Parts of it are shrill. The ending, with Broderella looking up from the floor of the bowling alley to announce, "I am finished," is handled masterfully.
Download it, or have a printed copy made through Lulu.
January 24, 2008
For Your Reading Pleasure
The Editors at the Poor Man Institute have a new book out, their first, called "Liberal Fascism."
Parts of it are shrill. The ending, with Broderella looking up from the floor of the bowling alley to announce, "I am finished," is handled masterfully.
Download it, or have a printed copy made through Lulu.
Parts of it are shrill. The ending, with Broderella looking up from the floor of the bowling alley to announce, "I am finished," is handled masterfully.
Download it, or have a printed copy made through Lulu.
January 23, 2008
House at Pooneil Corners
I don't know if this bit of civic exuberance go the band in any serious long term trouble, but I do know that no one inhabited the glorious portentiousness of psychedelic music any better than Jefferson Airplane. From a rooftop in 1968:
[…]
Seas from clouds will wash off the ashes of violence
Left as the memory of men
There will be no survivors my friend.
Suddenly everyone will look surprised
Stars spinning wheels in the skies
Sun is scrambled in their eyes
While the moon circles like a vulture.
Someone stood at the window and cried
"One tear and I thought that would stop the war,
But someone is killing me. Killing me."
And that's the last hour to think anymore.
Jelly and juice and bubbles - bubbles on the floor.
Castles on cliffs vanish
Cliffs like heaps of rubbish
Seen from the stars hour by hour
As splintered scraps and black powder.
From here to heaven is a scar
Dead center - deep as death
All the idiots have left
[…]
January 18, 2008
Bobby Fischer, dead today in Iceland at age 64
Here's what came to be called back then The Game of the Century, the famous meeting of 13-year old Fischer and Donald Byrne played in New York City on October 17, 1956. If you go to Alexandra Kosteniuk's site and paste the moves of the game into the text field there you can use her nice player to watch the thing unfold.
1.Nf3 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 Bg7 4.d4 0-0 5.Bf4 d5 6.Qb3 dxc4 7.Qxc4 c6 8.e4 Nbd7 9.Rd1 Nb6 10.Qc5 Bg4 11.Bg5 Na4 12.Qa3 Nxc3 13.bxc3 Nxe4 14.Bxe7 Qb6 15.Bc4 Nxc3 16.Bc5 Rfe8+ 17.Kf1 Be6 18.Bxb6 Bxc4+ 19.Kg1 Ne2+ 20.Kf1 Nxd4+ 21.Kg1 Ne2+ 22.Kf1 Nc3+ 23.Kg1 axb6 24.Qb4 Ra4 25.Qxb6 Nxd1 26.h3 Rxa2 27.Kh2 Nxf2 28.Re1 Rxe1 29.Qd8+ Bf8 30.Nxe1 Bd5 31.Nf3 Ne4 32.Qb8 b5 33.h4 h5 34.Ne5 Kg7 35.Kg1 Bc5+ 36.Kf1 Ng3+ 37.Ke1 Bb4+ 38.Kd1 Bb3+ 39.Kc1 Ne2+ 40.Kb1 Nc3+ 41.Kc1 Rc2+
January 17, 2008
The Song of Jonah, or, Merit Meets Its Match
You know what glib means. Unquestionably you've been subjected to its uses.
If Jonah Goldberg is a glibertarian, if William Kristol or John Podhoretz can be justly called that, then glibertarians include those who can and do in practice willingly talk just the sort of talk and walk just the sort of walk in public that libertarians recommend we all do for our own good, and make out just fine doing so, if libertarianism can be reduced to the rewarding politics of mining proven reserves of self-interest for a living.
With all of libertarianism's considerable nonsense about the free agency of the political monad of the individual filling their sails, glibertarians, to suit their purposes, uniformly support the selective dismantling of the state on the one hand and, at the same time, while presumably holding the state at an ironic distance with the other hand, but as long as they have the ear of who's in charge of it, publicly encourage the state's most autocratic uses as well. What the hell, it's a career. Say what works and move on up the ladder of success.
Jonah Goldberg has written a much-anticipated book called Liberal Fascism. It was already the fabled thing when first announced what seems like years ago, when the wags first lined up to bray about what turned out to be its long delayed arrival, and much hilarity ensued in the intervening months before publication as various sources took their turns swatting at the inviting piñata of Goldberg's conceit.
All during Liberal Fascism's gestation, Goldberg promised he was really going to bear down this time, to come up with a good one, to redeem in effect the glib in glibertarian by some studious research and solid argument.
Such a promise was never within his power to keep, apparently. Instead, the book is a standing appointment with all that is glib in the rhetoric of glibertarianism, the squaring of the Liberal Fascist circle in the Hitler Smiley Face on its cover the cleverest bit of glib in fact, the rest of it falling to the settled standard of Goldbergian glib familiar from his previously expressed views. I say that with confidence, having never read the book, but merely as a result of having witnessed Goldberg now loosed on the book tour supporting the thing, as in the edited interview with John Stewart found here.
If Jonah Goldberg is a glibertarian, if William Kristol or John Podhoretz can be justly called that, then glibertarians include those who can and do in practice willingly talk just the sort of talk and walk just the sort of walk in public that libertarians recommend we all do for our own good, and make out just fine doing so, if libertarianism can be reduced to the rewarding politics of mining proven reserves of self-interest for a living.
With all of libertarianism's considerable nonsense about the free agency of the political monad of the individual filling their sails, glibertarians, to suit their purposes, uniformly support the selective dismantling of the state on the one hand and, at the same time, while presumably holding the state at an ironic distance with the other hand, but as long as they have the ear of who's in charge of it, publicly encourage the state's most autocratic uses as well. What the hell, it's a career. Say what works and move on up the ladder of success.
Jonah Goldberg has written a much-anticipated book called Liberal Fascism. It was already the fabled thing when first announced what seems like years ago, when the wags first lined up to bray about what turned out to be its long delayed arrival, and much hilarity ensued in the intervening months before publication as various sources took their turns swatting at the inviting piñata of Goldberg's conceit.
All during Liberal Fascism's gestation, Goldberg promised he was really going to bear down this time, to come up with a good one, to redeem in effect the glib in glibertarian by some studious research and solid argument.
Such a promise was never within his power to keep, apparently. Instead, the book is a standing appointment with all that is glib in the rhetoric of glibertarianism, the squaring of the Liberal Fascist circle in the Hitler Smiley Face on its cover the cleverest bit of glib in fact, the rest of it falling to the settled standard of Goldbergian glib familiar from his previously expressed views. I say that with confidence, having never read the book, but merely as a result of having witnessed Goldberg now loosed on the book tour supporting the thing, as in the edited interview with John Stewart found here.
January 16, 2008
John Bolton Visits The Daily Show
John Bolton is taking a breather from the government work to do a book and tour. Last night he appeared on The Daily Show [Part 1.] [Part 2.].
Bolton's expressed policies have tended toward the utterly confrontational in every important public post he's occupied. Previously, Bolton confronted the threat of the UN as Bush's Ambassador to that body, and before that he confronted the threat of North Korea as chief instrument of Bush policy toward that squirrelly, pugnacious government that led directly to the resumption of its nuclear weapons program in response.
In the first part of the Daily Show video, Bolton namechecks Iran as the current big threat facing the United States. Oh, he'd wave a brisk policy or two at Iran if he had the levers of government again, no doubt, doubling down on the catastrophe his unleashed policies have contributed so far. Sure it's all in the book, from what I gather.
Bolton's expressed policies have tended toward the utterly confrontational in every important public post he's occupied. Previously, Bolton confronted the threat of the UN as Bush's Ambassador to that body, and before that he confronted the threat of North Korea as chief instrument of Bush policy toward that squirrelly, pugnacious government that led directly to the resumption of its nuclear weapons program in response.
In the first part of the Daily Show video, Bolton namechecks Iran as the current big threat facing the United States. Oh, he'd wave a brisk policy or two at Iran if he had the levers of government again, no doubt, doubling down on the catastrophe his unleashed policies have contributed so far. Sure it's all in the book, from what I gather.
January 13, 2008
CVSTOS RERVM PRVDENTIA
In The Decline of Classical Languages Bill Posner at Language log quotes Steve Berry's The Alexandria Link (pp. 418-419):
Admittedly I don't know what CVSTOS RERVM PRVDENTIA means. I do get that it's Latin and not Greek, because I know rerum is the Latin thing. I have that much Latin, and also guess English prudence may genuflect toward prudentia in some way. Custos, though, at first glance I'm not sure what it leads to in meaningful English, or even what that sentence would make of itself if my first guess were substituted, leaving me with the phrase C[custom]R[thing]P[prudence] to puzzle over. "Custom thing prudence" is not immediately a sensible sentence in English, and whatever its meaning, CVSTOS RERVM PRVDENTIA was put there to make some sense to passersby by its makers, having taken the trouble to engage the chislers' craft to spell all the words right and line them up there just so on the rock.
In the other book I look to see if CVSTOS RERVM PRVDENTIA is a common Latin phrase, and find that custos is guardian or watchman, a word in Latin whose sound heads for custom in English, but is in fact the name for the other thing entirely. My surmise about custom was wrong, and I can discard all the bother about trying to make sense of what "Custom thing prudence" might entail in English.
But still, that leaves C[watchman]R[thing]P[prudence], and "Watchman thing prudence" doesn't offer up much of a sentence to my kind of English either.
When I first looked at CVSTOS RERVM PRVDENTIA I had zero confidence in my knowledge of the meaning of the word custos, and, say, 95% confidence in my knowledge of the meaning of the word rerum, and as for prudentia, well, I have to admit it's a coinflip between prudence and prudent, the noun of the quality or its readily applicable adjective for all I know, leaving me with at most middling confidence that my initial substitution was appropriate. I went with the noun prudence for no good reason. But if prudentia shades toward prudent then C[watchman]R[thing]P[prudent] says "Watchman thing prudent," and that, if spoken in the stiff-voiced phrasings of Frankenstein's monster, which for all I know was the Roman way as well, would be a readily understood if admittedly gothic way of warning the public to keep an eye out in English.
My confidence in my knowledge of the meaning of custos is way up, having found a quick fact about it, athough my confidence in my knowledge of the meaning of rerum is greater still, having here and there seen the confirmed thing in rerum this and rerum that many times over the decades. As for prudentia, I'll admit to the sort of equivocation in my confidence that only further study might resolve, not that I will.
These words were chiseled into the granite below.
CVSTOS RERVM PRVDENTIA
"Prudence is the guardian of things," he said, translating, but his Greek was good enough to know that the first word could also be read as "wisdom". Either way, the message seemed clear.
Admittedly I don't know what CVSTOS RERVM PRVDENTIA means. I do get that it's Latin and not Greek, because I know rerum is the Latin thing. I have that much Latin, and also guess English prudence may genuflect toward prudentia in some way. Custos, though, at first glance I'm not sure what it leads to in meaningful English, or even what that sentence would make of itself if my first guess were substituted, leaving me with the phrase C[custom]R[thing]P[prudence] to puzzle over. "Custom thing prudence" is not immediately a sensible sentence in English, and whatever its meaning, CVSTOS RERVM PRVDENTIA was put there to make some sense to passersby by its makers, having taken the trouble to engage the chislers' craft to spell all the words right and line them up there just so on the rock.
In the other book I look to see if CVSTOS RERVM PRVDENTIA is a common Latin phrase, and find that custos is guardian or watchman, a word in Latin whose sound heads for custom in English, but is in fact the name for the other thing entirely. My surmise about custom was wrong, and I can discard all the bother about trying to make sense of what "Custom thing prudence" might entail in English.
But still, that leaves C[watchman]R[thing]P[prudence], and "Watchman thing prudence" doesn't offer up much of a sentence to my kind of English either.
When I first looked at CVSTOS RERVM PRVDENTIA I had zero confidence in my knowledge of the meaning of the word custos, and, say, 95% confidence in my knowledge of the meaning of the word rerum, and as for prudentia, well, I have to admit it's a coinflip between prudence and prudent, the noun of the quality or its readily applicable adjective for all I know, leaving me with at most middling confidence that my initial substitution was appropriate. I went with the noun prudence for no good reason. But if prudentia shades toward prudent then C[watchman]R[thing]P[prudent] says "Watchman thing prudent," and that, if spoken in the stiff-voiced phrasings of Frankenstein's monster, which for all I know was the Roman way as well, would be a readily understood if admittedly gothic way of warning the public to keep an eye out in English.
My confidence in my knowledge of the meaning of custos is way up, having found a quick fact about it, athough my confidence in my knowledge of the meaning of rerum is greater still, having here and there seen the confirmed thing in rerum this and rerum that many times over the decades. As for prudentia, I'll admit to the sort of equivocation in my confidence that only further study might resolve, not that I will.
January 12, 2008
Santa Cruz Standard Time
Our conception of what makes night is the precisely the same as theirs, as is our conception of what makes day. From that persective it would seem we might work to reach fundamental agreement on the issue, accomodating our differences into one harmonious truth. And yet in the East they say, "It is night," just when we in the West say, "It is day." We are bound to our experience, not to our helpfully accommodating conceptions. It is day. So there.
January 08, 2008
Sometimes a River Storms Through It
This picture of the San Lorenzo River passing through Santa Cruz was taken in the aftermath of a particularly dramatic storm that battered Northern California last Friday.
The San Lorenzo feeds enough water into the Pacific at Santa Cruz on a yearly basis to earn the name "river," but typically packs all its credentials into a few dramatic episodes each year. In the drier months between late April and late October less water flows in the San Lorenzo than in the average self-respecting creek. In those months its riverbed in Santa Cruz is a protobog of tule and willow and scruffy brush and lounging herons ankledeep in its midriver shallows, through which a narrow course of water meanders in the laziest possible way to exhaust itself against a sandbar that annually blocks the mouth of the river from contact with Monterey Bay.
But commonly in winter storms descend on Santa Cruz from the great weathermaking waters of the the Gulf of Alaska, enormous energetic things gusting with the rain that's the year-round lot of the continent's coast from Juneau to Mendocino, but which in winter pulse vigorously south to engulf as well the coast and inland parts of California during its customary rainy season, whose middle innings reach from November to March.
There's a ridge in the distance in the picture above, and a high point on the ridge from which it drops off to the right. That's the western side of the notch in the mountains through which the San Lorenzo River pours its waters onto the floodplain where Santa Cruz is built. The green berm in the picture on the far side of the river is one of the levees over which the San Lorenzo will manage to flow some day, so prodigious at times is the volume of water transferred from from cloud to watershed north of Santa Cruz in the healthiest of winter storms. Prior to the existence of Santa Cruz the San Lorenzo would just sort of blurt out all the water rushing from that notch in the mountains onto the mile or so of floodplain and let it seek its own sweet way to the ocean, from storm to storm rushing in whatever arbitrary direction it might so incline to reach the beach here or there in any given year.
This is fundamentally uncivil behavior from the point of view of a city which insists on inhabiting the river's floodplain, which is the longstanding and often enough inundated plan of the makers of the city of Santa Cruz.
Fifty years ago a previous version of the plan failed to prevent the San Lorenzo from inundating downtown, much of which, fronting the river, was scraped away and replaced with parking lots and newer buildings in that flood's aftermath. It was determined that what Santa Cruz needed was a storm drain instead of a river running through it, a storm drain of the sort championed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in those days, and so it was built, a modern-made channel for the San Lorenzo. Twenty-five years ago that plan failed and the San Lorenzo flooded Santa Cruz again. The railing in the foreground, the levees on either side of the river, the new bridge connecting Laurel Street downtown to Broadway on the eastern side of the city, all of these are features of the newest plan.
January 07, 2008
A brief politics
Personally I'd prefer the politics of the magic sky fairy sprinkling the sparkling dust on everyone that calls all to a more commonly humane sort of humanity, a politics of instantaneous solutions to all the human bother in this world. That would be my preference, something quick and utterly agreeable. Ah, well.
In the realm of the politics of likelihoods, John Holbo at Crooked Timber asks if Hillary Clinton would be a suitable running mate for Barack Obama, and receives a largely negative response in comments, ranging from the mild demurrer to the thunderous denunciation of the idea.
It's early January, and in less than a month the Democratic Party's nominee will have been decided, the person chosen to replace George Bush as President of the United States. An inordinate number of states have decided for some obscure reason to push their primaries forward this election year, front-loading the primary season and making it likely that a pretty decisive number of delegates will be in the hand of one of the candidate months and months before the Democratic Convention, let alone the election in November.
After February 5, the balance of the primary season up until the Democratic Convention will reveal the play of the real and actual politics of the momentous transfer of power the United States is bent on this year.
In the realm of the politics of likelihoods, John Holbo at Crooked Timber asks if Hillary Clinton would be a suitable running mate for Barack Obama, and receives a largely negative response in comments, ranging from the mild demurrer to the thunderous denunciation of the idea.
It's early January, and in less than a month the Democratic Party's nominee will have been decided, the person chosen to replace George Bush as President of the United States. An inordinate number of states have decided for some obscure reason to push their primaries forward this election year, front-loading the primary season and making it likely that a pretty decisive number of delegates will be in the hand of one of the candidate months and months before the Democratic Convention, let alone the election in November.
After February 5, the balance of the primary season up until the Democratic Convention will reveal the play of the real and actual politics of the momentous transfer of power the United States is bent on this year.
January 05, 2008
House For Sale
Sculptor David Ireland's house is for sale.
Ben Backwell photographed a room of David Ireland's house for sfgate.com., the San Francisco Chronicle's website.
Oakland Museum once staged a major retrospective of David Ireland's work [Real Media steaming video from an episode of KQED's program "Spark" which aired in 2004. It features a few shots of the house in question].
Ben Backwell photographed a room of David Ireland's house for sfgate.com., the San Francisco Chronicle's website.
Oakland Museum once staged a major retrospective of David Ireland's work [Real Media steaming video from an episode of KQED's program "Spark" which aired in 2004. It features a few shots of the house in question].
Belittling the Obvious Point
Obvious point: there’s a hell of a lot more kids listening to 40-year old music today than there were in 1967…
posted by tom hurka in a conversation at Crooked Timber
The point made by tom hurka is obviously mistaken.
Well, if he means by "music" only that subset of it which includes the permanent performances of pieces of music massaged onto some sort of easily replicable medium from which that particular performance can be retrieved and heard over and over again, then yes, as he says, many more kids are seeking out and listening to the Beatles today than listened to recorded performances of Rudy Vallee in 1967. I don't know how many kids were listening to recordings of Rudy Vallee in 1967. If I ever met any at the time, they were discrete about it.
I suspect, though, that Rudee Valee took a turn at most of the following songs and song just like them during his career in popular music, songs in every case overly familiar to anyone alive in America in 1967, songs for the most part 50 years old and more. I chose these titles as arbitrarily as possible from the index at Parlorsong.com, and I claim not only that they were universally known to kids in in 1967, but that they represent just a tiny fraction of commonly known popular songs at least 40 years old that kids had not only heard, but heard reworked and overworked and parodized to a faretheewell, all inflicted on their ears as their fair share of the burden of American Popular Music, howevermuch they may have preferred, times being what they were, to stick to the White Album (whatever tom hurka's current objections to it might be).
After The Ball
1892
Alexander's Ragtime Band
1911
All Alone
1911
The Band Played On
1895
Won't You Come Home, Bill Bailey?
1902
Shine On Harvest Moon
1918
Sidewalks Of New York
1894
The Sheik of Araby
1921
Let Me Call You Sweetheart
1910
Aba Daba Honeymoon
1914
Rockaby Your Baby With A Dixie Melody
1918
January 01, 2008
Best Of, Slough Of Melancholy Division
In the early '70's Jackson Browne's Saturate Before Using traded in an exquistely fashioned melancholia of the kind explored around the same time so successfully by Steely Dan on its first album, melancholia of the kind so utterly attractive to people of a certain age just past their earliest thirst for the simply glorious rhythms of rock n' roll, who find in this sort of music rock n' roll's acute and beautiful expression of their own discomfitted sadness, which sadness, not to go all Young Werther about it, is common enough affliction at that age.
There is nothing that pleases a musician's desire to be heard more than an audience wanting music, and there is no want of an audience for a good sad song, its air identical to the freshly felt melancholia that tugs at the common many of them.
These days we have Nick Cave and Radiohead (from what I hear) and Wilco and for all I Know Arcade Fire and all the others from the unexhausted list of musicians attending to this recognizably inexhaustible willingness of people to hear out the good sad song. At Acephalous, SEK links to an album by The National called "Boxer," which is heavily invested in fashioning music out of just this subset of sadness.
I'm not convinced it's the best album of 2007, as SEK claims, although I don't pay enough attention to pop music these days in all its variety to say if this is or isn't the best thing coughed up in the past year. There may not be all that much to chose from. Romantic melancholy itself may have had no better expression, but I'd have to listen a to a lot more of 2007's crop of it than I'm likely to get around to to make up my mind about that. I'm still working on what the best album of 1965 was, myself.
Anyway, if prefer your sad song neat, your man the Irishman is your musician for that. Here's a distraught one linked to recently by Thers at Atrios's Eschaton:
There is nothing that pleases a musician's desire to be heard more than an audience wanting music, and there is no want of an audience for a good sad song, its air identical to the freshly felt melancholia that tugs at the common many of them.
These days we have Nick Cave and Radiohead (from what I hear) and Wilco and for all I Know Arcade Fire and all the others from the unexhausted list of musicians attending to this recognizably inexhaustible willingness of people to hear out the good sad song. At Acephalous, SEK links to an album by The National called "Boxer," which is heavily invested in fashioning music out of just this subset of sadness.
I'm not convinced it's the best album of 2007, as SEK claims, although I don't pay enough attention to pop music these days in all its variety to say if this is or isn't the best thing coughed up in the past year. There may not be all that much to chose from. Romantic melancholy itself may have had no better expression, but I'd have to listen a to a lot more of 2007's crop of it than I'm likely to get around to to make up my mind about that. I'm still working on what the best album of 1965 was, myself.
Anyway, if prefer your sad song neat, your man the Irishman is your musician for that. Here's a distraught one linked to recently by Thers at Atrios's Eschaton:
December 25, 2007
December 22, 2007
A lump of coal in your stocking courtesy of the dismal science
Paul Krugman is a smart guy but he's no performer. He writes so lucidly on economic matters that I'm always brought up short when witnessing one of his talks. I imagine being in one of his classes at Princeton must be daunting for the student trying to follow the quicksilver coursings of his expressed ideas, which are congenitally cogent but when he speaks ex tempore rush from his mind to his his mouth unmediated by the the customary attention a public speaker pays to the formal requirements of being readily followed by a given audience.
Shifting from one stated thought to another is a tricky business in public speech, and is best attempted by any speaker only after being preceded by sufficient warning to the audience in some brief but comprehensible suggestion that now we're on to something else, accompanied by a fond farewell to the idea that's just now being left.
As he speaks, Krugman's mind seems constantly torn between saying the words coming from his mouth and evaluating the words coming from his mouth, and then instantly offering up a reformulation, emendation, verbal footnote or other bye the bye to almost anything he's just uttered, although it must be admitted that he resists as much as he can the temptation to completely drop what he was originally saying to follow along the trail of the interceding idea and its sequalia which is ever-receding end of so much of this kind of talk.
Which is not to say that this is not the way people speak. This is the way people speak. In conversation, people flit from one thing they've just said to some other whatever it may suggest as a matter of course, irrespective of the tangentiality of the suggested matter. When there's only one person speaking, this inclination can be policed, but in Krugman's case, alone there in front of his listeners, it is not.
He's worth listening to because he manages to convey, pace the disorderly delivery, real, informed alarm about the health of global financial institutions today as they grapple with the catastophic effects of the subprime mortgage meltdown.
He describes the current situation as unique, contrasting it with earlier episodes of instability — the Savings and Loan debacle of the late 80's, the economic collapses in Russia and East Asia, the bursting of the internet bubble at the turn of the millennium among the recent episodes which seemed to indicate as they played out that global financial institutions had the tools at hand to mitigate every foreseeable shock to the system. Krugman notes that the tactics used so successfully earlier simply don't seem to apply to this situation, which isn't a liquidity crisis — lenders unwilling to lend, drying up available capital, although there's a lot of that going on in an understandably skittish environment— so much as it is a solvency crisis brought on by a tidal wave of worthlessness settling in on a vast array of securities backed by subprime mortgages.
Krugman says that housing prices must fall by up to 30% if they are to return to historic costs relative to other parts of the economy. In that eventuality, housing bought at the height of the market, when customers were being shoehorned in to new homes or convinced to refinance using one of these vehicles, is now and for years to come worth less than the paper that must be paid off on it.
In a rising market, the usurious rate adjustment built in to the most liberal of these sub-prime instruments, which kicked in after a specified period of time in which the borrower paid some laughably small amount against the debt, could be easily eluded by the simple expedient of refinancing using the collateral of a house now worth more than the original loan to pay off that first loan, and rinse and repeat as needed to avoid the consequences of the unsupportable mortgage payment required when that loan's rate adjustment kicks in. The market slows, steadies, falls. Houses bought with sub-prime loans are now worth less than what is being paid for them by their owners. The chances to avoid the rate adjustment dry up. Borrowers are squeezed to pay more than than the house is worth, and at a faster rate, more's the pity. Foreclosures skyrocket.
And the market isn't really sure who owns all that bad debt, who'll be stuck with the payable bill for it all. Currently it's just sort of materializing out of the vaporous realm of serial securitizations which sought to leverage the collateral of the now thoroughly sunken value of those subprime mortgages into vaster and vaster loan arrangements, which according to best practices in business come due just as the monthly mortgage statement comes due for the homeowner, and must by the ineluctable laws of accounting properly materialize on the balance sheets of financial institutions left holding the bag, payable in full, at the end of a given reporting period.
Bear Stearns, whatever other irregularity it may have indulged in over the past 80 years, has never failed to show a profit for its investors, but this year reports a multi-billion dollar loss. Merrill Lynch, of the famous bull on Wall Street commercial, exposed itself to its first loss in almost three quarters of a century and made Bear Stearn look like it got off easy. Citigroup? … well, jayz. Who knows how far into the future they'll be paying for it? And the insurance bought by prudent investors to mitigate risk should the market go bad, as markets sometimes do, appears more and more to be worthless itself, being carried by insurers who, like the owners of those unpayable mortgages, cannot themselves meet their obligation to pay up in full for their share of the same failed investment in subprime-backed securitizations owed by Bear Sterns and Citigroup and Merrill Lynch and all.
When Paul Krugman says he's alarmed, listen.
December 21, 2007
Ho ho ho
I suppose that in the halls of academy the bright line between political scientists and those who fashion actual policy marks a well-established divide familiar to all those who care about that sort of thing. The political science people have their Department of Government at Harvard, and down the street the policy people have their Kennedy School of Government. This video crafts a sly parody of the television show "The Office" in which the Department of Government at Harvard is targeted to be absorbed by the Kennedy School.
The threatened merger is averted after a good deal of "Office"-like talk and camera work, resolved in the end by firing all the theorists. That's actually knee-slapping funny in context, as is the turn by the fellow with the William Kristol pinup in his locker.
[via…]
The threatened merger is averted after a good deal of "Office"-like talk and camera work, resolved in the end by firing all the theorists. That's actually knee-slapping funny in context, as is the turn by the fellow with the William Kristol pinup in his locker.
[via…]
December 08, 2007
Happy Rohatsu
Rohatsu is what the zen tradition calls Bodhi Day, the day Buddha achieved whatever enlightenment is. In Japanese, Rohatsu means the eighth day of the twelfth month.
Hundreds of years passed and people began writing down what the Buddha might have said at that tremendous moment, just sitting there, had he in fact said anything at all.
Siddhartha looked at the planet Venus in the morning sky on the day following one week's steady samadhi, and there he was, enlightened, Buddha.
One year ago today my father celebrated his last birthday. He was 89 that day, and gone in less than a month.
For Roman Catholics like my father, December 8 marks the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, mother of God. Although this feast is often confused even in the minds of nominal Catholics with the time God had his way with Mary and they conceived Jesus, it is not that conception, but her own conception that is being celebrated here. Notwithstanding the puissance of the godfucking of Mary that made Jesus, her own parent's fucking stands as the greatest, most thoroughgoing and holy human-on-human fuck of all time, producing as it did, according Catholic dogma, by the grace of god, the unblemished vessel of Mary herself, a fuck fully worthy of yearly commemoration.
My father enjoyed reminding everyone that kids got the day off from Catholic school on his birthday.
Hundreds of years passed and people began writing down what the Buddha might have said at that tremendous moment, just sitting there, had he in fact said anything at all.
Siddhartha looked at the planet Venus in the morning sky on the day following one week's steady samadhi, and there he was, enlightened, Buddha.
One year ago today my father celebrated his last birthday. He was 89 that day, and gone in less than a month.
For Roman Catholics like my father, December 8 marks the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, mother of God. Although this feast is often confused even in the minds of nominal Catholics with the time God had his way with Mary and they conceived Jesus, it is not that conception, but her own conception that is being celebrated here. Notwithstanding the puissance of the godfucking of Mary that made Jesus, her own parent's fucking stands as the greatest, most thoroughgoing and holy human-on-human fuck of all time, producing as it did, according Catholic dogma, by the grace of god, the unblemished vessel of Mary herself, a fuck fully worthy of yearly commemoration.
My father enjoyed reminding everyone that kids got the day off from Catholic school on his birthday.
December 06, 2007
December 05, 2007
Viscerally Anti-American, But Still…
You're wearing trousers with a tag on the back
and a cap with the visor turned up,
parading around Tuleto
like a lady's man trying to be seen
You're acting all American,
American, American,
listen here: who's asking you to?
You want to be all trendy,
but if you drink "whisky and soda"
you always end up sick!
You're dancing rock and roll,
and playing baseball,
but where'd you get the money
for the Camel cigarettes?
Mummy's handbag!
You're acting all American,
American, American,
but you're born in Italy, listen here:
there's nothing you can do,
O.K., Napoletano?!
You're acting all American,
American, American,
How can your loved one understand
if you're speaking half American?
When you're out loving under the moon,
where do you get a phrase like "I love you"?
You're acting all American,
American, American,
but you're born in Italy, listen here:
there's nothing you can do,
O.K., Napoletano?!
You're acting all American,
American, American,
...whisky soda & rock and roll…
—Renato Carsone - Tu' vuo' fa' l'americano
[via…]
December 02, 2007
December Weather
What I like about Weather.com is the tidy little box that shows you in big bolded numbers your temperature and in smaller type all the related info on wind and humidity and such after you enter your Zip Code.
The box has a reading for what your temperature "feels like," using some clever normalizing operation that I'm sure is a closely held trade secret taking into account the bearing of all the accumulated wind and humidity and stuff on the raw farenheit of the number. Some days in summer the box reports that Santa Cruz "feels like'" 76 degrees when the farenheit of it is only 71. Today at 8:45 am, 44 degrees farenheit "feels like" 44 degrees farenheit, according to Weather.com. So, out here in the garage today I'm simultaneously experiencing not only 44 degrees farenheit, but also at the exact same moment, what it feels like!
The forecast for today is cloudy skies, mild winds and a high of 61 degrees farenheit, whatever that may end up feeling like, more or less or equal to itself as may be. T-shirt weather Pacifica, is what I call it.
The box has a reading for what your temperature "feels like," using some clever normalizing operation that I'm sure is a closely held trade secret taking into account the bearing of all the accumulated wind and humidity and stuff on the raw farenheit of the number. Some days in summer the box reports that Santa Cruz "feels like'" 76 degrees when the farenheit of it is only 71. Today at 8:45 am, 44 degrees farenheit "feels like" 44 degrees farenheit, according to Weather.com. So, out here in the garage today I'm simultaneously experiencing not only 44 degrees farenheit, but also at the exact same moment, what it feels like!
The forecast for today is cloudy skies, mild winds and a high of 61 degrees farenheit, whatever that may end up feeling like, more or less or equal to itself as may be. T-shirt weather Pacifica, is what I call it.
December 01, 2007
On the Scent of the Desert Sage
On their way to making another film entirely, a camera crew from Coudal Partners ran into Ed Grothus of Los Alamos, New Mexico. The result is a remarkable video called Laboratory Conditions. Give it a look.
November 30, 2007
Ampliatio and the Arbitrary Animal Preserve
The little blobs of orange in the image above (click the image to to enlarge a bit) are monarch butterflies, which winter in great number in the trees of Natural Bridges State Beach in Santa Cruz. Natural Bridges contains the only dedicated butterfly preserve in California.
In recent memory there were "bridges" at Natural Bridges, archways carved in the little promontory of mudstone rising on the south side of the lagoon where Moore Creek seeps into the Pacific. The larger of the two arches, in accordance with the long-term geology of the situation, collapsed one year in a particularly forceful storm. A single smaller bridge remains, visible as a shadowy semicircle above the waterline on the rock. The plural of "Natural Bridges" is earned by ampliatio, as discussed previously.
November 29, 2007
Lake Lexington, November 2007
Lake Lexington is a reservoir in the Santa Cruz Mountains above Los Gatos, California. It's part of the Santa Clara Valley's water system. They've drained it to do some work.
You can see the brown interdicting mound of the dam in the distance. Normally the water would reach about halfway up the dam, and lap the ankles of the eucalytpus on the surrounding shores.
Fire-tested Argument
Then you call on the name of your god, and I will call on the name of the LORD: and the god that answers by fire—he is God."
[…]
Then the fire of the LORD fell, and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones, and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench. When the people saw this, they fell prostrate and cried, "The LORD, –he is God, The LORD, –he is God!"
Then Elijah commanded them them, "Seize the prophets of Baal. Don't let anyone get away!" They seized them, and Elijah had them brought down to the Kishon Valley and slaughtered there.
You can raise all the intellectual challenges you want about faith and the origins of the universe, but at the end of the day, you have to worship the god who can set you on fire.
We like to think Elijah stood in front of the howling column of heavenly fire, straightened his robes, turned to the crowd and said, "Thus, my opponent's argument falls." Then, he finished the debate in the way that all debates should be finished: by having the losers slaughtered.
— David Wong, The 9 Most Badass Bible Verses, via Scott McLemee's Quick Study
Long ago in rhetoric the "Shut up about that" rule was concieved as an alternative method for effectively striking specific people and groups of people and what they might have to say from the list of those who could continue to argue the given point. Every formal argument has such a rule. Slaughtering the losers does directly ensure that their argument will go unheard in every case, and the "Shut up about that" rule in rhetoric cannot hope to be as utterly terminal as that, however much it hopes to achieve the same end, the silencing. As the volume of nattering coming from those under the injunction of the "Shut up about that" rule reaches its critical peak, the probability of their ending in the Kishon Valley increases as well, sad to say.
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