approaching the last rest stop before we go north

Time to Reactivate This Blog

2012-01-17T10:26:00.000-08:00

Sorry I was gone...

This is absolutely the last sociopolitical post. Our new focus will be music!

"It was not Obama who deluded the left; the left deluded itself. His rise to the presidency was the product of a disoriented conception of politics that elevated race and gender into the central and defining issues in American life. Along with this went the repudiation of social class as the essential analytic category. The historic problems of social and economic equality seemed to disappear from liberal discourse. Sadly, liberals did not really care what Obama really thought about the concentration of wealth in the United States. They cared about the fact that he was African-American. But that is only part of the story. The sort of liberal constituency that existed in Roosevelt's time -- which favored a substantial redistribution of wealth in the United States -- is not to be found. In reality, liberals (as that term is used today) are distinguished from conservatives largely by secondary cultural issues. The liberal elite and its affluent constituency have no interest in any significant economic restructuring of American society. They are for "reform" to the extent that it does not affect their stock portfolios and personal wealth.Obama's empty rhetoric -- which consisted of stringing together cliches about change that lacked, upon examination, any significant social content -- appealed to wealthy supporters who enjoyed indulging their self-satisfied illusions in their own "progressive" intentions. The failure of Obama reflects the bankruptcy of the sort of identity-politics liberalism that raised him into the White House." -----somewhere in the NYT

click on the image for more detail...

An excerpt from the Spartacist Manifesto (published in 1918):

The question today is not democracy or dictatorship. The question that history has put on the agenda reads: bourgeois democracy or socialist democracy. For the dictatorship of the proletariat does not mean bombs, putsches, riots and anarchy, as the agents of capitalist profits deliberately and falsely claim. Rather, it means using all instruments of political power to achieve socialism, to expropriate the capitalist class, through and in accordance with the will of the revolutionary majority of the proletariat.

Virtuosos Becoming a Dime a Dozen

2011-08-12T11:11:00.000-07:00

An article in the NYT covered the breathtaking technical and interpretative skills of the current crop of concert pianists and young classical musicians in general (Virtuosos Becoming a Dime a Dozen). I submitted the following response:

Sir:

Interesting article. Indeed, when I studied clarinet in the early 60s, it was unusual to encounter a fellow 16-year-old playing the Nielsen concerto, much less the Francaix. As I approach my mid-sixties, I find the solo piano works of Liszt, the entire output of Paganini, and arrangements of Flight of the Bumblebee for inappropriate instruments (contra bass, theremin, etc) to be simply irritating. Musicians push the envelope to pay the bills. The results may stink to the ear.

Can You Detect A Difference?

2011-08-07T19:32:00.000-07:00

NYT,tonight:

President Obama acknowledged the challenge in his Saturday radio and Internet address, saying the country’s “urgent mission” now was to grow the economy and create jobs.

“Our job right now has to be doing whatever we can to help folks find work,” he said, “to help create the climate where a business can put up that job listing; where incomes are rising again for people. We’ve got to rebuild this economy and the sense of security that middle-class families have felt slipping away for years.”

Roosevelt 1st Inaugural Address:

Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources.

I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require. These measures, or such other measures as the Congress may build out of its experience and wisdom, I shall seek, within my constitutional authority, to bring to speedy adoption.

But in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of these two courses, and in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis—broad Executive power- to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.

For the trust reposed in me I will return the courage and the devotion that befit the time. I can do no less.

Old, old school...(pre KAPD!)

2011-08-01T14:44:00.000-07:00

Krugman, NYT today

In the long run, however, Democrats won’t be the only losers. What Republicans have just gotten away with calls our whole system of government into question. After all, how can American democracy work if whichever party is most prepared to be ruthless, to threaten the nation’s economic security, gets to dictate policy? And the answer is, maybe it can’t.
-------------------------------------

I give up. Last time America reached this point, the South seceded and we had a civil war. Time to fly my true colors... remember Rosa Luxemburg!

Vote Communists

KPD Spartakusbund

The Legislative Process

2011-07-31T15:59:00.000-07:00

NYT, today

Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, said she was pleased with what she had heard about the contours of the potential agreement.

“This provides an opening to a very broad sweep of changes,” Mrs. Feinstein said. Referring to the tortuous legislative process, she said: “Sausage making is not pretty. But the sausage we have, I think, is a very different sausage from when we started.”

Wobbly

2011-07-29T10:12:00.000-07:00

This comment appeared on a NYT discussion board today:

Republicans stand firm.
Pass the "Cut, Cap, and Balance" bill again with one change.
Separate the bill into two parts and have the Balanced Spending as another bill.
Keep passing the same bill and sending it to Reid and remind everyone of his "intransigence" in not passing the bill in the Senate.
As a great conservative once said to a RINO, "This is no time to go wobbly"

Hiuh??

2011-07-27T09:46:00.000-07:00

NYT, today:

Members of the House Republican caucus said after a morning meeting that Mr. Boehner opened by urging the rank and file to “get your ass in line,” but then listened as many of them voiced lingering concerns.
---------------------------------------------

I've never been a fan of capitalism...now, I'm wondering about democracacy.

Goodbye Bill, goodbye

2011-07-26T10:08:00.000-07:00

We Consider Death

2011-07-17T14:22:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the fourth "Give the Fiddler a Dram" podcasts.

"All things pass; all that lives must die. All that we prize is but lent to us, and the time comes when we must surrender it. We are travelers on the same road that leads to the same end."

Podcast 4

BROOKS USES HEAD - WINS PULLITZER PRIZE!!

2011-07-15T08:37:00.000-07:00

NYT, today: Brooks Quits Amid Scandal as Murdoch Empire Reels

Until the scandal erupted, Ms. Brooks, 43, had been a star within News International, the British newspaper subsidiary of Mr. Murdoch’s News Corporation, editing two influential tabloids and rising rapidly to head the division. British analysts described her as enjoying the status of a favored daughter, with close ties not only to the Murdoch family but also to leading politicians.

American Democracy: The New Normal

2011-07-13T13:58:00.000-07:00

NYT, today

Recounting how the 1995 government shutdown helped President Bill Clinton win re-election the next year, Mr. McConnell said any impasse that hurt the nation’s credit and led to government checks being delayed could have the same result for President Obama.

“He will say Republicans are making the economy worse,” Mr. McConnell, who is recognized as one of his party’s top political strategists, said in an interview with the radio host Laura Ingraham.

“It is an argument that he could have a good chance of winning and all of the sudden we have co-ownership of the economy. That is a very bad position going into the election.”

Meanwhile, one Republican presidential hopeful, Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, was drawing a hard line against voting to raise the debt ceiling and disputing the idea that the government’s credit standing would be jeopardized by the impasse.

“I’m a ‘no’ on raising the debt ceiling right now because I have been here long enough that I have seen a lot of smoke and mirrors in the time I have been here,” Ms. Bachman said.

Prairie In The Sky

2011-07-12T17:53:00.000-07:00

About 20 years ago, I was in Bozeman, MT attending a scientific conference. I explored Yellowstone, the Gallatin Valley, took a ski lift to the top of a mountain, bought a pair of snakeskin cowboy boots, got hammered on local beer in a bar where the band played Ian Tyson covers, and went to the rodeo.

It was touch-and-go at the airport. At the very last minute, I got on board for Philadelphia. Decision? Fear?

I ride an old blue roan, I carry all I own
In the pouches of my saddle bags with my bedroll tied behind

There's a prairie in the sky, I'll find it by and by
Hues of brown and yellow to make a soul unwind

Let the music take me home to where my heart may roam
I'll fly across the meadows, and touch the tall grass as I go.

Let the gentle western wind stay with me 'til the end
Beside me 'til the day is done and the sun has settled low.

Leave the ponies to run free, far as the eye can see
I'd ride the range forever just to see them once again.

Let the wild, flying things soar above me on their wings
The stars fill up the night sky and the moon light up the plains.

I ride an old blue roan, I carry all I own
In the pouches of my saddle bags with my bedroll tied behind.

-Mary McCaslin

All due respect...

2011-07-09T21:10:00.000-07:00

NYT tonight

Opinion
The Good Short Life
By DUDLEY CLENDINEN
Published: July 9, 2011

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BALTIMORE
--------------------------------
Sorry, Dudley. I've been doing this since the mid 90s. I won't take anyone with me, but I'm fuckin' going down fighting. No vent, either.

Cream of the Crop

2011-07-07T10:39:00.000-07:00

NYT today:

“Rupert Murdoch adores her — he’s just very, very attached to her,” said a person who knows them both socially. “To be frank, the most sensible thing that News Corp. could do would be to dump Rebekah Brooks, but he won’t.”

Ms. Brooks’s rise has been steady, and quick. She began her career in the Murdoch media stable as a secretary at The News of the World, rising to become editor of the paper just 11 years later. In 2003, she became editor of the tabloid The Sun, Britain’s best-selling daily newspaper, before being promoted to her current job two years ago.

From early on, she was known for her creative flair in getting articles and her lack of compunction in how she got them. In 1994, she prepared for The News of the World’s interview with James Hewitt, a paramour of Princess Diana, by reserving a hotel suite and hiring a team to “kit it out with secret tape devices in various flowerpots and cupboards,” Piers Morgan, her former boss and now a CNN talk show host, writes in his memoir “The Insider.”

On another occasion in her early days, furious that the paper was about to be scooped by The Sunday Times’s serialization of a biography of Prince Charles, Ms. Brooks disguised herself as a Times cleaning lady and hid for two hours in the paper’s bathroom, according to Mr. Morgan. When the presses started rolling, she ran over, grabbed a newly printed copy of The Sunday Times, and brought it back to The News of the World — which proceeded to use the material, verbatim, in its own paper the next day.
---------------------------------------------

hhhmmmmmmmm....

sopranos, altos, please accent that c#-d# slur...again: Bbblllooooooowwwwwww---JOB!

seriously, Brooks, Murdoch, et al. are beneath contempt...

That's what happens when you think too much...

2011-07-06T13:24:00.000-07:00

from: Ideas 2011 July/August 2011 ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

Recently, I noticed that one of my patients had, after a couple of sessions of therapy, started to seem uncomfortable. When I probed a bit, he admitted that he felt ambivalent about being in treatment. I asked why.

“My parents would feel like failures if they knew I was here,” he explained. “At the same time, maybe they’d be glad I’m here, because they just want me to be happy. So I’m not sure if they’d be relieved that I’ve come here to be happier, or disappointed that I’m not already happy.”

He paused and then asked, “Do you know what I mean?”

I nodded like a therapist, and then I answered like a parent who can imagine her son grappling with that very same question one day. “Yes,” I said to my patient. “I know exactly what you mean.”

----
Lori Gottlieb is the author, most recently, of Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough.

________________________________________________

One of the things I love about being a musician in a tightly-knit musical community [ed. note: google "Old Time Herald"] ls that the response to the above nonsense and angst would be "Shut up and play yer banjo".

Political Discourse

2011-06-30T10:34:00.000-07:00

MSNBC’s suspension of Mark Halperin is way over the top
By Greg Sargent Washington Post)

MSNBC just announced that they have “indefintely” suspended Mark Halperin for claiming that Obama was “kind of a dick” at his presser yesterday. Here’s MSNBC’s statement:

Mark Halperin’s comments this morning were completely inappropriate and unacceptable. We apologize to the President, The White House and all of our viewers. We strive for a high level of discourse and comments like these have no place on our air. Therefore, Mark will be suspended indefinitely from his role as an analyst.

--------------------------
Would they've tortured him if he said "dickhead"?

Does political discourse above the level of junior high school student council exist in amerika?

Uplifting Music

2011-06-21T08:06:00.000-07:00

After 9 years, over 200 different bands representing over 20 countries, and several venue changes, the Maryland Deathfest (or "MDF" for short) has developed into the premier metal festival in the United States, and one of the most talked about festivals internationally.

Past Featured Acts:

2005

Immolation, Cryptopsy, General Surgery, Regurgitate, Abscess, Impaled, Birdflesh, Rotten Sound, Wormed, Gronibard, Aborted, Pig Destroyer, Misery Index, Leng Tch'e, Ghoul, Lord Gore, Bodies Lay Broken, Splatterhouse, XXX Maniak, Despised Icon, Kill the Client, Ion Dissonance, Guttural Secrete, Magrudergrind, Warscars, Prophecy, Amoebic Dysentery, Screaming Afterbith

2003

Suffocation, Necrophagist, Devourment, Sublime Cadaveric Decomposition, Aborted, Abuse, Severed Savior, Soils of Fate, Dying Fetus, Brodequin, Foetopsy, Drogheda, Saprogenic, Pyrexia, Retch, Circle of Dead Children, Malignancy, Mortal Decay, Commit Suicide, Skinless, Goratory, Internal Bleeding, Incinerate, Nemo, Lust of Decay, Putrid Pile, Wasteform, Psychotogen, Suture, Anoxia, Malamor, Scumbitch, Severed Head, Spinefed, Artery Eruption

"...but most importantly, he made everyone laugh and be happy...we should all try to follow his example... "

2011-06-20T18:45:00.000-07:00

Local ‘Jackass’ star Ryan Dunn dies in wreck

By Jeremy Roebuck and Kathleen Brady Shea

PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS

"Jackass" star Ryan Dunn, known for his gross-out, daredevil stunts on the MTV reality show, was killed in a car crash along Route 322 early Monday, West Goshen Township police said.

Perhaps his most famous stunt, in 2002's "Jackass: The Movie," involved inserting a toy car into his rectum and going to an emergency room, where he made up a story that he was in mysterious pain after passing out at a fraternity party. Dunn's X-ray from the hospital became a popular T-shirt with "Jackass" fans.

In a 2000 stunt, he dived into a tank at a raw sewage plant wearing flippers, a mask and a snorkel.

A few hours before the 3 a.m. crash, Dunn tweeted a picture of himself drinking with two friends. The photo has since been removed.

Live Blogging the G.O.P. Debate in New Hampshire

2011-06-13T18:37:00.000-07:00

I swear on a stack of JACS issues this was in the Times tonight...

----------------------------------
The moderator John King is doing something he calls "This or That," asking each candidate an either/or question as they go to and come back from commercial breaks.

Here are the questions and answers so far:

Mr. Santorum: Leno or Conan? "Probably Leno, but I don't watch either, sorry."
Ms. Bachmann: Elvis or Johnny Cash? "That's really tough. Both. I've got "Christmas with Elvis" on my iPod."
Mr. Gingrich: "Dancing with the Stars" or "American Idol"? "American Idol."
Mr. Paul: BlackBerry or iPhone? "BlackBerry."

Old Dreams/Old Nightmares

2011-05-23T13:24:00.000-07:00

click here first

I have Lou Gehrig's disease. it's a rare variant, because I'm still alive, 12 years after diagnosis!

I spend a lot of time in the past.

One of the beauties of this disease is that no one can do anything to you anymore.

I think I will share some old dreams that never came true.

When I was a kid, I wanted to pursue a BM/MM at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY.

I wanted to study clarinet with Stanley Hasty.

I wanted to study theory and composition with Howard Hanson.

I wanted to study conducting with Frederick Fennell and Donald Hunsberger.

I wanted to play in the Eastman Wind Ensemble.

Never let other people take away your dreams. It's like getting murdered.

I finally got to The University of Rochester, the home of the Eastman School of Music, in 1981. I was a newly-minted Organic Chemistry Ph. D.

I was doing a post-doc, a stopover on the way to burial in Big Pharma. I was also an alcoholic. Classical Music was in the fuzzy distant past.

I worked for this guy. He's a highly respected academician. He thought I was a hack. I thought he was a jerk. I taught myself what I needed to learn. Deja-vu all over again.

I never saw the EWE in the Eastman Theater. No time or desire.

I bought a Vega banjo, and disappeared into the mythical world of Old Time Music, maintaining a limited real world presence for money and paid-for insurance.

Don't try this at home.

Visiting Pastor Baboon, Which side should I be on?

2011-04-14T13:09:00.000-07:00

This is a comment and response from a NYT discussion of recent deficit reduction machinations. I believe it may be used by historians and sociologists as primary source material to illustrate nearly 60 years of societal dysfunction. Sort of like the way paleontologists use fossilized dinosaur shit.
-----------------
It's time for the Baby Boomers to take to the streets again. Our new motto should be "Never Trust Anyone Under 55." The focus of our demonstrations has shifted from Southeast Asia ( where our jobs have been outsourced by the Robber Barons) to every state capital in Middle America where meanspirited miserly Republican governors are determined to neuter the civil service and reduce what's left of the Middle Class to groveling servititude. We Baby Boomers are going to stick it to the Man again, just like the good old days.Only this time around we're goingto circle the wagons to defend our Social Security benefits, including Medicaid and Medicare.

Peace folks! *********

Thanks, but I think the less baby boomers we have the better. These problems began on YOUR watch, as you sat idly by through decades of Republican tax cuts and military expansion. Wish you'd saved a little more along the way while you were at it. Moreover, Boomers are proving to be the most selfish lot, and therefore the least likely to be able to forge a solution for the common good. You basically demonstrate this in your comment, which focuses on YOUR social security and medicare.

Feel free to march in the streets if it will keep you busy, but the "untrustworthy" under 55 (I guess that makes about 95% of senators trustworthy?!) would rather you spent some more time saving so we don't have to support you for the next 70 years as you do everything possible under the sun to extend your life in retirement.

Assistant Provost Baboon, I Need at least a C-minus...

2011-04-12T16:04:00.000-07:00

This comment was posted at the NYT as part of a discussion of college costs, student loans, and the worth of a college education. I wonder if he's serious...

It's the same as healthcare or insurance - "free" money increases the price. Few can afford a 2k a night hospital bed or 50k a year college - without loans. Costs continue to go up b/c someone else paying for it (insurance, scholarships) or a loan is provided. Get rid of gov backed student loans and health insurance and you'll truly have a free market. Hospitals won't be charging 200k for a surgery, b/c no one can pay that. Same with colleges. Sure, we'd go through a very painful period and improvements in healthcare and drugs would come to a halt, but it'd be worth it in the long run.

Associate Mayor Baboon, I OBJECT!!

2011-04-01T15:12:00.000-07:00

nyt clips, today

For 9/11 Museum, Dispute Over Victims’ Remains
By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS 3 minutes ago

Some of the victims’ families are appalled by a plan to place the remains in the new museum behind a wall with a quotation from Virgil about never forgetting.

Afghans Angry Over Florida Koran Burning Kill U.N. Staff
By ENAYAT NAJAFIZADA and ROD NORDLAND 5 minutes ago

Stirred up by a trio of angry mullahs, thousands of protesters overran the compound of the United Nations in Mazar-i-Sharif, killing at least 12 people, Afghan and United Nations officials said.

Calorie-Counting Rule to Leave Out Movie Theaters
By WILLIAM NEUMAN 3:22 PM ET

After opposition, theaters were exempted from a proposed rule that would require them to post calorie counts.

April 1, 2011 4:15 PM ET
'Idol' Attracts 22 Million Viewers

Two finalists were eliminated from "American Idol" on Thursday, Naima Adedapo and Thia Megia, as a results episode of the Fox reality show attracted an impressive 22 million viewers.

Video Game Review
Defending America, the Underdog
By SETH SCHIESEL

It is 2027, and Korea is a superpower that invades the United States. You play as an American resistance fighter.

Video Game Review
Space Zombies, Prepare to Meet Your Mower
By SETH SCHIESEL

Dismemberment, dementia, wails of anguish, pustulant aliens: if that’s your sort of thing, Dead Space 2 is fabulous.

March 31, 2011 6:31 PM ET
GoDaddy Chief Draws Criticism for Elephant Hunting Video

Bob Parsons, founder and chief executive of GoDaddy.com, kicked off a wave of online criticism with a video in which he shoots and kills an elephant in Zimbabwe.
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makes you proud to be human...wanna be another species?

click here

Colonel Baboon, this needs your signature...

2011-03-24T12:31:00.000-07:00

NYT today

WASHINGTON (AP) — Consumer advocate Ralph Nader is calling for the elimination of college athletic scholarships, saying the move is necessary to "de-professionalize" college athletes.

Nader's League of Fans, a group aimed at reforming sports, proposes that the scholarships be replaced with need-based financial aid. He says that would help restore academic integrity to college sports.

The Associated Press obtained a copy of the proposal Thursday, ahead of its official release.

Nader, a former presidential candidate (ed. note: his candidacy siphoned off enough votes to allow Bush to steal the election and destroy amerika...remember?), argues that his plan would also help reduce the "win-at-all-costs" mentality in high schools, by reducing the incentive of college scholarships.

----------------------------
yeah, OK, Nader's right, but Huxley showed what happens when you screw up the soma distribution....can't anyone get Nader interested in windmills?

sheik-condom-tin-dated-1931

2011-03-18T14:30:00.000-07:00

NYT,today

MANAMA, Bahrain — Bahrain on Friday tore down the protest movement’s defining monument, the pearl at the center of Pearl Square, a symbolic strike that carried a sense of finality. The official news agency described the razing as a facelift.

“We did it to remove a bad memory,” Bahrain’s foreign minister, Sheik Khalid bin Ahmed al-Khalifa, said at a news conference. “The whole thing caused our society to be polarized. We don’t want a monument to a bad memory.”
------------

Fuck sheiks. Fuck 'em. al-Kings, too.

We Consider Birds

2011-03-18T13:45:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the third "Give the Fiddler a Dram" podcasts.

Birds have been around long before humans wandered onto the scene. Back then, they were dinosaurs. They survived several planet-wide extinction events, and evolved. Bird imagery occurs universally in all human endeavor throughout all human history. It's like people wanted to be birds...humans wore their feathers (and killed them), slept on their down (and killed them), ate them (and killed them), wanted to eat like them (invented pesticides and killed them), wanted to live in nests (invented suburbs), wanted to fly (invented flying machines that dropped nuclear weapons on other people)...do you detect a pattern? At least people realized birds were earth's original musicians, and tried to emulate them (imperfectly, which explains national anthems and the song "Duke of Earl").

Podcast Nr 3

This Ain't Hollywood

2011-03-13T21:19:00.000-07:00

NYT, tonite:

As the scale of Japan’s nuclear crisis begins to come to light, experts in Japan and the United States say the country is now facing a cascade of accumulating problems that suggest that radioactive releases of steam from the crippled plants could go on for weeks or even months.

The emergency flooding of two stricken reactors with seawater and the resulting steam releases are a desperate step intended to avoid a much bigger problem: a full meltdown of the nuclear cores in two reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.
------------------
I've worked with large amounts of radioactive materials all my adult life. Positron emitters, hard and soft gamma emitters, hard and soft beta emitters, alpha emitters...everything. What's going on in Japan at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station is a worse case scenario - an MOX-fueled BWR reactor/spent fuel storage facility damaged by a 9.0 earthquake. Over the next few days, it's going to get scary. Two secondary containment structures have been blown out by hydrogen-oxygen explosions, and gamma ray spectroscopy has confirmed the release of I-131 and Cs-137 into the immediate environment. Taken together, this suggests that partial core (fuel) melting has occurred in the damaged reactors. Last ditch core cooling procedures now involve flooding the reactor vessels with seawater spiked with borate salts (pumped in by firetrucks!) and venting radioactive steam to the environment when you hit critical overpressure. Not good.

-I believe you exist...-You're gullible enough...

2011-03-11T11:12:00.000-08:00

"The topic for today is: What is reality?"

NYT, today

Just two months shy of his fourth birthday, Colton Burpo, the son of an evangelical pastor in Imperial, Neb., was rushed into emergency surgery with a burst appendix.

He woke up with an astonishing story: He had died and gone to heaven, where he met his great-grandfather; the biblical figure Samson; John the Baptist; and Jesus, who had eyes that “were just sort of a sea-blue and they seemed to sparkle,” Colton, now 11 years old, recalled.

Colton’s father, Todd, has turned the boy’s experience into a 163-page book, “Heaven Is for Real,” which has become a sleeper paperback hit of the winter, dominating best-seller lists and selling hundreds of thousands of copies.

Todd Burpo wrote the book with Lynn Vincent, who collaborated with Sarah Palin on “Going Rogue.” Mr. Burpo, the pastor of Crossroads Wesleyan Church in Imperial, a farming community in southwest Nebraska, said in an interview that he had shouldered some criticism over it.

“People say we just did this to make money, and it’s not the truth,” Mr. Burpo said, referring to anonymous online comments about the book. “We were expecting nothing. We were just hoping the publisher would break even.” (He said he planned to give away much of the royalty income and spend some of it on home improvements.)
----------------

I read a lot of the recommendations for this book on Amazon. Much discussion concerned the "reality" of the story. [ed. note: I haven't read the book]

There is belief, which may be elaborated into faith. Reality does not figure into the process.

There are facts (imperfectly perceived), which may be elaborated into truth (incompletely realized). Disbelief is the basis of this process.

Many people confuse these pathways, unintentionally or intentionally. It may be argued that this confusion has lead to countless deaths since homo sapiens emerged as a species. The 20th century wasn't a walk in the park. Things aren't looking so good a decade into the 21st.

Watch Out: This is an Allen Ginsberg-style "Eyeball Kick"!

2011-03-05T10:02:00.000-08:00

The Associated Press
Friday, March 4, 2011; 10:06 AM

PHOENIX -- Blair River, the 575-pound spokesman for the Heart Attack Grill, an Arizona restaurant that serves shamelessly high-calorie burgers and fries, died Tuesday at the age of 29, following a bout of the flu.

Restaurant founder Jon Basso tells The Arizona Republic that River was more than the larger-than-life caricature he portrayed in promoting the restaurant in Chandler, which includes huge hamburgers, milkshakes and fries cooked in lard on its menu.

Basso says River was a creative genius who had been planning to take part in the shooting of a promotional spot called, "Heart Attack Grill: The Musical."

The 6-foot-8 River was an Arizona [high school] state heavyweight wrestling champion in 1999. River garnered celebrity as the grill's "Gentle Giant" when he became the face and advertising star of the medically themed restaurant -- famous for its triple-bypass burgers, flatliner lard fries and server "nurses" donning uniforms fit for adult films.

[Owner Jon] Basso is very open about the controversial position he puts himself in by marketing unhealthy food "worth dying for," as the restaurant slogan goes.

"I hired him to promote my food. We are absolutely guilty of glorifying obesity. That's what I do for a living: I make a mockery of heart-related issues in order to sell hamburgers," says Basso.

But nothing will change in the Heart Attack Grill's approach now that River has died, Basso says.

Before owning the grill, Basso owned a Jenny Craig franchise and a fitness center, and says that despite pouring "his heart and soul into the diet and exercise industry," he didn't feel like he was reaching anyone. "I'm making more inroads now into people's consciousness by working the other side," he says.
-------------------

I doubt Mr Basso has a heart or soul. Yeah, this story is funny in a black humored way. Yeah, it deals with what statisticians describe as outliers; a 600 pound pitchman, toxic "all American" food-porn, an event that will be lucky to last one news cycle...but consider this before you ignore this story and ignore my rant: this is a reductio-ad-absurbdum of everything expressed in contemporary American economic and popular culture, basically "eating" all you can or want, as opposed to need.

To celebrate (is there a Russian or Yiddish expression for "celebrate with contempt"?), this event and all its participants, from Mr River to the Associated Press, and sadly, myself, I am going to post what is generally considered the most offensive underground comix panel ever published; a "Captain Pissgums" episode by S. Clay Wilson. You are what you eat.

please click here first

Will Bare-Knuckles Capitalism Turn Urban America into a Shithole?

2011-03-01T20:25:00.000-08:00

Here are excerpts from NYT stories published a couple of days apart...

---------------
VERNON, Calif. — Vernon is a bleak, 5.2-square-mile sprawl of warehouses, factories, toxic chemical plants and meat processors that looks like the backdrop for “Eraserhead,” the David Lynch movie set in an industrial wasteland. It has a population of 95 — and 1,800 businesses, drawn by low taxes, lax regulations and cheap municipal power.

Willets Point, in Queens, is a 61-acre expanse of junkyards and auto-repair shops so squalid that local business owners compare it to Iraq. City officials estimate that Willets Point is home to 255 businesses, which employ about 1,700 people, some in sheds made of tin or cinder blocks. On a recent afternoon, as garbage cans burned, Mexican norteño music wailed from boom boxes on the hoods of cars. Large pools of swirling dirty water overwhelmed unpaved roads. Locals complained that the police handed out tickets for parking cars on the sidewalk, even though there were no sidewalks. “I don’t want to leave,” Mr. Nicolescue said, “but I have nowhere to go. This may look like the third world, but it is my world.”

mommy blog

2011-02-25T17:45:00.000-08:00

I ran across a five page article in the NYT about what may be a parallel universe; a parallel universe that is an exact enantiomer of our own:

der ,,mommy-blog'' welt.

Let me explain.

Carbon is tetravalent, that is to say, the maximum number of bonds the atom can make to other atoms is four. Carbon can also form what are called "multiple bonds", examples are double bonds (H2C=N-H), triple bonds (H-C=C-H), but we will consider good ol' single bonds, like we find in methane, CH4. At this point, just remember the bond count for carbon is four.

When a carbon atom has four single bonds to other atoms, like methane, the shape of the molecule is a tetrahedron, one of the platonic solids.

Let's not get into why, MO theory is boring. But consider this: if the four substituents bound to the central atom are all chemically or structurally distinct, we get a tetrahedron with a special, unique topology. You get what's called a chiral molecule. A chiral molecule is a type of molecule that lacks an internal plane of symmetry and has a non-superposable mirror image, that is to say, it comes in right and left-handed (enantiomeric, see above) forms!

Now here is the mind blowing thing; all life as we know it is chiral! In fact, because all of the natural amino acids (except one) are left-handed chiral, this is a sure signature of life (think proteins)!

In the "mommy blog" universe, however, everything must be different at a very fundamental, mind-blowingly enantiomeric level.

This is from the mother of all mommy blogs, http://www.dooce.com/

One of a few diet tips my trainer shared with me when I started working with her over a year ago was to snack on canned tuna (diet here does not refer to losing weight, but instead to eating healthy), and before you go and make that gagging noise that [husband] Jon does every time I even mention it, just hear me out. Or maybe you can't hear me over Jon's gagging. That's fine. Sometimes he can't hear his geek podcasts because of the sound of my eyes rolling. Today I got home from spin class and headed straight for the cabinet where I keep the tuna. I hadn't even opened the can of tuna and [daughter] Marlo was tugging on my pants while saying, "Up! Up!" This should be interesting, I thought, especially since I was opening up a new exotic mustard I found online. You guys, this combination is awesome, and it gets even more awesome if you add in a whole wheat tortilla, some shredded cabbage and a blow job!

This entry was dated 8 Feb 2011. You wouldn't know that anything, FUCKING ANYTHING ELSE was going on in the world outside of this mommy universe.

And in her ears the little Seashells, the thimble radios tamped tight, and an electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk and music and talking coming in.

-Ray Bradbury

me me me

2011-02-17T18:51:00.000-08:00

NYT, Bahrain

“I don’t want a democracy,” said Rayyah Mohammed, 32, an art project director and strong supporter of King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa. “I want a monarchy. I like how things are. I have a job. I have a house. I have free health care.”

And this is the essence. Rayyah has his stuff, and doesn't give a-flying-fuck-at-a-rolling-doughnut about anything or anybody else. This thinking produced pretty lampshades at Belsen. Out of human skin.

Addenda: NYT 18 Feb

The coffins were carried on the roofs of two cars as a man with a loudspeaker led the crowd in its chants from the bed of a pickup truck, alternating between calls to the faithful — “There is no God but God” — with political messages such as “We need constitutional reform for freedom.”
-------------------
good luck...

more "uncertainty"...

2011-02-16T17:42:00.000-08:00

headline, nyt

U.S. Raises Value of a Life, and Businesses Fear Impact

You too may be a weiner

2011-02-14T14:24:00.000-08:00

The following is a "fleshed-out" press release compiled from Reuters, AP, NYT, .gov websites, and my personal experience. It concerns Obama's proposed FY 2012 budget.

please click here before reading

---------------------------

It puts a five-year spending freeze on non-security discretionary spending, which the White House says would save $400 billion over 10 years and "bring government spending to its lowest level since President Dwight Eisenhower was in power in the 1950s and early 1960s". [ed note: July 1, 1952 US population was 157,552,740; July 1, 2010 US population was 309,050,816; this means the US population is greater by a factor of 1.962 today than at the start of the Ike & Dick Show. The current rate of change of the US population is ca. +1%/yr]

The freeze would cover the agencies and programs for which Congress allocates specific budgets each year, including air traffic control, farm subsidies, education, nutrition and national parks. [ed note: and Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs, a small, but high impact R&D program in which I was involved. The program funds research into terrifying, fatal, incurable, fairly common diseases]

It proposes spending $671 billion on the U.S. military next year, including $118 billion for the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. Total spending on national defense in the proposed budget would be $702 billion, a figure that includes spending on nuclear weapons and health care and retirement, down from $721.3 billion in fiscal 2010.

It cuts Community Development Block Grants by $300 million; $2.5 billion from a program, known as LIHEAP, that provides heating assistance to poor people; more than $1 billion in grants to large airports; $950 million for U.S. states' "revolving funds" for water treatment and other infrastructure.

The payoff in budget savings would be small relative to the deficit: The estimated $250 billion [ed note: from AP, $400 billion from Reuters, White House estimates 1.1 trillion] in savings over 10 years would be less than 3 percent of the roughly $9 trillion in additional deficits [ed note: from AP, White House estimates $7.2 trillion additional deficits] the government is expected to accumulate over that time [ed note: savings is 3-15.3% of additional accumulated deficit, depending upon the numerical data source].

------------------------

Get it?

Which side are you on...
-Florence Reese

Can Bristol Palin save America?

2011-02-09T19:55:00.000-08:00

I usually don't quote PopEater (I prefer Hecklerspray's ongoing coverage of Lindsay Lohan's "Boobs Embargo"), but sometimes....
-----------------

Bristol Palin, 20, is already plotting her future career in-- you guessed it-- politics! In an interview with E! News, Bristol admits that she'll "probably" run for office sometime "further down the road."

But sources claim Bristol's foray into politics is going to happen a lot sooner than she lets on. "Bristol has a new sense of confidence since she did 'Dancing with the Stars,'" the source said. "She has seen her mother (Sarah Palin's) success and believes Washington should have more regular people like her in office making decisions for the country, rather than the elite that currently run DC."

The abstinence speaker and soon-to-be author "doesn't have a strong political resume" but the source claims "that's what will make her a great congresswoman or even President!" Who knows? Maybe Bristol will be vying for the White House in 2012 instead of Mama Grizzly!

Beavis...he said "Twatter"...heh heh heh...

2011-02-05T21:07:00.000-08:00

Frank Rich column, NYT

The live feed from Egypt is riveting. We can’t get enough of revolution video — even if, some nights, Middle West blizzards take precedence over Middle East battles on the networks’ evening news. But more often than not we have little or no context for what we’re watching. That’s the legacy of years of self-censored, superficial, provincial and at times Islamophobic coverage of the Arab world in a large swath of American news media. Even now we’re more likely to hear speculation about how many cents per gallon the day’s events might cost at the pump than to get an intimate look at the demonstrators’ lives.

Perhaps the most revealing window into America’s media-fed isolation from this crisis — small an example as it may seem — is the default assumption that the Egyptian uprising, like every other paroxysm in the region since the Green Revolution in Iran 18 months ago, must be powered by the twin American-born phenomena of Twitter and Facebook. Television news — at once threatened by the power of the Internet and fearful of appearing unhip — can’t get enough of this cliché.

The talking-head invocations of Twitter and Facebook take the form of implicit, simplistic Western chauvinism. How fabulous that two great American digital innovations can rescue the downtrodden, unwashed masses. That is indeed impressive if no one points out that, even in the case of the young and relatively wired populace of Egypt, only some 20 percent of those masses have Internet access.

yeah...eekwal rights an' stuff...huh?

2011-02-01T21:03:00.000-08:00

NYT tonight

Barbara Bush, one of the twin daughters of George W. Bush, will endorse same-sex marriage on Tuesday, publicly breaking ranks with a father who, as president, pushed for a constitutional amendment banning such unions.

wikipaedia

click here

She attended Yale University where she was a legacy member of Kappa Alpha Theta sorority (her mother, former First Lady Laura Bush, and her twin sister Jenna are also members of Kappa Alpha Theta). On April 29, 2001, Bush was charged with a Class C misdemeanor for being in the possession of alcohol under the age 21 in Austin. On May 29, 2001, Bush was charged with another misdemeanor — attempting to use a fake ID (with the name Barbara Pierce, her paternal grandmother's maiden name) to purchase alcohol. She pleaded no contest to both misdemeanors.
-------------------

Uhhhhhhhh...OK....

American exceptional-fat-and-cluelessism

2011-01-28T18:31:00.000-08:00

NYT, Filed at 7:49 p.m. EST

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Two lesbian teens at Champlin Park High School have taken the state's largest school district to federal court because they want a judge to force the district to allow them to make a political statement by making a high-profile entrance to a pep fest as a couple on Monday.

Students at the school elected Desiree "Dez" Shelton and Sarah Lindstrom, both 18-year-old seniors, earlier this month as part of the Snow Days Pep Fest Royalty Court. Members of the court have traditionally been put into male-female couples and processed through the field house to a stage while an announcer said a few facts about each couple. The 2011 pep fest is scheduled for Monday afternoon.

A district spokeswoman said the Champlin Park High School principal didn't want the young women to walk in together because he feared they would be teased, but the lawsuit said denying them that opportunity was discrimination and an infringement of their First Amendment rights. The Southern Poverty Law Center and the National Center for Lesbian Rights filed the lawsuit Friday afternoon on their behalf.

Anoka-Hennepin schools spokeswoman Mary Olson said the women said they weren't comfortable walking in with a male student. Principal Michael George was concerned about the reaction of other students to a lesbian couple walking in together, Olson said, so on Friday the district decided the royal court would arrive individually or accompanied by a parent or favorite teacher.

"We believe we have come up with a better practice that is more tolerate and acceptable to all students," Olson said, adding that the traditional method assumed students were heterosexual while the new system makes no assumptions at all.

Sam Wolfe, a lawyer for the Southern Poverty Law Center, said that wasn't good enough. "The intent is really clear," he said. "The district does not want the same-sex couple walking in together."

But, the lawsuit said, walking in together was precisely why Shelton and Lindstrom campaigned to be elected by their peers in the first place. "Their intention was to make a political and public statement about gender roles" and lesbian and gay students, the lawsuit said.

Wolfe noted Shelton and Lindstrom were selected by their fellow students, suggesting the student body may be more comfortable with the teens' sexual orientation than administrators believe.

--------------------
OK, let's get this out of the way quickly. I believe Gay Americans and Straight Americans (as well as Bi and TG people) should have exactly the same rights, responsibilities, and protections under law. Since gay and straight people are people, gay and straight people also should be afforded equal respect due every human being. That covers everybody; every sexual majority and minority. Any ideology or doctrine that implies otherwise is not valid. End of discussion.

That being said, at this very moment, a revolution in Egypt is threatening to become a regional cataclysm with global implications (think oil), America is becoming "not America" because a significant number of its citizens no longer want to accept the responsibilities of citizenship ( ~50% voter turnout, reaganism-teapartyism, an entrenched plutocracy attempting to do away with democracy), and use of non-renewable resources to power human society is poisoning the planet.

Do we have the luxury of caring who goes down on whom? Are we Americans inhabiting an alternate universe?

Does inflammatory rhetoric lead to violence? Naaaaah...no proof

2011-01-27T12:07:00.000-08:00

NYT today

NAIROBI, Kenya — David Kato knew he was a marked man.

As the most outspoken gay rights advocate in Uganda, a country where homophobia is so severe that Parliament is considering a bill to execute gay people, he had received a stream of death threats, his friends said. A few months ago, a Ugandan newspaper ran an anti-gay diatribe with Mr. Kato’s picture on the front page under a banner urging, “Hang Them.”

On Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Kato was beaten to death with a hammer in his rough and tumble neighborhood. Police officials were quick to chalk up the motive to robbery, but the small and increasingly besieged gay community in Uganda suspects otherwise.

“David’s death is a result of the hatred planted in Uganda by U.S Evangelicals in 2009,” said Val Kalende, the chairperson of one of Uganda’s gay rights groups, in a statement. “The Ugandan Government and the so-called U.S Evangelicals must take responsibility for David’s blood.”

Mrs. Kalende was referring to visits in March 2009 by a group of American evangelicals (ed. note: http://exodusinternational.org/), who held rallies and workshops in Uganda discussing how to make gay people straight, how gay men sodomized teenage boys and how “the gay movement is an evil institution” intended to “defeat the marriage-based society.”

The Americans involved said they had no intention of stoking a violent reaction. But the anti-gay bill came shortly thereafter. Some of the Ugandan politicians and preachers who wrote it had attended those sessions and said that they had discussed the legislation with the Americans.

Them damn entitlements...get the governmint out of our lives AND deaths

2011-01-26T21:01:00.000-08:00

Social Security?

Interesting concept in present day amerika. The best way to be socially secure is to have a shitload of money and unlimited power. That way, you don't have to care about anything or anyone. -well, I do volunteer work at my church!...I gave at the office!...my children are everything in the world to me!...I voted for Obama you have no idea the problems that caused!...if all the taxes I paid into socialsecurity I could've invested myself, anyway I'll never get my money back and why should I pay for someone else's problems you think everything came easy I worked like a dog and now they tax me to death because some nigger crack whore shits out babies...I WANNA PLAY GOLF I EARNED IT!!!

- OK, don't read this blog entry.

Let's get didactic. Let's return to sophomore year highskool.

Class, how long will a typical American live? Seventy, eighty years? OK, what happens after those seventy, eighty years? Yup, the person dies. What percentage of those people die? no...no...well, it's 100%! Yeah! Now, when those people get to the last ten, fifteen years of their lives, do you think a lot or few of them will be too sick to work?...I know your granddad Joe used to shovel snow when he was 107, and he used to complain that mommom wouldn't hop in the sack with him, but do you think he was typical? I don't know your family?

Hey class, cool it. OK, the fact is, that all those people are going to die, and most of them will be too sick to work. You too when you get to be that age, Missy. Everybody.

Now if you were president of an insurance company, would you want to sell insurance on a risk where everyone dies and most people can't work? That's a real interesting idea Joey, charge real high premiums and then hire lawyers and muscle to keep from paying claims, but I think in most places, that business model would be illegal. Susie? Run the company as a non-profit? That's interesting, too, but...let me explain it like sports so everyone understands. You've got this pro football league. All the teams want to win, because winners get the most money. That's right, Joey, they're rad! Now let's say you have an expansion team, called the Philadelphia Ultimate Quakers. They have a meeting, and decide that what it takes to win, violence, is against their religion, and they don't want to loose...yes Billy, that would be so gay...so they decide to tie all their games. That's right, if the yearly meeting wouldn't come up with the cash, they won't be around next year. Now, what if there was an insurance company that actually is the US Government, and everyone who was an American Citizen paid in premiums, and then everyone was insured against getting old, starving and dying? And everybody got benefits when they needed them, no questions asked?...WHAT? THAT'D BE LIKE TAXES AND YOU CAN'T DO THAT IN AMERICA...NO?...WHAT? (...shit, there's the bell...)...CLASS!!!!

ARE WE NOT MEN?

2011-01-20T10:42:00.000-08:00

Did you look into my Cold War history post? A lot of statements aren't consistent!

MKULTRA??

Psychiatrist Dr Ewen Cameron's obit?

To anyone who knew Ewen Cameron intimately, it became obvious that here was a man who was vitally concerned with the well-being of men everywhere. He had a genuine disregard for national barriers, racial variations and religious differences. He had a world perspective on social, economic and political problems and his creed can, I believe, best be described in the world of our own Canadian poet,

F. R. Scott, when he says,
"The World is My Country
The Human Race is My Race
The Spirit of Man is My God
The Future of Man is My Heaven."

Rockefeller?

And if you scratch the surface, The Grateful Dead?

Is it worth pursuing? Dunno...I'm busy reading a music theory book by Paul Hindemith....

I SAY IT'S ALL JUST WIND IN SAILS

2011-01-19T12:54:00.000-08:00

AP today

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley told a church crowd just moments into his new administration that those who have not accepted Jesus as their savior are not his brothers and sisters, shocking some critics who questioned Tuesday whether he can be fair to non-Christians.

Speaking to a large crowd Monday at Montgomery's Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church — where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once preached — Bentley said that "if you're a Christian and you're saved ... it makes you and me brother and sister," according to a report in the Birmingham News.

"Now I will have to say that, if we don't have the same daddy, we're not brothers and sisters," he added, according to the paper. "So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I'm telling you, you're not my brother and you're not my sister, and I want to be your brother."

Bentley, 67, a retired dermatologist, had been sworn in earlier Monday.

-----------
Perhaps Gov Bentley (who will not be anyone's sister, no sir) likes to get people really, really, pissed off. I mean to the point of causing spontaneous tracheostomy to occur in people screaming their disapproval. As part of an ongoing research project to accurately define the border between "pissed off" and "ballistic", I once requested "The Horst Wessel Song" ("The Flag Up High") at a Peter, Paul & Mary concert. I elicited no response from the audience, other than a confused "how does that go?" from the person sitting next to me. This necessitated a re-write of the "Methodology" section of the grant when it came up for renewal.

Perhaps I should submit a business plan to Goldman Sachs to get start-up funding for a chain of Unfriendly Restaurants in Alabama. I plan to have vampire squid on the menu.

click here

EVOLVING UP FROM LITTLE SNAILS

2011-01-18T07:44:00.000-08:00

Discussion board, News Journal (Wilmington, DE)

1/18/2011 9:03:57 AM

joe-polucka wrote:
Replying to gleitner:

bearded midget! you are a frik'n redneck

thats an honor comming from a gay communist.

Recommend(1) New Post Reply to this Post Report Abuse

THEY TELL US THAT WE LOST OUR TAILS

2011-01-17T15:43:00.000-08:00

I did my undergrad at Northwestern University, in Evanston, Illinois (BA, 1976 Chemistry). I'm told that NU is a good place to get an education nowadays, but is very expensive. When I was there, however, many of the faculty members with whom I interacted had little or no interest in teaching undergraduates. I'll even name names. Faculty who had no interest teaching undergrads included Culver, Heithaus, Beattie, (Biological Sciences), Shriver, Nitzan, Klotz, Van Duyne, (Chemistry), Margoliash, Lorand, Dumas, (Biochemistry/Molecular Biology), Joravsky, (History) Roebuck, (Classics, by then, he was simply reading aloud from his venerable book), and several purveyors of English, Anthropology, and Political Science whose names I no longer recall. My favorite Chinese Restaurant, however, was called the Phoenix Inn, a pleasant memory.

It didn't matter. Useless pseudo-educators at NU provided reading lists, reserve lists, and specific literature. There was a big library. I simply attended lectures taught by real educators and labs where my absence could be noted. I only showed up at time-wasters to turn in bluebooks. I read every word "assigned" to me (and more!) at NU and avoided attending half of my classes. I learned how to educate myself. Grad school, intellectually, was no big deal (PhD 1981, Illinois-UC Chemistry). The skill of self education made my truncated professional career possible and successful.

Don't blame your teachers.

Today, we have broadband internet, and access to knowledge aggregators like EBSCO, MEDLINE, Google, and Thompson. For a motivated individual, this current state of affairs means essentially all of human knowledge is available for study. Who needs motor neurons? Why use this cyber-power to tweet and share pictures of boobs and beer pong?

Here, check this out. This is cold war history...this'll get ya started...

Sidney Gottlieb, 80, Dies; Took LSD to C.I.A.
By TIM WEINER
Published: March 10, 1999 New York Times

WASHINGTON, March 9 — Sidney Gottlieb, who presided over the Central Intelligence Agency's cold-war efforts to control the human mind and provided the agency poisons to kill Fidel Castro, died on Sunday in Washington, Va. He was 80 and had spent his later years caring for dying patients, trying to run a commune, folk dancing, consciousness-raising and fighting lawsuits from survivors of his secret tests.

Friends and enemies alike say Mr. Gottlieb was a kind of genius, striving to explore the frontiers of the human mind for his country, while searching for religious and spiritual meaning in his life. But he will always be remembered as the Government chemist who dosed Americans with psychedelics in the name of national security, the man who brought LSD to the C.I.A.

In the 1950's and early 1960's, the agency gave mind-altering drugs to hundreds of unsuspecting Americans in an effort to explore the possibilities of controlling human consciousness. Many of the human guinea pigs were mental patients, prisoners, drug addicts and prostitutes -- ''people who could not fight back,'' as one agency officer put it. In one case, a mental patient in Kentucky was dosed with LSD continuously for 174 days.

Wikipaedia entry:
Sidney Gottlieb (August 3, 1918 – March 7, 1999) was an American chemist probably best-known for his involvement with the Central Intelligence Agency's mind control program MKULTRA.

Gottlieb was born in the Bronx under the name Joseph Scheider. He received a Ph.D. in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology. A stutterer from childhood, Gottlieb got a master's degree in speech therapy. He also had a club foot, but this did not stop him from practicing folk dancing, a lifelong passion.

In 1951, Gottlieb joined the Central Intelligence Agency. As a poison expert, he headed the chemical division of the Technical Services Staff (TSS). Gottlieb became known as the "Black Sorcerer" and the "Dirty Trickster." He supervised preparations of lethal poisons and experiments in mind control.

In April 1953 Sidney Gottlieb headed the secret Project MKULTRA which was activated on the order of CIA director Allen Dulles. Gottlieb was known for administration of LSD and other psycho-active drugs to unwitting subjects and for financing psychiatric research and development of "techniques that would crush the human psyche to the point that it would admit anything." He sponsored physicians such as Ewen Cameron and Harris Isbell in controversial psychiatric research that used unwitting humans as guinea pigs. Many people suffered serious adverse affects consequent of research financed by Gottlieb and the Rockefeller Foundation.

In March 1960, under The Cuban Project, a CIA plan approved by President Eisenhower and under the direction of CIA Directorate for Plans, Richard M. Bissell, Gottlieb came up with ideas to spray Fidel Castro's television studio with LSD and to saturate Castro's shoes with thallium so that the hair of his beard would fall out. Gottlieb also hatched schemes to assassinate Castro, including the use of a poisoned cigar, a poisoned wetsuit, an exploding conch shell, and a poisonous fountain pen.

He also tried to have Iraq's General Abdul Karim Qassim's handkerchief contaminated with botulinum. Less known was an operation within the CIA's Phoenix Program in Vietnam where a team of CIA psychologists performed mind control experiments on NLF suspects being detained at Bien Hoa Prison outside of Saigon.

Gottlieb is said to have played a role in funding investigation into paranormal phenomena, including remote viewing.

...as my Japanese colleague Tochiro used to say, "....ahhhhh....many interesting things....go to library, bye-bye...."

America is waiting for an answer of some kind or another...

2011-01-15T09:49:00.000-08:00

Could it be that the "Destroy All Monsters" ethos of the Second Amendment remedy/solution supporters has its origin in Cold War lunacy?

from Wikipedia:

The Sky Scorcher project was proposed by the Convair Division of General Dynamics to the United States Air Force in 1956.[1] The missile was intended to be carried by an advanced, enlarged version of Convair's F-106 Delta Dart interceptor,[2] which had, at the time, not yet entered flight testing even in its baseline form.[3]

Sky Scorcher was a very large missile, which was projected to be capable of carrying a thermonuclear warhead with a yield of two megatons.[2] The oversized warhead would be used against attacking formations of supersonic bombers; it was anticipated that fourteen such initiations, at a distance of approximately 460 miles (740 km) from the bombers' target, would be sufficient to disrupt an attack. A force of eighty of the advanced fighters were proposed for carrying the weapon.[2]

Despite Convair's sales pitch and the anticipated effectiveness of the weapon, the Air Force was unenthusiastic about the concept; aside from the expense of developing the aircraft and weapon, the Sky Scorcher missile also suffered from the fact that the initiation of a multi-megaton warhead would produce significant effects on the ground below the location of the airburst.[2] As a result, the project was abandoned before any significant work was undertaken.[2]

References

1. Hansen 1995
2. a b c d e Parsch 2007

Long time since the Times authoritatively broke the Titanic story...

2011-01-14T22:22:00.000-08:00

NYT tonight:

Solar Panel Maker Moves Work to China

BEIJING — Aided by at least $43 million in assistance from the government of Massachusetts and an innovative solar energy technology, Evergreen Solar emerged in the last three years as the third-largest maker of solar panels in the United States.

The company is closing its main American factory, laying off the 800 workers by the end of March and shifting production to a joint venture with a Chinese company in central China. Evergreen cited the much higher government support available in China.

Stephanie Mueller, the Energy Department press secretary, said the department was committed to supporting renewable energy. “Through our Loan Program Office we have offered conditional commitments for loan guarantees to 16 clean energy projects totaling nearly $16.5 billion,” she said. “We have finalized and closed half of those loan guarantees, and the program has ramped up significantly over the last year to move projects through the process quickly and efficiently while protecting taxpayer interests.”
----------------------

My response to our dedicated guardians of the fourth estate:

Sir:
You and your team quoted Stephanie Mueller.

She did _not_ address the DOE's LPO lack of support for photovoltaics. Loan programs 1703 and 1705 indeed funded 16 projects. The following technologies were supported by 14 loans:

nuclear plant
U enrichment
coal plant scrubber raw material
2 concentrating solar power (CSP) technology with storage capability.
battery storage on-grid
flywheel storage 20 MW essentially early stage development
2 geothermal
3 wind
transmission line
smart glass

The _remaining 2 loans_ were to entities involved in photovoltaics.

As you can see, designating some supported projects clean or novel technology is a stretch. Mueller bullshitted you, and you could have "clarified" her statement by spending 30 min on the inet.

Pretty lame reporting.

Next time, I'll charge the NYT a consultant fee.

Jared Lee Loughner

2011-01-13T19:01:00.000-08:00

Enough.

I've read reactions that range from inhuman to depraved to evil, and not much in between. The kid has a neurological disease, LIKE ME.

My neurological disease has damaged my motor and autonomic nerves. I can't walk without two people holding me up. My hands and arms are paralyzed. People can't understand me when I talk. My wife feeds me. If you stick me with a pin by surprise, I have a vaso-vagal reaction that terrifies my doctors. It's called Lou Gehrig's disease. No known cause. No cure. Fatal, 100%.

We don't know what nerves are damaged in Jared's neurological disease. We do know the damage makes it impossible to think straight about anything, or act like you're part of this world. It's called schizophrenia. No known cause. No cure. Fatal, 100%.

When Jared and I were 15, we were both healthy. We both played the clarinet. Our girlfriends also played clarinet. Jared's girlfriend was named Kelsey. My girlfriend was named Glenda. All four of us played in our high schools' bands.

enough

uhhh.....blood libel?

2011-01-12T12:03:00.000-08:00

NYT this morning:

In her seven-and-a-half minute video, Ms. Palin said that “Especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.”

The term blood libel is generally used to mean the false accusation that Jews murder Christian children to use their blood in religious rituals, in particular the baking of matzos for passover. That false claim was circulated for centuries to incite anti-Semitism and justify violent pogroms against Jews. Ms. Palin’s use of the phrase in her video, which helped make the video rapidly go viral, is attracting criticism, not least because Ms. Giffords, who remains in critical condition in a Tucson hospital, is Jewish.

-----------------------
Let's analyze this. A quick click to Wikipedia, a reference check, and confirmation at the Holocaust Museum website allows us to use the following quote and references, and confirms NYT veracity.

Blood libel (also blood accusation[1][2]) refers to a false accusation or claim that religious minorities, almost always Jews, murder children to use their blood in certain aspects of their religious rituals and holidays.[1][2] Historically, these claims have–alongside those of well poisoning and host desecration–been a major theme in European persecution of Jews.

1. Gottheil, Richard; Strack, Hermann L.; Jacobs, Joseph (1901-1906). "Blood Accusation" Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=1173&letter=B

2. Dundes, Alan, ed (1991). The Blood Libel Legend: A Casebook in Anti-Semitic Folklore. University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 978-0299131142.

What does the Palin statement mean?
Without critical analysis, and taken in the context of the video, the statement appears to be a condemnation of assertions, apparently made by "left wing" "journalists and pundits", that rhetoric from the "right wing" media creates a toxic, confrontational sociopolitical climate that has the potential to incite mentally ill individuals with a propensity for violence to engage in the violent activities expressed, either overtly or covertly, in the rhetoric.

Palin's accusation that "left wing" "journalists and pundits" engage in the "manufacture [of] a blood libel" is curious, when the definition of blood libel is considered.

What does the Palin statement imply?
The implication, or functional meaning, of the statement centers on the use of the term "blood libel". It is possible that Palin and her speech writers were unaware of the history and usage of the term, and meant to accuse "left wing" "journalists and pundits" of engaging in libelous activity. The word "blood" would have a topical, adjectival function, made more effective by recent images of a woman receiving a massive gunshot head wound. It also is possible they were making linear combinations of words, and noted that "libel blood" was meaningless, as were partial anagrams such as "bdloei" or "looeild".

It is possible that Palin and her speech writers were aware of the history and usage of the term, and meant to conflate liberal or progressive ideology with (imagined) Jewish ritual murder, thus making the sociopolitical left, or "liberals" an object of xenophobic hatred. This time-proven political/rhetorical tactic is called "blame everything on da fuckin' Jooozze!"

It is also possible that Palin and her speech writers were aware of the history and usage of the term, and employed it as would a provocateur, hoping to insert Palin into the news cycle. This tactic was used with great success when vaginal photographs of a panty-less Britney Spears were inserted into the news cycle.

Sarah Palin may have considered all three possibilities with the aim of increasing her visceral appeal.

click here

all you've got if you can't read a book

2011-01-09T11:56:00.000-08:00

click here first, then listen. then read

The following is a very insightful comment posted on a NYT discussion board today. It moves beyond politics, as well as the vitriolic assholery that passes for sociopolitical discourse today and the non-solvable (due to supersaturation) gun violence problem. The issues raised by the author of this post may lead one to consider the possibility that America could descend into fascism if current trends continue.
-----------------

Here's the elephant in the room: most Americans are poorly educated at this point in time, especially anyone under 30. They are most likely to embrace slogans, conspiracy theories, and to look for scapegoats because they are incapable of real participation in a democracy which involves constant pursuit of information and its analysis. Also, because of this lack of skill and preparation to be real contributors to society, they are unemployable in the new world economy and so in their chaotic lives, lack the time, and resources to be self educated even if they wished to be so. Finally, as Nature will have her say, they end up having children, and a whole new generation cannot get a leg up in our rapidly changing (not for the better) society. As we ignore this problem, of course they will be victims of an elite who will both fear them and try to use them and their precious votes to stay in or grasp power in our election cycles. That's where the dumbed down, inflammatory rhetoric comes to the fore. And if a good willed politician tries to communicate what's really good for them, their well tended anger makes them see it as condescension and elitism. A nice "win/win" don't you think? The past 35-40 years in American education is a disgrace compared to what we once had. My 84 year old parents had better educations in high school (one didn't even finish) than people I meet now with Masters' degrees - which I too, have. They had the good common sense to know when they were being HELPED in the Great Depression, rather than thinking they were being insulted; they could sort things out without always using the mirror of personal identity which is all you've got if you can't read a book.

America, this quite serious...is this correct?

2011-01-08T17:00:00.000-08:00

This was the voter turnout of our most recent presidential election. It was a critical time; two wars, economic collapse, and socioeconomic polarization similar to that of the time of the Civil War.

Year	Voting-age population	Voter registration	Voter turnout	Turnout of voting-age population (percent)
2008	231,229,580	NA	132,618,580*	56.8%

As you can see, 43.2% of "We, the People" didn't give a shit.

The illustration below passed for political dialogue last midterm election; if you click on it, you will see gunsight images.

This behavior passed for freedom of expression at "Town Hall" meetings during which health care reform was discussed. Click on the image, and note the handgun carried on the man's right thigh. "Water the tree of liberty" refers to a quote from Thomas Jefferson. The complete quote is "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure." (ed. note: water=bloodshed; get it?)

This is what happened to a member of Congress, a Federal judge, a child, and more than a dozen other folks in Pima County, AZ today.

You think this is an aberration? You want to blame someone? Anyone? It's sarahpalinrushlimbaughglenbeckfoxnewsNRAteabagger's fault? America was founded by two groups of people..Plymouth Pilgrims who sought religious freedom and didn't give a shit about other peoples' freedom, and Jamestown Jerkoffs who wanted to make a quick buck.

intolerance........greed

oh yeah....guns

click here

You can choose your beliefs, but not your facts

2011-01-07T17:05:00.000-08:00

LA Times, tonight

Katie and John Powers in West Hartford, CT made the choice not to vaccinate, when they had their first child nine years ago. Neither of their two children, who have not been diagnosed with autism, have received vaccines. Katie Powers said their decision was made after she researched the issue and consulted physicians. The possible autism connection was one of the factors that weighed heavily. Even though the connection seems less likely nine years later, Powers said she probably would make the same choice today.

"I'm skeptical either way," she said. "If I were going to travel internationally, I probably would have made other choices."

When the H1N1 flu virus was at its peak a little more than a year ago, she said, her whole family came down with it — an episode that included 106-degree fevers and 21-day quarantines. It was "scary and exhausting," but at least now they're immune to that strain, she said.

click here

We Consider Religion

2011-01-03T11:45:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the second podcast in the series "Give the Fiddler a Dram".

Religion is a touchy subject nowadays. Don't bring it up in your local shot-n-beer joint if you don't have dental insurance.

I have no agenda. I see religions as an interlocking patchwork of folk traditions, very similar to music. If you've ever been to the Kutztown (PA) folk festival and checked out the barn that houses the quilt competition, you know what I mean...

Podcast Nr 2
We Consider Religion

Kumbyah, Pakistan Style....last post for 2010

2010-12-31T15:48:00.000-08:00

NYT:

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A crippling strike by Islamist parties brought Pakistan to a standstill on Friday as thousands of people took to the streets, and forced businesses to close, to head off any change in the country’s blasphemy law, which rights groups say has been used to persecute minorities, especially Christians.

The law was introduced in the 1980s under the military dictatorship of Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq as part of a policy of promoting Islam to unite this deeply fractious society. Many attempts to revise the law have since been thwarted by the strong opposition of religious forces, which continue to gather strength.
******

Luckily all of my bitching and moaning on this blog has solved the world's problems.

Beat the reaper again... 12+ years with ALS.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

s.

Do we need the Department of Education?

2010-12-29T17:33:00.000-08:00

This a verbatim, accurate and complete exchange appearing on a comment board, News Journal (Wilmington, DE, a Gannett property) tonight associated with the headline Tucker Carlson: Michael Vick should have been 'executed'

User Image
captain_sane wrote:
Replying to blackgirlfound:

Replying to captain_sane:

Replying to nottoooldtocare:

Replying to blackgirlfound:

Siht! What's the difference between a dog and a moose?

Do you know anyone who has been arrested and convicted of running moose fighting rings?

Mooses are hunted for food. The dogs were electrocuted. Your comment is racist and singles out Sarah Palin. You know that. Like I said racists on here every day.

Guess what they say about hit dogs hollering loudest is true. I didn't say jack siht about Sarah Palin. I just asked the difference between a dog and a damn moose. They were both killed for sport.

EINSTIEN: Mooses are killed for food! His dogs were torchered. You are clueless.
12/29/2010 8:23:14 PM

Assignment #1: Guess your sex

2010-12-29T16:06:00.000-08:00

This is a nativity scene in front of the Chester County (PA) Courthouse erected by the West Chester city Department of Public Works using taxpayer money.

This is a nativity scene in front of a home outside of Chicago, erected by the homeowners.

Use a #2 pencil to underline the statement that best describes what will happen if someone suggests that the nativity scene in the first picture violates the Establishment Clause of the US Constitution.

a. The world will end.
b. The Jews will take all our money.
c. Santa will destroy all the adult novelty stores in Rainelle, WV.
d. America will loose the space race to the Russians.

Sometimes, NYT columnists believe common knowledge

2010-12-26T13:31:00.000-08:00

Sir:

Frank Rich describes the vanished world and ethos of 1956 "middle class America" depicted in a home movie. He extols 1956 middle class America's quasi-egalitarian values; its "faith in its own unbounded future" and its belief in "shared sacrifice and...lower-case democratic values", apparently in partnership with benign industrial giants like 3M.

He presents a 21st century contrast: "Many of America’s best young minds now invent derivatives, not Disneylands".

Neither derivatives nor Disneyland (nor Scotch Tape) have any significance or societal value beyond their function as lucrative products and profit centers for their inventors. The racially and socially segregated "homogenous" middle class of 1956 may be viewed as a self-serving Scotch Tape repair applied to the American society depicted in Richard Wright's "Native Son", published in 1940.

The Scotch Tape repair failed decades ago.

My ol' feets failed on me then

2010-12-15T18:10:00.000-08:00

click here

New York Times
U.S. Rethinks Strategy for the Unthinkable
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: December 15, 2010

Suppose the unthinkable happened, and terrorists struck New York or another big city with an atom bomb. What should people there do? The government has a surprising new message: Do not flee. Get inside any stable building and don’t come out till officials say it’s safe.

Holy sleeping shit!!

Luckily, the article linked to this offical government publication:

It had real good advice:

Communicating about a high-stress, life-threatening emergency is always a difficult task; however, communicating about a nuclear detonation poses two unique challenges:

1. Many people do not believe that a nuclear detonation is survivable. The sense of futility, fatalism, and hopelessness severely impacts the public’s desire and even ability to absorb information and follow instructions.

2. A nuclear explosion will more than likely destroy or severely disable the communications infrastructure (any mechanism or system used to give or receive information) in the blast damage zones where people need to act quickly and appropriately to protect themselves. Residual power failures and overloaded systems could cause a cascade of communications failures into the surrounding area, including the dangerous fallout zone (DF zone) where fatal levels of fallout must be avoided to save lives.

To successfully address these challenges, a well-planned and prepared approach to both pre-incident preparedness and post-detonation messaging is essential.

The American Electorate Chooses the Best of the Best

2010-12-11T09:21:00.000-08:00

NYT, today

Nixon said he was not prejudiced but continued: “I’ve just recognized that, you know, all people have certain traits.”

“The Jews have certain traits,” he said. “The Irish have certain — for example, the Irish can’t drink. What you always have to remember with the Irish is they get mean. Virtually every Irish I’ve known gets mean when he drinks. Particularly the real Irish.”

Nixon continued: “The Italians, of course, those people course don’t have their heads screwed on tight. They are wonderful people, but,” and his voice trailed off.

A moment later, Nixon returned to Jews: “The Jews are just a very aggressive and abrasive and obnoxious personality.”

“Bill Rogers has got — to his credit it’s a decent feeling — but somewhat sort of a blind spot on the black thing because he’s been in New York,” Nixon said. “He says well, ‘They are coming along, and that after all they are going to strengthen our country in the end because they are strong physically and some of them are smart.’ So forth and so on.

“My own view is I think he’s right if you’re talking in terms of 500 years,” he said. “I think it’s wrong if you’re talking in terms of 50 years. What has to happen is they have be, frankly, inbred. And, you just, that’s the only thing that’s going to do it, Rose.”

We Consider Dance

2010-12-07T20:27:00.000-08:00

We are presenting our inaugural bi-weekly podcast tonight. The podcast will be called "Give the Fiddler a Dram". The theme music should tell you where we're coming from, musically, at least.

One of the defining events in my life came when I was an undergrad at Northwestern University (my advice is to steer clear of the place). John Cage was doing a one week residency in the School of Music. We cut classes and followed him everywhere. He was very open and engaging. We talked continuously for a week about everything from collecting wild mushrooms, Buddhism, ethnomusicology, music theory, dance, art, and sound. I learned that music was sort of a cross between a universe, a religion, and an identity. I closed my mouth, opened my ears, and let the Ghost World engulf me.

Podcast Nr 1
We Consider Dance

Rubberrrrrzzzzz!

2010-12-05T19:37:00.000-08:00

I know, I promised, but I couldn't resist making fun of someone the whole world wants to kill over Wikileaks...

Today's Globe and Mail:

Mr. Assange has denied the rape accusation, made by two women who hosted a party for him in Stockholm in August. He has acknowledged having had consensual sex with the complainants. Reports say the sex became non-consensual over disagreements about condom use.

Electronica

2010-12-03T09:14:00.000-08:00

The podcasts aren't quite ready yet. Soon, soon...

Here is a collection of electronic compositions absolutely free, as in free beer. You'll need WinRAR to open the archive, and open ears connected to an open mind...as John Cage told me, "There is only music...and silence."

A subwoofer or good headphones would be useful.

Electronica - 2010

Here are the program notes:

I played music most of my life. I can no longer play. I compose. Electronic music is one of the areas I am exploring.

Electronica is a collection of compositions I selected from the past five years of work. I am influenced by the ambient, drone, minimalist, and late 20th century neoclassic schools, but conform to none.

Neurological Disorder
White Ocarina
Enter a Cloverish Silence
Quaker Loops
Spin-Echo
Howl I
Walk Evening
Kaddish for Liviu Librescu, Virginia Tech 2007
Distant Loss
Walk Morning
Elegy for Norma Lane - 2010
I Am the Edison Phongraph

I am making this work freely available, but I am retaining copyright.
Copyright 2010 by SG Senderoff

Image from the Hubble Telescope, NASA

Change

2010-11-25T11:20:00.000-08:00

We've changed the blog visual elements, because we've changed the nature of the blog. Recent posts have featured excerpts from news publications illuminated by offensive selections from classic underground comix and nihilistic music from Akron, OH. The objective was to put a humorous perspective on the moronic times in which we live. It's not funny anymore. America is scaring me.

This blog will henceforth feature a biweekly podcast. We will use traditional music as a jumping-off point, and travel to the outer borders of of artistic comprehensibility.

Stay tuned...

Which side CAN you be on?

2010-11-24T11:25:00.000-08:00

from a Washington Post blog:

Animal rights activists are up in arms over Palin's treatment of a halibut in the latest episode.

In Defense of Animals has called the footage of Palin clubbing a halibut to death a "snuff film."

Television and the Internet Save Democracy and Stuff

2010-11-20T19:01:00.000-08:00

actual exchange on a Washington Post blog comment board concerning DWTS:

I can't understand how Bristol is an example of any child that parents want their teens to listen to. She got knocked up out of wedlock (great parenting Sarah and Todd) and got caught attacking teens on Facebook using vile profanity and homophobic slurs.

Yes, great example you are Bristol. NOT!!!!

I wouldn't put anything past the teabaggers in getting what they want, including voter fraud and using guns to intimidate. This is what our country has come to with the teabaggers and the spineless, greedy, unAmerican Republicans.

Posted by: denise4925 | November 19, 2010 3:33 PM |

I literally hate Sarah Palin.

Posted by: denise4925 | November 19, 2010 3:27 PM |

Denise, you are one retarded c*nt. Too bad your loser party can't win anything unless the conservative base decides it's time ti hit the 'reset' button.

You should be subjected to only the most sever Shariah punishments for taking time out of your day to publicly spew your hatred for someone that you're clearly jealous of.

You too can suck my balls biotch.

Posted by: Personal_Fowl | November 19, 2010 3:41 PM | Report abuse

Post-partisan, Post-racial, Post-cereal

2010-11-19T20:19:00.000-08:00

from Bob Herbert's editorial, NYT today

However you want to define the American dream, there is not much of it that’s left anymore. We’re in denial about the extent of the rot in the system, and the effort that would be required to turn things around. The human suffering in the years required to recover from the recession will continue to be immense. And that suffering will only be made worse if the nation embarks on a misguided crash program of deficit reduction that in the short term will undermine any recovery, and in the long term will make true deficit reduction that much harder to achieve.

We have neither the will nor the common sense to either raise taxes to pay for the wars, or stop fighting them. We’ve become a hapless, can’t-do society, and it’s, frankly, embarrassing. Public figures talk endlessly about “transformative changes” in public education, but the years go by and we see no such thing. Politicians across the spectrum insist that they are all about job creation while the employment situation in the real world remains beyond pathetic.

All we are good at is bulldozing money to the very wealthy. No wonder the country is in such a deep slide.

The Devil is Real

2010-11-12T20:44:00.000-08:00

I will admit this is a cheap shot, but this appeared in the NYT today:

There are only a handful of priests in the country trained as exorcists, but they say they are overwhelmed with requests from people who fear they are possessed by the Devil.

Now, American bishops are holding a conference on Friday and Saturday to prepare more priests and bishops to respond to the demand. The purpose is not necessarily to revive the practice, the organizers say, but to help Catholic clergy members learn how to distinguish who really needs an exorcism from who really needs a psychiatrist, or perhaps some pastoral care.

“Not everyone who thinks they need an exorcism actually does need one,” said Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki of Springfield, Ill., who organized the conference. “It’s only used in those cases where the Devil is involved in an extraordinary sort of way in terms of actually being in possession of the person.

“But it’s rare, it’s extraordinary, so the use of exorcism is also rare and extraordinary,” he said. “But we have to be prepared.”

“It’s a strategy for saying: ‘We are not the Federal Reserve, and we are not the World Council of Churches. We deal with angels and demons.’ ”

With so few priests who perform exorcisms, and the stigma around it, exorcists are not eager to be identified. Efforts to interview them on Friday were unsuccessful.

A person who claims to be possessed must be evaluated by doctors to rule out a mental or physical illness, according to Vatican guidelines issued in 1999, which superseded the previous guidelines, issued in 1614.

The day after the election

2010-11-03T11:16:00.000-07:00

Logo, The Warren Group, political advisors to unsuccessful South Carolina Democratic senatorial candidate Alvin Greene:

"Turn to the Left and Laugh/Turn to the Right and Laugh"
The Warren Group and its network of professional comedians will help politicians make their point with humor.

NYT, yesterday:

“Tonight there’s a Tea Party tidal wave, and we’re sending a message to them,” Mr. Paul said, facing a cheering throng in Bowling Green, Ky. To many in the movement, the singular goal now is to stop an expanding government in its tracks, to “hold the line at all hazards,” as Jennifer Stefano, a Tea Party leader in Pennsylvania, put it.

The movement is animated by a belief that the entire political system has become disconnected from the practical needs and values of Americans, suggesting that its voting power stemmed as much from a populist sense of outrage in a tough economic moment as it did from ideology. What many of its adherents want as much as anything is for the two parties to come together to solve problems.

That sometimes conflicting mandate was neatly captured by two interviews in Searchlight, Nev., hometown of Harry Reid, who as the leader of the Senate Democratic majority became the Tea Party’s biggest target. “I want to see gridlock,” said Ronald Hanvey, who supported Sharron Angle Mr. Reid’s opponent. “I don’t want to see any more laws.” A few months earlier on nearly the same spot, Jeff Church, arriving at a Tea Party rally against Mr. Reid, complained equally about the state’s Republican senator, John Ensign, and yearned for bipartisanship. “Why can’t they get along and make some common-sense solutions?” Mr. Church asked.

******

Every thirty years or so, a significant portion of the American public becomes unhinged. The clinical term is "goes batshit". Another description for this phenomenon was voiced by my Grandma Ida; the literal translation from Yiddish is better than a literary translation. It goes: When the putz stands up, the brains go into the dirt.

The circumstances that bring about a parade of batshit amerikans led by Richard Crainium (a meme devised by a lifelong friend ten years before the concept was re-discovered and popularized by Dawkins) are varied.

Below is an amerikan periodic table of batshitocratic sociopolitical effluvia:

1860s Civil War
1890s Gilded Age
1920s 1st Red Scare (Palmer)
1950s 2nd Red Scare (HUAC, McCarthy)
1980s Reganism
2010s Tea Party

My family has a bad habit of getting caught in the gears of these upheavals.

Grandpa Harry was beaten up in 1919 by a group of Palmer's Raiders while he chaired a meeting of the Benevolent Association of Laundrymen of Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Manhattan. The Feds thought the Laundrymen were a front for the Union of Russian Workers. Indeed, they were a front, but Grandpa Harry was aligned with Meyer Lansky. The word on the street was not to whack a federal employee. Grandpa Harry must've been pissed.

My father worked at the National Bureau of Standards (now NIST) in the early 1950s. He was hauled, along with NBS Director Edward Condon, in front of HUAC, declared a Communist and security risk, and shown the door. Although my father was a Stalinist, he was relatively harmless. Much to my surprise, I recently found a picture of him in the wartime Met Lab Graphite Research Group. He worked on the Manhattan Project. He's in the first row, far right (not left).

I emerged from the Precambrian ooze of graduate school into civilized society in the early 1980s. I became associated with a subculture so far below the radar, the reference point used to explain it to civilians goes back to early 18th century Appalachia. I'm flailing away on the banjo-uke in the Ghost World. I may be able to avoid the current Tourette-like spasm.

The Sunday before the election

2010-10-31T12:50:00.000-07:00

I actually live in Delaware...

News Journal (Wilmington, DE) today:

The two men stalked back and forth, like zoo animals glaring at each other from separate cages.

The edge of a concrete curb served as their fence. As they paced, they traded insults across the divide.

“You are a piece of American trash,” shouted Ryan Stevenson, holding a megaphone in one hand and a homemade “Just say no to Christine O” poster in the other. “Did you brush your teeth this morning? They have plaque on them. I can smell your breath from here.” Across from him, the man with a Christine O’Donnell yard sign, who would not give his name, responded: “Too bad Obamacare won’t help me. I’ll be paying for your health care so you can get all the diseases you want. Tell your African president to go back to Kenya where he came from.” For close to 10 minutes, the two shouted at each other from close range.

hmmmmmm......

and this is from the AP, about a California law whose constitutionality will be determined by Thomas, Scalia, and their colleagues on the supreme court:

California's measure would have regulated video games more like pornography than movies, prohibiting the sale or rental of games that give players the option of "killing, maiming, dismembering, or sexually assaulting an image of a human being" to anyone under the age of 18. Only retailers would be punished with fines of up to $1,000 for each infraction.

hmmmmmmm.......

and this note under an AP photograph:

AP Oct. 29: Rhode Island Democrat gubernatorial Frank Caprio, left, told President Obama to 'really shove it' after the president declined to endorse him.

hmmmmmmmmmmmm........

I believe that amerikan "democracy" has been transformed by its commercial entities and a significant number of its brain/eggplant transplanted citizens into a sociopolitical system previously unseen on earth; a"colostomybagoacracy" (ed.note: a colostomy bag is used to collect shit from bypassed intestines). I am keeping my office scruplously clean to avoid the demoralizing, mocking laughter of bacteria.

What Depression?

2010-10-27T09:22:00.000-07:00

click here

AP, today

SCRANTON, PA. — Work crews have leveled a half-dozen vacant homeless encampments in northeastern Pennsylvania.

City and Pennsylvania Northeast Regional Railroad Authority workers used bulldozers and heavy equipment to raze the structures near the railroad tracks along the Lackawanna River in Scranton.

The homeless were told to leave the sites last month. Scranton police Chief Dan Duffy told The Times-Tribune the crackdown was the result of safety concerns.

The residents were given information about city services for the homeless and given time to clear out. Four holdouts were cited for defiant trespass last week but no one was at the camps when workers came to demolish them Tuesday.

...Dammit, all the "homeless" had names...

Separation of church and state

2010-10-25T15:13:00.000-07:00

News Journal (Wilmington DE) today:

When asked at an event earlier this month, Christine O’Donnell told a group of Republicans that her faith plays no role in her political views (video below.)

But in an interview last week with the Christian Broadcast Network, the group behind Pat Robertson’s 700 Club, O’Donnell strayed from her usual refusal to talk faith and told David Brody, “God is the reason that I’m running.”

O’Donnell said God called her to run again this year and that prayer plays a large role in her campaign. She said in 2006 that she heard the “audible voice of God” during the primary and felt called by God to run then.

“The day that we saw a spike in the polls was a day that some people had a prayer meeting for me that morning for this campaign so I believe that prayer plays a direct role in this campaign and I always ask please pray for the campaign; please pray for our staff; please pray specifically that the eyes of the voters be opened,” she told Brody.

The culture war that ate humanity

2010-10-25T12:28:00.000-07:00

NYT today:

The Parents Television Council spent most of the last decade as a conservative superstar in the culture wars.

But the organization now finds itself damaged, defanged by court challenges to the F.C.C.’s hard-line position, by its own dwindling finances and by internal troubles that resulted in its accusing a former senior employee of extortion. Meanwhile, the entertainment industry — once so afraid of the council’s wrath that Fox blurred the naked behind of an animated character — is pushing the boundaries of taste with renewed intensity.

Forget cartoon nudity. One of CBS’s new fall sitcoms is called “$#*! My Dad Says” (ed. note: "$#*!"="shit") A catchy song with a highly vulgar title and chorus by the Warner Music Group singer Cee Lo Green (ed. note: "Fuck You!"; The Smeezingtons, c. 2010 Warner Music) has burned up the Web. Miley Cyrus, the 17-year-old Disney star, writhes on a bed in black underwear in her new music video (ed. note: “Who Owns My Heart”).

Boobs on the Supreme Court

2010-10-24T09:39:00.000-07:00

Mo Dowd's editorial in the Times today:

And now into the circus comes Lillian McEwen, an old girlfriend of Thomas’s.

Looking to shop a memoir, the 65-year-old McEwen used the occasion of Ginni’s weird phone message to Anita — asking her to “consider an apology” and “pray about this” and “O.K., have a good day!” — to open up to reporters.

If “the real Clarence” had been revealed at the time, he probably wouldn’t have ascended to the court, McEwen told The Times’s Ashley Parker. Especially since the real Clarence denied ever using the “grotesque” argot of the porn movies he regularly rented at a D.C. video store.

In her interviews, McEwen confirmed Thomas’s obsession with women with “huge, huge breasts,” with scouting the women he worked with as possible partners, and with talking about porn at work — while he was head of the federal agency that polices sexual harassment.

About 1973, I had a state of the art Texas Instruments SR51A hand-held scientific calculator. As part of an ongoing research project that has resulted in the discovery of notably stupid, nihilistic capabilities of personal computing devices, I found a sequence of digits when divided by zero and rotated by 180 degrees by repositioning the calculator flashed

b00bS

until the battery of the calculator fully discharged.

The State of the Union

2010-10-19T18:06:00.000-07:00

AP, today

Christine O’Donnell, the Republican candidate for Senate in Delaware, on Tuesday appeared to question whether the First Amendment to the Constitution imposes a separation between church and state.

In a debate at the Widener University Law School, Ms. O’Donnell interrupted her Democratic opponent, Chris Coons, as he argued that the Constitution does not allow public schools to teach religious doctrine.

“Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?” Ms. O’Donnell asked him, according to audio posted on the Web site of WDEL 1150 AM radio, which co-sponsored the debate.

The audience at the law school can be heard to break out in laughter. But Ms. O’Donnell refuses to be dissuaded, and pushes forward.

“Let me just clarify. You are telling me that the separation of church and state is in the First Amendment,” she says.

When Mr. Coons offers a shorthand of the relevant section, saying, “government shall make no establishment of religion,” Ms. O’Donnell replies, “That’s in the First Amendment?”

Sociology

2010-10-18T15:11:00.000-07:00

I studied History, Urban Sociology and English outside my Chemistry major at Northwestern. While History and English were presented as placid areas of study, my Chicago location guaranteed real fireworks in my Urban Sociology classes. It was the early 70s, post-Moynihan report, but pre-William Julius Wilson. We read Banfield's "The Unheavenly City Revisited", Jencks' "Inequality", as well as early work by criminologist James Q. Wilson (?!); "City Politics" (with Banfield), "Varieties of Police Behavior", and papers that became "Thinking About Crime". Back then, I was a Classical Marxist (Marx-Engels), having rejected my father's Soviet-styled Leninism/Stalinism. I found much of the material humorous and misguided. I imagined bearded professors dressed in ostentatious 19th century millitary parade regalia marching spastically in all directions on a football field before 50,000 screaming Big 10 fans. The professors are carrying enormous Sousaphones, emitting a cacophony of blatts and gurgles akin to a herd of dyspeptic elephants who snorted too much coke. They collide with each other and redouble their efforts.

As a chemist, I discovered that there was no mechanistic relationship between hypothesis and theory in Sociology. (bear with me) In Organic Chemistry, a hypothesis is validated as consistent with bedrock stereoelectronic/structural theory by "watching" the electrons and noting where the atoms end up. There a few simple rules: electrons don't like to bump heads and don't dig crowds; nothing happens if it takes too much energy or effort, and the final products like to be relaxed, mellow, almost soporific. That's called "formulating a plausible reaction mechanism." Sociology is devoid of this.

Today in the Times (‘Culture of Poverty’ Makes a Comeback)

For more than 40 years, social scientists investigating the causes of poverty have tended to treat cultural explanations like Lord Voldemort: That Which Must Not Be Named. Now, after decades of silence, these scholars are speaking openly about you-know-what, conceding that culture and persistent poverty are enmeshed.

As part of a large research project in Chicago, Professor Robert J. Sampson, a sociologist at Harvard, walked through different neighborhoods this summer, dropping stamped, addressed envelopes to see how many people would pick up an apparently lost letter and mail it, a sign that looking out for others is part of the community’s culture [rrrrriiiiinnnnnggggg: THEORY].
In some neighborhoods, like Grand Boulevard, where the notorious Robert Taylor public housing projects once stood, almost no envelopes were mailed; in others, researchers received more than half of the letters back. Income levels did not necessarily explain the difference [buzzzz: HYPOTHESIS] , Professor Sampson said, but rather the community’s cultural norms, the levels of moral cynicism and disorder.

Now if I had a moral cynicismometer with a disorder detector, maybe we could put this puppy to bed and publish in PNAS.....

Da financial industry (3)

2010-10-15T14:31:00.000-07:00

NYT today
Stevie and Grandpa Harry read the newspaper

“Mozilo’s record penalty is the fitting outcome for a corporate executive who deliberately disregarded his duties to investors by concealing what he saw from inside the executive suite – a looming disaster in which Countrywide was buckling under the weight of increasing risky mortgage underwriting, mounting defaults and delinquencies, and a deteriorating business model.” (What does that mean, Stevie? Well, It means that Mr Mozillo doesn't have to pay back the money he borrowed....No, it's not fair....If I lent him money? I'd just ask him nicely, and he'd give my money back....Ida, don't talk that way around your grandson!!! What Stevie?...what does "find him in a swamp in Canarsie with no hands and his balls jammed down his throat" mean?)

Help me...I can't think of anything funny

2010-10-10T10:05:00.000-07:00

From today's Washington Post:

A GOP nominee for the House of Representatives drew sharp criticism from Holocaust survivors Saturday for having participated in a Nazi reenactment group devoted to a Waffen SS division, and Democrats seized on the Ohio businessman's activities as the latest indication that the Republican Party is backing fringe candidates.

The Atlantic magazine reported Friday that Rich Iott, a member of the National Republican Congressional Committee's "Young Guns" program, participated in the reenactment group for several years starting in 2003. Iott told the Atlantic he joined the group with his son as "a father-son bonding thing" and left three years ago after his son lost interest.

Da financial industry (2)

2010-10-09T17:51:00.000-07:00

There was a description of another Ponzi investment scheme in the Times today...time for another imaginary lesson from my Grandpa Harry...

Mr. Cook was telling potential investors that he was producing monthly returns of one-half to 1 percent, month after month, without a loss, over a period that included one of the worst investment markets in modern times. (Stevie, something's wrong there. Your Uncle Meyer and I can do that, but, uhhhh, we're in a different type of business.) Mr. Cook claimed to be generating those profits by performing so-called carry trades that allowed him to game the differences on currency yields in various countries. (Ha Ha, Stevie! That's funny! When I was your age, we used to get a loan in rubles, and pay it back in zloty...that's childrens's games...we even used Hanukkah gelt!) Next, he said, he used interest-free loans (Stevie, listen, this very important, When Grandpa lends money, everybody pays him back, and the interest shows what a mensch he was to lend you the money...the vig, I mean interest, is very important!) to set up a mirror-image trading position, creating a perfectly hedged transaction that, he said, produced guaranteed profits (...smoke and mirror-images....nothing, Stevie...Grandpa was just talking to himself). The free money, he said, came from a bank in Jordan, which, because of Shariah Islamic law, was not allowed to charge interest. (Don't play with those Ayyrab kids down the hall! Stevie, did Mr. Cook take your money? That's OK, Grandpa Harry will make everything right. Uhhhh, Stevie, did you put your baseball bat away in the closet like Grandma Ida said? I'll be back before dinner...sure, we'll play chess!)

snarky

2010-10-06T16:59:00.000-07:00

Maureen "Mo" Dowd is a Pulitzer Prize winning editorial columnist for the New York Times. I don't tend to read her columns; she has been described as a "snarky" liberal, with which I have no problem (snarky? I guess if you give wide media coverage to Paris Hilton and Mittel-Amerika puts Oprah Winfrey in charge of the reading list, expressions like this creep into the language), but Mo's writing strikes me as if she is unaware that American literature existed before 1966. Nevertheless, her description of a Get Motivated! seminar is interesting:

"The second time the beach ball hit me on the head, I started feeling motivated.

"Not to become an instant millionaire with the help of Jesus and some cheesy business evangelists. Rather, I felt motivated to flee the 9-hour, $9.95 Get Motivated! seminar at the Verizon Center, which had devolved into a faux beach party with DJs playing ’80s music and audience members tossing around plastic beach balls and dancing to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and Van Halen’s “Jump.”

"But I stayed in the church of capitalism, determined to hear what wisdom headliners Colin Powell, Rudy Giuliani, Dan Rather, Steve Forbes and Terry Bradshaw would dispense."

This is the Get Motivated website:

http://www.getmotivated.com/

"The GET MOTIVATED Seminar is an action-packed, fun-filled, explosive, exciting, inspiring, skill-building business event that is world famous for its mega-watt superstar speakers and spectacular stage production. This blockbuster one-day seminar will give you proven strategies to sharpen your business skills, ignite your motivation, accelerate your effectiveness and increase your income!

"Only the BEST of the BEST appear on our stage! Dazzling pyrotechnics, live music and stunning special effects set the stage for our superstar speakers who deliver riveting presentations packed with cutting-edge skills for success.

"The GET MOTIVATED Seminar will give you and your team the latest and greatest information in the arenas of time management, leadership, goal achievement, sales training, negotiation, finances, investing, relationships, health, spiritual success, business strategies, motivation, communication skills and much more!"

Has the American educational system produced a generation of people who would be hard pressed to compete with sponges and coral?

What if you just want to take a shit and watch teevee?

Tyler Clementi, Musician

2010-09-29T19:12:00.000-07:00

Goddammit, I'm angry.

This appeared in the Times today:

It started with a Twitter message on Sept. 19: “Roommate asked for the room till midnight. I went into molly’s room and turned on my webcam. I saw him making out with a dude. Yay.”

Mr. Clementi, a Rutgers University freshman, is thought to have jumped off the George Washington Bridge.

That night, the authorities say, the Rutgers University student who sent the message used a camera in his dormitory room to stream the roommate’s intimate encounter live on the Internet.

And three days later, the roommate who had been surreptitiously broadcast — Tyler Clementi, an 18-year-old freshman and an accomplished violinist — jumped from the George Washington Bridge into the Hudson River in an apparent suicide.

````````

Damn right he was a musician. A fine one. The universe is made up of three things; time, matter and energy. When they interact, you get music.

Universe without end...

There comes a point in every musician's life when you learn that music and your life are one in the same...forever.

As we read in Spoon River,

THE EARTH keeps some vibration going
There in your heart, and that is you.
And if the people find you can fiddle,
Why, fiddle you must, for all your life.

Don't worry Tyler, you're immortal.

and we VOTE, too

2010-09-22T15:14:00.000-07:00

today in the Times..

Carrying a Flag for Mixed Martial Arts

Mr. St-Pierre has a rabid following among testosterone-fueled, under-35 head-banger types who, in another era, rallied around Hulk Hogan.

The sport has shed some of the stigma that led Senator John McCain to once dismiss it as “human cockfighting.” Years after banning some of its more overtly prison-brawl maneuvers, like groin-kicking and hair-pulling, mixed martial arts is growing in respectability and giving boxing a run for its money. Last year, the Ultimate Fighting Championship — the sport’s most visible promotion company — tallied nearly eight million pay-per-view purchases, a record by any company, including any provider of boxing or professional wrestling, said Dave Meltzer, who tracks such figures for his newsletter, Wrestling Observer, and for Yahoo! Sports.

Delaware Republicans Vote "No" on Masturbation

2010-09-14T19:17:00.000-07:00

click here

Homo Sapiens Number 1!!! Go Team!!!

2010-09-13T12:32:00.000-07:00

This is what happens when you mix politics and religion.

Kashmir today in the Times.

You still want public school prayer?

In honor of this past week

2010-09-11T19:38:00.000-07:00

If you think amerika is coming to an end, well, it was already falling apart years ago.

click here, then read the text

#10. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the letter to the National Endowment for the Arts be printed in the RECORD.

#11. There being no objection, the letter was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:

U.S. Senate, Washington, DC, May 18, 1989

Mr. Hugh Southern, Acting Chairman, National Endowment for the Arts, Washington, DC

#12. Dear Mr. Southern: We recently learned of the Endowment's support for a so-called "work of art" by Andres Serrano entitled "Piss Christ." We write to express our outrage and to suggest in the strongest terms that the procedures used by the Endowment to award and support artists be reformed.

Sincerely,

#18. Alfonse D'Amato, Bob Kerrey, Warren R. Rudman, Rudy Boschwitz, Dennis Deconcini, Pete Wilson, Bob Dole, Chuck Grassley, James A. McClure, John Heinz, Wendell Ford, Howell Heflin, Harry Reid, Richard Shelby, John W. Warner, Larry Pressler, Conrad Burns, Tom Harkins, Trend Lott, Jesse Helms, John McCain, Arlen Specter, Steve Symms.

19. Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, the Senator from New York is absolutely correct in his indignation and in his description of the blasphemy of the so-called artwork. I do not know Mr. Andres Serrano, and I hope I never meet him. Because he is not an artist, he is a jerk.

#20. Let us examine exactly what this bird did to get $15,000 of the taxpayers' money through the so-called National Endowment for the Arts. If they have no more judgment than that, it ought to be abolished and all funds returned to the taxpayer. What this Serrano fellow did, he filled a bottle with his own urine and then stuck a crucifix down there - Jesus Christ on a cross. He set it up on a table and took a picture of it.

#21. For that, the National Endowment for the Arts gave him $15,000, to honor him as an artist.

#27. Horsefeathers. If we have sunk so low in this country as to tolerate and condone this sort of thing, then we become a part of it.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

5. Serrano's work "Piss Christ" can be found on-line by Googling. (You are not required to look at the work. Please do not look if you believe it might be offensive or upsetting to you.) Which arguments that "Piss Christ" should be considered "art" are most compelling? Which arguments that "Piss Christ" should not be considered "art" are most compelling?

Wide range of concerns

2010-09-05T11:01:00.000-07:00

The range of sentiment expressed in today's NYT editorial page is staggering. Poet T S Eliot referred to the end of the world as a bang or wimper, but I'm not sure either sound is appropriate in our age of post-cognitive thought.

Comment on Frank Rich's column:
I am a 35 year old man who had an interesting set of perspective shifts from 2001-2002. I started 2001 a Republican; I ended 2002 a vocal anti- Bush anti-war Democrat. And now I'm not sure I even want to be an American anymore. I speak for many of my friends.

Third lead editorial:
In Search of a Bedbug Solution
Government and industry need to expedite the search for better solutions to bedbugs.

Old School

2010-08-29T16:42:00.000-07:00

Look, let's get something straight. Today's Glenn Beck rally could have been planned by a committee at the Ministry of Truth in Orwell's dystopian 1984. The people in attendance are not being duped by a right-wing entertainer. They support this shit.

It's time to get strident. Hey, Republicans, theo-facists, crypto-racists, apatheticoids, and other Ayn Rand adherent-morons:

FUCK YOU

News highlights today

2010-08-23T11:03:00.000-07:00

News highlights today:

1.
Back when Heidi Montag and Lauren Conrad were living the life in the Hollywood Hills, LC warned her then best friend that Spencer Pratt was "a sucky person." Not until now has Montag finally agreed.

"@LaurenConrad you were right! Spencer is soooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo sucky!!!" she tweeted Lauren on Sunday.

Conrad has yet to reply, but she developed a growing dislike for Spencer years ago during the filming of "The Hills." She tried to convince Montag of his not-so-nice ways but was left in the dust when Montag moved in with Spencer, ultimately severing their friendship.

The tweet is likely a response to Pratt's recent media storm against his soon-to-be ex-wife. TMZ has reported that Pratt has threatened to release a sex tape if the blonde starlet doesn't do another reality show with him.

2.
AMSTERDAM, Aug 23 (Reuters) - A giant chestnut tree that comforted Dutch diarist Anne Frank as she hid from the Nazis in an Amsterdam attic during World War Two collapsed in heavy wind and rain on Monday.

I guess that about covers it.

Occupational Hazard

2010-07-06T20:53:00.000-07:00

This appeared in the Times today:

Wal-Mart Fighting $7,000 Fine in Trampling Case
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Published: July 6, 2010

Wal-Mart Stores has spent a year and more than a million dollars in legal fees battling a $7,000 fine that federal safety officials assessed after shoppers trampled a Wal-Mart employee to death at a store on Long Island on the day after Thanksgiving in 2008.

The mystery, federal officials say, is why Wal-Mart is fighting so hard against such a modest fine.

It is not as if Wal-Mart has not already taken action to address any missteps and prevent another such accident. Three weeks before the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration ordered the fine, Wal-Mart, seeking to avoid criminal charges, reached a settlement with the Nassau County, N.Y., district attorney that called for the company to adopt new crowd management techniques in all 92 of its stores in New York State. At the time, Wal-Mart also agreed to create a $400,000 fund for customers injured in the stampede and to donate $1.5 million to various community programs in Nassau County.

More recently, the company announced improved crowd-control policies for all its United States stores to try to prevent such an accident from happening again.

But in fighting the federal fine, Wal-Mart is arguing that the government is improperly trying to define “crowd trampling” as an occupational hazard that retailers must take action to prevent.

More technology

2010-06-06T14:42:00.000-07:00

I can still play the clarinet, piano, and compose. This is study nr. 1 of "Three Studies on American Folksongs" If you play the Vaughn Williams "Four Studies", you'll see the hook...

click here

Technology!

2010-06-06T14:07:00.000-07:00

same speech with my new voice...

click here

Remarks, ALS Hope Foundation Concert, 6/5/10

2010-06-06T13:38:00.000-07:00

I am very pleased to have the opportunity to speak to you again. Indeed, I have been blessed with the gift of time, and tonight, I would like to speak about the future. You may think that people living with ALS don't think about the future. In fact, we are sometimes told at the early stages of the disease "to live like there is no tomorrow." I vehemently disagree. If you live like there is no tomorrow, that means you are selfish and have no hope. ALS is a terrible disease with no cure. But the damage it causes to individuals, loved ones, care givers, and communities can be healed, and hope can be substituted for hopelessness. But it takes a unique organization like the ALS Hope Foundation to bring this light to people living with ALS, and it takes your support. We are infinitely grateful for your help.

So, what about the future?

When will we cure ALS? As a scientist, I can be sure the time will come sooner than any of us can imagine. Last year, I served on a scientific peer review panel for the department of defense ALS research program. We evaluated research proposals from some of the best research groups in the country, if not the world. Millions of dollars were going to be awarded to researchers based on our recommendations. I read every proposal. I was excited and amazed. They're finding out things about this disease that were not even imagined two years ago. We are on the right track. By the time your children get to be my age, and I am not that old, ALS will be history. The ALS hope foundation supports this type of research. It is happening just a few blocks away from here. Cooperation and collaboration is occurring between research groups right here in Philadelphia, again promoted by the efforts of the hope foundation and your support.

What about things that will affect the lives of people living with ALS right now? The hope foundation clinic is a pioneer in clinical research. The lives of people living with ALS are being extended and lives are being made more rich and meaningful with new technology that was just a dream ten years ago. The hope foundation brain computer interface research program has taught me how to spell my name using only my brain waves. What will come next? That will be determined by your support and the skill of the foundation researchers, which I assure you is world class.

But what does the future have to do with the music I composed for you tonight? The music is based on old traditional American folk songs. When a musician does anything with folk music, he is taking something from the past that he considers important and beautiful, and makes it his own, with the intention of preserving it for the future. Without the help of the hope foundation and your generous support, I would no longer be a musician, and my friends and I, who live with ALS, would have no reason to look to the future.

Mike

2009-08-09T09:18:00.000-07:00

The New Lost City Ramblers

40 Years of Concert Recordings

Rounder 821 610 481-2

John Cohen (vocals, mandolin, guitar, kazoo, banjo, banjo-guitar, triangle), Mike Seeger (vocals, fiddle, mandolin, banjo-mandolin, banjo, autoharp, mouth harp, jaw harp), Tom Paley (vocals, guitar, banjo, kazoo), Tracy Schwartz (vocals, fiddle, guitar, button accordion)

Soldier’s Joy /Down in the Willow Garden/Brown’s Ferry Blues /Too Tight Rag /Little Birdie/Darling Corey /The Democratic Donkey (is In His Stall Again) /Poor Ellen Smith/On Some Foggy Mountain Top/Cackling Hen/The Battleship Maine/Worried Man Blues/The Unquiet Grave/Lady of Carlisle/Groundhog/Orange Blossom Special/East Virginia Blues/Country Blues/Little Maggie/The Little Girl and the Dreadful Snake/Keep Movin’/Fortune/She Tickles Me/The Arkansas Traveler/Saddle Up the Grey/Sally Goodin’/The Old Bell Cow/It’s Hard to Leave You, Sweet Love/Dark Holler Blues/Locks and Bolts/Wildwood Weed/Milk ‘Em in the Evening Blues/Madeline/Sourwood Mountain/Black Bottom Strut/Jordan Is a Hard Road to Travel/The Old Man at the Mill/Tom Sherman’s Bar Room/Turkey in the Straw (intro.)/Turkey in the Straw/Old Joe Clark/Rabbit Chase/Poor Old Dirt Farmer/Tennessee Blues/Gonna Lay Down My Old Guitar/I’ve Always Been a Rambler/Baltimore Fire/Three Men Went A-Hunting

“Reagents for Organic Synthesis” by Louis and Mary Feiser is a twenty-volume work found in the personal libraries of most practicing Organic chemists. Unlike a textbook or an encyclopedia, it is an essential reference, a compendium of past and present knowledge of the field as perceived by two eminent scientists. Simultaneously instructive and inspirational, it provides a portal to the universal corpus of chemical knowledge known as “the literature”. By analogy, the personal libraries of old-time music enthusiasts should include the two CD set “The New Lost City Ramblers: Forty Years of Concert Performances”.

The history of the NLCR is well known to readers of the OTH. Notable accomplishments include re-introducing urban mid-20^th century American society to its rural cultural antecedents and sowing the seeds that blossomed into a still vibrant subculture. Perhaps more importantly, along with Bascom Lamar Lunsford and Pete Seeger, they collectively and individually defined the role of a practicing vernacular musician-folklorist who operates outside of academia. The NLCRs’ deflation of academic ethno-musicological pomposity with excruciating puns, controlled silliness, and sparkling, authentic old-time musicianship motivated a multi-generational urban audience to personalize and re-invigorate traditional rural culture. Although the NLCRs’ penetration into mainstream consciousness was minimal at most, the band and its audience influenced the nature of mainstream culture with a very distinct stage whisper. But most importantly, the NLCR were and remain one hot little band, as evidenced by this outstanding collection.

This recording is a generous forty-eight cut retrospective of the Ramblers’ live performance career, ranging from a radio dub of “Soldier’s Joy” recorded in 1958 to “retrograss” experiments with Bill Monroe’s “Tennessee Blues” recorded in 1999. NLCR archivist Mike Seeger provided most of the material, which was assembled into the present collection by Jon Pankake in collaboration with the Ramblers. The intent was to create a program that conveyed the unique, joyous feel of a NLCR concert as well as to make available alternate takes and new live material. The entire breadth of the NLCR repertoire is covered. Examples of classic string band re-creations, solo ballad singing, Cajun music, jug-band blues, re-interpretation of material from cornerstone performers of traditional music such as Dock Boggs, early commercial country music, and newly-composed songs in traditional styles are spiced with trademark near-surrealistic humor concerning the travails of rural life in and around the imaginary hamlet of New Lost City. Most of the selections are intensely vocal-driven. The raw energy of the earlier live performances is captured and enhanced by the primitive recording techniques. Occasional ensemble raggedness contributes to the feeling of immediacy and excitement. The differences in musical approach shown by the original ensemble that included Mr Paley and the current line-up that includes Mr Schwartz are clearly discernible. The maturation of the Ramblers as a musical unit and the growth of their interpretative powers are fascinating to witness. Sixteen tracks are previously unreleased. A veritable treasure-trove is presented!

Since the previously released tracks (some appearing on the 1978 Flying Fish 2-LP set, "20 Years: Concert Performances") may be familiar to OTH readers, this reviewer chooses to highlight some of the newly released material. A performance recorded at Symphony Space (NYC) in 1995 (“Turkey in the Straw”, “Old Joe Clark”, “Rabbit Chase”, “Poor Old Dirt Farmer”, “Gonna Lay Down My Old Guitar”, “I’ve Always Been a Rambler”, “Three Men Went A-Hunting”) is one of the gems of the collection. The Ramblers are at the apex of their powers as interpreters of traditional music. Mike Seeger demonstrates how the lowly jaw harp can be used to deliver a virtuoso performance of “Turkey in the Straw” with a tongue-knotting patter-song vocal alternating seamlessly with the jaw harp’s metallic boinnnng. “Poor Old Dirt Farmer”, composed and performed by Tracy Schwartz, is a stark lament accompanied by an ominously droning DDAD-tuned fiddle. The song is indistinguishable from traditional material, and the presentation is a testament to Mr Schwartz’s uncanny skill at assimilating diverse traditional musical genres. Two interesting performances come from a 1972 concert at NYU. The Uncle Dave Macon chestnut “Jordan is a Hard Road to Travel” is given a supercharged full-band reading that threatens to flatten the audience, not unlike the aggressive approach taken by post-modern old-time bands such as the Old Crow Medicine Show. Tom Ashley’s “The Old Man at the Mill” receives a deep, mysterious reading, as belies the enigmatic nature of the text. An unusual selection was unearthed from a 1963 performance at Knox College (IL): “Orange Blossom Special” is given a good time, non fiddle-indulgent “train blues” treatment, complete with a running commentary on the Doppler effect. OTH readers who truly hate OBS should give this a listen! Outstanding among the previously-issued material is the side-splitting, rapid-fire “Arkansas Traveler” routine, which should take its place in the pantheon of word-play inhabited by Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s On First?”

Many of the recordings were not made on professional equipment, and a progression of sound quality from earlier to later performances is evident. This in no way interferes with the enjoyment of this release. A carefully annotated booklet is included containing full source, personnel, and recording details for each cut. Striking band portraits and an illuminating essay by veteran folk music commentator Jon Pankake round out the packaging. Also included are an extensive bibliography, filmography, and discography of Messrs Cohen, Paley, Seeger, and Schwartz, as well as references to important documentary musical collections produced by them. “40 Years of Concert Recordings” is, in this reviewer’s opinion, marvelously entertaining and absolutely essential listening for anyone interested in traditional American music. I cannot recommend it more highly.

Steve Senderoff

Beer, Humanity, and other Universal Considerations

2009-03-09T12:48:00.000-07:00

Recently, a woman was mauled by a 200 pound chimpanzee. She was, and still is very close to death, and probably nothing more can be done for her. The chimpanzee was a lifelong pet of an acquaintance of the victim. It was raised as a human child in a misguided attempt to produce a non-human surrogate for companionship. Even though the owner and the chimpanzee bathed and ate together, the chimpanzee's genetically encoded instincts remained intact. The animal did not respond well to Xanax. He tore the victim's face off. Apparently, she had changed her hairstyle.

The animal's behavior is perfectly explainable. But it is not explainable to people who tend to anthropomorphise and "own" non-domesticated animals. Domesticated animals that have been integrated into human society are the result of countless generations of selection for physical and behavioral traits. If they weren't, my cat will probably bite my head off when I ask him not to sit on my computer keyboard. This unfortunate incident, which resulted unnecessarily in the maiming of a human and the death of a chimpanzee, proves my arguments concerning the corrosive effects of Disney movies upon American society.

How do we define "human"? Is it the ability to engage in meaningless violence? I am not sure I share the opinion that the violence exhibited by the chimpanzee is analogous to human violence. I am sure the chimpanzee thought he had a good reason to rip a woman's face off, unlike our former president's cynical perpetration of violence upon the Iraqi people. Is it the ability to use tools? Chimpanzees have been observed to use tools. Is it the ability to create natural language? I do not think we know enough about the details of animal communication to make a determination either way. Is it the ability to create formal language? I do not (thankfully) know of any animal-developed programming languages or technical jargon such as the word "chemoselective", which is a neologism that truly stinks to the ear. Is it the ability to create and manipulate religion? Certainly, my cat's ritual behavior appears to be a religious mimetic. The above "human" characteristics give an equivocal measure of humanity at best.

I believe the human species can be unequivocally and accurately defined by its unique ability (among all other species) to produce beer. Indeed, the intentional combination of a carbohydrate source, water, yeast, and flavorings in the presence of a container meant for storage of the resulting product is an exclusively human endeavor.

Da Financial "Industry"

2009-01-29T13:21:00.000-08:00

It seems that JP MorganChase made some highly leveraged investment products (derivatives) available for purchase to institutional investors. Below is an excerpt from the corresponding story appearing today in the New York Times.

I'm going to annotate it as though I am having a conversation with my grandfather. Grandpa Harry was one of the most lovable members of my family. Interestingly, he controlled the laundry rackets in Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan with an iron fist from the 1920s until his "retirement" in the late 1950s. Let us just leave it at that, and see what Grandpa Harry would have to say:

From New York Times:
Leveraged notes issued by big banks like JPMorgan Chase (Stevie, never trust a bank unless they are, how do I say this, like us.) and Nomura became conduits through which fresh money flowed from institutional investors' hands into the Fairfield Sentry and the euro-based Fairfield Sigma funds, both run by the Fairfield Greenwich Group — and, in turn, into Mr. Madoff’s hands. (Stevie, Mark my words, this guy sounds like a shyster... He's getting laundered money.) The arrangement worked like this: Investors put up cash to buy the notes from the bank. In return, the bank promised to pay them up to three times the future earnings of the Fairfield funds (Stevie, this is too good to be true. When I loan money, the vig about 50%.) When the notes matured in five years, assuming the funds did well, these investors would get more than if they had invested in the funds directly. The bank collected just under 2 percent in fees, investors said. (Stevie, those Morgan guys must have their hands wet, too. How else could they hedge their bets?) And because the bank had to hedge its entire risk, it put up to three times the face amount of the notes into the Fairfield funds. (I told you, Stevie, and I bet you they will dump their position and not tell the other guys when things get meshugge!) Thus, Fairfield Greenwich got more cash to manage than it otherwise would have, increasing its own fee income. (Stevie, that's called a sweetheart deal!) To reward note-holders for making that possible, Fairfield paid them a so-called rebate of a fifth to a third of a percentage point a year. (Stevie, that's called a kickback!) ...Stevie, did they take your money? Well, don't worry, Grandpa Harry will set everything straight! I'll be back in about an hour.

If the legal investment world operates like that, I wonder what Grandpa Harry did to set everything right in this imaginary discourse. I'm glad I wasn't there.

Teachers

2009-01-27T08:57:00.000-08:00

Most of my teachers were forgettable at best, and obstacles at worst. The exceptions were a high school English teacher who taught me to write, a speech therapist who taught me to speak, a chemist/research director who taught me to think, and a number of musicians who taught me everything else.

Here's a great teacher. An appreciation by David N. Adamson, BW ‘73, a fellow student.

ALAN P. SQUIRE

Alan Squire first entered the third floor clarinet studio of the Baldwin-Wallace Conservatory of Music in 1950 as Professor of Clarinet. A student of the legendary Daniel Bonade, he would remain in this position for the next 43 years, retiring in 1993.

Alan taught all the clarinet majors, the clarinet method classes and area high school students who shared his love for the instrument. He performed with the BW Faculty Woodwind Quintet, The Ohio Chamber Orchestra, the Blossom Festival Band, and the Lakewood Hometown Band, being as adept as a performer as he was a teacher. He also conducted the BW Concert Band and taught Music History when the need arose as well as directed BW’s Clarinet Choir, a true joy for him.

In the 1950’s the legendary conductor George Szell drove to BW seeking a new principal clarinetist for the Cleveland Orchestra. Mr. Szell knocked on Alan Squire’s studio door and asked him to fulfill this need with no audition. Alan declined the maestro’s offer as teaching was his first love and, in his own unique way added, “I have nothing to prove to anyone”. If this sounds a little arrogant, you have to have known Alan for he was the epitome of self-confidence and is it arrogance when one is factual?

There were numerous pictures of bands and orchestras on the walls of the Alan’s studio, showing him sitting principal clarinet in every one! One of his students noted this and asked him, “Did you always sit first?” He replied with his customary ‘self-confidence’, “since the day I was born”!

As rich as his professional life was, his personal life was unfortunately marked with tragedy. His son was killed in the 1970’s and during the last years of his life, his daughter died followed by his wife, Mary. He soldiered onward; often performing at his church in Missouri, “sharing his musical gift so unselfishly” noted a church member who represented his adopted family during his final years.

Alan Squire was a unique teacher, a gifted musician and a person of high intellect. His legacy is assured for his talent and personality impacted all who heard him play and/or benefited from his teaching. There are over 1000 students who occupied his studio and they now perpetuate his spirit and love of the clarinet and music. Perhaps some of us even pass on a “lauba, lauba, lauba” or “cha, cha chi” as we vocalize a musical passage for a student. Ok, probably not, but we remember hearing such from Alan and if only we could hear him utter those syllables one more time…..

Thank you Dr. Squire. We miss you.

The Hollow Men

2009-01-26T17:54:00.000-08:00

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Images: Frances Reisman and Hubble Space
Music: Vincent Persichetti

Me and the Devil

2009-01-05T12:51:00.000-08:00

"Weeping Willow" (trad.)
Jesse Black, gtr & voc

My alter ego.

Last Entry of 2008

2008-12-27T14:36:00.000-08:00

Doors Close at About 200 Woolworths in Britain

Article Tools Sponsored By
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: December 27, 2008

Filed at 2:48 p.m. ET

LONDON (AP) -- About 200 Woolworths stores in Britain have shut their doors for good.

The stores that closed Saturday represent about a quarter of the company's shops. The rest of the stores are to close within about a week unless a last-minute buyer is found for the failed retailer. It filed for a form of bankruptcy protection last month.

About 27,000 people are expected to lose their jobs.

The company's current debt-laden predicament is a far cry from the clamor that greeted the first British store, which opened in Liverpool, northern England, in 1909 under the FW Woolworths brand -- a subsidiary of the U.S. company.

click here

2008 was a nightmare. I'm lucky I'm alive. I'm curious what 2009 has in store.

Music Education

2008-11-22T12:26:00.000-08:00

Public schools no longer support music education. How can they when half of the American people equate taxes and government with an assault on freedom?

My high school education in basic musicianship started a process that saved my life 35 years later.

Take a look at the photostory. Which kids do you want to see dead, and which teachers do you want to become mortgage brokers?

Our Town(2)/North(5)

2008-10-24T18:39:00.000-07:00

The Stage Manager's monologue, Act 3
Stage Manager: Paul Newman
Music: Romeo Cascarino
Images: All over the 'net

"Joe the Plumber"

2008-10-18T07:54:00.000-07:00

Seems like "Joe the Plumber" exists only at the strange Republican ideological intersection of high school student council politics and an infatuation with a 1950s television sitcom interpretation of suburbia that never existed. Why be a metaphor when you can be a maxiphore in a social hygiene film aimed at brain dead adolescents?