That’s my excuse! Does anyone else still check in over here? It was a good thing when we had a little momentum. I’ll try to put up a substantive post or two in the near future. At the moment I’m pretty worked up about the circumstances leading to the suicide of Aaron Swartz.
http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/40347463044/prosecutor-as-bully
Also: http://bjkeefe.blogspot.com/2013/01/oh-no-oh-fuck-no.html
Update: WordPress sucks.
It’s always good to know that one is not alone in thinking that the Constitution can and should be changed, and that the process of interpretation, by the Nine National Constitutional Priests, may be flawed. Interesting article in the New York Times.
Have a Happy New Year!!!
Happy Holidays, dear bloggers.
I could say more, but I won’t.
Juan_Der_Meant 16 hours ago
>>I still have hopes that Mr. Obama will do the right thing, now that he
doesn’t need to run for president. If he will, I will forgive him
everything. If he won’t, I hope you’ll dump him.>>
I’ve already dumped him. I didn’t vote for Obama’s re-election, although I preferred him to Romney.
I agree strongly with your remarks on defense. I think there’s considerable common ground among anti-interventionist Republicans, Libertarians, Greens and anti-war Dems. I’m optimistic about exploring that common ground in the years to come.
All votes are not equal under an electoral college system. California dreamin’ is alive and well. Rubio/Paul 2016
http://bloggingheads.tv/comment-threads?type=video&id=12909#comment-717863044
In Washington State we vote by mail. It’s not exciting. How’d it go for everybody else?
I was feeling pretty good about the election all the way up until the first debate, whereupon I immediately started feeling really really bad about it, having nightmares, randomly panicking while doing other things, and all that. Now I’m feeling better about it, and it’s not just because of Nate Silver. It’s because I keep hearing this argument:
These days, when Mr. Romney talks about his record in Massachusetts, it is not as a deeply conservative governor, but as a leader who welcomed communication and compromise.
“I knew from the very beginning, to get anything done I had to reach across the aisle,” Mr. Romney said on Monday.
Sitting in the audience, Carla Dickard, 61, said she was drawn to Mr. Romney’s put-down-the-pitchforks message. “It wasn’t always like this, everyone so divided like they are,” she said. Ms. Dickard views Mr. Obama as overly partisan, setting off the birth of the Tea Party. Mr. Romney, by contrast, she said, “seems to understand that we won’t get anything done unless we work together.”
This woman is obviously not an undecided voter. If she hasn’t been a Republican for the last four years, getting all her information through Fox News, then she’s a total idiot. This is the worst argument for Romney I’ve heard all year, and all the arguments for Romney have been pretty bad. I mean, seriously.
Some very serious conservative (possibly David Frum, although it may have been David Brooks) said that, although they find the tea party uncouth, it really would be better for the country if Romney were elected, because if Obama were elected, the Republicans would just spend four years obstructing everything and we’d get nothing done. Are you kidding? I guess this may be compelling to those very serious people for whom “get something done” basically equates to “undermine Social Security and Medicare”.
Anyway, I’m encouraged that the Republicans have been reduced to this argument. It’s so transparently stupid. That’s why I can sleep at night. Well, that and alcohol.
ETA: Oh. I got this quote from this NYT article, via washingtonmonthly.com. OK, time to go to bed now.
Members of a loosely knit group of political dissidents known to one another as the Gang of 12 have disappeared, according to reports from the “New Orleans Times Picayune.” Two bodies, one male and one female, were discovered by New Orleans police on Friday, both in states of extreme decay. Identification of the bodies could prove to be very difficult, according to forensic scientists for the City of New Orleans, who spoke to us off the record, but FBI sources also indicate that the bodies may be those of members of the Gang of 12 reported missing by their families. How people who were scattered around the country could end up dead in New Orleans is still a matter of speculation, as is the whereabouts of other members of the Gang of 12 reported missing.
I happened to hear a lengthy discussion on France Culture radio this morning of a new book by a sociologist named Eva Illouz about strains in the possibility of romantic love created by modernity. The book sounds quite interesting, and the author appears to be quite smart. She’s sort of in the tradition of the Frankfurt School, I gather. This is the first I’ve heard of her. I’m not sure what language the book (“Why Love Hurts”) was written in. (It first appeared in German. But her English must be quite good.) She teaches in Israel, she was educated in France and the US. She must know at least four languages quite well. I guess her native language is French, since she was born in Morocco. She may even know Arabic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eva_Illouz
Strangely, or perhaps not, I am listening to a series of 1-hour lectures, also on France Culture, by the French philosophe Luc Ferry, former minister of education in the Chirac government, that overlaps very significantly with this book in subject matter.
The Illouz book apparently concentrates upon institutional arrangements that make love more difficult in the contemporary age. It contains numerous literary citations. An annoying thing was that these French people kept saying her name without spelling it, and I would never, ever have got to “Illouz” from their pronunciation. That is truly idiotic. Luckily, I’m quite good at Google, although there might be some documentation about the broadcast on the website of France Culture.
In follow up to our previous discussion, here’s another article in the New York Times about the myths regarding the ascent of women.
Here’s an excerpt of an interesting aspect of the dynamics at play:
Just as the feminine mystique discouraged women in the 1950s and 1960s from improving their education or job prospects, on the assumption that a man would always provide for them, the masculine mystique encourages men to neglect their own self-improvement on the assumption that sooner or later their “manliness” will be rewarded.
Just for quiet enjoyment in the middle of the week.
I really dig this new tune of his. Happy Friday! –UE
OK, it’s been a good couple of weeks for the Democrats. It’s at least conceivable that they could have the White House and Congress come 2013. Are we going to be back to 60 votes for anything gridlock, or what? If it’s more filibuster I’m going to be mad as hell.
Here is a pretty cool article written by David Byrne of the Talking Heads that was in Salon last week. In it he makes the case that the creative process for music is directly tied to the environmental factors of the venue where it would be performed. So much so that the venue (concert hall, speak-easy, arena, bar/club) essentially sets constraints that consciously and unconsciously direct the creation.
At the same time that classical music was tucking itself into new venues, so too was popular music. In the early part of the last century, jazz developed alongside later classical music. This popular music was originally played in bars, at funerals, and in whorehouses and joints where dancing was going on. There was little reverberation in those spaces, and they weren’t that big, so, as in CBGB, the groove could be strong and up front. (Photo 13)
It’s been pointed out by Scott Joplin and others that the origin of jazz solos and improvisations was a pragmatic way of solving a problem that had emerged: the “written” melody would run out while the musicians were playing, and in order to keep a popular section continuing longer for the dancers who wanted to keep moving, the players would jam over those chord changes while maintaining the same groove. The musicians learned to stretch out and extend whatever section of the tune was deemed popular. These improvisations and elongations evolved out of necessity, and a new kind of music came into being.
By the mid-twentieth century, jazz had evolved into a kind of classical music, often presented in concert halls, but if anyone’s been to a juke joint or seen the Rebirth or Dirty Dozen brass bands at a place like the Glass House in New Orleans, then you’ve seen lots of dancing to jazz. Its roots are spiritual dance music. Yes, this is one kind of spiritual music that would sound terrible in most cathedrals.
The instrumentation of jazz was also modified so that the music could be heard over the sound of the dancers and the bar racket. Banjos were louder than acoustic guitars, and trumpets were nice and loud, too. Until amplification and microphones came into common use, the instruments written for and played were adapted to fit the situation. The makeup of the bands, as well as the parts the composers wrote, evolved to be heard.
Likewise, country music, blues, Latin music, and rock and roll were all (originally) music to dance to, and they too had to be loud enough to be heard above the chatter. Recorded music and amplification changed all that, but when these forms jelled, such factors were just beginning to be felt.
I think it is a very interesting theory. There is no doubt that the attributes of the venue are a key element to how a piece of music is ultimately received. I know first hand that trying to play something subtle in a noisy bar is useless. Or playing heavy rock in a coffee-house, will get you alot of quizzical stares. “Play to the room” is the old adage. However, while I think Byrne draws on a lot of truths about music and the writing process, I don’t think it tells the whole story. The first, most obvious question is chicken/egg. Do people make music that will fit into a particular type of venue or delivery mechanism (ear-buds, bass-thumpin’ car stereo) or are the venues/mechanisms designed to optimize the existing music that is already gaining popularity? My guess is that like most environmental interactions, it works both ways. Continue reading
I’m in Portland for a few days. I’ve been here 7 hours and I think I’ve gained 5 pounds already. The food here is fantastic.
I love Portland so I hate to admit this, but Portlandia is really on the money.
You probably have heard about Mitt’s 47% quote by now. Brad Plumer gives a great summary of why this Randian trope is just a myth:
— 53.6 percent of households pay the federal income tax. Presumably Romney is okay with these folks.
— 28.3 percent of households pay no federal income tax, but they do pay the payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare. That means they don’t need Mitt Romney to convince them to “take personal responsibility and care for their lives.” They already have jobs.
Most of the households in this group don’t pay any federal income tax because they qualify for enough deductions that their income tax liability has shrunk to zero. See this Tax Policy Center report for more, which gives an example of “a couple with two children earning less than $26,400. They get an $11,600 standard deduction and four exemptions of $3,700, and that takes their liability to zero.” Indeed, it’s worth noting that many of these deductions and credits were part of the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts, which Romney wants to extend.
— 10.3 percent of households pay no federal income tax because they’re retired and elderly. Many retirees aren’t taxed on their Social Security benefits, which they earned by paying into the system over many years. If Mitt Romney secretly thinks that these households are all irresponsible freeloaders, he has a weird way of showing it, as he keeps insisting that he doesn’t want to cut Medicare or Social Security benefits for those over the age of 65.
— That leaves 6.9 percent of households which are non-elderly and have incomes less than $20,000 per year and aren’t paying the payroll tax. These poorer households pay neither income taxes nor payroll taxes. Perhaps Romney thinks that they should all pay more in federal taxes. It’s hard to say. But this is also a much smaller fraction of Americans.
Is Mitt simply disingenuous or stupid (or both?)
I have read the review more than twice now, and my tendency is to think two things simultaneously: (1) the book is a somewhat hastily thrown-together expansion of a very successful magazine article; (2) the review is petulant, catty, and fundamentally unhelpful.
The review begins with a complaint about the title, it’s not a title, it’s a sound-bite. Except that, according to the reviewer, Rosin believes in her title, but the reviewer fails to attend to the question of the sense in which Rosin believes in her title. We can’t be talking about the biological end of men, for example, although you, ocean, say exactly that in your original post, that Rosin is imagining the end of one of the genders. Having still not read the book, what is being imagined, I imagine, is the end of a certain kind of male dominance in society, in the family, in the workplace, then in the halls of power. I think it’s very strange that a professional historian complains about this title without even mentioning, let alone investigating, how this book fits into the “End of…” series. I will say, though, that I am now inclined to think that Rosin had a significant interest in marketing herself and her book, in becoming famous and infamous and in increasing demand for herself as a speaker, as well as in selling lots of books.
Here is what most evinced a negative reaction in me to the review. Paragraph three of the review begins, “Human history? Global economy? Her evidence for women the globe over consists of thin, small facts cherry-picked to support outsize claims.” Paragraph four begins, “But Rosin’s real focus is the United States, and here she delivers a blizzard of numbers, studies, statistics.” So, instead of saying that Rosin is more convincing when talking about trends in the US than in talking about international trends, the reviewer tries to have her cake and eat it too. Rosin can’t win for losing. The data Rosin adduces are either far too skimpy and cherry-picked or they are too copious and, by implication (and by implication only), under-digested and either under-interpreted or misinterpreted. Except that the reviewer does not really have anything important or interesting to say about the wealth of statistical evidence that Rosin brings to bear. Paragragh six of the review concludes, somewhat disingenuously, I suspect, “We know the numbers, and they are bad: since 2000 the manufacturing economy has lost six million jobs, a third of its total work force — much of it male. In 1950, 1 in 20 men in their prime were not working; today the number is a terrifying 1 in 5.” Does this reviewer convey the impression that she was familiar with the “blizzard of numbers, studies, and statistics” adduced by Rosin? She does not convey this impression to this reader. But she sums it all up by saying that “We know the numbers, and the numbers are bad.” This won’t do. This is the meat of the book, presumably, and it’s up to the reviewer to deal with the meat of the book
The complaints about gender stereotyping by Rosin, “Plastic Woman” and so on, seem somewhat damning, this is certainly not the kind of writing or analysis that appeals to me. These are categories developed for highly commercial journalism, the sort of stuff that has made Thomas Friedman rich, except that he was rich before he wrote a word.
Consider this paragraph from the review. “The matriarchy isn’t just happening at the low-income end; it is happening among the middle classes too. Take the young women who are flocking to school to become pharmacists, one of Rosin’s favorite fast-feminizing professions. Giddy at the prospect of a $100K salary and certain they will never not work, even if they have children, these women are planning for lives without men — or without reliable men.” This is doubly important to the review, because the reviewer focuses on pharmacists in her concluding paragraph. “Will the women who are so diligently training themselves as pharmacists today be as flexible and confident when the winds of the feckless global economy turn against them?” My reaction to all this is that the reviewer has chosen the wrong example to fasten on. I can’t myself think of a more secure profession than that of pharmacist in today’s world. I think the rhetorical strategy chosen by the reviewer in this regard is truly idiotic. She does not dispute the idea that these women pharmacists are planning for the possibility of a life with children but without a stable male companion – that would have been one strategy. Instead, she disputes the wisdom of the career choice, but on what grounds? Of course, there could be a glut of pharmacists in the future, but what would be a better career choice if the criteria are a relatively high steady income and some intellectual challenge and psychic reward from the job?
Ms. Homans, the reviewer, has concerns about the political consequences of some of Rosin’s “arguments.” “Is it really a good idea to say that we are, by gender if not by sex, open, empathic, flexible, patient, prone to communal problem-solving and the like? We’ve known for a long time that men do not hold a monopoly on being rigid, hierarchical, close-minded or authoritarian….” And then, “Above all, is it really a good idea to suggest that women are poised to inherit the economy and that over time men and boys, God bless them, may learn to adjust and become more — more what? More like us (except when we’re not)? To suggest, in other words, that success — material, social, sexual, emotional — depends on (our!) gender traits and not on the legal and institutional frameworks we live in? I’m all for each of us remaking ourselves from within, but this kind of argument seems carelessly apolitical, especially at a moment when we are faced with public officials actively working to undermine access to birth control, abortion, equal pay for equal work. Talk about endings.”
Let’s leave to one side the question of the political consequences of the book. The changes Rosin is talking about are either happening or they are not. The reviewer seems not to dispute that they are happening. So what do the changes mean, and what do they portend? Will the trends continue in some linear fashion until they stop, as Rosin apparently suggests, or not? The reviewer does not say. I don’t see why the causes of the trends should not be based both in gender and in institutional frameworks. Does Rosin anywhere deny that institutional frameworks were fundamental in determining how much income women contributed to households prior to 1970? Who, in his right mind, would deny this? But if she does not deny this, is she saying that institutional frameworks suddenly became irrelevant after 1970 or that they are not relevant now? Globalization is itself a collection of institutional frameworks, of trade arrangements and floating exchange rates in the first instance, of multinational corporations and so on. When Rosin argues that globalization has caused the trends in gender relations and economic performance that she studies, she is perforce arguing that institutional frameworks have been largely responsible for the trends. So the complaint cannot really be that the analysis is apolitical, but it is rather that the reviewer does not share what she characterizes as Rosin’s rosy faith: “And I can’t share Rosin’s rosy faith in the global economy. Revolutions, economic or otherwise, have a way of disappointing women. They tear down the old, women step in and make strides, and as a new order sets in the strides disappear.” I would have to read the book in order to know if Rosin really has a rosy faith in the global economy.
In terms of policy prescriptions, I have argued in the bhtv forums against the pure free-trade position and in favor of an industrial policy in the US that would favor high value-added manufacturing. But I don’t really know enough about this subject to know if such a strategy would have a good chance of being effective. And I was not looking at this idea through the prism of gender, but it could be seen as a small way of helping the male gender, I suppose. But there is nothing, in principle, which would prevent women from obtaining a majority of the jobs in new industries dominated by information technology and engineering. Women are still lagging behind in engineering, however, that’s my impression.
I am as sceptical as the reviewer about the idea that women are outperforming men in the service economy because of specifically female psychological traits, i.e. because they are more empathic than men or more cooperative or more intuitive. But it does make sense to me intuitively that there is some percentage of men who are ill suited to bureaucratic jobs or to nonmanual labor. A lot of men are better suited to physical labor than to intellectual labor and do not like to be cooped up, whether in school or at work. They can’t sit still, as it were.
I am still inclined to think that fears about an important political backlash to this kind of book are ill-founded. Opposition to equal pay or access for women to various jobs antedated the book and is unlikely to have been intensified by the book, in my view.
“The stubborn fact that in most countries women remain underrepresented in the higher precincts of power and still don’t get equal pay for equal work seems to her a quaint holdover, `the last artifacts of a vanishing age rather than a permanent configuration.’” If this is a correct characterization of what Rosin thinks about the stubborn facts, then that could be a serious defect of the book, or at least grounds for serious criticism of the book. But one’s estimate of the seriousness of the defect should also depend upon one’s assessment of the meaning of the trends identified by Rosin in her blizzard of statistics and studies. There has, in fact, been a kind of revolution in the economic status of women in the US since 1970, and some of the revolution has been at the expense of men. I never really understand it when people complain that economics is not a zero-sum game, because it clearly is a zero-sum game for the most part. Economic growth is not infinite, it always concerns a finite quantum. The quantum has to be divided, or distributed. So some of the quantum will go to less developed countries, some to more, some to men, some to women, and so on. This is analogous to what I said about the innate conflict between economic growth and environmentalism. Basically, people like to pretend that life is not tragic, but it is. One could try to design a political system in which economic gains were equally distributed between the sexes, or between countries, or regions, or whatever. That might be a good idea, it might not. Generally speaking, I favor the idea of designed human institutions that are supposed to produce some desired outcome, but one has to admit that there are often unintended consequences, that human designs are highly fallible.
I don’t think Rosin was attempting to write a book, or an essay, that was highly informed by an underlying political theory or political philosophy. And it does not sound as though she wrote a book that has a very sophisticated view of gender differences or of the history of gender and gender roles, though she has presumably read a fair amount of stuff that bears on this. I don’t get the feeling that the reviewer is reading the book on its own terms. She shoud have dealt in much more detail with the blizzard of data from the US. If she doesn’t like Rosin’s interpretation of those data, she should offer some alternate hypotheses or interpretations. She did none of this.
Might not be able to skip the ad, in which case, sorry. Great song, though, cowritten by the singer when she was sixteen. I like the combination of major and minor sections, gypsy swing with a very buoyant American swing chorus.
Kelly recently turned me onto this guy. He has a killer voice and also is an amazing whistler, guitarist, violinist and songwriter. It was the perfect music for meandering drives in the High Sierras.
Enjoy–
We knew exercise is good, but evidence keeps accumulating. In some way it’s weird.
It’s widely accepted among scientists that regular exercise transforms the brain, improving the ability to remember and think. And a growing and very appealing body of science has established that exercise spurs the creation of new brain cells, a process known as neurogenesis.
I imagine many, most, or all of you saw Jennifer Granholm’s speech to the Democratic National Convention, but if you haven’t, here’s a good story about it:
I am totally in love. 
Here’s the actual speech:
Back in the early 1990s I could one-up my fellow liberal by stridently advocating gay marriage. Now it’s in the Democratic platform. I bet you guys have your own radical ideas too. Mine are:
1) free college
2) full employment (as opposed to deficit handwringing)
Following the trend of soft music, here’s one of the best Bossa Nova songs. Elis Regina was another victim to drug overdose.
Second Movement of Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G. I heard Cecile Ousset play this with the San Francisco Symphony. I can’t hear the opening solo piano portion of this movement without crying. This is my idea of music. This is one of the reasons I live in France, the beauty and melancholy of this music. I read an interview with Keith Jarrett not too long ago that was conducted by the pianist in the Bad Plus, Ethan Iverson, and Jarrett is clearly an admirer of this classical pianist, Michelangeli, so I am using this performance. There are lots of others available on youtube. Jarrett likes Michelangeli’s touch. This would be a good test for any pianist’s touch. Keith Jarrett is a god to me.
On a somewhat related subject, I recently had occasion to watch the movie “Five Easy Pieces” again, and it holds up really well. I’ll probably watch it yet again in the not too distant future. The connection is in the simplicity of the opening 2 minutes or so of solo piano in this Adagio. The rest of you were probably still small children when “Five Easy Pieces” came out, so you might not know the movie.
There is a deep connection between this music and modern jazz harmony.
Are you watching the DNC?
If you are, what a difference!
Of course, I will not pretend that my opinion is unbiased because it is. But, wow. I watched Michelle’s speech. If we had to define where we are politically in this country with the two parties, Michelle Obama and Ann Romney’s speeches are good samples of each.
Michelle’s is a speech filled with substance. This is an amazing intelligent and educated woman with clarity.
Ann represents an aging Barbie, shallow, talking about love like a beauty pageant participant would. Perhaps they represent the stereotypical woman that each party seeks.
Also, the energy and attendance to the DNC is so much greater than the RNC. I don’t blame the Reps for their lack of enthusiasm. What’s there to be enthusiastic about?
Anybody have the stomach to watch the Republican convention? I don’t.
As a follow up to a previous post about Jazz covers, here’s for you to add and comment.
Here’s two by Stevie Ray Vaughan:
Cover for Superstition (I love the video):
And this version of Voodoo Chile is, in my opinion better than Jimi’s equivalent. However, there is another Voodoo Chile version by Jimi which is incredibly unique and I haven’t heard any covers for that one (and I’m glad because I love the original).
Today I read this article, written by Greg Hampikian about the apparent superfluous existence of men. My reaction was, here we go again. But I’ve got to say, this time since the article was written by a man, I appreciate the author’s honesty and candid view, although I still regret the lack of realism.
A couple of years ago, when Hanna Rosin came up with a diavlog about her book The End of Men, I was rather turned off by the idea, and many of the comments in the forum confirmed my fears that this kind of approach can very easily backfire. And in my opinion, there’s really nothing to gain from it, except the 15 minutes of fame that Hanna got and the gloating that some women may need in order to release centuries of submission and frustration.
So, why my apprehension? The fact that women have been kept under strict conditions of submission throughout history may have multiple causes, but one of them, perhaps the most important is that men have a psychological need to dominate once they reach adulthood (or perhaps before, during adolescence). The evolutionary role of men requires their development of aggression. Individuation and self confidence are pre-requisite for appropriate control of aggression. Children of both genders, are almost totally dependent on their mothers as they’re growing up. Psychologically, this dependency has to be processed adequately in order for the child to individuate. Depending on the dynamics of the particular individuals involved, this task is accomplished more or less perfectly.
