Reading to kids

Since Michael and I are on the topic of dads reading to kids and since we've been talking about my dad's reading tastes, I'll just share a bit about my dad reading to me when I was little.

I would, of course, want him to read Green Eggs and Ham or something like that to me. I would get my book and climb into his lap. He'd open my book and begin:

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred...

I'd whine in exasperation, "DAAAAAADDYYYYYY, that's not how it goes."

He'd say, "Oh, I was on the wrong page.

 "Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Someone had blunder'..."

Me: DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADDYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!! Read it RIGHT"

Dad:  Just listen:

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd;


Me:  MOOOMMMMYYYYYY!!! Daddy won't read it right.


He thought this exchange was hilarious and the madder I got the harder he laughed.

Yes, he knew many poems, or parts thereof, by heart, including Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade.

In the end, we'd often compromise and he'd read The Duel by Eugene Field or some Kipling.

In spite of our differences, which in later years were a bigger deal than getting him to read what I wanted to hear, I'm appreciative of the really cool stuff he exposed me to.

Imam Rauf to be exposed...

in 13 hours of audio tape. Now can we question his motives? Do you care about his motives?

The Debate is Over

Red hot and an intolerant neo-fascist wingnut. What’s not to love?

The 24-year-old Rima Fakih, is the first Muslim winner of the Miss USA contest and is preparing for the Miss Universe Pageant, scheduled for Monday in Las Vegas.

“I totally agree with President Obama with the statement on Constitutional rights of freedom of religion,” Fakih told “Inside Edition” in an interview that will air tonight.

“I also agree that it shouldn’t be so close to the World Trade Center. We should be more concerned with the tragedy than religion.”

From Allah.

Top 100 most skilled male rock vocalists from the DDD Music Forum

The Digital Dream Door music forum -- I have no idea who they are -- has generated a list of the top 100 most-skilled male rock vocalists. They place Adam second behind Jackie Wilson. There are 332 pages of comments on the thread wherein people debate the list's contents and order. It's, of course, an impossible silly task to rank musicians, as if what they do is quantifiable. It's fun reading, nevertheless, and they do work really hard to stay focused on the technical aspects of singing. Lots of links to performance video and audio are included so it's a treasure trove of great vocal performances.

There's a point by point breakdown comparing Adam and Freddie here. (H/t to Kate Ewing (aka Nolechica on Twitter) for the link to the list and h/t to Marjorie for getting me to the vicinity of the point by point discussion.)

Update: I see that by the time they get to page 331 in the comments, the group has changed the order and Adam is lower. But still in the top few no matter how you cut it.

Stewart doesn't begrudge the "sensitivity" issue. Otherwise, he makes perfect sense as usual.

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Who exactly is lacking common sense and decency?

The debate about the mosque discussion is typically formulated in two parts: 1) does the Constitution guarantee the right to put the Cordoba House sort of near Ground Zero? and 2) even if they have a Constitutional right to put it there, is it bad manners to choose that location.

Tim Fernholz writing at TAP gets to the heart of the manners question:

The debate demonstrates how the project's critics simply assume that it is offensive for Muslims to celebrate their faith two blocks from the World Trade Center, to the point where they simply take the proposition as self-evident. Cupp kept repeating the phrase "common sense and decency," as if those terms are defined a priori, but couldn't explain why it's common sense that Muslims worshipping near the World Trade Center is indecent. That's because it's not common sense -- unless you happen to blame the religion of Islam for what happened on 9/11. It's an ugly kind of bigotry to admit.

It's offensive to even entertain the manners question.

My Dad's Approved Reading List

I think I've told this story here before. Michael, my cool cousin six years my elder, influenced my reading choices when I was in junior high and he was in college. (That is a key job function of being a cool older cousin, right?)

My dad was none too happy that I was reading Breakfast of Champions in eighth grade; rather than forbid me from reading such things, Dad figured he could instead eat up all my reading time with other things -- books of his choosing -- if he offered big enough incentives. It was a move of parenting brilliance, I must admit. The deal he proposed was that for every book I read from a list of books he approved, I would get one flying lesson. I was going to try to solo before I got my driver's license.

I just found the book list. Here it is:

• A Farewell to Arms, E. Hemingway
• To Have and Have Not, E. Hemingway (For Whom the Bell Tolls, which he probably would have approved as a substitution)
• The Old Man and the Sea, E. Hemingway
• Tom Sawyer, M. Twain
• Test Pilot, J. Collins
• All Quiet on the Western Front, E.M. Remarque
• Any 1 (only) by Edna Ferber
• Any 2 (both count) by J. Steinbeck (Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, East of Eden)
• The Virginian, Owen Wister
• Any 2 of (both count) Ernest K. Gann (e.g. The Aviator, The High & the Mighty)
• The Caine Mutiny, H. Wouk
• 4 short stories, R. Lardner
• 4 short stories, E. Poe (Tell-tale Heart, Pit and the Pendulum, The Fall of the House of Usher; Poems:  Lenore, Annabelle Lee, The Raven)
• 4 short stories or 1 novel, N. Hawthorne (Scarlet Letter)
• 4 short stories, D. Runyon (Blue Plate Special, Money From Home)
• Seventeen, B. Tarkington
• The Three Muskateers, A. Dumas
• 1 (only), Z. Grey
• 1 (only), M. Albrand [? Can't read this or figure out who this is]
• Up to 3, J. London (Call of the Wild, White Fang)
• 1 (only), L. Short
• 1 (only) J. Marquand
• We, C. Lindbergh
• Treasure Island, R. L. Stevenson
• The Prince & the Pauper, M. Twain

That is one heck of a great reading list . . . for adventure-seeking boys. I read the bolded ones, for sure, and maybe a few more. A couple of these we read for school, possibly even the previous year, but he gave me credit for those to get me started.

Update:  I added blue bolding for things I know I read eventually.   Musing:  Jack London was a socialist.  I wonder if schools still assign his novels.

Update 10/28/14:  I did read The Three Muskateers a couple years ago and liked it alot.

The Daily Show: on the mosque/community center

Daily Show on the mosque issue here.

Fernholz on Douthat: Mosque

Redux: Douthat's musings are like chum in shark-infested waters. My favorite liberal bloggers show up to feast.

Here now, Tim Fernholz, writing at The American Prospect:

In rejecting Cordoba House -- and saying that religious freedom doesn't apply to Muslims -- opponents of the Mosque are doing the exact opposite of encouraging assimilation. They're telling Muslims that even if you embrace religious liberty, we're not going to welcome you to our shores. What liberals worry about in the case -- aside from their normative support of religious liberty -- is the terrible message opposing the Mosque sends to Muslims around the globe about our country's values.

Picking up after Douthat. This time: the Ground Zero mosque/community center.

Ezra on the coverage of the mosque, here:

You get a lot of these mini-manias in the 24-hour news cycle, and it's always hard to say which you should take seriously and which you should ignore. After all, if you jump on everything that cable news makes into a big deal, you've become part of the problem, because you're helping the story along. But you don't want to just dismiss everything, either. The test I try to use is this: Could I imagine a world in which this thing was happening but no one ever thought to comment on it?

Well, yes. I can't imagine that world for unemployment, or financial-regulation reform, or the Afghanistan Wikileaks. But it absolutely could've been the case that Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf decided to build an Islamic community center and no one really noticed, or cared, and maybe a few local politicians from both parties showed up to help cut the ribbon. As it happened, a few opportunists went after it, which brought it to the attention of a few sensationalistic media outlets, and then some opportunistic politicians jumped on board, and then their colleagues felt compelled to comment, and then more legitimate media outlets had something to cover, and on and on. The story is a story because of the incentives of the people making it a story, not because there's something about an Islamic community center a few blocks from Ground Zero that just screams out for national attention.

Don't believe me? Then ask yourself why you've never heard anyone complain about the halal food carts parked outside the Ground Zero construction site. This didn't need to become a polarizing national issue. It was made into a polarizing national issue. And now the only thing to do is to wait for it to pass.

I'm inclinded to follow Ezra's example and not discuss the mosque mess, but, offline, Michael requested my response to Douthat's mosque piece, so I'll indulge him.

Douthat makes two common mistakes:

1) Treating the 9/11 terrorists as if their behavior informs us about Islam. It doesn't, any more than the bombing of abortion clinics by self-proclaimed Christians informs us about Christianity. There is an America that cannot get this concept through their heads and therefore insist on treating Muslims as a special class who are always suspect, who are not entitled to the freedoms that our country promises, who have to prove their trustworthiness in a way that non-Muslims do not, who are expected to employ more "sensitive" antennas than non-Muslims. It's THAT America that scares the sh*t out of me.

2) Watching and reading news stories and drawing the conclusion that what isn't presented there doesn't exist -- that if news stories don't present images and sound bites of Muslim Americans decrying the 9/11 terrorists, then that means Muslim Americans accept, support, and are in agreement with the 9/11 terrorists or other radicals. Douthat, and everyone else, needs to appreciate that the media doesn't give time or space to people spouting reasonable, temperate sentiments, so Muslims with reasonable, temperate sentiments are not going to be appearing in news stories or as talking heads in the proportions that they exist in the world. The Muslims being quoted or trotted out for inflammatory comments in news coverage are not a representative sample and that's what gives Douthat the impression that they "too often" do what they do. The real "too often" is that the news finds and quotes these folks but fails to quantify how prevalent their positions are. Also, "too often" the media automatically associates the views of an individual with those of an organization to which he/she belongs.

I don't know anything about Craig Berger writing at Future Majority, but he has already written a rebuttal to Douthat that addresses these points. He does a good job of putting the shoe on the other foot to illustrate the absurdity and unfairness of having an attitude that the events of 9/11 should have a bearing on selection of a mosque location.

I'm still calling him DOUGH HAT in my head. Will someone correct me if I've got that wrong, please? It's hard not to think derisively of someone you're calling DOUGH HAT.

Chabon is a subtitle generator extraordinaire

Noir is perfect for blog subtitles. About 50% of the sentences in Yiddish Policemen's Union work as subtitles.

Update moments later: Our previous subtitle ("Sparkling with epiphanic dew") came courtesy of Chabon too, from an essay about short fiction. Quoting a Wikipedia entry:

In a 2002 essay, Chabon decried the state of modern short fiction (including his own), saying that, with rare exceptions, it consisted solely of "the contemporary, quotidian, plotless, moment-of-truth revelatory story." In an apparent reaction against these "plotless [stories] sparkling with epiphanic dew", Chabon's post-2000 work has been marked by an increased interest in genre fiction and plot. While The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay was, like The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and Wonder Boys, an essentially realistic, contemporary novel (whose plot happened to revolve around comic-book superheroes), Chabon's subsequent works — such as The Final Solution, his dabbling with comic-book writing, and the "swashbuckling adventure" of Gentlemen of the Road — have been almost exclusively devoted to mixing aspects of genre and literary fiction. Perhaps the most notable example of this is The Yiddish Policemen's Union, which won five genre awards, including the Hugo award and Nebula award. Chabon seeks to "annihilate" not the genres themselves, but the bias against certain genres of fiction such as fantasy, science fiction and romance.

Update another moment later: "An atmosphere of ruined festivity" by itself would have been more fitting for this blog, but the sentence as a whole is so great, it deserves full quotation.

Marriage in Minnesota is awfully "thin"

Neither K nor I are believers of any creed of any major religion, so we weren't married in a religious ceremony. We were married by a judge. In preparation for the ceremony, the judge provided us with the text of her typical marriage spiel for us to revise/edit as we wished. If we'd wanted to write it from scratch, she would have been happy to use our text.

The task made me wonder what EXACTLY were the vows that the state required. The state licenses marriage; the state uses the concept of marriage in a panoply of laws. Surely, I thought, the state must have minimum requirements for the promises exchanged in wedding vows in order for the marriage to be recognized by the state. What terms must be included in the marriage contract? No doubt, I thought, you'd have to express a life-long term to the contract ("until death") and probably a promise of fidelity ("forsaking all others").

But no. The State of Minnesota (and I suspect lots of other states) has almost no restrictions on or requirements for the promises that betrotheds must make in order to be legally married. You need not commit for life; you need not commit to fidelity. Besides a few technicalities (age, not already married, not related, not coerced), the only requisite vow is proscribed as follows:

517.09 SOLEMNIZATION.

No particular form is required to solemnize a marriage, except: the parties shall declare in the presence of a person authorized to solemnize marriages and two attending witnesses that they take each other as husband and wife; or the marriage shall be solemnized in a manner provided by section 517.18 [which deals with various religious authorities].

The only sentences in a Minnesota wedding ceremony that matter to the State are "I take you to be my husband/wife."

Minnesota's marriage statute (Chapter 517) is here.

That's an awfully "thin" definition of marriage, if I may abscond with Douthat's thin/thick lingo.

On a related note, I was surprised when we got our marriage license that there was no information provided by the State about the legal consequences of marriage. It seems to me that there should be a pamphlet or a required course in which the State identifies the legal consequences that flow from marriage. Minnesota does offer a discount on the license fee if you take a class that covers the soft topics of communication and conflict resolution. (Ugh. Well-intended, but even for this liberal, it strikes me as not an appropriate function for a governmental entity.) But there is no education about the hard aspects of property rights and the like. Who owns assets/debts you bring into marriage? Who owns what's earned during marriage? What does it take to dissolve a marriage? What happens to property on dissolution? What are one's obligations on tax liabilities incurred by earnings of spouse? That kind of information the state ought to provide to prospective wedders. (Weddees?)

North Dakota Bois are beautiful. And funny.

They should have used the zoo train, rather than the trolley.

Serwer on Douthat

Douthat's musings are like chum in shark-infested waters. My favorite liberal bloggers show up to feast.

Here now, Adam Serwer at The American Prospect.

The meaning of marriage, anthropologically speaking

Those inclined to consider the purpose of marriage might want to hear what anthropologists have to say on the subject:

Arlington, Virginia--The Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association, the world's largest organization of anthropologists, released the following statement on February 26, 2004 in response to President Bush's call for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage as a threat to civilization:

The results of more than a century of anthropological research on households, kinship relationships, and families, across cultures and through time, provide no support whatsoever for the view that either civilization or viable social orders depend upon marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution. Rather, anthropological research supports the conclusion that a vast array of family types, including families built upon same-sex partnerships, can contribute to stable and humane societies.

The Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association strongly opposes a constitutional amendment limiting marriage to heterosexual couples.

Ezra vs. Douthat - next rounds

Ezra yesterday:  

In other words, America does not currently conceive of marriage in the way that Douthat and Tushnet would like it to conceive of marriage, and in the way it would need to conceive of marriage in order for there to be a good reason the institution can't accommodate gays. So to oppose gay marriage, Douthat and Tushnet must first construct an alternative version of marriage, and then argue that if real marriage opens to gays, that's another step away from the idealized marriage that would be closed to gays.

I'm sticking to my assertion that not even Douthat conceives of marriage in the way he's put forth, because if he really, really did, then he'd advocate for marriage to be available only to the procreating. In fact, he'd need to advocate for the establishment of government sex panels to make sure married couples were engaging in practices that might result in procreation, or risk losing their marriage status. (Truly, I could go on and on with the absurdities that would follow if Douthat's notions of the real purpose of marriage were correct.)

Back to Ezra:

Deep into his essay, Douthat admits that this is a difficult argument to mount. "This thickness issue also helps explain what often sounds like tongue-tiedness and/or desperation from social conservatives when they’re asked to explain what, exactly, it is about marriage that makes it distinctively heterosexual," he says. That's an important insight, but I think it cuts in the other direction. When you hold a position that you feel very deeply but can't justify with persuasive facts or clear theory, it's generally a signal that something is awry in the underlying position.

Ezra analogizes that the move toward acceptance of gay marriage is like the shift from VCR to DVD.

Douthat responds to Ezra today:

Douthat quibbles with Ezra's pick for analogy and says it's more like Betamax vs. VCR.  

Like the Betamax supporters,  social conservatives are convinced that they have a superior product — in this case, a conception of marriage that ultimately leads to greater overall human flourishing than the newer, thinner understanding. But having a theoretically superior product isn’t always enough: You have to be able to persuade the world to buy it, or buy into it, and you have to adjust as the world changes and some of the forces that gave your model a structural advantage in the marketplace shrink or disappear. And on both fronts conservatives have been conspicuously failing.

Ezra on Douthat

Ezra on Twitter says: Ross Douthat's posts on gay marriage are convincing me there really isn't a critique of gay marriage that makes sense.

Could not agree more, Ezra. I tried to write a rebuttal to Douthat's column, but he had made so little sense there wasn't anything to say in response.

Douthat said that the real reason heteroseXual marriage deserved honor was that straight couples had the unique ability to bear biological children. OK. That's true. But so what? It's a tautology, not an argument.

Of all the letters, only X is an X. Does that mean it should be treated differently? Maybe we could always capitalize the X. Of all the ways there are to be parents, only heteroseXual couples can create children biological to both of them.

Fine. But Douthat needs to then make the case that that unique condition matters in order to have said something.

If you want to say that the real meaning and purpose of marriage is about procreation, then what are you going to do with all the marriages of people who can't procreate, don't want to procreate, or are done with their procreating days? What are you going to do with straight couples raising kids that are not biological to one or either of them? There's absolutely no way to construct a sensible rationale for the institution of marriage that honors procreation but not parenting of the non-biologically-procreated. (If we were short on people, then you could; but since we have plenty of people, you can't.) And, if you base your rationale on parenting, rather than procreating, then you have to open the door to same-seX couples who parent.

But the thing about Douthat's blathering about this issue that steams me isn't that it doesn't make any sense; it's that it's dishonest. If Douthat had ever in his life argued that marriage should be reserved for procreating couples and should not be available to straight couples who aren't procreating due to barrenness or age or lack of interest, then I would believe that he actually believes his own rationale for what marriage ought to honor. If he said, "That's right; no getting married for women past child-bearing years. No marriage for men who've had irreversible vasectomies. I really mean it -- marriage is for procreators." But no. He hasn't done any such thing. He's only conjured this position about how the real purpose of marriage is to honor procreators as a way to try to draw a distinction between straight couples and gay couples. He knows that if he focuses on parenting, he can't eXclude gay couples from access to marriage.

It's possible that there is no particularly good rationale for why the government ought to sanction marriage for anyone. Big topic for another day. I think there are some reasons why it makes sense, including but not limited to a structure for parenting, but if you make me pick between a) making marriage only available to straight couples or b) no marriage for anyone, I pick no marriage for anyone.

BTW, how do you pronounce Douthat? I'm calling him DOUGH HAT in my head.

Update: So I guess The American Prospect called out the problem of Douthat failing to explain why the uniqueness of heteroseXual couplings matters, and he's responded by saying that heteroseXual seX has consequences or the potential of consequences that same-seX seX doesn't have.  My charges of dishonesty still stand, since there are no potential consequences for barren/old/vasectomied people having seX and yet Douthat isn't suggesting these folks should be eXcluded from marriage.

Twentieth Century Boy

Adam took on T-Rex tonight for the first time in Erie, PA.


(Sound on this video is painfully distorted. Will substitute something better when it turns up.) Video from mndchngr.

Update 8/15/10 for Michael: By "took on T-Rex", I mean he sang a song originally recorded by the band T-Rex.

Update 8/15/10 pm: Another performance of the same song from 8/14/10 performance (Quebec), recorded by fan Addicted2AdamLambert:

Ezra does an informal survey on the Laffer curve

My boy, Ezra, did an interesting exercise.

The idea behind the Laffer Curve is that there is some percentage at which revenue generated from income tax can be maximized. With tax rates at 0%, obviously no revenue is generated. At 100%, no revenue is generated because there'd be no reason to work. Somewhere between 0 and 100 is a sweet spot where federal tax revenue is maximized.

Ezra surveyed a couple economists and a bunch of politicians about where they think the Laffer curve peaks and presents their answers here.

Answers from Republican politicians and folks who lean to the right politically, tended to be well below 50%; Democratic politicians (looks like only two of them) were up around 70%. The two economists he asked identified top rates of 69% and greater than 60%.

Of course, as Martin Feldstein, Harvard, answered, maximizing federal revenue shouldn't really be a goal of tax policy, so in that sense the question is pointless. Further, half of the pertinent equation is missing when you ponder just the government-revenue-generation portion of the effect of tax rates. You should also be considering the effect on GDP or growth or something reflecting the effect on private sector income or wealth or something. But, still, the question is interesting for revealing how far apart are politicians' views. If you really believe setting income tax rates above 19% causes a drag on the economy, then of course you're going to fret about raising the top bracket from 35 to 39%. If, though, you think that you can raise rates to 70% without being an economic drag, then an increase from 35 to 39% for the top bracket is really not a big deal.

Snakes as art

Gorgeous photos of snakes here. (I promise it's not pictures of Douthat.)

Marriage: "It Wasn't All Bad"

Douthat inspires me to post this.

An American Childhood, Annie Dillard

I have been poking away at this book club selection for a couple months.  It's a memoir and I am just not a good memoir reader.  I have two problems reading memoirs:  a) typically, there's not enough story arc (because real life doesn't necessarily work that way) to sustain my interest; and b) as I've mentioned before, I'm not comfortable with the posing.

Annie Dillard is a writer (and artist) who has written more non-fiction than fiction. AAC is Annie Dillard's story of her growing up years, childhood through high school.  It reminded me a bit of Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury, though DW is fiction and is set earlier than Annie Dillard's life by a couple decades.  Both AAC and DW paint childhood/adolescent years with a respectful and romantic brush.

Annie Dillard descended from some old money families, so her early life included private school, dancing schools, coming out galas, second summer homes.  Her immediate family lived a more middle-class existence, but her grandparents were well-heeled, so that culture trickled down.  Sunday evenings were spent at the country club.  She of course was aware enough to observe the privileges available to her and she was not particularly invested in that world.  She was much more interested in learning, drawing, reading, writing, science, exploring, baseball,  and so forth than in her place in social hierarchy.

Annie Dillard has mad writing skills; she can turn a phrase.  Describing the light that passed occasionally across her bedroom walls at night, after having figured out that it was a car that generated the moving light, but still enjoying the story she could make up about it:

When the low roar drew nigh and the oblong slid in the door, I threw my own switches for pleasure.  It's coming after me; it's a car outside.  It's after me.  It's a car.  It raced over the wall, lighting it blue wherever it ran; it bumped over [sister] Amy's maple headboard in a rush, paused, slithered elongate over the corner, shrank, flew my way, and vanished into itself with a wail.  It was a car.

And I appreciated how far-ranging her interests were in her childhood and the way she incorporates them into her memoir.  Example:

The awesome story of earth's crust's buckling and shifting unfortunately failed to move me in the slightest.  But here was an interesting find.  Only a quirk of chemistry prevented the ground's being a heap of broken rubble.  I hadn't thought of that.  Why isn't it all a heap of broken rubble? For the bedrock fractures and cleaves, notoriously; it uplifts, crumbles, splits, shears, and folds.  All this action naturally shatters the crust.  But it happens that the abundant element silicon is water soluble at high temperatures.  This element heals the scars.  Dissolved silicon seeps everywhere underground and slips into fissures and veins; it fills in, mends, and cement the rubble, over and over, from age to age.  It heals all the thick wounds on the continents' skin and under the oceans; it solidifies as it cools, uplifting, and forms pale veins of scarry quarts running through everything; it dominates the granite bedrock on which we build our cities, the granite interior of mountains and the beds that underlie the plains.

She grew up in Pittsburgh, so she touches on Pittsburgh's steel history.

Wanted: Secretary

Karma the Dog seeks to hire a full-time secretary to support her agility career. Responsibilities include:

• Maintaining Karma's calendar
• Keeping memberships and dog registrations current for all sanctioning bodies (NADAC, CPE, AKC, etc) by tracking deadlines for renewals, filling out forms, mailing checks
• Investigating upcoming events to identify appropriate competition opportunities
• Docketing due dates for entry registrations and for "move-up" registrations
• Preparing and submitting competition entry forms within deadlines
• Storing and being able to find Karma's permanent height cards for each sanctioning body; scan/print the right one to accompany each competition entry
• Verifying accuracy of and maintaining database of her competition results
• Staying abreast of competition rules for each sanctioning body
• Packing her tools and belongings for competition (DO NOT, DO NOT, DO NOT forget the water dish)
• Maintaining her website
• Broiling chicken and cutting the chicken, and lowfat hotdogs, into teeny-tiny pieces for training
• Ironing her ribbons and polishing her trophies

The successful candidate will be:

• Crazy
• Well-organized
• Dedicated to Karma's successful career and without any other interests or commitments
• Proficient in Word, Excel, Filemaker Pro, Google Sites, and Adobe Acrobat
• Type 60 wpm

Salary will be commensurate with experience and will be paid in slobbery doggy kisses.

Either this or I have to buy new pants

I think it'd be a really good thing if it was deemed socially acceptable to call in "fat" to work a few days a year. "I can't come in today; I woke up too fat to fit comfortably in my pants." No one gets anything done when their pants hurt, anyway, so you might as well stay home.

In conjunction with this idea, I'd like to see emergency fat-fighting (EFF) centers that would provide acute weight-control assistance. You wake up heavier than you've ever been, make your call to your workplace to say you won't be in, and then go to the EFF where a professional trainer would put you through an intense workout and send you out for a bike ride and then for a run and then for a swim. A professional chef would serve you low-cal meals. At the end of a day or two or three of this, your pants would fit and you'd return to work.

Music theory exercise

I have a suggestion for an exercise for Michael beginning music theory students: transcribe a recording of a piece of music.

Choose something you haven't seen sheet music for. Select music with some meat to it (i.e. not just I, IV, V, V7 chords), but not overly dense (i.e. not full orchestra). Pick something that you like enough to listen to ad nauseum as you deconstruct it. Consider, though, that your relationship to this piece of music will never be the same. You will forever after hear its parts; listening to it will be a thinking, rather than a feeling, enterprise so don't pick music that you love because of its emotional impact.

Of course, you can write your transcription out on paper. You'll need a big eraser, though, for all the mistakes you'll make. There are software programs for transcribing music that are pretty cool. I haven't researched these fully, so I don't know what's best. I came across Finale which has a suite of programs of varying capability, available on a free trial basis for 30 days. These programs all allow you to enter notes into your score through dragging/dropping a note icon onto a staff, or by "playing" notes on your computer keyboard, or by using a midi keyboard. The software plays your score back to you, so you can hear if you've got it right.

Except for the least sophisticated of the suite (Notepad), the software can automatically provide chord symbols. I'd suggest that you use this capability just as a check on your own chord analysis, a useful part of this exercise.

Start with the melody; then select one instrument at a time and figure out its path through the song. For pop/rock/jazz, I'd suggest doing the bass line after the melody.

In the process of transcription, you'll have to figure out the time signature of your piece; its key; its melody; its harmonies; its phrasing; its tempo and tempo changes; its rhythms; its chord progressions; its organization; the way its lyrics fit; its dynamic changes; and on and on. You'll be forced to grapple with pretty much every concept in music theory.

You may not be able to deconstruct everything, but you'll be surprised at what you can do, once you start pulling the song apart. It's very much like doing a jigsaw puzzle; it's a big impenetrable task to begin, but one little puzzle piece at a time you get intimately familiar with the picture and attuned to the smallest changes of hue. When you're done, qualities of the image to which you were oblivious when you started are pronounced and obvious to you.

Joan Armatrading

We saw her last night at the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis. Holy coyote; she was amazingly great.

K was a fan from ages ago and introduced me to her music in 1996. I didn't love her then. I liked her music, but didn't like what she did with her voice.

As we were waiting for the show to start last night, we admitted to each other that we weren't very excited to see her. K was expecting her to have aged way past her prime and I was expecting to hear that voice-thing that I dislike. (I don't know if there's a word for it; it's that Anita-Baker swallowed-sound, cat-yowling thing.)

The Cedar is simultaneously a miserable and fabulous place to hear music. The sound system is outstanding. Tickets are general admission and it's not the kind of crowd that shows up hours in advance, so you can always count on getting a really close seat if it matters to you. It's a short bike ride from our house.

The physical environment at the Cedar is wanting, though. They pack waaaaay too many tiny folding chairs into a small space with too few exits. It's an effort to keep my claustrophobic panic at bay. Beer is necessary to take the vividness out of my imaginings of dying in a fire under the feet of a crowd futilely trying to get to the exits while tripping over downed folding chairs. You just know the electrical system is not sufficiently updated. Do we have no fire code in this city? To top it off, there's no discernible ventilation and tap beer is $5.50.

When Joan came on stage, she first thanked us for leaving our television sets behind for the evening. That seemed unnecessarily condescending and obnoxious. We're sweating, we're squashed in here like sardines, and now we're being insulted.

But then she started playing and blew us away. Her voice has aged like fine wine. Powerful, clear, soulful, interesting, expressive, perfectly on pitch, with zero Anita-Baker yowling. Her vocal prime is now. Her guitar-playing was even more impressive. And with a catalog of three decades to pick from, she had no trouble filling a solid two hours with nothing but great songs.

If you get a chance to see her during her current tour, you just have to do it. (Doesn't look like she's got any Texas stops on her schedule yet, but maybe they're yet to come.)

Update (moments later): One of Joan's old songs is Weakness in Me (1982), with lyrics that describe the pull of an affair. If you listen to her singing it as a much younger woman, it's fine. But her delivery of this today -- standing still on stage, no guitar, no microphone in her hand or stand in front of her, with enough years of maturity to sell the sentiments of the song -- was stunning. It's sort of like Ralph Stanley singing O Death or Johnny Cash singing Hurt; advancing age is a trememdous asset to the song.

Updated again (one more moment later): Video is worth a thousand words:

Using the power of the internet for good. This time: learning languages

Here's yet another way that social networking via the web can be harnessed for good. A person trying to learn a language can, through world-wide social networks, get access to native speakers. And, perhaps more importantly, one can get a motivational boost to learn:

Still, he finds it ultimately worthwhile to work with others on the Web and search for the better partners because that provides a real connection that cannot be found from a book or a simple computer program.

“When I have to do an exercise and submit it to the world, when I know that real people are going to look at it and comment on it, it really jacks up my brain,” he said.

And another stunning vocal display from Adam

Starting at 3:30 is his acoustic Whole Lotta Love encore, performed tonight in San Francisco. I recommend watching all the way to the end.



I love the progression starting at 6:06. And 7:54 to the end is really something.

(Video by Suz526. H/t to Hooplamagnet.)

Update: Another video of the same performance with audio that is better in some respects.

Update 8/9/10:  Another video of the same performance.  This is cut together from several fan-taken videos.

Rachel does bacon

Looks like Rachel is stealing my bacon schtick shtick.

LibraryThing

As I've been working on our book club web site, I've been exploring online book-related tools and resources. LibraryThing is one of my favorites.

At its core, LibraryThing is a digital card catalog for your library. You establish an account and then add your books to your virtual "bookshelves". It's easy to add books; you just start typing a title, and it'll bring up matching books that you select. These are really data files that include the book's ISBN number and other meta data. You can also pick from the cover images available. You can rate your books and write notes or reviews of them. LT analyzes your library and returns statistics about your books, such as the breakdown between male/female authors or living/dead authors, settings for your books, and awards won by your books.

LibraryThing also generates html code for widgets that display your books on websites or blogs. Here's an example:

But LibraryThing isn't simply a personal book database. It also aggregates book information across all its member accounts and facilitates online community. Here are a few examples of what you can do with LibraryThing:

• See community-wide ratings
• View other people's libraries
• Get suggestions from LT about other users with libraries similar to yours and then view their libraries
• Read others' reviews
• "Follow" or "friend" other members
• Get personalized reading recommendations generated by analyzing your taste
• Swap books with other members
• Get free copies of books from other members or from being an early reviewer
• Participate in online chats with authors
• Buy LT merchandise, such as the LibraryThong
• Public, shared “Work” pages, allow users to fill in info about book, like quotes, setting, characters, awards, descriptions
• See community-wide statistics for all the books on all member shelves, like word clouds showing where authors went to college and where they live
• See a feed of upcoming book-related events (e.g. signings, readings) in your geographic area

And that's not even a complete listing of its features and capabilities. I recommend spending some time poking around.

Amazon Associates Program

Blogger is offering a new feature in conjunction with Amazon. You can register your blog/site with Amazon to be an "Amazon Associate", whereby if your blog/site drives a customer to Amazon (via clickable cover images that are linked to Amazon) and results in a book sale, you get a little kickback.

Seemed completely harmless, so I signed my book club web site up to be an Amazon Associate. I figured that at worst, I'd have a license to the cover images (for absolute sure) and a super-easy way to add the images. Also, Amazon provides code for a nifty widget that shows 10 book covers in a rotatable carousel GUI, and I have been hunting for just that sort of thing for both our book club site and for SSJ but haven't been able to find one that I can make work. At best, our book club might make 30-40 cents a year in kickbacks; our book club tends more toward borrowing books from our libraries.

I got an email from Amazon yesterday (emphasis added):

Hello Associate,

We noticed that you were accepted to the Amazon.com Associate Program several weeks ago but have yet to refer a sale.

Oh, Amazon, you crack me up.

Exactly

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Fox is not delicious

Frankly, my side of the political spectrum is not really doing my bidding or satisfying my wishes, so I have little appetite for criticizing the right. But this ridiculous cable situation we have in our house, where we've got Fox News but not MSNBC, and the knowledge that countless others out there have this "family" cable package offered by Comcast and so are fed the Fox News diet (perhaps without realizing they're being deprived of another viewpoint), is enough for me to spare a smidgeon of emotional outrage on the nonsense that is Fox "News".

From the American Prospect:

We didn't need a lesson in how good the right is in kicking up these dust storms, because they've done it so many times before. It's a very simple formula: take some incident or person who can embody something you want people to believe about the left (elitists, scary black people, etc.); put it into heavy rotation on Fox and conservative radio; immediately begin screaming that the liberal mainstream media are ignoring this vital story; watch while the mainstream media pick up the story to prove they really aren't liberal. Rinse, repeat. It works pretty much every time.

Karma is amazing (in case I hadn't already mentioned that)

She "qualified" in the "Tunnelers" event yesterday. "Qualified" just means she passed, by completing the course within the requisite time and without faults (like me touching her or her running an obstacle out of order). She ran 144 yards -- almost 1.5 football fields -- in 33 seconds, through 12 tunnels.

Pretty much just want to spend the day telling people about her success. Now who can I tell? And thanks in advance to everyone who pretends to be interested.

Update 7/13/10: Here's a video of someone else's dog competing in the same Tunnelers event as Karma ran on Sunday.

NADAC Novice Regular

This is not Karma, but this is a comparable event to her second run today:  It is the same complexity level (Novice), the same event  ("Regular") at the same facility (Soccerblast, Burnseville, MN), at a NADAC-sanctioned event. The dog in this video makes it look easy:



This dog, Mira, makes it look more difficult:

Happy day at our house

Karma competed in her first agility trial today.  The world of agility competition is a complex thing, with many different sponsoring organizations (AKC, North American Dog Agility Council (NADAC), U.S. Dog Agility Association, Canine Performance Events), and with many different varieties of events at each competition at many different levels (i.e. courses vary in complexity/trickiness).  Not all of the organizations allow mixed breeds to compete.  Karma competed in a NADAC event at the least complex level (Novice).  She competed in two events today (regular and "touch-and-go") and will compete in another event tomorrow morning.  This event was indoors.

The whole experience was intensely stimulating for her:  dogs everywhere, her first exposure to Astroturf, strangers in the ring doing the judging, her fear of the unknown, the inexplicable (to her) schedule of sitting in a crate, then competing, then going back in the crate, then competing again.  Her doggy brain had a lot to process.

It's not at all uncommon for dogs new to competition to completely wig out and just zoom around the course paying no attention to the obstacles or their handler.  I had very low expectations going in, but Karma did amazingly well in her first run.  She ran fast and clean through the first 14 of the 16 obstacles (A-frame, tunnels, wickets that she's never seen before), but then she came upon the dog walk and froze.  The dogwalk is an elevated level plank with inclined planks on either end.  She's never had any issue with the dogwalk in practice.  I suspect that from her vantage point as she was getting on, it looked like a teeter-totter, something she hasn't completely conquered yet.  In class, she gets a chance to see all the equipment as we get warmed up before class, so she can tell where the teeter is and where the dogwalk is.

So she took two steps onto the dogwalk, got scared and jumped off.  That's a disqualification.  Also, at some point when I was trying to coax her back onto the dogwalk, I reached out to her and ruffled her neck, not to physically maneuver her onto the walk, but just to give her some encouragement.  That too, though, is a disqualification; there is no touching your dog during a run.  It's a habit I'll have to break.

I was very pleased with her performance for the first time out.  Lots of more experienced dogs ran around completely out of control.

We sat around for a couple hours before the next event, and by that time Karma was pretty much mentally exhausted.  She ran her second run poorly, running around the jumps and getting distracted by smells on the ground.

We'll compete in one more event tomorrow if I can get her out of bed in the morning.  She is one tired pup now.

Sad week at our house

When I joined this blog, Michael promised that I'd offer cat stories.  Now is the time.

In January 1997, K decided he'd like to have a cat. [Update:  He was living alone at the time.] He'd never had a pet before, but he had observed my two cats and concluded that cats added a little life to the house without demanding huge amounts of attention.  They were more fun than plants and less work than a dog. Cats were independent and didn't need much to be content, K thought.

At the time he said he didn't understand why people talk to animals. "What do you SAY to them?  Why talk to them when they can't understand you?" he'd asked me, incredulously, when I said I talked to my cats all the time.

We went to the Minneapolis pound and he inspected the available kittens.  One black and white tuxedo kitten clung spread-eagle to the bars of her cage and meowed with all her might at us.  When K held her, she immediately purred; she put up a huge fuss when he tried to return her to the cage, shouting more than meowing at him.  K was smitten with her feisty attitude.  She had to be held at the pound for three more days before she could be adopted.  That fourth day fell on a day when K couldn't leave his office at midday when the pound opened, but he wanted that particular kitten so I took time off of work to be at the pound the second it opened to nab her for him before someone else got her.

"Diggity" has been passionately devoted to K ever since.  The second he sits down at home, she is on him.  She gazes at him and purrs.  (I've made up a little voice for her that says, "I love you, I love you, I love you" in rapid succession, matching the passion in her gaze.) When he pets her, she drools.  When he tries to get away from her she shouts at him.  When he leaves the house, she sits by the door and yowls.  When he's been away for awhile she yowls more.  When she hears his keys outside the door, she races to the door and yowls some more.

He's expressed annoyance about this over the years:  "Why does she have to be ON me all the time?  Why can't she just be by herself sometimes like your cats?  I got a cat because I thought they were independent."  I remind him that in their initial meeting at the pound, Diggity showed him exactly who she was.  She's so much needier than any of the four cats I've owned but she's a one-person cat so K bears the burden of giving her the attention she demands.

She's smart.  K trained her not to jump on tables and counters EVER and to sit up on command.  Diggity has trained K to talk to animals -- a lot.

She's fierce.  Michael's mother bears scars from wounds inflicted by Diggity.  A couple years ago, my mother and Michael's mother, D, stayed at our house.  D had her cat, Missy, there.  We kept Missy closed up in one bedroom for most of their stay, but D tried to introduce Missy to the rest of our animals in hopes they'd get along so Missy wouldn't have to be sequestered.  Carrying Missy, D walked into the living room where Diggity, Petrik (my cat) and Karma (dog) were lounging.  Diggity decided this was a highly threatening situation and went into attack mode.  She leaped onto D's back, embedded her claws and hung there while yowling ferociously.  It was just like watching a lion leap onto the back of its prey in a hunt.  I was able to save D before Diggity made a meal of her or Missy.

She doesn't like when people yelp or scream.  K and I were watching the X Games one evening when some amazing feat made me hoop and holler.  Diggity jumped onto my head and embedded her front claws in my forehead and her back claws in my neck.  I shrieked and leaped about the room begging K to "get her off of me!" while she clung stubbornly to my head.  K was laughing too hard to help, which got me laughing and then Diggity was willing to let go.

A couple days ago, K noticed that Diggity was peeing outside her litter box.  He took her to the vet, suspecting a urinary tract infection.  We discovered that she did indeed have such an infection; but we also learned that she has Stage III kidney disease.  It's incurable and the vet expects she'll die within the next couple years.  She's 13.5 years old right now, so that'll be an average life span for a cat.  The house will be quieter and more peaceful without her and that will stink.

Marilynne Robinson defends religion

One of my favorite authors, Marilynne Robinson (author of novels Gilead, Home, and Housekeeping), will be on The Daily Show tonight.  She'll be talking about her new non-fiction book, "Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of Self."  I haven't read this, but I see from its WaPo review that it is, at least in part, a defense of religion and that she takes on Dawkins and his ilk.  She's an extremely careful, thorough thinker, so I imagine that she does a good job.

Update:  Wow.  That was a bad interview.  I didn't understand anything she said.  Still, I would expect that the book is good.

Someone spends too much time with her gerbils

Good news!  We did not win an award for writing any of the worst sentences of the year.

This year's winner is Molly Ringle for this counterproductive simile:

For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity's affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss--a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity's mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world's thirstiest gerbil.

I'm betting Molly has also won an award for worst kisser on the planet.

You're a King, BUT

This is brilliant.  The idea.  The execution.  Perfect.  (And a great marketing ploy for the ad agency itself, Leo Burnett.)

Word count in novels

A blog post by "Blue" lists the word counts of a few dozen novels, including a bunch of classics and some PEN/Faulkner winners.  Blue doesn't exactly identify a source for the info; in the Comments, Blue says they're taken partly from teacher materials and partly from Amazon that used to provide word counts but does not do so anymore.

Median word count in the "classic" novels listed is 99,341; average is 136,604.  War and Peace (version unspecified) is 587,287 and Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged is only about 25,000 short of that.  The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay has 216,020.

Anyone have a source for word counts?  I tried the Library of Congress, but I don't see this info there.

Update 1/14/11: Here is a source for word counts. In fact, that's probably the source used by "Blue" above. H/t to Lars Knudsen who commented on Blue's post.

Labels

I am slowly but surely adding tags or "Labels" to our posts.  I've made it through about 500 posts.  Just 2300+ more to go.  (Yeah, I'm not sure I'm that motivated.) The labels serve as an index; they're an additional tool to help find things.  Feel free to add or edit tags.

Update:  Two things:

1)  I've been inconsistent -- whimsical, really -- in choosing whether to tag a post liberally or sparsely and whether to include the topics that appear in the Comments.  Do not try to infer rhyme or reason; there is none.

2) I believe we can "hide" the Labels on the posts, so if you don't like the way they alter the look of the blog, we can fix that.

Comcast's role in delivering audience to Fox News

I've just discovered something unsettling.

We intended to downgrade our Comcast cable TV service for the summer, from the ridiculously priced $80/month package (with gazillions of channels, but no HBO etc)  to their $10/mo plan that would give us decent reception, but no cable channels.  I called to make the service change and the customer service person explained that if we made that change, our internet service would increase by $10 and oh-by-the-way we offer a $20/month "family" cable package that would include lots of channels, though not all that we have been getting.  In other words, for the same amount we were willing to pay for zero cable channels, we could have a bunch of cable channels.  She rattled off the list of channels that I didn't pay much attention to since we were prepared to not have any.

Here's the strangest thing:  the "family" cable package includes Fox News Channel, but does not include MSNBC.  This gives me a new perspective on audience numbers for cable news shows.

Happy Birthday, LJ!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LJ



A present for you. Pretend your name is Terrance.



Update: The birthday boy, Terrance, is the first dancer appearing in the video posted immediately below.

Is it rock or is it opera?

Here's a video from a recent one of Adam's tour shows.  Vocals are amazing. This is Sleepwalker, a song on his album.

I'm thinking maybe he was taking it easy while recovering from a cold the night we saw him, because he didn't sing like this that night.

NYT on Adam's concerts at the Nokia

Jon Pareles, writing for NYT, seems to have felt the same way I did, but he does a better job expressing it:

[W]hile Mr. Lambert has worked in musical theater since the early 1990s, his performance was by turns rushed and sluggish: groups of set pieces punctuated by his band playing in the dark, while Mr. Lambert changed to a different black costume.

His greatest asset is his voice, which is made for melodramatic crescendos and heroic upward leaps. But for many songs, it was all but buried in overeager band arrangements and phantom backing voices — tricks that lesser singers hide behind. Eventually, he calmed the band for a drumless segment, though the singing was more showy than intimate.
[Jump]
There’s a big-voiced showman in Mr. Lambert, ready to surface when he worries less about pleasing everyone or hitting his marks.

Adam's Glam Nation Tour at Mystic Lake Casino, Prior Lake, MN

You know how I love him, so you know that it pains me to say this: the show was disappointing.  Part of the problem is a mismatch between the show's budget and Adam's aspirations.  He wants to create a spectacle, an extravaganza, but the show is apparently on too tight a budget to pull that off.  Yet, Adam doesn't want (and the albums songs don't call for) an intimate, organic, non-staged kind of show.  The result is an awkward in-between sort of presentation.  There are costumes, but no set except a short set of aluminum stairs; dancers, but only four of them; a small screen showing static images instead of showing a live feed of a camera showing Adam close up; recorded backing vocals instead of backup singers. There are cool lasers shooting out over the audience, but I assume that's kind of standard for concerts these days.

His vocal performance was, of course, excellent.  Generally, he avoided the super high notes.  I understand this completely.  He's going to do 70 shows in three months and needs to take care of his voice.  Yet his ability to hit those notes is part of what makes his singing thrilling so I was disappointed to not hear that live.

All in all, I would say that the production values are not equal to his talent.

Soaked, performed with just piano accompaniment, was gorgeous.

The set list was:
1. Voodoo
2. Down the Rabbit Hole
3. Ring of Fire!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
4. Fever
5. Sleepwalker
6. Whataya Want From Me
7. Soaked
8. Aftermath
9. Surefire Winners
10. Strut
11. Music Again
12. Broken Open
13. If I Had You
14. Encore:  uptempo, acoustic Mad World

My favorites songs of his are Voodoo, Down the Rabbit Hole, Fever, Sleepwalker and Broken Open, so the song order was sort of upside down for me, with the best stuff near the beginning.  Ring of Fire live was fabulous and will be a special moment on tour when he sings it at the Ryman in Nashville, after Randy Travis (or was it Simon Cowell?) declared during Idol that Adam's Ring of Fire wouldn't go over very well at the Grand Ole Opry.

Adam has said the set list will change and evolve as the tour goes on.  He's been doing acoustic, jazzy, improved improvised Whole Lotta Love for an encore at most venues.  He sang Madonna's Ray of Light during a sound check recently, and it often seems to be the case that sound check songs turn up in sets later.  He sounded great on it; it's a really good song for him.  (As you may recall, if you actually read my Adam posts, Monte Pittman, Adam's guitar player and musical director, was Madonna's guitar player.)

The venue had horrific sound problems for Allison Iraheta's and Orianthi's sets.  The instruments were so so so loud that the singers' voices were amplified to distortion, so it was as if you couldn't hear them singing at all.  We had to leave the auditorium during Orianthi's set because of this.  The sound was good for Adam's set, though.

The financial aspect of the music business must be so frustrating for artists.  Gaga was reportedly in the red with her tour until a couple months ago, in spite of being the most expensive, most sought-after ticket around the world and in spite of having a slew of hit songs and huge record sales.

Unaccustomed Earth

This is a collection of short stories from Jhumpa Lahiri, author of The Namesake (novel; made into a movie) and Interpreter of Maladies (short stories).  Unaccustomed Earth explores the experiences of immigrants from India, their children and grandchildren.  Beautifully written.

Nathan Coulter, Remembering, A World Lost - Three Short Novels, Wendell Berry

I love Wendell Berry's fiction.  I love his concept to tell the intertwined stories of many families, across generations, in a non-linear way in many works each of which can stand on its own.  I love the understated, quiet, calm tone of his writing. I love his appreciation of beauty in the simple.  I love his portrayal of the black sheeps in families.  I love his romantic portrayal of land and family farming and physical labor.  I love that his lawyer character is honest and good.  I love that there's a map and genealogy tree that is a useful supplement to his works. I love his portrayal of drama-free, steadfast marriage.  I love his portrayal of small community life in which there is no anonymity and, except in rare circumstances, everyone must just make do with everyone else in the community. I love his portrayal of a time and place in which parents knew more than their kids about that which the kids were going to do for a living (farm), with parents educating their kids by working side by side while the kids are respectful sponges. I love reading about kids growing-up where they had land and time to explore.

Dreamers of the Day

Mary Doria Russell wrote two novels (The Sparrow (sci-fi) and Thread of Grace (historical fiction)) that we've read for book club that I liked a lot.  She's a fan of Walter Miller and wrote a forward for a recent publication of Canticle for Leibowitz.

The premise is absurd.  In 1921, a middle-aged school teacher from Ohio retires and takes a trip to Cairo during the Cairo Peace Conference at which was born Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan.  On her first day in Cairo, by happenstance, Agnes meets Lawrence of Arabia, Gertrude Stein and their friends.  She hangs out with them and has a fling (her first ever) with some guy who may or may not be a spy.  I knew this much about it before I began reading and recognized the ridiculousness of the premise, but I thought that Mary Doria Russell was so supremely skilled that she could make a believable story out of this.  Alas, no.

Update:  One more thing.  Agnes meets Lawrence because her dog causes a stir at the hotel.  She meets the maybe-spy when he comments on her dog.  Obvious plot device is obvious.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

This was a book club pick. I had pitched it, in part on LJ's suggestion.

The story is a re-imagining of Hamlet (or of The Lion King, if you prefer), set in rural Wisconsin in the mid-to-late 1900s.  The Sawtelle family is in the business of breeding and training dogs, as it has been for a couple generations.  They do not breed according to customary breeding practices, but instead find dogs with remarkable qualities (temperament, intelligence, etc.) and introduce them into the breeding population.  Before their dogs are sold into homes, they spend a year and half training them and recording the results of training, and use that data to better the lineage of the Sawtelle dogs.

The main character is Edgar who is not deaf but cannot speak.  This makes him similar to the dogs in the sense that he has a communication barrier; Edgar and his family develop a custom sign language to be able to communicate.  I appreciated this focus on communication because I find that 70% of successful dog training is about learning to communicate with your dog.  (The other 30% is operant conditioning; good training has virtually nothing to do with dominance or getting your dog to "obey".)

Some of the chapters are narrated by Almondine, an old dog with whom Edgar has grown up.  I think Wroblewski does a beautiful job of presenting dog thought in a unique way.  He makes Almondine something of a poet, and I preferred this to the usual approach in which authors turn the dogs into not-very-intelligent people.

I was hooked from the beginning and didn't want to put it down.  It wasn't slow for me at all.  I do have a couple quibbles with the ending.  Since they're spoilers, I'll slip behind the cut.

If I Had You

I'm working on a (not entirely positive) review of Adam's show. In the meantime, enjoy the music video for his next single, If I Had You. It's a straight-up disco tune, if you ask me. The video features oodles of Adam's real-life friends, many of whom are famous to Adam's fans. Watch for Allison Iraheta (the redhead on Season 8 of Idol).

VH1 TV Shows | Music Videos | Celebrity Photos | News & Gossip

Flaws in Dartmouth Atlas' health care cost analysis

Have to cite this because Bismarck, ND and Houston are mentioned in the same sentence and how often does that happen?

But the real difference in costs between, say, Houston and Bismarck, N.D., may result less from how doctors work than from how patients live. Houstonians may simply be sicker and poorer than their Bismarck counterparts. Also, nurses in Houston tend to be paid more than those in North Dakota because the cost of living is higher in Houston. Neither patients’ health nor differences in prices are fully considered by the Dartmouth Atlas.

I've always wanted to be a drummer in a band..

this guy makes me jealous....ah, not really.

Twitter as social commentary

Speaks for itself (here).

Oil subsidies

This is a topic we covered ages ago. Kate Sheppard, writing at Ezra's WaPo blog, discusses the subsidies that flow to the exploiters of fossil fuels.

Even that [$39 billion over 10 years that would result from Obama-proposed cuts to subsidies] would only be a fraction of what we hand over to fossil fuels every year. The government spent $72.5 billion on fossil fuels between 2002 and 2008, an analysis from the Environmental Law Institute found last year. The government directly spent $16.3 billion on petroleum, natural gas, and coal products, and gave the industry another $53.9 billion in the form of tax breaks.

Testing the embedding of an audio player and audio file

Testing how to embed audio clips with an audio player. Here; have a bit of Slash talking about Adam:

Update: Cannot get this to work. Ought to be easier than embedding video, but it's not.

Update II:  As an unintended consequence of my efforts here, I may have turned the blog into a podcast.  Oy.  Why is this difficult when video is easy?  Back to the drawing board.

Go To FileFactory.com

Update III: OK. That's a huge and ugly player, but it works!!! I'll see if I can find a better looking one.

Update IV: Because it's so much easier to embed video, some user forums describe turning your audio file into a video by adding a picture, then uploading to youtube.



GRRRRR - doesn't work Test

Apparently, being a guitar tech for a band has its frustrations

Cute challenge

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to find something cuter than this:

Winnie Cooper fantasy

She's in Maxim this month. Her clothing is not.

New music from Trent Reznor

Here. For LJ.

Did I mention...

I'm going to see Adam in concert on June 12?!!!!!!!!!!!

Glam Nation Tour

We have tickets to Adam's tour show June 12 at the Mystic Lake Casino, just a hop and a skip from Minneapolis!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  The shows that have been announced are at pretty small venues (2000-3000 people) which means demand exceeds supply.  (Scalper/reseller tickets are going for 2-4 times face value and they're not really even on sale yet to the general public.)  Small venues also mean that there's nothing but great seats and an amazing chance to hear his voice in a room with decent acoustics.

Allison Iraheta is one of his opening acts. 

So far, no tour dates announced in the South, but more dates and venues will be announced later.

I'm shocked...SHOCKED to find that gambling is going on in here

Roger Lowenstein's op-ed for NYT yesterday advocates for: 1) trading derivatives on exchanges and in standard contracts; and 2) banning or at least regulating credit default swaps. These seem like eminently reasonable suggestions.

Adam at River Rock

This is Adam singing Mad World at a concert Friday at River Rock Casino and Resort in Vancouver:
It's all great, but I'm particularly fond of the improv starting midway through. Lyrics are unnecessary.

"None of us is as smart as all of us"

I find this fascinating:

In one study, groups and individuals were given a complicated card game called the Wason selection task. Seventy-five percent of the groups solved it, but only 14 percent of individuals did.

From David Brooks' column yesterday.