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| Mr. Hellman is wearing a red shirt and a two-tone ball cap in this photo taken at the Strawberry Music Festival, Camp Mather, California, 2007 |
December 18, 2011
Warren Hellman, July 25,1934 - December 18, 2011
Warren Hellman is the only billionaire I've ever said a word to, and it was complimentary, mostly. I didn't bring up the part about the mayonnaise, which I abhor. His Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival was a grand patrician gesture, a weekend of free music in Golden Gate Park which greatly pleased the hundreds of thousands of people who attended each year. I don't know what provisions he's made for continuing the festival after his death, if any, and losing that would be a sad thing. I'm pretty sure they'll be putting his damn mayonnaise on everything forever and ever, though.
December 16, 2011
Christopher Hitchens, April 13, 1949 – December 15, 2011
Christopher Hitchens was an extremist steeped in the refinements of London literary culture. He wrote well, especially in the key of opprobrium. He eviscerated Kissinger in print, and even took on recieved wisdom regarding Mother Theresa, complicating her sainthood with a contrary reading of her place in India.
Galvanized by their plight under Sadaam Hussein, Christopher Hitchens strongly favored the cause of the brutalized Kurdish people. It's a mugs game to pick sides in the Middle East, locus of the greatest concentration of aggrieved peoples per hectare in the world, and Hitchens saw the logic of his alleigance [sorry but i cant even spell the word —p.r.] put to the ultimate test in the runup to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. He couldn't help but hope the despised Hussein would be removed, and favored the war. He didn't relent when the causus belli was shown to be so much whole cloth soon after the invasion, followed almost immediately by years of score-settling on the part of all the aggrieved of Iraq, whose balance sheets stretch continuously back five millennia in recorded history now, creating, for example, in that band of foothills sloping eastward from Asia Minor to Persia north of Mesopotamia a coherent swath of culture that flowered emphatically with Urartu all those long years ago and by virtue of the vicissitudes in that same place became what Hitchens cared to call the Kurds, holders of the debt owed to them by their history, aggrieved to this day by its denial, who may yet benefit from what's said to have ended yesterday. But still.
Public argument has long been an institution in London, and Hitchens was a master of argument there before his arrival in America. In public Hitchens spoke with lucidity and force. His rhetoric was full of the jugular-seeking barb. Speech for him was often enough an offensive weapon pointed at his opponent rather than the topic at hand.
He was not a fool. He was widely read and could write coherently about the books he confronted. He liked to drink and smoke. He became a U.S. citizen after long residence here persuing a career as a renowned journalist. Cancer of the throat killed him. He died yesterday.
Galvanized by their plight under Sadaam Hussein, Christopher Hitchens strongly favored the cause of the brutalized Kurdish people. It's a mugs game to pick sides in the Middle East, locus of the greatest concentration of aggrieved peoples per hectare in the world, and Hitchens saw the logic of his alleigance [sorry but i cant even spell the word —p.r.] put to the ultimate test in the runup to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. He couldn't help but hope the despised Hussein would be removed, and favored the war. He didn't relent when the causus belli was shown to be so much whole cloth soon after the invasion, followed almost immediately by years of score-settling on the part of all the aggrieved of Iraq, whose balance sheets stretch continuously back five millennia in recorded history now, creating, for example, in that band of foothills sloping eastward from Asia Minor to Persia north of Mesopotamia a coherent swath of culture that flowered emphatically with Urartu all those long years ago and by virtue of the vicissitudes in that same place became what Hitchens cared to call the Kurds, holders of the debt owed to them by their history, aggrieved to this day by its denial, who may yet benefit from what's said to have ended yesterday. But still.
Public argument has long been an institution in London, and Hitchens was a master of argument there before his arrival in America. In public Hitchens spoke with lucidity and force. His rhetoric was full of the jugular-seeking barb. Speech for him was often enough an offensive weapon pointed at his opponent rather than the topic at hand.
He was not a fool. He was widely read and could write coherently about the books he confronted. He liked to drink and smoke. He became a U.S. citizen after long residence here persuing a career as a renowned journalist. Cancer of the throat killed him. He died yesterday.
December 02, 2011
November 27, 2011
Details suggest taxpayers paid a price beyond dollars…
A fresh narrative of the financial crisis of 2007 to 2009 emerges from 29,000 pages of Fed documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and central bank records of more than 21,000 transactions. While Fed officials say that almost all of the loans were repaid and there have been no losses, details suggest taxpayers paid a price beyond dollars as the secret funding helped preserve a broken status quo and enabled the biggest banks to grow even bigger. —BloombergDo tell.
November 18, 2011
November 13, 2011
October 18, 2011
October 13, 2011
hashtag revolution
"Do you understand that 400 people in this country have more wealth than the bottom 150 MILLION? Does that sound fair to you?"
—fervent comment found here.
It depends on how well the bottom 150 million are provided for. For my money, the 400 can go ahead and be that wealthy if and only if the needs of those 150 million are adequately met, and when that happens, the 400 can go ahead and try to be as wealthy as the bottom 250 or 300 million, on the same plan, for all I care. It doesn't matter to me how much the 400 are worth compared to any other fraction of society so long as the 150 million, the 250 million, the 300 million, the 99% of us, don't have to eat shit for that to be the case.
October 10, 2011
The Polo Field To Date, October 2011
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| A View of the Polo Field From The East October 2, 2011 |
Fifty years ago, on October 7, 1961, the Polo Field in Golden Gate Park was occupied by one of the largest crowds in San Francisco history. By most accounts half a million people gathered there that day. I was one of them, squatting on the grassy berm above the playing field far across a vast sea of people from the stage where Father Peyton led us in the Rosary.
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| A View of the Polo Field From The North October 7, 1961, via |
A little more that five years later I was at the Human Be-in, held on that same field. It was a much smaller crowd that day, but in many ways equally impressive. There was a great deal of chanting on both occasions, I seem to recall.
October 08, 2011
October 05, 2011
August 23, 2011
Jerry Leiber, April 25, 1933–August 22, 2011
As much as anybody, he deserves thanks for rock 'n roll.
August 11, 2011
August 03, 2011
August is Weedmonth
A dog, snarling with bared teeth, charges you. You have a heavy stick in one hand and a gun in the other.
Do you …
A. Thwart it with the gun.
or
B. Thwart it with the stick.
There's a distinction to be made between reason and logic. Some might hasten to work logically through to an irrefragable argument for A over B, trusting that reason might prevail in reaching a solution to the dog's threat, so that the matter, succinctly decided, might shine as a beacon of best practice in all such future encounters. Others might contrarily chose to support preference B, no matter what, traditionally favoring a cudgel in hand in every dealing with a dog from the get-go.
In this narrowed window of rational choice an argument might be made. Marshalling all the main and ancillary points required to support positions for or against one or the other of these fundamental choices will take a non-trivial amount of time and effort. N.B.The stipulated dog does not inflict itself, but remains suspended in all respects while this sort of argument runs its course.
Individuals entering into such an argument become attached to, proprietary of, the logical structures the've contributed or endorsed in searching their way through to what they submit is a reasonable end to the matter, and often enough are so willingly invested in supporting the logic that leads them to claims about the fairly decided thing they strive for that they will continue to defend that logic long after it has become abundantly clear that an encompassing view of the list of alternatives to the leading question Do you …, has not yet been exhausted, with all the explanatory material inserted here in the text merely serving to approximate the effect of the great opening intercessionary salvos of argument arising whenever gun or stick is called for, but which alternatives must at the very least include
C. Trust the fence.
D. Profit!
Do you …
A. Thwart it with the gun.
or
B. Thwart it with the stick.
There's a distinction to be made between reason and logic. Some might hasten to work logically through to an irrefragable argument for A over B, trusting that reason might prevail in reaching a solution to the dog's threat, so that the matter, succinctly decided, might shine as a beacon of best practice in all such future encounters. Others might contrarily chose to support preference B, no matter what, traditionally favoring a cudgel in hand in every dealing with a dog from the get-go.
In this narrowed window of rational choice an argument might be made. Marshalling all the main and ancillary points required to support positions for or against one or the other of these fundamental choices will take a non-trivial amount of time and effort. N.B.The stipulated dog does not inflict itself, but remains suspended in all respects while this sort of argument runs its course.
Individuals entering into such an argument become attached to, proprietary of, the logical structures the've contributed or endorsed in searching their way through to what they submit is a reasonable end to the matter, and often enough are so willingly invested in supporting the logic that leads them to claims about the fairly decided thing they strive for that they will continue to defend that logic long after it has become abundantly clear that an encompassing view of the list of alternatives to the leading question Do you …, has not yet been exhausted, with all the explanatory material inserted here in the text merely serving to approximate the effect of the great opening intercessionary salvos of argument arising whenever gun or stick is called for, but which alternatives must at the very least include
C. Trust the fence.
D. Profit!
July 14, 2011
BREAKING: After 168 Years, Britain's News Of The World Vomits Its Last Edition
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| Mr. Murdoch and his son discussing the British phone hacking matter with Paul McMullan. |
July 06, 2011
Egypt
…as it ever was:
Four months after the fall of Hosni Mubarek, the winners have begun to take shape. The military averted the prospect of a Gamal Mubarek succession and maintained the power it has held since Nasser’s coup d’état of 1956. The Moslem Brotherhood has emerged from decades of persecution to potentially become new Egypt’s new powerbrokers, and the Salifist groups, once outlawed, are now organizing political parties. So far, Egypt’s revolution has bolstered the standing of all parties, except the young, secular, progressive activists whose dreams and courage first ignited it.
—Christian Vachon at The Rumpus
July 04, 2011
June 16, 2011
The Half-Life Of Other News
“Ft. Calhoun is the designated spent fuel storage facility for the entire state of Nebraska…and maybe for more than one state. Calhoun stores its spent fuel in ground-level pools which are underwater anyway – but they are open at the top. When the Missouri river pours in there, it’s going to make Fukushima look like an x-ray.”
—Tom Burnett on the underreported story of Nebraska's Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant, currrently submerged beneath a national wave of weiner jokes. Presumably Burnett is concerned that the flooding Missouri River, adjacent to the plant, will wash away some, or even lots, of the spent nuclear fuel stored in outdoor pools around the plant, where an electrical fire in the control room interrupted the regular order of business a week ago.
Bloomsday! For Reals!
It's all aligned now, you see, the proper anniversary of Bloomsday, when the calendar comes round as it will from time to time, with the day of the week, Thursday, and the month, June, and its sixteenth day, all three essential components matched up once more, identical to those canonically given in the famous book "Ulysses" by James Joyce.
Here's the fabulous RTÉ Radio dramatization, courtesy of the Internet Archive:
I'll be over here leafing through the thing as is my way on Bloomsday.
Here's the fabulous RTÉ Radio dramatization, courtesy of the Internet Archive:
I'll be over here leafing through the thing as is my way on Bloomsday.
June 14, 2011
May 30, 2011
May 24, 2011
May 20, 2011
He Walk On Gilded Splinters
Dave Bry at The Awl posts "13 other songs about Voodoo, Juju, Mojo, and Witchcraft" to go with a video by Random Axe called "The Hex" and fails to include a song by Dr. John. Specifically, this song, "Walk on Gilded Splinters," a seven-and-a-half minute discursus on just those matters.
May 15, 2011
May 14, 2011
April 29, 2011
April 24, 2011
Happy Computus
Putting Easter where it belongs was as grave and momentous a battle as the Roman-inspired calendar has ever experienced, with the class of those who cared to note the event eventually splintered into factions which continue to this day to maintain their own prescription for dating each year's Easter.
To say "Happy Easter" today of all days perhaps inadvertently endorses an argument that had them shouting from the lecterns all over Christendom some time ago and hasn't ended yet. To say "Happy Computus" is much more even-handed.
To say "Happy Easter" today of all days perhaps inadvertently endorses an argument that had them shouting from the lecterns all over Christendom some time ago and hasn't ended yet. To say "Happy Computus" is much more even-handed.
April 23, 2011
Hazel Dickens, June 1, 1935-April 22, 2011
Daddy died a miner and grandpa he did too,
I'll bet this coal will kill me before my working days is through
And a hole this dark and dirty an early grave I find
And I plan to make a union for the ones I leave behind
Stand up boys, let the bosses know
Turn you buckets over, turn your lanterns low
There's fire in our hearts and fire in our soul
but there ain't gonna be no fire in the hole
I'll bet this coal will kill me before my working days is through
And a hole this dark and dirty an early grave I find
And I plan to make a union for the ones I leave behind
Stand up boys, let the bosses know
Turn you buckets over, turn your lanterns low
There's fire in our hearts and fire in our soul
but there ain't gonna be no fire in the hole
April 16, 2011
April 15, 2011
April 08, 2011
April 07, 2011
April 04, 2011
Some Last Notes Before Leaving
I see more than one site pointing to this video of of LCD Soundsystem's last show, performed awhile back at Madison Square Garden, almost four hours of that kind of music. Here they are more briefly on the Colbert Show in their very last television appearance:
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| LCD Soundsystem - I Can Change | ||||
| ||||
April 02, 2011
Capital Crime
People are subject to the death penatly for some crimes. Not infrequently, innocent people are convicted of capital crimes, and if the Supreme Court is any judge, they are not entitled to any recompense should prosecutors proactively interfered with their right to a fair trial.
Not all people are subject to the death penalty, which in theory should weigh upon every person equally. Corporations are a class of persons who can do anything they choose without fear of extirpation. But if it makes sense for other people, it makes sense for them. There are some crimes they should be made to die for. To be fair.
April 01, 2011
Rueful emoticon goes here
This past weekend Talk of the multiverse by Brian Greene on C-SPAN [rebroadcast tomorrow, April 2, 8a.m. PDT] lit on the notion of a great set of universes expressing all possible paths of physical progress emanating from whatever beginning we may choose to assign. Each outcome has a range of possibilities (built on the existential premise that something will eventually happen) and each probability, in a suitably ergodic setting, is eventually expressed, each leading off into its own range of possible universes in turn. Probablities collapse around some value in the event, and off each universe goes from there on its own peculiar way.
Something will eventually happen is the existential premise of baseball, too.*
So, for example, Edgar Renteria's home run in the deciding game of the 2010 World Series had a probability of occuring before the fact, along with the more or less knowable likelihood of each and every other possible outcome of his at-bat as well. In the event, in our universe, he hit a home run, I'm pleased to note, and in that moment of decoherence denied every other universe where some other probable outcome obtains, where Renteria is not even a baseball player, or hits into a double play instead. All possible alternate iterations of universes are counter to our fact, since he did hit that thing, we know for sure, a home run once improbable improbable no more, forever, for us.
Our universe is the universe in which redoubtable Renteria did so stroke that decisive shot. All those other universes are all well and good in theory, but in practice, in the universe we've got, that homer is the done deal, I'll have you know. Such knowledge emerges from the well-recorded resolution of a set of probabilities into that singularity of a stroke put on the ball by Renteria. We must believe that anything probable may well occur in the future. It is the nature of probabilities to probably happen at their naturally given rate, and we can know that any of them might naturally occur, without being able to do more than believe in the likeliest outcome with any certainty at all. Nevertheless we can rightfully put aside impertinent universes that do not carry us along with Renteria's known home run to our present state.
*The highlight of Opening Day for the Giants was the play of Brandon Belt in his first game in the majors, who played a highly credible first base and went 1 for 3 with a base on balls at the plate, battling Dodgers closer Broxton through an eight-pitch at-bat that ended the unfortunate game with a liner to third.
[In many universes it is said catcher Posey does not make the rookie mistake of trying to force a play with bases loaded and two outs. He's got Tim Lincecum out there on the mound in all pertinent universes up til then. Insert for crying out loud here. All he needs to do is corral the ball and get it back out to his pitcher. A flub on Posey's part, pure and simple, leading us to the present sad state of our known universe…]
March 31, 2011
March 30, 2011
Nearing the Real 2010
Spring Training is over, the stiffness of a winter away sluffed off now by vigorous repetition of all the characteristic motions of the game in preparation for the actual Season, the one ending with what those in baseball call a World Championship.
The World Series trophy won by the San Francisco Giants in 2010 was sent out on a long proud progress by the club, visiting among other spots the site of the last Polo Grounds the Giants played in before leaving for San Francisco. And, as it turned out, the thing itself came to Santa Cruz as well.
The Santa Cruz Boardwalk is the perfect house for such a public spectacle. It's got gaudy public celebration built right in. Two lines formed .
The World Series trophy won by the San Francisco Giants in 2010 was sent out on a long proud progress by the club, visiting among other spots the site of the last Polo Grounds the Giants played in before leaving for San Francisco. And, as it turned out, the thing itself came to Santa Cruz as well.
The Santa Cruz Boardwalk is the perfect house for such a public spectacle. It's got gaudy public celebration built right in. Two lines formed .
 |
| The Tour reached all the way to Santa Cruz |
 |
| Lots of people lined up to have a photo taken with the Trophy |
 |
| Others formed a shorter line for the chance to merely sidle by at a respectable distance from the thing itself |
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| The photographer kneeling right is, I aver, in the very instant during which the official photographer busies himself picturing the same happy people, recording for the public his best view of what will appear on the front page of the next day's Santa Cruz Sentinel. Mis-en-meta-abyme? |
February 28, 2011
CSI: Edwardian London
From The Case of Oscar Brodski (c.1912) by R. Austin Freeman:
"May I trouble you for your lens, Jervis?" he said; and, as I handed him my doublet ready opened, the inspector brought the lantern close to the dead face and leaned forward eagerly. In his usual systematic fashion, Thorndyke slowly passed the lens along the whole range of sharp, uneven teeth, and then, bringing it back to the centre, examined with more minuteness the upper incisors. At length, very delicately, he picked out with his forceps some minute object from between two of the upper front teeth and held it in the focus of the lens. Anticipating his next move, I took a labelled microscope-slide from the case and handed it to him together with a dissecting needle, and, as he transferred the object to the slide and spread it out with the needle, I set up the little microscope on the shelf.
"A drop of Farrant and a cover-glass, please, Jervis," said Thorndyke.
I handed him the bottle, and, when he had let a drop of the mounting fluid fall gently on the object and put on the cover-slip, he placed the slide on the stage of the microscope and examined it attentively.
February 23, 2011
Roundup of Today's Authentic Roadrunner Sightings
From Norwood (1966) by Charles Portis:
"…I like the Road Runner."
"Yeah, I do too."
"I could watch that scutter for an hour."
"I believe I could too."
The bread man began to rumble with quiet laughter. "That coyote or whatever he is, a wolf or something, every time he gets up on a cliff or somewhere with a new plan, why the Road Runner comes along on some skates or has him some new invention like a rocket or a big wrecker's ball and just busts that coyote a good one." He laughed some more, then fell into repose. In a minute or two his face clouded with dark memory. "Noveltoons are not any good at all," he said. "It's usually a shoemaker and a bunch of damn mice singing. When one of them comes on I get up and go get me a sack of corn or something."
February 17, 2011
February 14, 2011
February 13, 2011
"Atum" of the Patriarch, heh heh.
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| Atum (Ra manifested at sunset) by way of Wikipedia. |
Hosni Mubarek, deprecated as ruler of Egypt, has transferred himself to Sharm el Sheik, which is a lot like not being in Egypt, for most values of Egypt, and probably as far as he might be expected to get away from Egypt for now given the understandable reluctance of other nations to take him in and the countervailing bulk of Egypt's people insisting that he must nevertheless go.
He didn't take his form of government with him, but rather left it in the hands of the military. The state of emergency persists as the sun sets in Sharm el Sheik.
Atum goes off. What will replace him but Ra again in the morning?
February 10, 2011
Civilization 6000
Currently Cairo deserves attention. Egypt has been expressing civilization in an unbroken sequence of daily events for more than six thousand years. People who've inherited what's resulted from that prodigious expenditure of time and effort are not presently satisfied with their lot. People of Cairo have dragged with them to Midan al-Tahrir [Liberation Square] for the past couple of weeks all the burden of influences those six thousand years of events have bestowed on them thus far, and have demanded, as immediate recompense for the condition in which they now find themselves, that the one in charge of Egypt, Hosni Mubarek, be removed.
There are other demands that may or may not have unconditional support from everyone in Tahrir Square. Oh, sure, cancelling the State of Emergency declared by Mubarek shortly after Sadat's assassination and under which he's ruled as he sees fit for the past thirty years. That. Probably only the revanchist few in the crowd who think that a permanent state of emergency is as likely an organizing principle of civilization as any other, would argue that, yes, Mubarek must go, but the state of emergency should continue with somebody else in charge of it. It's really not that kind of crowd. Not that such calculation is absent outside Tahrir [COUGH USA COUGH].
Mubarak, at any rate, is scheduled to ease himself out in less than half an hour. Yet another in that yet unbroken line of momentous Egyptian events to add to the thus-far continuous lot of them.
UPDATE: Mubarak draws the line at relinquishing power, admits that the state of emergency just might be eased eventually at some unspecified future date given suitable conditions down the road. Ahem.
There are other demands that may or may not have unconditional support from everyone in Tahrir Square. Oh, sure, cancelling the State of Emergency declared by Mubarek shortly after Sadat's assassination and under which he's ruled as he sees fit for the past thirty years. That. Probably only the revanchist few in the crowd who think that a permanent state of emergency is as likely an organizing principle of civilization as any other, would argue that, yes, Mubarek must go, but the state of emergency should continue with somebody else in charge of it. It's really not that kind of crowd. Not that such calculation is absent outside Tahrir [COUGH USA COUGH].
Mubarak, at any rate, is scheduled to ease himself out in less than half an hour. Yet another in that yet unbroken line of momentous Egyptian events to add to the thus-far continuous lot of them.
UPDATE: Mubarak draws the line at relinquishing power, admits that the state of emergency just might be eased eventually at some unspecified future date given suitable conditions down the road. Ahem.
February 02, 2011
Happy Birthday Jimmy
Every year on this date James Joyce's birthday pops up to remind us that there will be at least six more weeks of Logos.
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| Drawing by Augustus John |
January 26, 2011
January 08, 2011
January 01, 2011
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