Sa Nuit D'ete (Nocturnes) by Lauridsen is a haunting, unexpectedly powerful choral work. I enjoy it. Proverb (1995) by Steve Reich illustrates his essential weakness: he composes by coming up with a concept, rather than a visual or auditory line: what a small thought to fill 11 minutes. Igor Stravinsky I've listened to enough to think he's over-rated at the moment. And "Three Songs from Statuesque (2005) by Jake Heggie is a pleasure to listen to, with funny moments (Pablo Picasso, Head of a Woman 1932 being my favorite.)

An interesting short piece from someone I enjoy arguing with.

In one of the funniest articles he's written, A N Wilson says what's wrong with the Sony Walkman, and calls it "the gadget that helped break Britain."

For those of us who liked getting on a bus or a train and overhearing, or even taking part in, conversations, there is something a bit bleak about the dozens of private solitudes which nowadays clamber aboard.

It apparently hasn't occured to him that many of them are listening to the music from the walkman, ipod, or whatever in preference to listening to him. But I suspect they prefer their music to his conversation.

I'll bet you think that's impossible, right? Bank of America is a large bank, and the government wouldn't simply threaten them with being fired to get them to lose shareholders' money?

Not according to the Attorney General of New York: they were supposed to lose money on the Merrill Lynch buyout or be fired.

What was missing, of course, was a good reason why the pension funds that hold BofA stock should have to take the hit: they have older people to look after, who need the money they were promised.

Governmental compassion on display. We're in the best of hands.

You've probably seen them: ads promising that you'll get program x/product y/facecream z "and just pay the shipping". Have you wondered what's going on?

There are several levels of what's going on: first, with the economy going downhill, people aren't showing up at their usual sources of disinformation, and advertisers want to reach them. Odd as it sounds, this is the harmless version of what's going on: they're subsidizing something in an effort to build a mailing list, or "e-mailing" list. You may notice that suddenly your inbox gets lots of stuff you didn't anticipate: that list of addresses can be sold and re-sold to other advertisers, and they're happy to give you a try. You might even agree that it's harmless until your inbox reaches the stratosphere: "You have mail" turns out to mean another 300. Since this morning. It's another way to realize that your time has value, and that perhaps that offer wasn't as good as you thought it was.

Second, service providers have noticed that you're paying something, shipping costs, and giving them a credit card. You will find that some of these have authorizations to charge your credit card money each month for the privilege of access to their information. Some credit card companies are sharp enough to catch these, and will notify you at the first statement -- but most won't. As a matter of fairness, they will give you a difficult to execute procedure for canceling the ongoing charge (calling an 800 number that rings 50 times only to yield to a voice advising you, in Spanish, that the mailbox is full is one I've seen). Some of these will involve making a "support request" at an associated website: and they can always say they didn't get it. It really doesn't improve when whatever you ordered arrives: you've just validated a mailing address, and you're back on the solicitation lists you thought you were off of, and there will be a notice inside detailing one of the barely-working methods of canceling the account. Slimier, arguably providing service for value, but not in my book.

Some sites are offering premiums like laptops -- but only if you recommend ten friends. And this leads to the noise in the equation: if you want the laptop, and you provide ten friends, you're engaging in the same kind of thing that the post office used to ban as "chain letter fraud". It doesn't take too many levels of "refer 10 people" to exceed the population of the country. So something interesting has developed: a market in "being a friend" for referral purposes. There are websites dedicated to posting the offers and allowing acceptances for groups of temporary friends, all of whom agree to fill out the information on the site, pay shipping, and otherwise look like a genuine referral in return for cash. The poster gets the laptop, or xbox, or whatever premium the site offers, (note that paying 10 people $20 each not only covers their shipping costs and gives them walking around money, but also gets you a laptop for $200 -- not bad.), and friend-for-pay cancels the service after ten days or so to look like s/he meant to check out their service and changed his/er mind.

This "noise" has another name: fraud. The friend-for-pay is engaging in a conspiracy to defraud the marketer of the benefits of his scheme for getting his valuable address list by helping clutter it up with unmarketable junk, and sending off laptops to people who haven't cooperated in good faith. I'm sure the FTC, or Department of Consumer Affairs or some other local government entity, is starting to look out for some of these things (and I'm sure that Google and other companies that engage in giveaways should be more interested in their bottom line). If they aren't, of course, just pass this on. I'll pay shipping.... (OK, kidding)

Several years ago, I learned that one of the ways to make bad plays funny was to add "On Ice!" to the title -- which turned out to work for good plays, too (Death of a Salesman On Ice! promised such wonderful comedic possiblity). Today, thanks to the Fast & Furious movie franchise and its dedicated band of reviewers, I got the cinematic equivalent:

Here is a secret I discovered with some friends a couple of years back: putting Tokyo Drift after inappropriate movie titles is a joke that never gets old. Citizen Kane: Tokyo Drift! Wendy and Lucy: Tokyo Drift! Breakin' 3: Tokyo Drift!

Eugene Novikov's reviews seldom disappoint, even when the movies he is reviewing do: one more quote to send you hunting through Google for "Eugene Novikov" "film blather":

Among other things, it taught me that "nothing really matters unless you have a code." Paul Walker speaks that line maybe halfway through the film, his face a tumult of emotions like boredom, mild confusion and the munchies.

Why read the blogs when you have Name of Prestigious Newspaper Here?

Perhaps because you'll know what's going on before the readers of the paper.

You Know This Guy We Haven't Told You About? Well, He's Not Going to Be Important! During the Trent Lott scandal, if I remember right, there was speculation that the blogosphere would really have arrived when a high public official suddenly resigned over an Web-borne scandal without the scandal being mentioned in the respectable mainstream press--so if you had only read the New York Times or Washington Post you'd have no idea why this person quit or what the scandal was until he or she was gone. Poof! Killed by ninja blogs.** Well (without regard to the merits of the dispute), the Charles Freeman withdrawal is close to that case, no? WaPo apparently printed its first news story on the controversy the day it ended--i.e. when Freeman withdrew. Ditto the New York Times. ... What does this event signify? Not to be too portentous, but it signifies you can no longer be a well-informed citizen if you just read the Times and Post print editions. You have to go online.

Which brings up another point: How many of you don't read Kausfiles?

A category: the annoyingly true.

As with most history, it doesn't do much to describe what goes on in the world today, other than provide an entertaining narrative gloss.

In other words, biology without darwinism is still biology, and the experiments conducted would not be that different.

The above, from a respected biologist, confirms that the dustup over evolution is a proxy for something else.

It's the something else everyone is concerned with.

Read the article.

That's the quick summary of this speech by Havel, which was not politely received by the European Parliament (a body which doesn't care if it insults heads of state is an interesting choice to speak at, but I applaud Havel's courage).

Interesting quote:


The present decision making system of the European Union is different from a classic parliamentary democracy, tested and proven by history. In a normal parliamentary system, part of the MPs support the government and part support the opposition. In the European parliament, this arrangement has been missing. Here, only one single alternative is being promoted and those who dare thinking about a different option are labelled as enemies of the European integration. Not so long ago, in our part of Europe we lived in a political system that permitted no alternatives and therefore also no parliamentary opposition. It was through this experience that we learned the bitter lesson that with no opposition, there is no freedom. That is why political alternatives must exist.

And not only that. The relationship between a citizen of one or another member state and a representative of the Union is not a standard relationship between a voter and a politician, representing him or her. There is also a great distance (not only in a geographical sense) between citizens and Union representatives, which is much greater than it is the case inside the member countries. This distance is often described as the democratic deficit, the loss of democratic accountability, the decision making of the unelected – but selected – ones, as bureaucratisation of decision making etc. The proposals to change the current state of affairs – included in the rejected European Constitution or in the not much different Lisbon Treaty – would make this defect even worse.

Since there is no European demos – and no European nation – this defect cannot be solved by strengthening the role of the European parliament either. This would, on the contrary, make the problem worse and lead to an even greater alienation between the citizens of the European countries and Union institutions. The solution will be neither to add fuel to the “melting pot” of the present type of European integration, nor to suppress the role of member states in the name of a new multicultural and multinational European civil society. These are attempts that have failed every time in the past, because they did not reflect the spontaneous historical development.

I fear that the attempts to speed up and deepen integration and to move decisions about the lives of the citizens of the member countries up to the European level can have effects that will endanger all the positive things achieved in Europe in the last half a century. Let us not underestimate the fears of the citizens of many member countries, who are afraid, that their problems are again decided elsewhere and without them, and that their ability to influence these decisions is very limited. So far, the European Union has been successful, partly thanks to the fact that the vote of each member country had the same weight and thus could not be ignored. Let us not allow a situation where the citizens of member countries would live their lives with a resigned feeling that the EU project is not their own; that it is developing differently than they would wish, that they are only forced to accept it. We would very easily and very soon slip back to the times that we hoped belonged to history.


Read the whole thing. Rather important to the project of Europe.

Veterans' Day, Who Needs It? The school district has decided to ditch the holiday because "students don't understand it."

My suggestion? Ditch school. If they can't be bothered to explain things, you're not getting an education anyway.

It's not nice to point out things that are unfavorable to us. You might get an unfavorable impression. That appears to be the thought behind this protest.

Ok, here goes. If you're resigned to staying where you are, and not persuading people to help change their circumstances, if you are not pestering the government (locally, provincially, and nationally) to change the things that can be changed (from public health, to building codes, to training programs for jobs), then, while I recognize your dignity as a human being, I don't respect you. If you are working at those things, then you're too busy to be bothered by things that you are overcoming. So the protest sets you, not the studio, not the author, in an unfavorable light.

Was that clear enough?

Pocket Obama, the book for everyone to read daily as they acquire the key knowledge of America under the new administration.

Or the silliest joke this week.

Periodically, I get called a hypocrite by one person or another because I don't always live up to my own standards. It has proved impossible to explain to people the difference between "the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak" and machiavellian plotting to deceive.

I wonder if people would understand a different perspective on hypocrisy: it is aspirational. Check out this article.

Best thoughts of the day:

Wisdom is not the ability to see dark clouds on the horizon: it is the ability to use the sunshine you've got productively. (from a friend who's trying to put things back together out of a difficult situation)

And, on an entirely other subject, a comment from an uncle to his neice, who was complaining that her husband only thought of her as a sex object: "He's had practice, as a teenager and a little later, at sublimating that urge. But what you have to understand is that when he has to sublimate it, it's you who get shut out. He sublimates you, too. If I were you, I'd be happy for the attention."

Both, in different situations, speaking as truthfully as they can. Truth, like kindness, is dazzling, and always worth knowing.

I've had problems with this division periodically, and I finally have a form of the division I like: those who believe in moral complexity, and have five bases of moral instinct guiding their reason, and those who believe in only two bases to guide their reasoning and are famously in search of new things. Oddly enough, the theory was proposed by an atheist liberal, Jonathan Haidt, who is nonetheless eloquent on its consequences and problems.

Check out this video of a short talk on the subject, which is excellent, or see his many publications on moral foundations. Just as a quick preview, from his website on moral foundations (not the one with the papers), here are the five bases:

In brief, the theory proposes that five innate and universally available psychological systems are the foundations of “intuitive ethics.” Each culture then constructs virtues, narratives, and institutions on top of these foundations, thereby creating the unique moralities we see around the world, and conflicting within nations too. The foundations are:

1) Harm/care, related to our long evolution as mammals with attachment systems and an ability to feel (and dislike) the pain of others. This foundation underlies virtues of kindness, gentleness, and nurturance.
2) Fairness/reciprocity, related to the evolutionary process of reciprocal altruism. This foundation generates ideas of justice, rights, and autonomy.
3) Ingroup/loyalty, related to our long history as tribal creatures able to form shifting coalitions. This foundation underlies virtues of patriotism and self-sacrifice for the group. It is active anytime people feel that it's "one for all, and all for one."
4) Authority/respect, shaped by our long primate history of hierarchical social interactions. This foundaiton underlies virtues of leadership and followership, including deference to legitimate authority and respect for traditions.
5) Purity/sanctity, shaped by the psychology of disgust and contamination. This foundation underlies religious notions of striving to live in an elevated, less carnal, more noble way. It underlies the widespread idea that the body is a temple which can be desecrated by immoral activities and contaminants (an idea not unique to religious traditions).

...

The current American culture war, we have found, can be seen as arising from the fact that liberals try to create a morality relying almost exclusively on the Harm/Care and Fairness/Reciprocity foundations; conservatives, especially religious conservatives, use all five foundations, including Ingroup/Loyalty, Authority/Respect, and Purity/Sanctity.


The talk referred to above is intriguing, and worth a second look. Do yourself a favor and click on it.

Readers are familiar with my comments that advisers on medical ethics not only think very poorly about their own discipline, but reach unethical conclusions and advocate them.

Here's my latest: a patient in Oregon, with insurance operated by the state health fund, was told that the state would pay for drugs for assisted suicide rather than the drugs necessary to save her life. After all, assisted suicide was miles cheaper, and would end all complaints about her care and the messiness of being sick. The problem is not unique to Oregon: others have noticed, and I'm sure that state cost experts are deeply interested.

The balrog in the woodpile here is depression. Depression is one of the few treatable psychological disorders (with therapy and/or medication), and its presence can induce people to despair of life. And that despair should not be respected as a "wish" but treated as the illness it represents.

This is too funny. Here's the original heading:

Guess who said the following this morning about Joe Biden's latest gaffe—his statement that America would be faced with a major international crisis within the first six months of an Obama administration as foreign forces seek to test the young new president: "certainly if Sarah Palin had said this, it would be above the fold in most newspapers today."

1. Brent Bozell
2. Rush Limbaugh
3. McCain adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer
4. Dan Rather


Read the rest. Click through on the videos to verify. Smile wanly.

UPDATE Michael Malone, long-time reporter, is also appalled.

Here's a way to impress people. Lt. Jensen is on active service in Iraq. His wife is pregnant, and with relatives on the East Coast, along with his small son.

Now, Lt. Jensen is being told to get an irrigation system and landscaping on his property as soon as possible or face legal action from the Oak Hill Country Estates Homeowners' Association.

"I really don't give a [expletive] where he is or what his problem is," said Chick Edwards, owner and developer of the 47-lot subdivision at the south end of Oak Street in Kennewick.

"It doesn't matter to me," said Edwards, who insists Jensen has violated terms of the homeowners-association covenants requiring that landscaping be completed within one year after an occupancy permit is issued for a home.

"[Jensen] doesn't have the right to walk away from his obligation," said Edwards, who as the developer is the only member of the homeowners association. "I have most of the property still, so I am the homeowners association," he said.


There may be a hitch here, Mr. Homeowner's Association: the Servicemember Civil Relief Act, which has a useful provision you might want to know about:

(1) PROTECTION AFTER ENTERING MILITARY SERVICE- After a servicemember enters military service, a contract by the servicemember for--

(A) the purchase of real or personal property (including a motor vehicle); or

(B) the lease or bailment of such property, may not be rescinded or terminated for a breach of terms of the contract occurring before or during that person's military service, nor may the property be repossessed for such breach without a court order.


Just a suggestion: if you're hauled into court for violating the act, "L'etat c'est moi" isn't that impressive a defense. It merely means that the judge has a simple process to stop, and only one place to go.

UPDATE: Courtesy of pithhelmet in comments below, the rest of the story, including an attempt at shamefaced denial of his actions by our one-man homeowner's association, and an outpouring of neighborliness and community spirit. Problem solved, and with fewer lawyers, than usually the case: I'm impressed with the community. Read the whole thing.

Time, once again, to think about Halloween Costumes and all that implies: the masks with big grins behind them as they get to play being someone else.

And for my part, the problem of the holiday lies in the Bulk Halloween Candy. It was easier when I was working at a place which had a staff breakroom/lunchroom. Then all I had to do was dump it in a bowl and it would "disappear" within a few days. You can't just leave this on someone's doorstep, ring the doorbell, and run off giggling.

Or can you?

It's open season, once again, for those who love to yell "Hypocrite!"

They don't understand much about christians... or the real meaning of the word, ably elucidated by Neal Stephenson, in Diamond Age in the mouth of one of his more interesting characters:

You know, when I was a young man, hypocrisy was deemed the worst of vices. It was all because of moral relativism. You see, in that sort of a climate, you are not allowed to criticize others - after all, if there is no absolute right and wrong, then what grounds are there for criticism? Now, this led to a good deal of general frustration, for people are naturally censorious and love nothing better than to criticize one another's shortcomings. And so it was that they seized on hypocrisy and elevated it from a ubiquitous peccadillo into the monarch of all vices. For, you see, even if there is no right and wrong, you can find grounds to criticize another person by contrasting what he has espoused with what he has actually done. In this case, you are not making any judgment whatsoever as to the correctness of his views or the morality of his behavior - you are merely pointing out that he has said one thing and done another. Virtually all political discourse in the days of my youth was devoted to the ferreting out of hypocrisy.

The truth of the matter is simple: a hypocrite is someone who advocates a standard in which he himself does not believe -- not one who advocates a standard and fails to live up to it. (There is a good case to be made that one who upholds a standard for himself and others while occasionally violating it is acting heroically, not badly.) Yet all the current accusations of hypocrisy lie in the latter arena, pretending to have evidence of the former in the curious thought that "actions reveal true beliefs", which would be anathema to a traditional understanding of people, in which "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" is a much more common thought. In other words, an accusation of hypocrisy pretends to an understanding of motivation and intention that only God could have, and use.

Which is why most of us, upon hearing someone assert that someone else is a hypocrite, assume that the accuser is the devil.

UPDATE: And, for extremists, acting consistently with your values is a sign of hypocrisy, which means that they are mentally challenged.

You have to take a moment and read some really bad poetry. You'll feel better for it.

If you HAVE to have a taste first, read:

"O people of Chicago, why do you shun me so?" he lamented.
"I have a bachelor's degree and I am here to organize you."

And THEN go there.

This site has not been approved by any campaign for any office whatsoever, and Arnold Williams paid for it.

And if you're wondering why anyone would bother posting something so self-evident, check out this ridiculous story. The setting? A typical small town, where the citizens think they can speak freely about their political thoughts:

For example, in 2000, FEC investigators descended on Muleshoe, Texas, a small farming town of just under 5,000 inhabitants west of Lubbock. They were looking into a complaint filed against local citizens who made the horrible mistake of putting up competing signs alternately supporting Al Gore or George Bush. This political rivalry started when Harvey Bass, the owner of the local furniture store, took an empty refrigerator box, painted “Save Our Nation, Vote Democrat, Al Gore for President” on the side, and placed the box on the porch of his store.

Two other local citizens, Bill Liles and Mark Morton, got tired of looking at this sign. With the help of some of their friends, they had a bigger sign painted that read, in part, “Vote for George W. Bush for President … Not Al Gore Socialism.” They hung it on a borrowed cotton trailer and parked it across the street so that Bass “would have to look at it every time he walked out the front door of his business.”

And then the FEC gets involved:

After subjecting Liles, Morton, and two other locals to an extensive investigation, the lawyers for the FEC found that they had violated federal law because their homemade sign did not have a disclaimer. In other words, it did not say who had paid for the sign and whether or not it was approved by the candidate ....

As demonstrated in this article, quantum mechanics has nothing to do with how you experience the world.

Which brings me to the most useful note on listening to public speakers: if the word "quantum" is used, get up and leave, turning over tables if necessary. Some kinds of madness are contagious. What they are doing is creating an analogy to something that neither they nor you have spent long enough with to be comfortable, and attempting by that analogy to describe aspects of something that you can personally experience. A good friend of mine from Ohio called it "the fallacy of ignotum per ignotius -- explaining the unknown by means of the still more unknown".