dec. 31, 2005. The utilities successfully argued that they had undertaken the construction projects as regulated monopolies and the costs otherwise would be "stranded."

The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio agreed to allow FirstEnergy to collect a total of $8.7 billion to compensate the company for those costs. Always part of the electric bill, the charge now appears as a separate item called a "transition charge" and represents about 30 percent of the bottom line.

And consumers who switch to another power company still must pay the transition charge.

Critics think that's wrong.

Me too. Market solutions to public problems never work if the effort is half-assed. This is a cautionary tale for advocates of market solutions to everything under the sun (me included). Sure, the market could make the world a beautiful place, but only if it works perfectly. Kind of like they used to say about Communism.

Tuesday Morning Quarterback Gregg Easterbrook:

"Take away the runs of 82 yards, 72 yards, 63 yards and 45 yards that Jamal Lewis recorded against Cleveland this season, and he still ran for another 238 yards."

That's in two games, people. Two games.
 

We're entering an era in rock history where "live fast, die young, leave a beautiful corpse" will soon be replaced with "live long, die slow, leave a beautiful album."

The last two years have seen several high-profile last albums from dying artists, and I suspect more will be on the way as artists from the golden age of Rock confront their mortality. Joey Ramone's final effort, 2002's "Don't Worry About Me" and Warren Zevon's August 2003 release "The Wind" were both recorded as the artists raced the clock against cancer, and Johnny Cash released three albums between being diagnosed with and dying of Parkinsons-related ailments.

There is something novel about music written by dying songwriters. Even if the material has little to do with death on the face of it, their condition, as long as the listener knows about it, inevitably colors the listening experience. It's part of a larger package of "performativity" issues that pointy-headed academics (like me, sometimes) talk about, and which boil down for our purposes to the relationship between a fan and the musician they venerate, and how that relationship works in the fan's mind.

Part of popular music's appeal has always been in the persona the performer creates. From the on-the-spot character plays and dying-children ballads of Vaudeville and music halls to Jimmie Rodgers as "The Singing Brakeman," Johnny Cash as "The Man in Black" to Curt Cobain as "Tortured Genius," how an artist presents themself is tightly bound up with the music itself. Without the personas, the music would still stand up, but the songs are richer for them.

Paradoxically, in light of the importance of image, rock has always thrived on asserting its "authenticity." Long before the first rapper kept it real, rock and roll musicians were downplaying artifice, theatricality, and forethought in favor of instinct, spontaneity, and honesty. Of course, to present yourself as honest can take a lot of planning, acting, and hard work (viz. Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan), but that's beside the point. The point is, popular music is often assumed to be (or presented as) an unedited communique' from the singer's heart to you. Indeed many artists enjoy the interplay between their "real" selves and the characters they create, and this interplay only works if the perception remains intact that the artist has a "real" side visible to the fan.

And what better way to get "real" then with death, the ultimate authenticity trip?

Some artists have made careers out of audiences predicting (or celebrating) their suffering and death (Keith Richards, GG Allin, Kurt Cobain, Iggy Pop, a whole slew of rap guys). Can you imagine a world in which Keith Richards had died shortly after recording "Sister Morphine"? Can you imagine the towering legend that he would be? Can you imagine a world where Kurt Cobain had entered rehab? Can you imagine his decline from relevance? The possibility of dying suffuses our (my?) experience of Keith's and Kurt's work to the point that it's shocking that Richards is alive, and not at all shocking that Cobain is dead.

The interplay of an artist's persona and the reality of death gives power to the music created under these conditions. What we're seeing today is a new twist. Whereas Janis, Jimi, and Jim Morrison all gained in stature after their deaths as their legends grew unhindered by the real person, that was accidental. And although a dead Elvis is a saint and a dead Sinatra is no longer a wife-beating cad, death in their cases too only uncoupled myth from reality. But now, artists from an autobiographical songwriting tradition are singing about the end of their own lives, taking the opportunity to fuse their "real" inner lives with the public personas they inhabit, and actively mold the outcome. So far, the first efforts along these lines are excellent works of art.

But isn't it a little weird that watching our heroes chronicle their own death holds such an appeal? I mean, George Jones sings about drinking killing him on literally every album, and every couple of years almost manages to pull it off. One of these times will be the last. Tupac Shakur sang about dying over and over, and his posthumous body of work exceeds that released during his life. Pete Townshend eventually backed off his "hope I die before I get old" schtick, because he was getting old and the sentiment was getting weird.

It seems to me that, like with most other things, rock fans use musicians as scapegoats for their own darker urges and deathwishes. It is exhilarating to see someone walk the line between junkie and corpse, and it is profoundly satisfying to honestly mourn the death of someone who has touched your life deeply yet doesn't share your last name. I wept for Johnny Cash when June died, and I wept again for the man himself, but at least it's not my wife, father, or mother in the grave. I mean, it's cool and all, but I just want to call it what it is.

That being said, it is right and good that the first Rock and Roll Death Autobiographies are from Warren Zevon, Joey Ramone, and Johnny Cash, three artists whose personalities seemed always to shine through the characters they created. Death settles all questions of authenticity.

Listening to Joey give the Ramones Treatment to Louis Armstrong's "What A Wonderful World" or sing "I want my life, it really sucks" in "I Get Knocked Down," you understand the pain Joey is in yet understand that he approaches death the way he approached life-- with equal measures humor, introspection, and cartoonish fervor. Ditto for Warren Zevon. The last track on "The Wind," "Keep Me In Your Heart For Awhile," is an elegiac, touching, and humble capstone on a career that encompassed everything from archly intellectual smartassery to lacerating fury. Here the weight of his young man's anger seems to be stripped away as Zevon accepts that he won't be here anymore very soon. (Ironically, Zevon's 'meditiations on death' album was 2001's "My Ride's Here," recorded before he was diagnosed with cancer, and I suspect the irony was not lost on him.) Finally, if there is any justice in the Christian tradition, I know that Johnny Cash is sitting on a lawn in heaven next to June, and they both have guitars.

This article also appears at blogcritics.org.

N.B. Revised extensively on the advice of commenters including my wife, who is more wise than I.

I am a man of many peeves, so many that I don't have pets. I'm more like a peeve farmer. And the "white person clap" is the first among them.

"What?," you ask? Well, I'll tell you! The white-person clap is when one claps one's hands on the first and third beats of a measure of music, no matter whether it's the 1812 Overture-- where it is almost appropriate-- or "Funky Drummer"-- where it's just not. The net effect, when such people inhabit an audience alongside more soulful people clapping on two and four, is that claps occur on all four beats of the measure as the two traditions collide. Ugly, ugly, ugly, and decidedly unfunky.

This time of year, PBS' programming is nothing but wall-to-wall music performances punctuated by reruns of The Vicar of Dibley. The same-ness of the performances is both stunning and discouraging. From the dude with the frizzy mullet and the white piano to former members of Elvis Presley's band with special guests, every single audience is the same: uniformly anglo, trending older, and uniformly unable to distinguish weak pulses from strong ones. 

Here's what happens every time: the big show finale comes... the house band kicks into some ridiculous arrangement of Proud Mary featuring The Canadian Brass... the band is tight, the backbeat is heavy on TWO and FOUR, and 1500 white people in boat shoes begin swaying back and forth and clapping on ONE and THREE like it's goddamned Lawrence Welk.

I swear to God, every time I see this shit it makes me crazy. We've had sixty years... sixty fricking years... of Rock and Roll... of TWO and FOUR - these people grew up on Little Richard, Elvis and Aretha... and they still can't find a backbeat. The JB's might as well be a polka band! The MG's might as well be Peter Paul and Mary! What the hell is so hard about feeling one TWO three FOUR?

It's not even like people are being asked to feel funky shit like "bom rest CHICKadika bom bombom CHICKadicka." Leave that to the pros. It's "boom CHUCK boom CHUCK boom CHUCK boom CHUCK." That's four on the floor, people, you grew up with it! There are no excuses! What the hell?

Jesus Christ! &*%! @?^!!!!

*panting*

The December Award for Inadvertant or Vertant Perfidy goes to... PBS, because I can. Stank you very much.

[wik] Duane, on my crosspost at Blogcritics, notes the following:

Traditionally (and there is a tradition here, oh yes!), the white person's clap consists of clapping on the 1 and 3 beats of a 4/4 meter, when the natural emphasis is on the 2 and 4 beats. You can see that in large audiences when a bunch of dorks are one beat out of sync with the music, so the net effect is that there are clapping sounds on all four beats -- the dorks (about 1/2 the crowd) and the rest (the eyerolling other 1/2) contributing equally. Quite maddening. Who are these people? Why are they mostly white? I used to blame Lawrence Welk and the polka, but now. I just don't know.

I don't know either, Duane. Maybe there's a vaccine? 

Last week, the design for the building to replace Manhattan's World Trade Center towers was unveiled. It's a tall office building topped with an open scaffolding which will contain windmills to provide a certain percentage of the building's power. Cool! Better yet, the design contains elements that will echo the surroundings: the scaffolding will resemble the cables on the Brooklyn Bridge, and the topmost spire is meant to echo the Statue of Liberty's hand thrust skyward.

The new building will include observation decks and a top-floor restaurant, and if they could find a way to throw in a super-secret piano grotto that would also be cool. Who do I call for this?

I almost forgot to mention-- in a grand New Yorkish gesture of "fuck you" defiance, the rebuilt World Trade Center will be the tallest building in the world.

[wik] Will Baude of Crescat Sententia nails it: "I do think there would have been something poetic about the twin piers, or a simply adorned void, but replacing the World Trade Center with the tallest building in the world is a pleasantly arrogant thing to do."

[alsø wik] Is the name "Freedom Tower" Orwellian? You decide!

You might want to read this particular Republican Fundraising Letter. What's it about? Simple!

" Please help us reach our goal of 450,000 AMERICAN grassroots contributors to the Presidents campaign."

This is a direct attack on Dr. Dean's unprecedented contributions from over 540,000 AMERICANS. Bush has been campaigning, or been president, for almost six years now. During that time he's amassed around 400,000 supporters, the majority of whom are direct beneficiaries of his policies. Dean's only been on this roll for about a year, and he's already got more individual contributors.

Bush's problem is that he's hit the folks who are going to give him cash already. Republicans have always relied on a small number of wealthy donors to drive their fundraising. They've done it through a laundry list of perqs and "access" come-ons. I've had GOP neighbors ask me to attend a dinner, or attend fundraisers, and $5,000 a plate. "Why?" I would ask. "Because you'll meet ALL the right people", they explain. "You'll be able to get to know people who can help you."

That's my GOP fundraising experience so far. We should probably note at this point that I'm Canadian, and as such, cannot (and will not) contribute to any election, at least in monetary terms.

That GOP fundraising letter is an attempt to mislead supporters into believing that the gosh-darned foreigners are trying to buy the election. Foreigners like George Soros!

Except....the Soros is an American citizen.

You gotta love these blatant attempts to fan the flames of racism and xenophobia. You gotta be scared of the people it works on.

The Department of Giant Sucking Sounds Calling Itself Homeland Security raised the terror alert level today from Bert to Ernie.

It's been a while since they've done this. Let's hope this time is just as frivolous as it was in the early days of the terror alert system when they changed the level from yellow to orange to tangerine to just-off-saffron on a daily basis.

Be safe and happy this holiday season, have a happy Chanukah and a merry Christmas, and if you see a dude with a shoe bomb, be sure to kick his ass a lot.

Bert Rutan's Scaled Composites are in the lead in the race for the X-Prize. This week, on the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers' first flight, Rutan's company staged the first flight of the SS1, (Space Ship 1). Although the flight was suborbital, two important conditions apply. 1) The SS1 is the first supersonic rocket-powered aircraft to be sent up by a private company rather than the Air Force, and 2) the SS1 is totally and cheaply reusable.

The X-Prize team predict that within a year, Rutan or one of two other teams will claim the prize, and the era of private space flight will begin. Sweet!!!!

The New Yorker is running an article by Alex Ross that aims to pit "Wagner vs. Tolkein." It's a fairly interesting but airy piece about the influence of Wagner on Tolkien, and a discussion of the parallels between the "Ring" cycle and Howard Shore's score to LotR. Not bad. However, what sticks in my craw is Ross' lazy and mistaken deployment of music theory in his discussion. You could fill Graceland with all the shitty books written about the music theory of Wagner's operas, so I'm used to that. But dude! Lord of the Rings! Music Theory! I believe you're in my house... so excuse me while I load my bop gun.

Warning: read on only if you have a high tolerance for wonkery.

Ross writes,

Early in The Fellowship of the Ring, the first film in Peter Jackson's monumental Lord of the Rings trilogy, the wizard Gandalf finds himself alone in a room with the trinket that could end the world. It lies gleaming on the floor, and Gandalf regards it with an attitude of fascinated fear. The audience feels a chill that neither Jackson's vertiginous camera angles nor Ian McKellen's arching eyebrows can fully explain. The Ring of Power extends its grip through the medium of music, which is the work of the gifted film composer Howard Shore. In the preceding scenes, an overview of the habits of hobbits, Shore's music had an English-pastoral, dance-around-the-Maypole air, but when the ring begins to do its work a Wagnerian tinge creeps in - fittingly, since The Lord of the Rings dwells in the shadow of Wagner's even more monumental Ring of the Nibelung. J. R. R. Tolkien's fans have long maintained a certain conspiracy of silence concerning Wagner, but there is no point in denying his influence, not when characters deliver lines like "Ride to ruin and the world's ending!" Brünnhilde condensed to seven words.

Shore manages the admirable feat of summoning up a Wagnerian atmosphere without copying the original. He knows the science of harmonic dread. First, he lets loose an army of minor triads, or three-note chords in the minor mode. They immediately cast a shadow over the major-key music of the happy hobbits. (A digression for those who skipped grade-school music class or never had one: Why does the minor chord make the heart hang heavy? First, you have to understand why the major triad, its fair-haired companion, sounds "bright." It is based on the spectrum of notes that arise naturally from a vibrating string. If you pluck a C and then divide the string in half, in thirds, in fourths, and so on, you will hear one by one the clean notes that spell C major. Wagner's Ring begins with a demonstration: from one deep note, wave upon wave of majestic harmony flows. The C-minor triad, however, has a more obscure connection to natural sound. The middle note comes from much higher in the overtone series. It sets up grim vibrations in the mind.)

The minor triad would not in itself be enough to suggest something as richly sinister as the Ring of Power. Here Wagner comes in handy. He famously abandoned the neat structures of classical harmony for brooding, meandering strings of chords. In the Ring, special importance attaches to the pairing of two minor triads separated by four half-steps - say, E minor and C minor. Conventional musical grammar says that these chords should keep their distance, but they make an eerie couple, having one note (G) in common. Wagner uses them to represent, among other things, the Tarnhelm, the ring's companion device, which allows its user to assume any form. Tolkien's ring, likewise, makes its bearer disappear, and Shore leans on those same spooky chords to suggest the shape-shifting process.

In The Return of the King, which opens this week, Shore's music keeps pace with the burgeoning grandeur of the filmmaking. When the hobbits escape Mt. Doom, Renée Fleming sings, in Elvish. As the evil lord Sauron comes to grief, the dusky harmonies of the ring give way to their mirror image in the major key. There is an abrupt harmonic shift that has the effect of sun breaking through clouds. You would have thought that sometime between the birth of Stravinsky and the publication of Alexander's Ragtime Band such echt-Wagnerian material would have gone out of fashion, but there is life in the fat lady yet.

OK. First of all, although Ross' assertions are correct on a harmonic level, he is dead wrong about why Howard Shore's score to LoTR is a descendant of Wagner's operas.

On this point, Ross is right: the major third is lower down in the harmonic series of a vibrating string than is the minor third. Hence, it may be described as more "natural" sounding if you'd like. But to argue from that base that "natural" equals "happy" and "unnatural" leads to "grim vibrations in the mind" is so much handwaving. Music theory is as much a cultural construction as it is a matter of science. That's the problem that the Greeks ran into, as well as the problem that Bach papered over with his "Well-Tempered Clavier."

What that means is, although acoutistics and the properties of vibrating bodies are a matter of physics, how the ear interprets them is a matter of conditioning, context, and prior preparation more than anything else. Don't believe me? Then you tell ME how "Boot Scootin' Boogie" is as much a party song as Balinese gamelan music. What music-theoretical parallels can be drawn between the two to isolate the "happy sound"?

Within the boundaries I've just established, it's perfectly OK to say that major is a happy sound. In European society, it surely is. And it's even possible to theorize that it's so because major keys resolve so neatly.

Why is this? Because the half-steps in the major scale come between the 3rd and 4th degrees and the 7th and 8th (or 1st) degrees of the scale. In the key of C, that would be between E and F, and between B and C. Because of other aspects of theory which I won't bore you with, this means that these half-steps fall in harmonically crucial places.

In conventional music theory, a "V-7" chord, or "dominant 7th" in the key of C is spelled G-B-D-F (a G major chord plus an F on top). Theory dictactes that, in the key of C, a G chord likes to resolve back to a C chord (C-E-G). With the addition of the F on top, that tendency becomes far more pronounced.

Why? Two reasons. First, the minor third (D-F) placed on top of the nice-sounding G triad pollutes the harmony. A string vibrating G will generally contain prominent overtones of B and D. Any guitarist can tell you this. So this triad is part of what occurs naturally (and audibly) in any vibrating body. But adding the F on top sets up a series of conflicts that add dissonance to the mix. Dissonance, to Western ears, likes to resolve to consonance.

Second, the chord G-B-D-F contains a "tritone," or two notes separated by four whole steps. In music theory, the tritone is a black sheep, neither consonant nor particularly dissonant, and it is the only interval that does not naturally occur in the interaction of the root of a given major scale with the other elements of that scale. (That is, all the possible intervals between two notes, except the tritone, occur in the following two-note combinations: C-D C-E C-F C-G C-A C-B.)

Look at those notes F and B. Earlier I mentioned that the pairs E-F and B-C were special. Guess where this tritone of F and B contained in the G-B-D-F chord likes to resolve to? That's right-- E and C. E and C are two notes in a C chord (C-E-G). Thus, adding F to the triad G-B-D sets up a harmonic situation that tends very strongly to resolve to C-E-G, a nice, square, clean C major chord.

Since our ears are trained from birth with fundamentally simple songs that rely on this very harmonic device, such a tension-release series is very satisfying to us. Hence major keys produce harmonically balanced sounds that could be considered 'happy.' I'm not claiming that these theoretical reasons are the only reasons why major keys sound so happy, but it's a major part.

Minor keys, on the other hand, are a different story. The minor second intervals fall between the 2nd and 3rd degrees of the scale, and the 5th and 6th. In C minor, that would be between D and E-flat and G and A-flat. That means that the tritone in the scale exists not between F and B, which tends to resolve strongly to the home chord of the key, but between D and A-flat. The tendency is thus for the key to resolve to E-flat major (why? just bear with me). Therefore, minor keys are constantly fighting their own tendency to go elsewhere, and only frank harmonic trickery and exception-making causes minor-chord pieces to work out harmonically.

Since our ears, as I've asserted, are trained to hear the square, mathematically neat resolutions of major keys as deeply satisfying, minor keys sound by comparison unsettled and dissonant. The same goes to a certain degree with modal harmonies which are beyond the boundaries of this particular bit of wonkery.

So. All this crap is to say that Alex Ross is engaging in a lot of post-Romantic handwaving when he talks about "dark vibrations in the mind" (he is a Wagner fan, after all!) Tibetan throat singing sets up dark vibrations in my wife's mind, and that's neither major nor minor. The real feat is that, using the simplest of musical tools available in the Western tradition,Howard Shore's score advances the state of the art of "Mickey Mousing" (that is, keying musical cues to onscreen action) for almost the first time since John Williams did "Jaws" and "Star Wars: A New Hope," and comes close to the heft, grandeur, and complexity of Wagner's most demanding moments. Theme is heaped upon theme, harmonic relations are handled with a loose and masterful hand, and the tension-release cycle is closely keyed to the action we are seeing on the screen. In this regard more than anything else, Howard Shore has come very close to the spirit of Wagner's writing, as a thousand shitty books will tell you at great length. Regardless of whether Tolkien disavowed his Wagnerian inspiration or not, Howard Shore has brought the spirit of Wagner's operatic scoring to the big screen in high style.

Heh. Mark Saleski, a fellow blogcritic notes that a US Court of Appeals has sided with Verizon, finding that the RIAA's subpoena campaign is not authorized under current copyright law. Yeah! Take that you dinosaurs! Your business model is tired and outmoded! Your strategies are ossified! And you suck!

Speaking of copyright, I'm right now listening to one of the greatest things in the history of rock music: An "illegal" mix of Eminem's vocals from "Without Me" over top of Led Zeppelin's "The Wanton Song." It matches perfectly. Isn't technology grand???

Every year, Nat "I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts" Robinson sends around an end-of-the-year survey. I must confess that this hasn't been the greatest year for me as regards fiction reading, film, or music, so my pool of answers is pretty limited and conventional. But will that actually stop me from waving my withered narcissism here for the world to see?

Don't be silly!

Politics

• Person of the Year: Howard Dean
• Asshole of the Year: Ralph Nader, but only if he decides to actually run for President. Barring that, I’m going to have to go with Karl Rove.
• Scandal: That nobody STILL has been shitcanned for the intelligence failures leading up to September 2001, yet members of Bush's team who didn't toe the line have been jettisoned repeatedly. 

Sports

• Best Athlete: Lebron James, especially if he can develop into a team player.
• Best Sports Team: The Red Sox.
• Most Memorable Sports Moment: approximately 11:18 PM, October 16, as my baptism into the Red Sox Nation began. I've had my Buckner moment, and it feels 'ouchy.

Film/Television

• Best Film: The Hours was good, as was Master and Commander, but I'm going to bet that the Return of the King is going to be a near-spiritual experience.
• Best Documentary: Martin Scorsese's The Blues, with special attention to Bobby Rush and the ass on hinges.
• Best Adaptation of Literature to Film: Return of the King.
• Best TV show (comedy/drama/fiction): Scrubs, and Gilmore Girls.
• Best TV show (information/reality/non-fiction): Queer Eye for the Straight Guy
• Most Memorable TV Moment: Saddam Hussein's examination for head lice.

Music

• Best Album: Outkast: Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
• Best Song/Single: Seven Nations Army: The White Stripes
• Favorite Live Show: Robert Randolph & the Family Band, free afternoon show at Copley Square.
• Notable "Re-discovery" in Music: The Beatles. I no longer think they suck completely. Only partly.

Literature

• Best Fiction Book (Since January 2002): Screw dates of publication. Dan Simmons Hyperion and sequels.
• Best Non-fiction Book (Trade) (Since January 2002): Edmund Morgan's Benjamin Franklin was pretty hot shit.
• Best Academic Book (Since January 2003): Screw dates, again. David Hackett Fisher's Albion's Seed was pretty hot shit.
• Best Short Story: I don't read these. I also don't run sprints.
• Notable "Re-discovery" in Literature: Haruki Murukame The Wind-up Bird Chronicles

Guilty Pleasures

• Album that I refuse to admit that I like: I am perfectly willing to admit I listen to Christina Aguilera and I've finally come to terms with the fact that Garth Brooks released some great songs.
• TV show I watch in secret: Nothin'. I'm proud of my viewing choices. Although I'm only allowed to watch Adult Swim on the Cartoon Network alone because it gives my wife headaches, except for Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

Culture

• Best Restaurant Meal: The steak tips at McSwiggin's Irish Pub in Salem, Massachusetts have twice brought me, in a literal and entirely un-metaphorical sense, to tears. They may be the best meat I have ever tasted. For the non-New Englanders: steak tips are pieces of sirloin. Don't know why they're called tips. They're just pieces of sirloin. A regional delicacy on the level of fried whole-belly clams, Moxie, Sky Bars, and Kelly's Roast Beef.
• Favorite Personal Moment: For Christmas I got my wife an appointment at a hair salon on Newbury Street, the high-fashion nexus of the Boston area. I sat and read my book patiently while the stylist did her magic. After a while, I looked up to find a vision walking toward me. It took a minute to register in my stunned mind, but when it did it was like a sweet punch to the head: "Oh my God, that gorgeous, hot, breathtaking woman, is my wife. MY wife!"
• Favorite Website: why, perfidy.org, of course.
• Gracious Celebrity: Erm.... Jessica Lynch, for having the grace to slide back into obscurity.
• Undeserved Celebrity: Ann Coulter.

Will be found guilty/innocent

• Michael Jackson: Innocent.
• Kobe Bryant: Guilty!
• Scott Peterson: Guilty, guilty, guilty! Who goes boating on Christmas eve?

Eric Boehlert, Salon.com's resident music critic, has a long history of alternating wildly between prescient music-industry watchdoggery and tepid stabs at political writing. All that means is he's well above par for music critics, most of whom suck worse than Aerosmith's "A Night In The Ruts" and Korn bassist Fieldy's solo effort "Fieldy's Dreams" combined.

I can't argue with his latest column at all, which asserts that Dec. 20, 1969 was the greatest week in the history of rock. In terms of what the Billboard charts say, he's dead right. Check this out:

No. 1, "Abbey Road," the Beatles
No. 2, "Led Zeppelin II," Led Zeppelin
No. 3, "Tom Jones Live in Las Vegas," Tom Jones
No. 4, "Green River," Creedence Clearwater Revival
No. 5, "Let It Bleed," the Rolling Stones
No. 6, "Santana," Santana
No. 7, "Puzzle People," the Temptations
No. 8, "Blood Sweat & Tears," Blood Sweat & Tears
No. 9, "Crosby, Stills & Nash," Crosby, Stills & Nash
No. 10, "Easy Rider" soundtrack (featuring the Byrds, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and Steppenwolf)

I dare you to find another week, ever, in which every single album in the top ten is still listenable, relevant, and awesome. No matter what you may think of CS&N or Tom Jones, they are a lot better than other chart toppers like Andy Gibb, Rick Astley, or Milli Vanilli. Go check it out... it's enough to make you pull out a zippo and hold it overhead.

Personally speaking, this chart has my favorite Beatles record, my favorite Stones record on it (which is not the same thing as their greatest), Led Zep's leanest and meanest LP, two of the best soul-funk records of all time, and "It's Not Unusual." Damn! Boehlert is especially powerful writing about the content of the records in the chart, their relevance to the violence of the time, and the symbolic passing of the torch between the 60's and 70's.

If the best music writing (like the best rock lyrics) is nothing more (or less!) than the creative deployment of impressions and evocative imagery to make your point, Boehlert has earned a great deal of goodwill with me to get him through his next quixotic attempts to prove that Bush lied ergo people died.

Go read Charles Krauthammer. Now. I'm no expert on the Arab world, so I can't speak to the accuracy of his historical context, but this is dead on:

The race is over. The Oscar for Best Documentary, Short Subject, goes to . . . "Saddam's Dental Exam."

Screenplay: 1st Brigade, U.S. 4th Infantry Division.

Producer: P. Bremer Enterprises, Baghdad.

Director: The anonymous genius at U.S. headquarters who chose this clip as the world's first view of Saddam Hussein in captivity.

In the old days the conquered tyrant was dragged through the streets behind the Roman general's chariot. Or paraded shackled before a jeering crowd. Or, when more finality was required, had his head placed on a spike on the tower wall.

Iraq has its own ways. In the revolution of 1958, Prime Minister Nuri Said was caught by a crowd and murdered, and his body was dragged behind a car through the streets of Baghdad until there was nothing left but half a leg.

We Americans don't do it that way. Instead, we show Saddam Hussein -- King of Kings, Lion of the Tigris, Saladin of the Arabs -- compliantly opening his mouth like a child to the universal indignity of an oral (and head lice!) exam. Docility wrapped in banality. Brilliant. Nothing could have been better calculated to demystify the all-powerful tyrant.

[And then a bunch of stuff about myth-building and imported Stalinism]

On the run, Hussein enjoyed one final moment of myth: the ever-resourceful, undaunted resistance fighter. Perhaps, it was thought, he had it all calculated in advance, fading silently from Baghdad like the Russians withdrawing from Moscow before Napoleon, to suck in the Americans only to strike back later on his own terms in a brilliant guerrilla campaign masterminded by the great one himself.

And then they find him cowering in a hole, disheveled, disoriented and dishonored. After making those underground tapes exhorting others to give their blood for Iraq and for him, his instantaneous reaction to discovery was hands-up surrender.

End of the myth. It is not just that he did not resist the soldiers with the guns. He did not even resist the medic with the tongue depressor.

Absolutely. The most evil of men are still just men, and I seem to remember something about... what was it? Sic transit something something.

Glory. Right. Sic transit gloria, you murderous jackass. Lucky for you, we don't use woodchippers.

Homo sapiens, as a species, have distinguished ourselves through uncounted millenia by asking questions of ourselves and our Earth and relentlessly pursuing answers. Sometimes we get it right, sometimes our answers are way off; often our quest for answers only serves to confuse us further and demands new questions.

As our intellect evolves and becomes more refined, many an academician and layman alike seek a single, elegant solution to solve all the great puzzles of our universe.

I refer, of course, to those intrepid intellectual explorers who unflaggingly seek to tie Nazis and malevolent aliens together with secret Aryan Antarctic bases, the Trilateral Commision, the Kennedy assassination, the hollow Earth, and Denver International Airport.

Jose Padilla, US citizen and suspected "dirrty bomber" cannot be tried as an "enemy combatant" according to a three-judge panel.

This is a good day for our civil liberties. Guilty or innocent, this guy deserves due process.

From the story:

President Bush does not have power to detain American citizen Jose Padilla, the former gang member seized on U.S. soil, as an enemy combatant, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.

The decision could force the government to try Padilla, held in a so-called "dirty bomb" plot, in civilian courts.

In a 2-1 ruling, a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Padilla's detention was not authorized by Congress and that Bush could not designate him as an enemy combatant without the authorization.

Buckethead and I have spent time before lamenting the US's policy of getting into bed with dictators during the Cold War. Saddam Hussein was one of those. Aziz Poonawalla has a killer post up to that effect which goes into some detail about the level of support the US lent Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War. Hint: the words "anthrax" and "Rumsfeld" turn up. Not to get all tinfoil-hatty on the topic, but this has turned into a rather embarrassing, inconvenient, expensive, and generally lamentable situation thirty years down the line.

As one of Aziz' commenters says, "Catching evil dictators is a great thing, but it would be better if we did not have a policy of working with evil dictators when it seems in Washington's best interests." Right on. Although it's one thing to sit here in my swivel chair and condemn Reagan-era foreign policy for cozening up to known monsters and another to have to decide between backing the Shah and backing Hussein, I think the flaws in the US's policy of making allies of convenience are all too clear, and the long-term costs are far too high.

[wik] Please note that Michael Moore is quoted in the AP post linked. Guess what? He's an irritating f*ck, but so is Newt Gingrich and last week he said something totally on the money. So, again, can it with the America-hating stuff.

"Juan non-Volokh" at the Volokh Conspiracy writes:

On a Diet? Drink Guinness! Yes, it's true. The rich, thick, chocolate-brown mother's milk of beers has fewer carbs and calories than many lighter (and less tasty) beers. As a story noted in yesterday's print WSJ, 12 ounces of Guinness have only 125 calories and 10 grams of carbs -- less than Budweiser, Coors, or Corona. It might even be good for your heart. So, what are you waiting for? Drink up!

Hell, yes! Guinness is one of the most perfect inventions man has ever devised, right up there with the shovel, the wheel, the waterproof shoe, and US football on CBS.

Moreover, new studies suggest that people that eat fewer calories live longer. What's a long life without beer? Drink Guinness.....

(responsibly)

I'm going to invite a withering barrage of return fire now.

1) Now that Saddam Hussein has been captured (sweet!), can we please return to the war on terrorism? I've never quite understood what the value was of libervading Iraq instead of Syria or some such overt state sponsor of terrorism. To make a movie analogy, was going into Iraq like Han Solo walking into the Mos Eisley Cantina and shooting the dude nearest the door, just to scare the shit out of the other scum and villains?

Please understand. My saying this does NOT imply that I am an "idiotarian". It does NOT imply I am an America-hater. It does NOT imply I am pro-Saddam. It does NOT imply I am pro-totalitarian. 5) Its does NOT imply that Mullah Misha needs to issue a fatwa on my ass. I'm just asking that the Taliban be beaten soundly over the head, Iraq's infrastructure stabilized, Israel and Palestine made to sit quietly and work shit out (...yeah....), and the rest of the actual America-haters in the region dealt with. I think some of these goals have been neglected of late.

2) Let's not forget that Hussein's capture, sweet as it is, was never the reason for invading in the first place. Remember the imminent threat from Weapons of Mass Destruction? Where the hell are those things, anyway?

3) Did you know that the US's reserve of troops is now down to a few National Guardsmen? Jeeeeesus.

4) Why exclude Germany, France, Canada, etc. from bidding on contracts in Iraq and invite Rwanda to the table? And why do it on the same day that James "The Fixer" Baker is working to get Germany and France to forgive debts to Iraq. It's called synergy, George. It's a business buzzword. Or did you fall asleep during Org-Management class?

5) If the economy's so hot, why is Wal-Mart selling so many gift cards this holiday season, and so much less actual merchandise than expected? Is it because the full-time job market still sucks ass and because most people have burned their savings and run up credit card debt?

[wik] A commenter at Pandagon has framed the Bush's line on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction beautifully. Taking a cue from Bush's intimation that not having found wmd's yet is evidence of their existence, they are going to tell their daughter this Christmas that "wanting a pony is the same as having one." Zing!

A cabal of three critics (Sasha Frere-Jones, Keith Harris and Rob Sheffield) are doing an end-of-the-year music roundup on Slate (a wholly owned subsidiary of Globocorp). The general concensus is that this year was a bery, bery good year for American pop music in general, and indie rock, hip hop and microhouse in general. Since I no longer live in New York, and no longer go up in da club ever since I realized that "da club" is in general a shitty experience, I have no idea what microhouse is. Very short house songs? House music where the hook is deconstructed and turned inside out? I already know about Moodymann, and I've always felt that house tracks go on too long. But that bit of Manhattanite insularity aside, go read: 's fun!

I haven't bought an album of new music this year since I picked up Erin McKeown's disappointing third album this past Spring, at least that I can remember. But I do listen to the radio a lot and watch MTV and VH-1 in the morning, when they play actual videos. So. Was it a good year for music? In general, sure it was. One of my personal favorite trends in hip-hop continued with artists boosting totally unlikely styles and making them work like a twenty-dollar lapdance. Li'l Joe's "Get Low" used schoolyard handclaps, Missy Elliott's "Pass The Dutch" used jumprope rhymes and Kelis' "Milkshake" used street percussion (you know, those dudes who play 5-gallon buckets and trashcan lids for money outside the subway). Coming on the heels of Truth Hurts' "Addictive" late last year, which featured a ridiculously great Indian taxi-driver music loop, I thank God every day we live in a global culture. It really is the shit.

Indie rock does seem to be on a bit of a run. The White Stripes have become more than critical darlings and are actually played on the radio some. Jet ripped off of the Strokes ripping off Sweet ripping off the Dolls with their excellent "Are You Gonna Be My Girl." The Strokes released a second album, I hear. I bet it's pretty good. But do a handful of great singles indicate a breakthrough for indie rock to mirror the "alternative" breakthrough of the early 90s? No. But it sure sounds good on the radio.

Disappointingly, Liz Phair and Jewel both released boring albums. We expected this from Jewel, who has all the talent of a roll of paper towels. But Liz... come on, Liz. "Volcano!" Remember "Volcano?" This glammy pop shit we can get from Madonna. Just about the only critic that disagrees with me on this is Sasha Frere-Jones writing at Slate. Her take:

We understand that Liz Phair is flipping the mainstream syntax something fierce, but others think she "committed an embarrassing form of career suicide" with her brilliant new album. Her new album has sold 245,284 copies in six months, according to Nielsen SoundScan, while her previous album whitechocolatespaceegg has had five years to sell 274,542. This is why we love record companies! Because, for all the wrong reasons, they can get it right sometimes.

Well, Sasha, I disagree with both your opinion and your reasoning. Her new album isn't brilliant to my ears, merely tired and calculated. And to compare her new record, which got both pop radio and MTV exposure, with whitechocolatespaceegg which got neither and was widely recieved as a fan-only record to boot, is fatuous. I'm thrilled that "wcse" sold a quarter million, and a little surprised. I'm only sad that Liz Phair's moment of greatest exposure came when she apparently has run out of interesting things to say.

My favorite album of the year: Speakerboxx/The Love Below by Outkast. It's like Prince driving the Mothership with Eric B. and Rakim riding shotgun. It really is that weird and it really is that good.

I don't have a least favorite album of the year. I don't buy albums I don't like.

Although it's probably in bad taste to do so, I get a great deal of pleasure from those sweet times when sanctimonious moralizers are brought low. Bill Bennett, Rush Limbaugh, John Ashcroft, and so on, profess to be good Christians. I'm a Godless Heathen (or at best a Unitarian), and even I remember that thing about the mote in your eye and the splinter in your neighbor's. Or whatever.

John Ashcroft, come on down!

Exhibit A) The legality of medical marijuana use has been upheld in California. That's right, the G-d D-mn Liberals on the Ninth Circuit Court used the pro-Federalism Commerce Clause implications of two recent conservatively-decided SCOTUS cases to decide the Federal Government may not interfere with medical marijuana programs in California. W00t! Seems Federalism is a good idea that the G-d D-mn Liberals can use too.

Thanks to Randy Barnett of the Volokh Conspiracy for the pointer, and kudos to him for being one of the lawers to argue the case in favor of pot before the 9th as well. If I ever see him around Boston, the beers are on me.

Exhibit B) Ashcroft has been rebuked for violating a court-imposed gag order regarding a terrorism trial.

A federal judge in Detroit rebuked Attorney General John Ashcroft yesterday for violating a gag order in the nation's first terrorism trial after the Sept. 11 attacks.

U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen said Ashcroft "exhibited a distressing lack of care" by issuing public statements during the nine-week trial that ended in June, despite a court order prohibiting them. Twice, Ashcroft publicly praised the government's lead witness in the case.

According to Ashcroft, his remarks were "inadvertant." Luckily for him, "inadvertancy" has been long established as a valid defense in American courts. Just try it next time you are caught speeding. "Geez maaan, I didn't mean to!"

Exhibit C) The FEC has slapped Ashcroft for illegally using $110,000 in his unsuccessful Senate campaign in 2000. The funds had originally been donated to a committee he had formed to explore running for President and as such could not be transferred. He should know that. He became the Attorney General not long afterwards.

The Federal Election Commission has determined that Attorney General John D. Ashcroft's unsuccessful 2000 Senate reelection campaign violated election laws by accepting $110,000 in illegal contributions from a committee Ashcroft had established to explore running for president. Additionally, Ashcroft was fined for lending an extensive donor list to one of his committees that had been paid for by the other [Hey! That's illegal!].

In documents released yesterday by the FEC, Garrett M. Lott, treasurer for the two Ashcroft committees, the Spirit of America PAC and Ashcroft 2000, agreed to pay a $37,000 fine for at least four violations of federal campaign law. Lott agreed "not to contest" the charges.

It's probably clear I'm no great friend of Ashcroft's. And while I don't necessarily agree that he's an evil idiot hellbent on destroying the country, I do think he's a sanctimonious putz who's only slightly more qualified to be an Attorney General than an above-average dog would be. Therefore, neener, neener, neener!

[wik] n.b. Extensively edited and cleaned up to follow a better version that appeared on blogcritics.

Those words are, to paraphrase,

"How about you lay off the bitching about who invaded who and whether it was right, and instead why not lend a goddamn hand, already?"

Via Spoons:

>Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment II
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

Amendment III
No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

Amendment VII
In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

Amendment VIII
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people Courts.

Just go look at the University of Pennsylvania's page for "Reporting Hate."

MINILUV awaits your report.

Long-time readers of this website, as well as those certain friends unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of my endless beery grad-school screeds against the perils and pitfalls of academic jargon run amok, will know that I have it in for theory.

That is, I have it in for academics who use theory for its own sake without a hope or thought of applying their lovingly modelled ontological meanderings to actual evidence drawn from the world as lived by actual people. For me, the moment of apostasy came in a discussion of George Chauncy's book, "Gay New York," which used boatloads of primary evidence to describe how the idea of "gayness" as in homosexuality became defined in the early 20th century. It's a giant of modern cultural history, and a thought-provoking book for graduate students.

The ensuing discussion, which ranged far and wide, featured several theory-mad members of the class postulating at length about the political motivations of the titular gay New Yorkers who, in the bars and bathhouses of the city gave rise to gay culture and indeed, the very idea of gay as a separate thing from straight. "Oh, they were asserting their otherness." "Oh, they were subverting gender norms." "No, they were subverting sex norms." "No, they were finding alternative avenues to power in a world that systematically denied them voices."

All fine, all possible. But the the theorists never once suggested that men who went to bathhouses in New York in 1910 may just have been horny and maybe a little lonely sometimes too. Is it even possible to talk about why people have sex, without discussing desire? You bet, in crazy theory-land!

I bring this up to talk about the often-assumed connection between bad writing and bad thinking. Theorists are often totally impenetrable, with some offenders famously so (Judith Butler, Stanley Fish). Their critics assert that their tortured language suggests an unclarity of the underlying ideas.
Well, that's often true enough. The above example is a shining exemplar, and anybody who peer-reviews papers will come across howlingly bad writing that clearly is the product of a person who should probably give it up.

Many weblogs (Butterflies and Wheels, Critical Mass) spend time drawing out and justly ridiculing the densest examples of academic writing. Recently, Crooked Timber has joined in, and it's been fun. Bad writing sucks! But "Daniel" at CT has weighed in with a counterargument that I agree with entirely. I've always felt that theory and jargon are necessary (evils?), and all disciplines have to hash things out at that level, among themselves, before translating the results into English for lay people to see.

Daniel, who's an economy geek by training, writes:

typically, the formal language of a discipline (its jargon) has, among its other functions, the function of making it more difficult to make the characteristic mistakes of that discipline.

In economics, it’s politically convenient adding-up errors. In literary criticism …. well, I don’t know enough about criticism to be sure, but if I know properly the little bit I do know, one of the things that at least some of them are all about is careful analysis of the implicit assumptions of common language. And it strikes me as not on the face of it unreasonable to suggest that the most common mistake in this kind of analysis would be to make arguments which unconsciously rely on an unanalysed implicit assumption, and that one way to avoid this common mistake would be to adopt a formal use of language which made it more difficult to rely on the common meanings of words. So the defence of Bad Writing on the grounds that “some subjects can only be written about in unclear terms” actually encapsulates an important truth about the subject; it’s probably possible to write about the implicit assumptions of everyday terms without falling into exactly the same kind of mistake yourself, but it might take a hell of a guy to do it. Just as it is possible to write in a sensible and apolitical way about economic matters, but it takes a hell of a guy to do it.

Furthermore, it’s much more difficult to write economics in a manner comprehensible to laymen (and check by hand that you’re not making the mistakes) than to write in the mathematical style (when the maths basically does half of your checking for you). So the progress of the subject at anything like its current rate depends on the ability of professionals to use the formal language when talking to each other, and to only use Good Writing when expressing ideas to a non-specialist audience which have already been judged as worthy of the extra effort.

Read the whole thing-- it's worth it. Seen in this light, bad writing is not so automatically an indicator of cottonheaded thinking. Instead, it's a tool like many others that can often be put to bad ends. Moreover, when you drag the pale pointy-heads in the back room blinking into the sunlight, they're bound to come off badly. Out of context, academic writing has all the appeal of a wet towel on a cold day. But judgements have to be made in context, because, as they say in history, context is everything.

Check this out-- I stole the picture from Occam's Toothbrush (original pointer from the vodkapundit). The Israelis have a gun, a working, shooting gun, that shoots around corners. Note the tiny video display sighting mechanism.

The future is now. Where's my jet pack? I was promised a jet pack.

[wik] GeekLethal helpfully suggested the above headline. I think it's much better than my original nod to "Get Smart," which is all funny and stuff, but who the hell wants a shoe phone? Not me!

Who's your daddy indeed....why, it's Strom Thurmond! What an asshole. He sleeps with a black maid at age 22, gives his daughter hush money (but not enough to give her a comfortable existence) all her life to keep the story quiet, and goes on to build a political career as an unrepentant racist and segregationist. The very definition of a class act. Just look at the picture at CNN-- his daugher is the spit and image of him, except black like the people he dedicated his career to working against.

Just a fun fact, his daughter is now... seventy-eight years old. Strom Thurmond was around a long, long time.

Stuart Benjamin has more at the Volokh Conspiracy.

[wik] Al Barger has more, in screed form at blogcritics.org.

Geek Lethal, the lethalest geek of them all, is a saint and a man for all seasons.

His Christmas gift to me: Arthur S. Locke, et al., "Principles of Guided Missile Design" (Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand & Co., 1956). Sweeeeeet. Now all I need is a backyard, an engineering degree, and money. Oh, and also a total disregard for my neighbors. Ever read Dad's Nuke?

I also recieved this weekend a pack of "Iraq's Most Wanted" playing cards. I opened the package, went to bed, and woke up the next morning to find that the Ace of Spades had turned up in the flop. Woo!!! Read 'em and weep, the dead man's hand again! And other Motorhead-related elations.

Truly this is a blessed fricken' season.

[wik] I have changed the link to the Guided Missile tutorial above, lest people get the mistaken impression that Mr. Lethal is some sort of nut. He's not. He's a very specific form of nut.

Gregg Easterbrook sounds off on the lack of positive press coverage of Bush's "environmental initiatives".

I started wandering around the CBO site and the EPA site, trying to get a feel for how the budgets have changed over the past decade or so. It's pretty hard to do -- the budget offices have conveniently changed their categories and document formats, seemingly every year...which makes it really hard to break out a category, such as air quality, and understand it.

EPA gives the 2004 legal services budget as $46 million or so. That sure doesn't seem like much; $46 million to chase after every non-compliant polluter in the country? My understanding is that the EPA is absolutely snowed under -- major polluters are out there that they simply do not have the budget to go after. In some of these cases, there are crimes being committed. The budget just isn't there to pursue it.

My overall impression is that Bush has gutted the enforcement end of the EPA budget. We all know that nothing pisses off a Republican more than some pinko commie environmentalist wanting to save a stupid squirrel or spotted crap-warbler or whatever it is that's currently in front of the bulldozer. Scattered searches have shown me that there's been around a 20% reduction in enforcement manpower over the past two years.

One way to avoid having pollution laws is to stop enforcing them. This is the Bush method.

Easterbrook says "The rub is that existing Clean Air Act power-plant regulations and "state implementation plans," which govern overall airshed quality, have led to runaway litigation, with the typical Clean Air Act rule taking ten years of legal proceedings to finalize, according to a study by Steve Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute. Bush's Clear Skies bill would scrap the litigation-based system and substitute the "cap and trade" approach that has been spectacularly successful at reducing acid rain. "

Makes me wonder if a "cap and trade" system would work for crime. You know, criminals in low-crime communities could buy the right to beat people up or kill people from criminals in high-crime communities. Everybody wins! Crime goes down.

Or, maybe we realize that pollution is a bad thing, and whatever we can do to reduce it is probably a good idea.

Let's remember that Bush is gutting the current legislation, which would have achieved the pollution targets far more aggressively (particularly with regard to mercury -- remember that Bush's EPA suppressed a study on mercury for nine months because they didn't like the scary sounding results), in favor of a much slower approach. The justification is that the current system is "litigation intense". It doesn't make sense to complain on one hand that a system can't litigate fast enough, and then to cut that legal department on the other hand. Bush is essentially creating a problem (or, to be fair, making it worse) by cutting the budget, then pointing at that problem as the reason for scrapping the program.

All I see here is that we could have chosen to enforce the current laws, and air pollution would have been dramatically cleaned up inside of five years. Instead, we're on a 15 year merry-go-round, subject to the whatever the current whims of the energy industry are, as channelled by Bush and Corporation.

Continuing Johno's environmental theme, you really need to read Robert Kennedy's piece detailing what Bush has done. It's pretty scary.

The question I always ask myself when reading these kinds of doom-and-gloom essays is, what motives do the "bad guys" have? In this case it's fairly clear that the motives are financial. Environmental protection is viewed as unnecessary, and stands in the way of profit.

The method of attack is something I've noted before. "We need to study it" is always the last position.

Calpundit discusses Gregg Easterbrook's record on environmental punditry and concludes "I don't know what axe Easterbrook has to grind here, but whatever it is I recommend not accepting anything he says on environmental issues without checking it out yourself first. He's not necessarily wrong every time, but he's definitely untrustworthy."

So there you go. Grain of salt.

Posting will be light from me. I got the SARS again, or maybe it's the grippe, hard to say. But it sucks no matter what it's called.

So two weeks ago I attended the live broadcast of "Hardball" with Howard Dean.

This last Tuesday, I was one of only 800 people to attend a talk by Wen Jiabao, Premier of China. ("How was it, Johno?" "How do you think? I attended a once-in-a-lifetime talk by a leader of the unfree world, and he took audience questions. It was awesome.")

This coming Monday, I'm going to be at "Hardball" once again, this time with Joe Leiberman.

This weekend, I'm going to try to get Goodwife Johno down to Foxwoods for a few hands of blackjack. If my luck's hot, I really oughtta do all I can to cash in. It's the American way!

But seriously... on Tuesday, I attended a speech by the Prime Minister of China. He spoke for about an hour on the topic of "coming together". Never in my lifetime did I foresee a day when a leader of China, in the interest of polite innocuous diplomacy, would openly advocate the democratization of Chinese politics and the marketization of China's economy. Although most of what he said was simple diplomatic boilerplate and therefore only mildly interesting, he spent a lot of time talking about trade, Taiwan (semicircumspectly), and the problems facing China as she tries to deal with SARS, AIDS, industralization, education, and the adequate distribution of goods and services to the entire population. Not mentioned: Tibet, except by a protester who was promptly and gently removed.

Master of All Blogcritics Eric Olsen, And Master of the Master of All Blogcritics Dawn Olsen, have finally had their kid.

Alexander Kirk Olsen was born at 7:05am Eastern, this morning, and weighed 9 lbs even. He was 20.75 inches long.

And yes, I keep using the past tense, but that's because they grow and shrink hour by hour these first few days!

Baby Alexander was overdue, but Dawn had Mexican last night. Consequence: a two-hour labor, total. Mexican sure does go right through you. Congratulations to the Olsens. Ohio just got a little smarter.

Gregg Easterbrook is having one of his rare moments of supreme lucidity not related to football. At the New Republic's Easterblogg, Easterbrook writes

The latest example of the media standing on its head regarding George W. Bush's environmental policies is the treatment accorded the White House announcement, last week, that Bush would impose a substantial reduction in emissions from Midwestern power plants. Did you even know this happened? Of course not, because news organizations either buried the story or twisted it to make it sound negative.

Here's the picture. Front-page treatment after front-page treatment has been accorded Bush's decision to relax the "new-source review" standard that mainly governs repairs at Midwestern power plants. Bush's NSR decision has been depicted--by beat reporters, Democratic presidential candidates, The New York Times editorial page and Eliot Spitzer, among others--as an astonishing, super-ultra horror, though total emissions from Midwest power plants have declined by 40 percent in the last two decades, and though the worst-case reading of the Bush NSR standard is that it will slow the rate of future declines.

Next, Bush has been widely ridiculed for proposing a "Clear Skies" bill that would require power plants to cut emissions, except greenhouse gas, by about 70 percent. Democrats in the Senate, plus quasi-Democrat James Jeffords, have fought Clear Skies with blazing fury, while editorial cartoonists have scoffed. Why are Democrats opposed to a 70 percent reduction in pollution? Because passage of the bill would give Bush an environmental victory before the 2004 election; Bush-bashing, not air quality, is the essence of the issue. Besides, Democrats know that all forms of air pollution except greenhouse gas are already declining anyway, so the harm done by power plants just isn't that great--though for posturing purposes, Democrats and enviros pretend it is a super-ultra-mega calamity.

Interesting. Anyway, go read the whole thing. Easterbrook is justifiably teed off at media sources who won't cut the President a break, even when he's doing the right thing. I need to look into this further before I decide just what pot is calling what kettle what color here, but between the non-coverage of the antiterrorism riots in Iraq earlier this week, this thing, and the endless and sickening promos for "The Simple Life" at all hours, I'm tempted to give up on TV and get all my news by divining tea leaves and chicken innards.

Aziz Poonawalla points us to this version of The Two Towers with all badger scenes fully restored. Which is as it should be.

Go watch! Now!

I said now.

Now! Or are you asking for a fresh one right in the chops?

I grew up in Northeastern Ohio, in one of those pockets of country where high-school football and God compete for first place in the hearts of the people that live there. Like they do in Midland, TX and Southwestern PA, my people spend their Friday nights at high school stadiums, huddled on rickety steel bleachers while teams of wildly varying talent grind out a life-and-death drama for their benefit.

Sometimes football is all you have. I'm risking getting my ass sued for this, but we are the Ministry of Minor Perfidy after all, so there you have it. Below the fold is an article from a November issue of the Washington Post about the thriving tradition of six-man high school football in Montana. Apart from being a great sports story, the piece rises above the game-- as good sports writing should-- to encompass the re-fronterization of the West, the decline of the family farm, and the unintended effects of federal farm policy. Found via a dam site, and he's right. This should win some award, and make it into "The Best Sports Writing of 2003."
Montana Town's Boys Are Its Last Gasp of Hope

By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 17, 2003; Page A01

GERALDINE, Mont., Nov. 16 -- A cold, nerve-rattling wind, the kind that can make a passer sick to his stomach. That's what the coaches from Geraldine High, whose boys had won 11 straight by keeping the football on the ground, were praying for in the state championship game.

As football prayers go, it was reasonable enough. The November wind in north-central Montana often knocks railroad cars off their tracks. But the wind did not blow here on Saturday afternoon, and the boys from Geraldine, halfway through the third quarter, seemed helpless to do anything but lose.

They could not stop a strong-armed senior named Tyler Stookey. With eight touchdown passes, Stookey had put Custer-Melstone High ahead by the soul-crushing score of 64 to 32. To rub it in, the visiting band played taps.

Wrapped in blankets against the windless cold and sitting in lawn chairs along the sidelines, most of the 3,315 people in attendance were too stunned to cheer, too heartsick for the boys from Geraldine to boo. Lila Armstrong, who has taught English at Geraldine High for 34 years and whose son Alan is on the team, whispered to a friend, "It's all over but the crying."

The English teacher, though, was wrong. The blowout turned into a cliffhanger. When it was over, the coaches of both teams agreed that Montana's Class C state championship was one of the best -- and most improbable -- high school football games they had ever seen.

"Oh, my God," Rod Tweet, the normally stolid coach of Geraldine, said as he walked off the field. "I am going to have a heart attack."

Six-man football is what they play in towns as small as Geraldine, population 284. From Montana to the Dakotas and south to Texas, six-man football is a socially sanctioned intoxicant. On Friday nights and Saturday afternoons, it numbs the pain of demographic decline across the Great Plains.

For a few delicious hours every autumn, the game provides families with the illusion that farm country is not emptying out, that farm culture is not drying up.

"If we don't have these boys playing football, we don't have anything to get together for," said Scott Stone, 28, who played six-man for Geraldine High and who on Saturday was standing along the sidelines, worrying the score and screaming himself hoarse.

Geraldine is a power in six-man football. It has been to the state championship game eight times in the past 10 years. Usually, though, its prayers go unanswered. Six times, including last year, Geraldine has lost in the finals.

Coach Tweet called his team together after practice last Thursday and prepared them for the pain that might again be in store on Saturday afternoon.

"Don't let one game ruin your entire season," he said.

A more subtle kind of heartbreak in Geraldine occurs every school day when teachers count heads. Like thousands of small towns on the plains, Geraldine is bleeding young people.

The town has lost 23 percent of its population since 1970. But the high school has shrunk even more: By 53 percent since 1970, from 103 students to 48. There are 11 students in this school year's graduating class. In 2007, there will be six.

Six-man football was invented in Nebraska in the 1930s as an antidote for the declining populations and empty wallets that came with the Great Depression. It blossomed on the plains until the mid-1950s, but wilted with the Baby Boom and good crop prices.

Geraldine played six-man football until 1960. That's when it felt prosperous and populous enough to step up to the eight-man game. (The town is named after the wife of William G. Rockefeller, a major investor in the Milwaukee Railroad, which created Geraldine in 1913 as a grain depot.)

By 1989, with most of the boomers grown and gone away, Geraldine High began running low on boys. Coach Tweet decided he had no choice but to step back down to six-man.

It was a decision that is becoming increasingly necessary across central and eastern Montana, where the 2000 Census showed 23 counties either losing population or stagnating. Only five Montana high schools were playing six-man when Geraldine rejoined their ranks. There are now 20 six-man teams, with 20 more schools expected to sign up in the next five years.

Worked Off the Land

Like a sick canary in a coal mine, healthy six-man football suggests that something is amiss on the Plains.

Stagnant farm prices are part of it, as is the declining birth rate, the trend toward larger farms and the increasing sophistication of farm equipment. Modern tractors, equipped with global positioning devices and autopilots, allow a single operator to farm several thousand acres without a hired hand. Five years of drought have also forced families off the land.

But perhaps the most important reason for the depopulation of Geraldine and eastern Montana is a 15-year-old federal subsidy that pays farmers to grow native grasses on their land, rather than grain.

Called the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), it was intended to remove fragile, easily eroded land from production and stabilize crop prices by reducing the amount of grain that farmers grow. Thanks to the CRP, 40 million acres of farmland are out of production across the United States, including 3 million acres in Montana. The program guarantees farmers in this area about $39 an acre per year. That is slightly less than what they could get for growing grain, but it is guaranteed and they do not have to fertilize, spray with herbicides or harvest the wild grass.

The program has had a salutary effect on wildlife in the plains. Farmers say they have never seen so many pheasants, deer and antelope. Geraldine's football field is on the edge of town, and during practice last week, pheasants chortled in the nearby grass and deer wandered to within reach of a long punt.

The CRP, however, has also had the unintended consequence in Montana of emptying small-town schools, according to farmers, bankers and local federal officials. In a perverse way, they say, the CRP is a major booster of six-man football. Geraldine reverted to six-man just three years after local farmers began signing up for the program.

"The CRP obviously hurt," said Bill Evans, the executive director of the federal Farm Service Agency for Chouteau County, which includes Geraldine. "It means farmers buy less chemicals, fuel, seeds and equipment."

Since the program locked up about 20 percent of county farmland, scores of business owners that cater to farmers have closed up shop across Chouteau County. Most moved away, taking their children with them. The county has better soil and usually gets more rain than most of central and eastern Montana. It is far and away the largest wheat-producing county in the state.

Thanks to the CRP, it no longer has a single dealer that sells farm implements. To buy a tractor or get parts, farmers have to drive 70 miles to Great Falls.

"The CRP is killing us because there are no new families coming in to farm," said Armstrong, the English teacher who gave up on the football team midway through the third quarter.

Young farmers with children are disappearing because the CRP makes it possible for elderly farmers to stay on their land. Normally, the cost of paying their land taxes would force retired farmers to sell farmland or lease it, usually to up-and-coming young farmers. With CRP money rolling in risk-free, they have no financial reason to do so.

"It has turned into a great retirement plan," said Bill Larsen, vice president of the Geraldine branch of Heritage Bank. "They don't have to farm, and they don't have to buy equipment."

Geraldine, as a result, is withering, and it looks it. Streets are potholed. Up and down Main Street, buildings are boarded up. There is one grocery store and one place to eat, a bar called Rusty's. There are also persistent rumors in town that the school might have to close, with students having to ride the bus 26 miles north to Fort Benton, the closest town.

"It's going to happen," said Stone, the former six-man player at Geraldine High who now runs a carpentry business. He said it's just a matter of time.

A Way to Escape

As dreary as Geraldine looks, it is a wonderful place to grow up. That's according to Joey Boso, 17, a senior place-kicker on the Geraldine football team. He ought to know. He and his mother moved here from Las Vegas seven years ago, after an older boy stole Joey's bicycle at knife-point.

"I knew that if I raised him in Vegas, he wouldn't be the boy he has turned out to be," said his mother, Michelle Marino-Boso.

She said she found Geraldine by throwing a dart at a map of Montana. She ran a bar and restaurant on Main Street here until last year, when it caught fire and burned to the ground. Still, Joey is glad they got out of Vegas.

"It is sheltered here," he said. "The kids don't know what drive-bys are. You can build friendships. In Vegas, you had to watch your back. In Geraldine, you can actually be a kid."

With four minutes left in the third quarter on Saturday afternoon, Geraldine High seemed bound for yet another championship loss. Prowling the sidelines, the team's assistant coach, Andy Whiteman, mumbled, "I just want this game to be over."

Then, out on the field, Stookey, the passing phenomenon from Custer-Melstone High, began to play like a mortal. He missed a couple of receivers. He dropped the ball and had to fall on it for a big loss. He threw an interception.

The boys from Geraldine, down by 32 points, abandoned the comfort of the running game. They faked a punt and threw for a touchdown. They tormented Stookey with a two-man rush. They scored 40 unanswered points, as farmers on the sidelines leapt out of their lawn chairs and threw off their blankets. They danced around in their work boots, whooping and laughing, until they were red in the face.

Geraldine led the game 72-64 with only 1 minute and 13 seconds to go. It was getting close to 4 p.m., and dusk was closing in on the prairie that borders the field.

Stookey, though, recovered his senses. He threw his 10th touchdown pass and kicked the point-after conversion, which counts for 2 points under six-man rules. The game went into overtime, tied 72-72. The farmers, again, began to fret.

Custer-Melstone won the coin toss and quickly scored an overtime touchdown. Stookey, though, missed the point-after kick.

Geraldine High had one last chance. They made the most of it, running the ball for a touchdown and tying the game at 78-78. There was no time left. Joey Boso, the boy from Vegas and the place-kicker, was ready to attempt the point-after.

On the sidelines, though, Coach Tweet suggested that his boys run for it, rather than risk a kick. Several seniors on the team objected. They told the coach that Joey, who was already nine-for-nine in point-after attempts, had earned his shot.

They were right. His kick was perfect and he won the state championship, setting a 10-for-10 state kicking record in the process.

Geraldine had chased away its second-place demons. Farmers stormed the field. Coach Tweet wept. Armstrong, the English teacher, said she was ashamed of herself for having said all was lost. On into Saturday night, beer ran like water at Rusty's bar on Main Street.

The state championship allowed the people of Geraldine to forget, at least for a while, that they were running out of young people.

Special Roving Correspondent GeekLethal, the lethalest geek that ever walked the mean streets, has reminded me of this piece that I wrote about a year ago before my webloggin' days. From the glass-lined tanks of old Latrobe, I tender this loving tribute to the faded genius of funk master and crackhead George Clinton (paint the white house black!) for your personal enjoyment. "33."

In response to his question, "John-0, If you had a gun to your head and had to choose only one Parliament record to have forever, with the rest facing certain and permanent destruction, which would it be and why?" I answered the following:
Funkentelechy vs. the Placebo Syndrome.

Why?

Of all of Parliament's albums, from the early weird shit like "Osmium" or "Up For the Down Stroke," to the later shit like "Trombopulation," "Funkentelechy vs. the Placebo Syndrome" achieves the best balance of forces. Like Funkadelic, Parliament's evil twin, Parliament's career has three phases: half-baked, baked, and too baked to get up to pee.

Parliament's early music has its' undeniable high points-- "Testify," "All Your Goodies are Gone" and " Up For the Downstroke" all qualify. But overall, the early records suffer the same fate as early Funkadelic-- half-assed production, too many drugs in the studio, and more ideas than
George Clinton knows how to stuff into 40 minutes of music.

Conversely, the later albums suffer from the opposite problems-- overpolished production, WAY too many drugs, and a dearth of original ideas combined with a creeping desire to appeal to the
disco set. Under no circumstances should you ever buy "Trombopulation" or its Funkadelic
equivalent, "The Electric Spanking of War Babies" unless you are a longtime fan of the hardcore jollies.

But for a golden period in the middle of their career, Parliament made lowbrow high-concept albums in outer space, underwater, in nursery rhymes, entombed in the Pyramids, and made it all work. The best of these is "Funkentelechy vs. the Placebo Syndrome." As I'm sure you're aware, the album chronicles the battles of Starchild against Sir Nose D'Voidoffunk, and
Sir Nose's attempt to stop the power of the bop gun from funkatizing the masses with the torpid vibes of the Placebo Syndrome (don't fake the funk, or your nose will grow). Starchild is of course victorious, and Sir Nose finally gets up, gets shot with the bop gun, and shakes his motorbooty under the influence of the Flashlight.

Everything on the album works-- the "straight" funk jams like "Bop Gun" and the title track, the bizarre slow love jams like "Wizard of Finance," (my personal favorite love song P-Funk ever did) the weird political songs like "Sir Nose d'Voidoffunk [Pay Attention-B3M]", and the all out motherfuckers "Flash Light," which track proves once and for all that (Julliard-trained!) Bernie Worrell and (an uncredited!) Bootsy Collins are the now and future presidents of the world. Please note that most of the bass on this recording is handled by Cordell "Boogie" Mosson, a wonderful bassist eclipsed by Bootsy's star power, but Bootsy is believed to have played both
bass and guitar on "Flash Light."

Furthermore, writing this here has made me want to hear it, really really bad.

Last night, in a surprise reversal of fortune (all was juuuust fine when I went to bed in the second), the Rams defeated my beloved Browns to secure a playoff berth and deny one to Cleveland.

What everyone must understand about the Browns is they are always the handmaidens to destiny. In fact, that goes for all Cleveland teams. Consider the following:

Cleveland Cavaliers, 1989. "The Shot." Craig Ehlo quixotically tries to play aggressive D against a not yet superhuman Michael Jordan in a playoffs-deciding game. Jordan gets angry, and murders the Cavs, propelling the Bulls to the playoffs. The Bulls go on to win their first of many, many championships.

Cleveland Browns: the Cardiac Kids versus the Steel Curtain, 1970s. Who won? In fact, who won it ALL, FOUR EFFING TIMES? Who gets their likenesses on Iron City beer cans every year? Who's dirtier than a pig farm and half as pretty? You frickin' guess.

Cleveland Browns and Bernie Kosar (a): The Drive, 1986. Denver Broncos QB John Elway ("Horseface") takes the ball 95 yards for a TD, forcing the 1986 AFC title game into overtime. The Denver D orchestrate a quick turnover and Horseface orchestrates a quick field goal, thus making his name as one of the great ones. Great assholes, that is.

Cleveland Browns and Bernie Kosar (b): The Fumble, 1987. Actually two fumbles. In the AFC title game(sound familiar?) Kevin Mack fumbles early in a rematch with the Broncos. The resulting loss of TD results in a browns-down-by-7 scenario later in the game. With less than two minutes to play, the Browns threaten to tie the game at 38. Kosar's handoff to Ernest Byner on the draw play results in a goal-line fumble, recovered by Denver. Denver wins, again. The Browns never again field a team worth speaking of, and eight years later are dissolved. Meanwhile, Horseface goes on to a Hall of Fame career.

Cleveland Indians: The Great Disappointment, 1997. After a five-decade World Series drought, the Indians make it to game seven, inning eleven, against the expansion Marlins. A tiring Chuck Nagy throws a sleeper to rookie shortstop Edgar Renteria, who drops one to short center thus scoring the winning run. The Indians never again threaten to make the World Series, their run of quality teams eclipsed by the rise of the Yankee Machine and an uptick in the fortunes of the Red Sox.

So, there you have it. If it's down to the clutch, and a Cleveland opponent is in a position to make the playoffs, win the playoffs, or become legend, always bet against Cleveland.

[wik] Thanks to "Tam" for kindly pointing out that I got the year wrong of the Indians' humiliation. Rest assured-- it was a typo.

[alsø wik] News flash: I'm a moron when I haven't had my coffee.

Uncle Jam himself, George Clinton, was arrested Saturday in Tallahassee for possession of cocaine and a crack pipe. Clinton admitted to the charges, so we can't treat him as President of Stankonia, political prisoner, but rather as an aging hipster whose considerable luster is fading fast.

What the hell, George?

I mean, acid, pot, shrooms, peyote, even straight coke was excusable for a man of your station. It was the '60s. It was the '70s. It was the '80s. You're Starchild, Mr. Wiggles, The Long Song, The Bop Gun, leader of the Funkonauts and purveyor of the wisdom of the pyramids. You found the One. You backed up the booty and spanked that ass. Your face is on the funky dollar bill. Your mother did the Cosmic Slop. You entered the Nappy Dugout and the Witches' Castle and came out alive. You tasted the maggots in the mind of the universe. You turned on the flashlight and funkatized millions. You're the greatest huckster, talent scout, songwriter, and pussy hound a barber college ever produced. You made William "Bootsy" Collins into BOOTSY COLLINS, Funkzilla. You made Bernie Worrell's right hand into Beethoven and his left hand into a porn star. You made Mudbone Cooper, Gary Shider, Eddie Hazel, and a cast of thousands into a host of multicolored angels. When Dre and Snoop boosted your sound, that was cool. They brought you along for the ride. You're a king to us all.

You made doo-wop into funk, and funk into funkadelic. You put the funk into rock and the rock into funk. You put Three Blind Mice and Old Macdonald on the dancefloor.

Even when your powers diminished, we kept faith. We bought "Hey Man.... Smell My Finger" and "T.A.P.O.A.F.O.M." We came to see you again, and again, and again, as the P-Funk All-Stars Tour Without End kept rolling like the greatest medicine show, tent revival, circus, and swingers' party the world has ever seen.

And yet, in the end, maybe you didn't rise above it all like you vowed you would back in '71. Even then we knew it was a huckster thing, but it's still sad to see.

Crack?

Crack? I mean, dude. You know who does crack? Crackheads.

Rosemary (Dean's World) points out the following post, written from a "Christian" moral perspective, on gay issues. Here's my response...

You want someone to challenge your logic, or challenge your assumptions. I wonder if you have looked at what you've written, and have an understanding of the assumptions therein. My short list:

1. You assume some may view you as fascist. This is highly unlikely; by inserting this drastic word, you grant yourself immunity -- you can say, "I am not that bad. I am not that extreme".

2. You assume homosexuality is a choice. As others have pointed out, the act is a choice, but the feelings are not. Unless you have a mechanism for knowing what's inside someone else's head, you're just going to have to take their word for it. I certainly won't pretend to know what goes on in your head.

3. You assume concepts drive human beings. We are many parts logic and many parts emotion.

4. You state that there is a high correlation between drug use and homosexuality without providing a single serious source. Without an unbiased source this does not stand.

5. You provide no examples of "all sorts of unfortunate consequences", with which we might connect homosexuality. What consequences, exactly, are you speaking of?

6. You indicate that disagreement with the "choice" theory is in fact "denial". This is only true if the "choice" theory is in fact true. If the choice theory is wrong, then there is no denial. Support your choice theory with actual evidence, generalize it, and then perhaps you have a denial argument. Otherwise, nothing.

7. You indicate that the position holding that AIDS is not a homosexual disease is once again "denial"; denial is against your pattern of morality, therefore such denial is immoral. Homosexuality is emotion and a set of physical choices, made in the context of those emotions. Certain physical choices in the gay male community have resulted in increased rates of AIDS in that community. There are millions of heterosexual persons all over the world who've made certain physical choices, and AIDS has been the result. Statistically most AIDS victims in the world are heterosexual. There are numerous other sexually transmitted diseases, the very vast number of which are equally available to hetero- and homo-sexual persons. Is there some reason why you single out AIDS, as opposed to other diseases, as an indicator of lack of morality? Perhaps you intend that _any_ sexually transmitted disease is evidence of behavior that contradicts your moral pattern.

8. You state that the homosexual population "at large" should "accept responsibility". For what? What should they confess to? If you are referring to the "homosexual disease" notion, you need to back that up with some kind of statistical evidence. I don't see it. If you're referring to the "choice" argument, prove its a choice, and we can talk. You haven't proven it. You've _stated_ it.

9. I must confess that I do not know what a "bug-chaser" is. If I did, I would probably disagree with you.

10. You indicate that there are homosexual "demands". You make several assumptions: First, that homosexuals are the only ones who want these social changes to happen. I am happy to be your first counter-example. Second, you assume that the homosexual community is homogeneous in demanding, rather than supporting. It is highly unlikely that the gay community is sigificantly unlike any other community in this regard -- a minority of persons feel extremely strongly about an issue and press very hard, while most simply favor one side or the other and go about their lives. I am certain that within your Church community, you find a similar spectrum of activity with regards to gay issues.

11. You make the rather ridiculous assumption that 100,000 happy, lifelong monogramous gay couples do not presently exist. I'm just one guy who barely knows any gay people at all, and I know two couples like that. Come to think of it, that's 50% of the gay people I know. ;) Do that math on that.

12. You make the assumption that there is something that needs to be _proven_ to you, or to other people, at all. Why should gay people have to do _anything_ to convince you of the "correctness" of their lifestyle? At which point, exactly, did your particular brand of religion become a benchmark? The founders of this country were very explicit in their desire that religion be a fundamental freedom. The heart of that is the notion that personal religious choices _must_ be protected; to ensure that, the _public_ does not make such choices. Where possible, society usually chooses to engage in religious acts in circumstances that are _voluntary_, thus ensuring personal religious choice.

13. You make the assumption that homosexuals are offended (and "adolescent") by your notion that morality be a part of marriage. My opinion is that they are not offended by the notion; they're offended by your definition of morality. You confuse the two. Of course "morality" can be part of the marriage discussion, but you've got to agree on what that is. You've made no argument as to the correctness of your "morality", other than your opinion that it is in fact the "best". History gives us a lot of examples within your religion and others of people saying it also. You might want to provide some evidence you're right.

14. You're not advocating responsbility and morality. You're advocating acceptance of a moral framework, then defining responsibility as the act of gauging oneself according to that framework. Can there be no responsibility outside that framework?

15. You assume that the teachings of today's Churches (or religions) do, in fact, represent a "combined wisdom of ages". Give the fact that historically most repression, violence, and hatred has had religion at the core, how do you presume this? Personally, I think organized religions have a hell of a long way to go before they can presume to tell anything to anybody about morality.

16. You state that you're not going to "give up and let homosexual advocates freely erode our standards". You assume that "your" standards are "our" standards. You also assume that something like gay marriage represents an "erosion" of standards. Feel free to give evidence for either one of these assumptions.

The point by point is over, but...I have to agree with Dean on how short the conversation _should_ be, ideally.

If we start with the notion that all persons are equal in this country, we note that the structural institution of marriage conveys with it a certain relationship with the state (taxation, granting of power of attorney, right to visit, etc). This particular state is granted to married persons. Is this special relationship a "reward" that the state provides to encourage marriage? It is not. The government provides a means with which we can define familial bonds, and thereby derive the answers to many other important questions, such as responsibilities of a person (parent to child, man to wife), inheritance, accessibility (next of kin for health purposes), genetic compatibility (cousins marryin') and so on.

You want to _deny_ this choice to two people who happen to be gay. You don't know these people and their lives have no intersection with yours. This falls squarely into the "telling other people what to do" category. Why should you be allowed to tell other people what to do?

Well, there might be some _direct_ effect on you, and there are _indirect_ effects. I am quite hard-pressed to think of a direct effect on you, Nathan, if two gay men in Iowa get married. So I assume that you are talking about indirect effects.

Which brings us back to the "consequences" argument above: You made the assumption that being gay brings a host of negative consequences without providing any examples that this is so. You could try to find some correlation between homosexuality and crime rates, or homosexuality and tax evasion, or homosexuality and any other generally agreed _secular_ negative phenomenon, I guess. Maybe you can dig something up that shows a "decay" of that type. If so, bring it on. You have a path to legitimacy there. Contravening your personal moral code doesn't count.

You do have a right to educate your kids as you see fit, and it seems you have taken that path. The generally agreed-upon standard that we have in society is that we favor tolerance. If someone is gay, let them be gay. If someone is X, let them be X. But we also teach that if someone swings their fist and impacts your nose, you don't need to let them swing their fist.

Are you saying that you believe tolerance towards gays (and other groups) should not be taught in schools? Or do you believe that intolerance should actively be taught? You are unclear on this point. The consensus within society is, at the moment, that being homosexual is no big deal. You don't have a right to punch someone in the face for being gay. Teaching kids that it's not OK to punch someone in the face for being gay is not the same as encouraging them to be gay. I remain perplexed as to why certain religious conservatives cannot make this distinction.

So the core of this argument becomes: How does this affect you at all? What logic or justification provides you with the right to control the definition of marriage and grant or deny a relationship with the state as a result? What justification do you provide for imposing your will on other people by creating inequity with respect to the state?

I haven't seen any yet.

Later...

Having read more on the original writer's site, I deeply regret having written a damn thing at all. I figured it was part of a serious conversation on the nature of the relationship between morality, majority, states, and individual rights. What I found was the rants of a guy who hasn't dealt with the shit in his life, and has a shiny new hammer called Belief, which apparently is good for screwing screws and sawing boards, in addition to pounding sand and carving turkeys.

I quoted "Christian" above 'cause I'm not sure who this guy thinks he represents. I know it isn't the serious, thoughtful, and tolerant Christians that I know, and am pleased to call friends.

Hanah Metchis of Quare points to a list of the five most common geek social fallacies. Go read: I bet you find something familiar in there.

As a former sufferer of GSF1, 4, and sometimes 5, I can sympathize with those afflicted, but my sympathy dwindles as I get older, jaded, and less tolerant of, well... most things.

Long-time and observant readers will recognize a connection between GSF1 (no-one shall be excluded, no matter how obnoxious, useless, or smelly) and the concept of the "spare" as explained by Minister Buckethead.

Reason's Hit 'n' Run (now with more raisins!) has a post up about the "last acceptable prejudice." In this case, it's Italians, and the party taking offense is the "Sons of Italy Commission for Social Justice."

Jeez. Better watch out or you're in for a kneecapping.

Sheesh. Everybody knows that the following groups are still wide-open for mocking, stereotyping, and derision of all kinds: White males (uptight, square, and nefarious, yet oddly bumbling and emasculated); rednecks (g'hyuk!); lesbians (non-lipstick variety); homosexuals (as long as it's by homosexuals); Canadians (with their beady eyes and flapping heads); native Americans (redskins, chief Wahoo); black people (as long as it's done onstage at the Apollo); fat people (the degenerate slobs!); liberals; conservatives; environmentalists; Mormons; Catholics; Jews; Muslims; English people; the Irish (they eat their dead!); intellectuals; Latinos; little people; and the blind.

Of course, the last truly acceptable prejudice is against clowns. F*cking clowns.

Jesse at Pandagon, which site I just don't link to enough, has posted his list of the twenty most annoying conservatives of 2003. It's a good list. The President's not on it. 'course, he's not a conservative either. Enjoy!

[wik] In the interest of real, actual fairness and balance, I will note that Right Wing News have responded with a list of the Twenty Most Annoying Liberals. In keeping with John Hawkins' demeanor, it's not as funny as Jesse's list, but it's pretty spot-on about the annoying part.

The Japanese are small and industrious, and wish to enslave us.
The Soviets are devious sociopaths, hell-bent on a Satanic mission of infiltration and subjugation.
The Mexicans are indolent and lazy.
The Italians? Chaos! Lock up your women!
The French? Quislings! Watch your back!
The Germans? You mean, the Hun?
Arabs? "You have to understand the Arab mind," Capt. Todd Brown, a company commander with the Fourth Infantry Division, said as he stood outside the gates of Abu Hishma. "The only thing they understand is force — force, pride and saving face."

Oh, man oh man. I mean, is that really an attitude we want in a US military officer in Iraq? What about that hearts and minds thing?

I wouldn't lay blame specifically on soldiers in the field who are doing the best they can in the face of insurgency, chaos, and a lack of clear and sensible command mandates. Stereotyping is good for one thing, for good or bad: reducing a percieved overload of information and priorities to simple terms to that you can get on with your life. Given the knotty situation our soldiers on the ground are dealing with, it's no surprise that some of them have become jaded, as Capt. Brown's quote suggests.

Nevertheless, stuff like this suggests a lack of groovy come-togetherness of the kind that will make Iraqi citizens into our allies. This site has written before about the importance of getting Iraq's people on or near our side-- you nkow, by winning their hearts and minds by repeated shows of integrity, trust, competence, and tough/fair open-mindedness-- and as the political side of the libervasion seems increasingly aimless, the happy fuzzy groovy side only becomes more crucial. Dammit.

Bizarrely, I found a piece by Newt Gingrich on the importance of winning the hearts-and-minds war in Iraq. Well, that in and of itself is not so bizarre, but what is, is that I agree with him about how things are going (not well-ish), and why (plans? um...why do you ask?). It's a crazy world where Citizen Newt and I share an opinion.

TM Lutas: Islamists believe that there is one God, he sent prophets down to Earth and the last one was Muhammed. If you believe in this, you get to live a first class life. If you have some other interpretation and only believe in some of the prophets, you get to pay discriminatory taxes and live as 2nd class citizens. Everybody else converts or dies. That's their belief system. Nice pagans get killed, nice atheists get killed, nice hindus, nice buddhists, the whole nine yards. Whether or not you are a decent human being is irrelevant. Read their stuff and understand what they are saying. Combine that ideology with the simple technical fact that it's getting easier every year to build WMD and you have a ticking time bomb. One day, the people who believe in this ideology will have their own shiny red buttons and will be able to enact their dreams of mass genocide. If they die in the process, they get their 72 virgins so it's all ok in the end by their lights.

A practitioner of Islam is not an extremist. An extremist is an extremist. Every religion has them. The socio-cultural circumstances of the origin states of Islam have resulted in a surplus of extremism for that religion, unfortunately. Each of the major religions has some pretty crazy stuff in it.

Judaism has pretty much been able to characterize many of its quirks as "tradition"; for example, foods that are not eaten are not necessarily viewed as "commands from God", but rather as continuations of tradition, critical to cultural survival.

Christianity sits a little farther away from this, with some issues being stamped with "word of God" status.

Islam is, to its detriment, a more structured religion, with quite a few direct commands from God. As such they are less flexible, less able to bridge across change in society. Their culture has paid an enormous price for this inflexibility, over time.

The point is, we are not dealing with a universal whole. Do you truly believe that 99% of Arabs/Muslims in the world want people who are different to suffer? I do not. I believe in an absolute morality. I don't put very much into that category, but essential tolerance and goodwill towards your fellow man are definitely there.

My main point is this: I firmly believe that the only way to control extremism within a given target population is to bring the bulk of that population to our side. We will never be able to stamp out extremism within another culture. The members of that culture are capable of stamping it out themselves, though, which they will do if a positive cultural relationship is established. This is not a PollyAnna vision; the Nazis were decimated as a social entity, ultimately, through the changes the German people themselves enacted, over decades. They decided to be something different than they were.

We need an environment where the average citizen in a "muslim" country views extremists the way Germans view Nazis. As we move towards a future containing the "super-empowered angry man", we must rely on social means as our primary defense. We make it very difficult for an average person to come to our side when we casually discuss extreme solutions, like turning the Middle East into a glass ashtray, or "eliminating" the only religion they have ever practiced, from the world. It is the wrong starting point for the discussion.

You make in case, in the linked entry, that "spiritual warfare" should not be overlooked as a means of change in this asymmetric conflict. There are a number of problems with your approach.

• Are you really talking about forced conversion to another religion? How do you propose to accomplish this? What religions will be on the "list" of "bad" religions? Or do you propose that we simply forcibly convert everyone to Christianity?
• How do you suggest that the US project its power across the entire world to accomplish this? The Muslim population in the US is simply not a threat, and is in fact the most powerful weapon we have to counter prejudice in other countries. Our Muslim population is free to live their lives and worship their God in any way they see fit, and they choose to do so.
• What time scale do you see accomplishing this? Religions have been present, persectured, evolved, and cast aside for thousands of years. Pogroms have been remarkably ineffective at eliminating the fundamental cultural continuity of Judaism, in spite of thousands of years of trying. What factors make you believe that you can accomplish this, within your given risk time frame of a single lifetime?

I respect the fact that you are trying to solve the problem, and reaching for any solution you can. To me, what you are doing is advocating that it is better to do something, anything...than to do nothing, even if that action means that the situation will become worse.

As with virtually every complex endeavor, we need to really think about the consequences of what we do and choose, in a sober manner, those paths with the highest probability of success.

What sociological implications, world-wide, do you see for your religious suppression? How controllable are those implications? Remember that the US military cannot suppress this kind of behavior in one small country. The military can defend against almost any threat, but they cannot change hearts and minds. They're not set up to do it.

Islam in this country is not the problem. Followers here are, with virtually complete agreement, quite aware that they have far more freedom and potential in their lives than practitioners in the old world.

My solution is a combination of "Good Samaritan", principled stands, true ethics in international relations at the economic level, and decentralization within the US. I will write another time about decentralization...it is a key defense concept.

Dear AL,

Must be great to be you, what with the keeper-of-the-truth T-Shirt you got from God, or wherever. I lost mine a while back. Or, I think I used to own one. I'm not sure.

Let's assume that we're both reasonably intelligent people, capable of figurin' on our own.

We reach our opinions through a combination of experience, trusted facts/sources, logic, and emotional inclination. Is there a category I missed? Some kind of green misty field that warps truth?

What dismays me about most right-wing debate is the lack of specificity. You use loose words to describe nebulous concepts; you use sweeping generalizations to juxtapose an opinion you don't like with an evil that is unquestioned.

I asked if I'm "Idiotarian" or not. Nobody seems to be answering. Are you just being nice? Or, given a moment to think about it, does the term just seem a little unclear?

Where are the tripwires? What are your issue tests to qualify/disqualify?

Generalizing can be fun. I can start by picking a few groups, like terrorists, anti-abortion militants, Bush's economic advisors, and street drug dealers. A bad lot, all around.

I think I'll call them "Purples", and then I'll wax all axiomatic about how there's a big Purple love-fest going on, with plenty of winking and solidary and people-eating for all. See how it's all part of the same conspiracy?

Which is all ridiculous, of course. And so is...the I-Word. If you can't define it.

Diversity is a beautiful thing.

And to all, a good night...

Frank Zappa died ten years ago today. Thanks to Mark Saleski at blogcritics for the reminder.

Or is the original version of "The Long And Winding Road" incredibly touching, strings and all? Made me tear up this morning.

By the way: good news-- I almost certainly do not have cancer.

Keith Richards is pretty annoyed that Mick Jagger has accepted a knighthood from the Queen.

His objections, stripped of mumbling and pretense, are this: " it's a paltry honor ... It's not what the Stones is about, is it?" I'm with Keith on this one, except for one thing-- Mick was destined for knighthood, just as Keith was destined for contempt of Mick for accepting it.

This rift exposes what has always been a source of greateness for the Stones-- the tension between Mick's calculated posing and Keith's elemental directness, between Mick's London School of Economics schoolboyish naughtiness and Keith's taciturn, stoned badness. Few other bands have two such singular and powerful personalities to draw upon, and Keith's exasperation with Mick's knighting might have something to do the fact that the Stones' last vital music was made twenty-five years ago, and their last great music almost twenty. When they were at their creative peak, these differences were assets, but now that their powers have diminished while their stature has not, they're just... differences.

I'm amused that CNN has bought into the tired myth of Mick's "near spotless rebel credentials," as if those credentials aren't 50% marketing and 50% opportunity.

[wik] Also posted to blogcritics.org