the art of writing is discovering what you believe
Mostly, that my eye was not as sharp as it could have been. The old adage “if your pictures aren’t any good, you’re not close enough” applies to a lot of my old stuff.
I’m happier with the BandW work I did, so far.
Reading Kevin Phillips’ American Theocracy, he is connecting some dots I hadn’t seen linked before.
My knowledge of English history is pretty thin, especially 17th century and earlier. So I would not have worked out that the Red state/Blue state divide and it’s corollaries — Dixie/Old Confederacy vs Yankee North, secular vs religious — can be traced back to the English Civil War and the overthrow of Charles I, Oliver Cromwell’s rule as Lord Protector, and the ensuing Restoration.
But Phillips makes the case that there were North/South hostilities at the time of the founding of the United States and they have never really gone away. They seem to be rooted in the makeup of the United Kingdom, with England on one side and Scotland and Ireland — the ancestral home of many Southerners — on the other. In fact, men from the Northern colonies fought on the Parliamentarian sides of the English Civil War. Virginia supported the Royalist side, welcoming Cavalier emigrés and evicting its Puritans. One battle was fought on US soil in 1655 with the Puritan side defeating the Royalists at the Battle of Great Severn.
There was also talk of secession by the Northeastern states long before the Confederacy made its move. The divisions persist to this day, according to Phillips, and underlie the current political landscape, with religion/faith the most visible aspect of them.
There’s the old knee-slapper about the guy looking for his keys under a streetlight, even though he lost them in a dark alley. When asked why he doesn’t look in the alley, he replies, “Well, the light’s better here.”
Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall:
There’s a pretty high bar on news that makes former Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feith look like an even bigger jackass.
But this may meet the standard. According to this Periscope report in Newsweek, just after 9/11, as administration officials were debating where to launch the war on terror, Feith came up with an idea that showed he was really thinking outside the box.
The first attacks, he apparently wrote, should come in South America. Such attacks would have the advantage of being “a surprise to the terrorists.”
Feith and his advisors “argued that an attack on terrorists in South America — for example, a remote region on the border of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil where intelligence reports said Iranian-backed Hizbullah had a presence — would have ripple effects on other terrorist operations.”
I don’t usually find much common ground with Feith. But I think he’s right that such an attack would have come as quite a surprise to the terrorists. But why stop there? They probably would have been even more dumbfounded if we’d blown up one of our ships in our initial round of retaliation, or perhaps bombed Portugal.
All jokes aside, consider that this fool was a key architect of our policies in fighting terrorism.
Tommy Franks, for all his mistakes, took the measure of this guy pretty well.
1. The economics of prostitution. The best way to limit prostitution is to raise male wages, thereby increasing the return to becoming a wife.
I haven’t followed the link, but I have to wonder why male wages? Why not put a floor under all wages? Is being a wife the best option for women?
Really?
This just in . . .
32-HOUR RADIO MARATHON
MONDAY, MAY 22nd at midnight to TUESDAY, MAY 23rd, 8:20 AM
89.9 FM NYC & WWW.WKCR.ORG streaming live across the galaxies
The Sun Ra Institute and WKCR-FM are proud to announce the Sun Ra Arrival Day Celebration, a 32-hour radio marathon featuring work of the innovative and iconoclastic composer, bandleader, and keyboardist Sun Ra. Each segment of the festival will focus on a specific feature of Ra’s musical legacy:
The Arrival Day Celebration will include exclusive recordings from WKCR’s archives as well as live special guest interviews with Marshall Allen, Director of the Sun Ra Arkestra, and Arkestra members of the past, present and future.
Don’t know all that much about him, but I like what I have heard. A good chance to hear more.
Apple Beats the Beatles, d/b/a Apple Corps
Why would the Beatles, who long ago escaped their humble Liverpool origins, hold the world’s most successful digital music store to ransom? Why would bassist and songwriter McCartney, who regularly figures in lists of the world’s richest musicians, care about adding to his pile of dough?
My guess is that it’s all part of a bigger strategy. The Beatles catalog is the biggest hole in the digital download arena. Anyone who wants “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” or “I Am the Walrus” on their headphones has to buy an old-fashioned compact disc and download it themselves. That’s set to change.
Apple Polishing
During the proceedings, Apple Corps Managing Director Neil Aspinall said the company was polishing the collection of Beatles recordings to prepare it for downloading. Digital sales tripled last year to $1.1 billion; while that’s still just a fraction of the $33 billion of total music sales, it’s growing rapidly.While the Beatles want to make their songs available through iTunes, they’d prefer to bust the 99 cents-per-song rate that Apple has imposed on everyone else seeking to add to the 1 billion songs sold through iTunes in the past three years.
Never mind that the Rolling Stones are still twanging away, or that Elvis Presley’s 21 No. 1 U.K. singles outscore the 17 notched by the Beatles; there’s no doubt that McCartney regards the Beatles as the most important band that ever strung together a couple of chords.
So the lawsuit, which seemed frivolous at best, may have been no more than a negotiating tactic. Now that it has failed, expect to see “All You Need Is Love” appearing on iTunes in the not-too-distant future — and at the standard price of 99 cents.
Wow. This may have been about opening their own “Apple Corps Music Store” so they could break the 99¢ price point?
The Beatles 1 compilation — 27 tracks — sells at Amazon for $13. Figure iTunes would list the whole collection for $19.99, 99¢ per track, with some tracks restricted to Album Only (as is I would pay anything like 99¢ for Eleanor Rigby). It looks to me like the per track revenue might be better through iTunes.
All you need is love and a pocketful of folding money is more like it.
Chutney seems harder to find in stores than usual, but mangos are cheap and plentiful right now. A solution is at hand.
My usual technique is to review as many recipes as I can find, sift out the common steps/ingredients, and use the result as a base.
Peel and cut mangoes into as small pieces as you want: I recommend using ripe ones and cutting them in 1/2 inch dice.
Add the mango to a large bowl with the sugar and raisins and mix.
If you have a food processor, I recommend smashing up the garlic, ginger, and cayenne with the vinegar in that. But if you don’t, just grate the ginger as best you can.
Add this to the bowl, stir well, and cover overnight. Stir occasionally, if you like or can’t resist the smell.
The following day, dice two medium onions, and saute them in some oil, til soft and golden, in a large saucepan.
Add the other goodness and bring to a boil, keeping it going until it thickens. The sauce should turn a rich brown and thicken quite a bit. The mango should soften quite a bit as well.
Take off the heat and can it up. This only made 2 1/2 pint jars.
I would probably double it if I were to do it again. I’m going to let it mature for a couple of weeks to a month before sampling.
Now playing: Sunday by The Cranberries from the album “Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?”
“if you could cause one invention from the last hundred years never to have been made at all, which would it be, and why?”
PZ questions the question — not cricket, in my opinion — but draws some interesting responses.
Leave your comments there. What’ll be? I think 100 years is too short: I’d like to uninvent gasoline as a motor fuel but that predates the cutoff.
<update>I am going with television. A close second is landmines, as a couple of the hosts over at Scienceblogs have chosen. Tells me they get out more than I do, and have a less parochial view of the world than I do.
Now playing: Soul For Hire by Elvis Costello from the album “When I Was Cruel” | Get it
This came in the other day:
HAPPY THIRD BIRTHDAY, FREECYCLE, AND HAPPY MAY DAY TO
ALL!On May First, 2003, the first email was sent out to 30
or 40 friends and a handful of nonprofits in Tucson,
Arizona announcing the birth of a crazy idea.Now as there are groups in some 67 countries and
growing, it’s beautiful to see how this grassroots
wildfire has spread and continues to spread.Three cheers for us all. There are literally millions
of us changing the world one gift at time, every day!Anyway, at three, I’m glad to say we’ve already left
the diaper phase with 2,180,000 members and over 200
tons a day not going to landfills.Way to go, everyone! So, make a wish and blow out the
candles, or maybe light a candle or two for the
upcoming years…Warmly,
Deron
Founder, The Freecycle Network (TM)
Just three years? Amazing.
Now playing: Helpless by k.d. lang from the album “Hymns of the 49th Parallel” | Get it
National Anthem Sung in Spanish At First Bush Inaugural:
I say that basically nullifies the whole thing, and means we can put Gore in his rightful place.
The Spanish language version was commissioned by the US government in 1919, so we were for it along time before we were against it. If in fact we are.