Friday, May 25th
"Pro-life" is liberal propaganda
Jerry Falwell: Every good Christian should be concerned (about Sandra Day O'Connor's nomination to the supreme court).
Barry Goldwater: Every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass.
I don't know much about Barry Goldwater; I do remember what my father thought of him. Dad thought that Barry Goldwater was the closest thing to the devil on earth: a conservative's conservative: a reactionary, really. I don't know when exactly I heard dad say these things; I suppose it was sometime after Lyndon Johnson trounced Goldwater in the 1964 election. I was six years old at the time.
What I just recently found out was that a certain up and coming politician made quite a name for himself by making speeches for Barry Goldwater. Ronald Reagan made no bones about billing himself as a conservative's conservative; got himself elected as governor of California in 1966; and later ended up president of the U. S. A.
Reagan and Goldwater didn't agree on everything though: Goldwater was pro-choice.
It is interesting that the typical argument on the pro-choice side sounds very conservative. "A woman should be able to do what she wants with her own body." How can a liberal say that without choking? If we substituted "money" for "body" no liberal would agree with the statement. A woman has the right to pay her workers whatever she wants? To invest money overseas with no government regulation whatsoever?
The pro-life people on the other hand sound very liberal to me. "The abortion industry is out of control. Those doctors are acting immorally- against the interests of the very people they should be protecting- all for the sake of making a buck. We need far more government intervention to rein in these evil capitalists."
The political situation over abortion reminds me of the political situation over alcohol about a hundred years or so ago. Back then the church was universal in its condemnation of the alcohol industry: this condemnation led to the complete criminalization of producing and selling alcohol. As it turned out this didn't work very well and alcohol was relegalized.
That doesn't mean of course that alcohol ceased to be a problem. However the problem became more controlled as government found ways to regulate the sales and production of alcohol without complete criminalization.
I expect that something similar will happen with abortion. But, surprisingly, the solution to the abortion question will be an essentially liberal one.
Thursday, May 24th
Focal Practices
When I attended O. S. U. school of music, I developed a real love of music history, but only about halfway through my 3rd quarter of freshman history. Prior to this time I was too busy drinking and playing to have payed much attention to what was going on in class. By the time I had my head on right the prof was well into the 19th century. Thus I missed at least a couple of thousand years of history and have had trouble catching up ever since.
By some twist of fate I got ahold of Mike's music history textbook after he passed away and it happened to be the same one that I used at O. S. U. about 25 years ago: A History of Western Music by Donald Grout. So now I get to catch up on what I missed:
Plato and Aristotle agreed that the "right" kind of person could be produced through a system of public education in which two principal elements were gymnastics and music, the one for the discipline of the body and the other for that of the mind. In the Republic, written about 380 B. C., Plato insists on the need for a balance of these two elements in education: too much music will make a man effeminate or neurotic; too much gymnastics will make him uncivilized, violent, and ignorant. "He who mingles music with gymnastic in the fairest proportions, and best attempers them to the soul, may be rightly called the true musician."
Interestingly, Plato's two principal elements of education are also evident in Borgmann's list of focal practices which he believes we postmodern people must get back to. They are also the two things that it seemed were constantly getting cut from education back in the 90's when my kids were in school.
I'm actually so old that when I went to college they still required us to take P. E. I'm not so old that it was taken very seriously; as I recall I had one quarter of introductory bowling and one of archery. I suspect things have changed now but I don't really know. I don't remember having to wash gym clothes for my kids when they were in jr high like my mom had to do for me.
Not being very athletic I can't shed many tears over these developments, but I do wish that my kids had more music in school. I remember going to music class rather regularly when I was in elementary school- it seems to me that we had one hour a week. The music room had pictures of the classical composers posted around the walls, and the blackboard had staves. The teacher actually acted as though she expected everyone to learn how to read music, although I suspect a lot of people didn't, especially the boys.
Another opportunity I had to do music was singing in the church's junior choir. As I recall, this choir was open to kids in the 3rd through the 6th grade. It seems to me that we met every week except for during the summer and sang as a group in church at least a few times a year. I hope that at least a few churches still have junior choirs.
One thing that concerns me is that focal practices seem to be about keeping tradition whereas their device paradigm counterparts seem to be about continually coming out with something new. This demand for newness is a neccesary condition for commercialism, which in order to survive must continually creating demand for new things that people don't have so that people are unhappy with their old stuff. Music as a focal practice is more susceptible to this problem than athletics. At least in athletics, success has a tangible measurement; the latest and greatest thing isn't very great if it doesn't put points on the board. Thus in athletics there will be more respect for tried and true methods if they win the game. Since success in music is less easily defined, traditional practices are much more at risk than in athletics.
Wednesday, May 23rd
The Device Paradigm II
Borgmann's response to the device paradigm is to urge a restoration of what he calls focal things and practices. A focal thing is something of ultimate concern and significance, which may be masked by the device paradigm, and must be preserved by its intimate connection with practice. "Focal things require a practice to prosper within." Borgmann 1984, p 196
Borgmann's examples include: music, gardening, running (especially long-distance), the culture of the table. These modern (or postmodern) examples are inconspicuous, homely and dispersed, in contrast to the grand awe-inspiring things on which our ancestors were focused - such as temples and cathedrals.
I find Borgmann's list of practices fascinating in view of what I tend to think the problems with our culture are. The practice of gardening and the culture of the table are essential to get us away from the bad effects of the commmercialized food industry. Of course, right with us, is the masking process of the device paradigm, exemplified by the supermarket and the restaurant. Borgmann does not mean by "the culture of the table" a search for the snazziest restaurant in town. These restaurants work in competition with the focal practice. What homemaker can possibly compete with the restaurant experience? The restaurant dining environment is perfectly clean- the ambience perfectly thought out with ideal decor- the menu a wide choice of the tastiest foods. Such a thing is impossible for real people practicing the culture of the table in their own home. Such a restaurant is no less (and no more) than a commodity which people evaluate solely on the basis of whether it will give them more pleasure than competing restaurants.
Borgmann's other two examples: music and running: have been at least as masked by the device paradigm as the culture of the table. Both have largely degenerated into mere commodities: I buy tickets to watch my favorite sports teams run around and download the latest offerings of my favorite musicians from the internet. Thus it is no longer necessary for me to practice the focal activites of athletics or music myself: the professionals are doing it for me- and much better than I possibly could.
The problem is that as we become separated from actual experiences with the processes that the pros model for us, we lose touch with what real living is like. If we forget to involve ourselves in the processes of living, we start to imagine that the characters we see on T. V. like Dr. McDreamy or Jack Bauer really do exist in real life, or at least that they should. This in turn discourages us from living, because our actual efforts pale in comparison to our T. V. heros.
Monday, May 21st
The Device Paradigm I
In Borgmann's terminology, a device is an artifact or instrument or tool or gadget or mechanism, which may be physical or conceptual, including hardware and software. According to Borgmann, it is a general trend of technological development that mechanisms (devices) are increasingly hidden behind service interfaces.
In his classic 1984 book, Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life, Borgmann introduced the notion of the device paradigm. This means viewing technology exclusively as a device (or set of devices) that deliver a series of commodities, and evaluating the technical features and powers of such devices, without having any other perspective.- Wikipedia
I ran across this idea of "device paradigm" in the book Dark Ages America by Morris Berman. Berman is brilliant but his book is whiny and pessimistic. Basically he says American culture sucks and there isn't anything anyone can do about it.
According to Berman one of the many problems with American culture is the proliferation of the "device paradigm." I'm having trouble figuring out all the ins and outs of this concept, so I'm trying to get ahold of Albert Borgman's book Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life, the book which first articulated it. I do believe that it is a useful concept for understanding certain problems in American contemporary culture without believing as Berman apparently does that the situation is hopeless.
The much repeated example of a device paradigm from Borgmann's book is that of the furnace. We understand that the furnace heats our home, but we don't have much understanding of the technology behind this particular device, other than how to adjust the thermostat. This is in contrast to the wood burning stove, for which we understand how to obtain the fuel and how to light it. Thus in the case of the furnace the real device which provides the heat is hidden behind the surface interface of the thermostat.
It can be argued that on the positive side that what technology such as the furnace accomplishes is that it keeps us from the hard work of actually having to chop wood and tend the stove to make sure it doesn't burn our house down. This is actually a positive and a negative, because being "saved" from all this labor also insulates us from appreciating the actual device.
The ultimate device in today's society could be the T. V., which keeps us from the hard labor of actual living while we access "life" as a commodity with the remote control acting as a surface interface. The good news is that we don't have to work hard at our life relationships anymore since we can live vicariously through characters on T. V., who all lead far more interesting lives than anybody we know does or even possibly could. Sure, this puts us sorely out of touch with the actual business of living, but there's really nothing to worry about; we can simply dial up the appropriate programming using the service interface of the remote control so that we can think and feel that we are alive.
Another device that I feel has caused us many problems is the supermarket. The main problem here is that we are simply out of touch with the main purpose of food. Although food was supposed to be primarily for nourishment, now we choose our food on the basis of the pleasure it gives us. Thus our food has become full of such things as monosodium glutamate, aspartame, high fructose corn syrup, red dye #3, and other things which not only don't promote nourishment but likely promote disease.
Sunday, May 20th
Karaoke dreams
The other night I dreamed that Nancy and I hosted a karaoke party. There are two possible reasons:
1. Past events. I dreamed this dream on the eve of participating in a karaoke event at the Holiday Inn on Lane avenue. Anya was there and we wanted to share what time we could with her before she moves to Arizona in about a week's time. What did I sing?:
a. Scotch and Soda
b. Folsom Prison Blues
c. They Can't Take That Away From Me
d. Danny's Song
Nancy says that I sang "b" best but admitted she may be prejudiced because she particularly likes that song. "d" was definitely the worst, mainly because they gave me the Ann Murray version- way too high and with the wrong gendered lyrics (which I did my best to work around but flubbed occasionally)
2. Future events. Wednesday we are hosting an American Idol finale party. Nancy doesn't like me saying this, but A. I. is essentially a huge karaoke competition. I have this fantasy of hearing the following exchange:
Simon Cowell: That performance was pure karaoke.
Contestant (beaming): Wow! Thank you so much, Simon!
I was proud to predict accurately who would go home last week. It occurred to me that I actually have a recording of the song she has sung for two weeks in a row now: "I'm a Woman." My recording is done by Maria D'Amato with Jim Kweskin and his jug band and features banjo and gutbucket. I think I like this version better.
I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that Blake- the man with the amazing 6 note range- will win the entire competition.
Wednesday, May 16th
The song of creation
(intro:)
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
(1st stanza:)
And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night."
(refrain:)
And there was evening, and there was morning--the first day.
(2nd stanza:)
And God said, "Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water." So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. God called the expanse "sky."
(refrain:)
And there was evening, and there was morning--the second day.
(3rd stanza:)
And God said, "Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear." And it was so. God called the dry ground "land," and the gathered waters he called "seas." And God saw that it was good. Then God said, "Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds." And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.
(refrain:)
And there was evening, and there was morning--the third day.
(4th stanza:)
And God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth." And it was so. God made two great lights--the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good.
(refrain:)
And there was evening, and there was morning--the fourth day.
(5th stanza:)
And God said, "Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky." So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them and said, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth."
(refrain:)
And there was evening, and there was morning--the fifth day.
(6th stanza:)
And God said, "Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind." And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." Then God said, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground--everything that has the breath of life in it--I give every green plant for food." And it was so. God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.
(refrain:)
And there was evening, and there was morning--the sixth day.
(tag)
Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.
I used to go to church with a woman that had a theory that God sang the universe into existance. I thought that was a cool theory, but at the time I was really into literal interpretation of the Bible. Didn't the Bible clearly say "God said"?
Recently it occured to me that the first creation story is indeed laid out a lot like a song. It seems to me that there is the typical parallelism that characterizes Hebrew poetry. God's creative speaking is followed by his seeing. And evening is followed by morning. I find this interesting because, of course, one can only see in the daytime.
It seems to me that sensing sound is a more primal function than seeing. I don't know if this is true in the evolutionary sense, but on the human level, one becomes aware of something first by hearing. Hearing is our most long distance sense.
I find it interesting that the second day is the only one that lacks the phrase "God saw that it was good." It is understandable- anyone familiar with what was coming would know that God's work on the second day made the flood possible. This lack is made up for in the 3rd day in which there are two instances of God's speaking/seeing.
All in all there are seven instances of speaking/seeing pairs. It is possible to lay out the form in 2 sets of 3 days, each of which closes with a day that has two such pairs.
One of the things I love about the NIV is that it clearly indicates poetry by changing the font style. So I have to trust that the NIV made the right call by saying that this is, in fact, not an instance of Hebrew poetry. But I do have to wonder if this decision was at least in part driven by the fact that poetry is often highly metaphorical. There is a large desire on the part of the evangelical community to make this section of Genesis into something more literal than metaphorical. Many people would reject out of hand the idea that some ancient poet or songwriter chose to write six stanzas because that number worked well poetically. I really like the idea, though. Six is an ancient number symbolizing the six directions of the cosmos: north, south, east, west, up, down.
Sunday, May 13th
American Decadence
Is there any greater symbol of American Decadence than the American Buffet?
"Fred, what did you have for dinner?"
"Fried Shrimp, Fried Chicken, Fried Cauliflower, Fried Cheese, Pasta Salad, Potato Salad, Augratin Potatoes, Mashed Potatoes, French Fries, Green Beans Almondine, Green Bean Casserole, Baked Beans, Black Beans, Some kind of Beans I didn't recognize, Chicken Kabobs, Beef Kabobs, Shrimp Kabobs, Veggie Kabobs, Chicken Salad, Deviled Eggs, Chips and Dip, Stuffed Mushrooms, Sauteed Mushrooms, Fried Mushrooms, Mixed Nuts, Mini Eggrolls, Hot Spinach Artichoke Dip, Pickles, Olives, Roast Beef, Roast Turkey, Roast Chicken Breast, Sweet Corn, Corn on the Cob, Macaroni & Cheese, Spaghetti and Meatballs, Linguine with Clam Sauce, Linguine with Red Sauce, Linguine with some kind of sauce I didn't recognize, Lasagna, Cheese Chunks w/ Crackers, Cheese Spreads & Crackers, Chili w/ cornbread, Hamburger, Hot Dog, Bratwurst, Sauerkraut, Fruit Salad, 3 Bean Salad, Baby Carrots, Shrimp w/ Cocktail Sauce, Broccoli Salad, and Chicken Wings."
"Wow! What did you have for dessert?"
"Nothing. I'm watching my weight."
Perhaps a close second to the buffet as a symbol of American Decadence is the digital music subscription service. When I downloaded the latest version of Windows Media Player, setup asked me if I wanted to set up some music store called URGE. I figured what the heck, sure. So while checking it out, I noticed that URGE offers a subscription service whereby I will have access to millions and millions of songs for the low low price of $9.95 per month.
Wow that sounded tempting! Then I thought about it a little bit. I just purged my itunes library from hours and hours of music that I had at one point borrowed from the public library and ripped so I could listen on my ipod. Never again will I hear Britney Spears: Britney; or Megadeth: Rust in Peace; or Sister Carol: Isis, the original Womb-Man; unless I go back to the library and check them out again. The packrat part of me had a bit of a tough time letting go. You just never know which old song you might have the overwhelming URGE to revisit, and it would be good to have it handy on your hard drive.
But honestly I was feeling a bit overwhelmed. Being a P type, Myers-Briggs wise, I have a hard enough time making decisions. The last thing I need is to clog up my music library again to make sure I get my $9.95's worth and then sit in front of my computer in a near catatonic state trying to figure out which of thousands and thousands of songs I want to listen to.
I see there's an 80 gigabyte ipod now. By my calculations that's about 54 days of music if you played it 24/7. Recently I read that Americans watch an average of 4 hours of T. V. a day. (The implication was that this was a terrible thing.) If you listen to 4 hours of music a day, it will take you over 10 months to go through all of the music in your 80 gig ipod- once.
The good news is that Windows Media Player works a lot more efficiently on a P. C. than itunes. CD's are imported MUCH faster- my impression is 4 to 5 times faster.
Too bad you can't use Media Player with an ipod. I'm considering getting a Sansa- the 1 gig model, thank you very much.
Friday, May 11th
A Devoted Busker Is Gone: Reflections on the Passing of Harold W. Kohn
An article by Khrysso Heart LeFey from A Different Strummer; the newsletter of the Columbus Folk Music Society:
When I’m gone they’ll talk about my singin’
When I'm gone they’ll remember the good old days.
I’ll be in heaven with the golden music ringin’,
With a crowd on every corner
And a hat that’s full always.
-“Street Singer’s Heaven,” lyricist unknown
They say this was a favorite song of Harold’s. I believe it, even I don’t remember having ever heard him sing- he and Janet performed (as “Kohnfetti”) at the Other Side Coffeehouse in the ‘90s, so I probably did. I remember his playing: particularly, for some reason, the krumhorn, an exceedingly reedy, really funny-looking Renaissance double-reed instrument.
Harold W. Kohn was a charter member of the Columbus Folk Music Society; the longest-time members I know, Fred and Nancy Bailey, tell me he was there when they joined. He was the founding type: He founded, and for six years directed, Buskers Columbus. He won an Ohio Senior Citizens Hall of Fame Award for that in 1992.
Someone at the memorial service suggested that Harold’s affinity for the disenfranchised accounted for his havingfounded Buskers: Buskers existed to bring performers and audiences together, audiences, particularly, of elders in places like nursing homes, who couldn’t get out much and were pretty much captive audiences,without much control over where their entertainment came from.
Buskers was good for performers, too: it arranged to subsidize the available fees from the venues so members could get decent minimum pay for their work. If the institution could pay only $25, it would pay it to Buskers and then Buskers would pay the performer $50. Everybody won.
Probably everybody in CFMS leadership had the experience of being accosted by Harold, either in person or on the phone, and stiffening, steeling oneself for a blast of something: hot air, enthusiasm, candor- one was never quite sure what it might be. I think some people avoided him, but I secretly delighted in his curmudgeonliness, and he always sprinkled his stories with delightful bits of trivia: it was from Harold that I learned that no song is ever really original... “Yes, We Have No Bananas,” for example, could just as easily have been sung as,“Hallelujah! (bananas). O bring back my Bonnie to me.”
And even when he was being really critical (during my presidency), I couldn’t complain, because he usually had really good points- good enough that it was painful, to acknowledge that he was right and that the status quo wasn’t going to address the needs. Harold wasn’t too shy about leaving people out to dry. Then again, it wasn’t anything to take personally: he was just calling attention to an inequity. He wasn’t complaining about me- just to me.
I remember a CFMS friend telling me one time of having witnessed Harold accosting Les Wexner, as he stood in line outside the Ohio Theatre while Harold was busking, about the lot of the busker. Wexner called Harold a scatological name and told him to get lost, I was told. I was always impressed that Harold was willing to “speak truth to power.”
Cathy Silver, who was there when I joined CFMS in 1992, reminds me that Harold was one of our first loud voices in protest of keeping the demographic of our membership narrow and heavily stacked with white-guys-with-guitars. Obviously,I am in a tight spot agreeing with him, I with my Germanic skin, whiskers, and Martin 12-string, but I do: the point isn’t that white guys with guitars are bad- it’s that folk music includes so much more,and so should the Folk Music Society.
It is indeed “his singin’” that we’re talking about now he’s gone, which is significant because he was, by profession, a chemist, and notable one at that. His obituary in the Dispatch said,
He graduated ... with a BS in chemistry and ... a PhD in 1953. He served inthe US Navy ... the Army National Guard. His chief occupation was research chemistry at Oak Ridge National Laboratories from 1954 until 1973, and he also worked for the Ohio Environmental agency from 1973 until his retirement in 1986. Dr.Kohn published or co-authored over fifty papers on scientific subjects...
And he published more articles about chess than he did about music.
I had, once upon a time, assumed that his doctorate was in bassoon performance or something, but even though he did make money as a bassoonist and player of other kinds of reeds, music was always an avocation, not his claim to professional fame. He was actually, for all his accomplishment, remarkably humble about his musical abilities: it always seemed to come back to being about the music, not about Harold.
At the memorial service, I was most impressed when they spoke of how Harold adored his wife.
Harold signed himself and Janet up for a Good Friend membership shortly before he died. We can scarce know what a good friend he was to us. Don’t it always seem to go...
Thursday, May 10th
Mr. Reagan's Fantastic Lie
It's popular these days to say that the old conservative/liberal description of politics doesn't apply any more. There is so much diversity among so-called conservatives and their liberal counterparts that you just can't tell what a person's political beliefs are with one label, it is said. Some suggest it would be better to go with a 2 axis description of people's political beliefs instead of just one.
I think it's too bad people think this. I think the conservative/liberal description is still a great way to go. But things have been badly messed up by one fantastic lie.
One of the things that "the great communicator" (as Ronald Reagan was sometimes called) liked to say was that conservatism was about smaller government. He said it so often and so well that it seems everybody believed it and still believes it.
But of course it's nonsense. If conservatism is about smaller government, then Mikhail Bakunin is an ultraconservative and Adolph Hitler is an ultraliberal.
The fact is that liberals and conservatives believe exactly the same thing about government. The purpose of government is to grant the good people the freedom to do the good things that they do. The main way government does this is by keeping the bad people from hurting the good people. The only disagreement between conservatives and liberals is who the bad people and the good people are.
Differences in opinion about who the bad people are will lead to differences of opinion as to the size of government in different circumstances. If you believe that there are a lot of bad people, and/or that the bad people are wielding a great deal of power, then you will want more government. Unless, of course, you believe that the government people are the bad people.
Many, many years ago there wasn't much disagreement about who the bad people were. For the most part the bad people were poor. The good people were those who had money. If you were good and industrious and you resisted temptation to do evil, God would reward you with money. If you were a really, really good person, God would reward you with a whole bunch of money. Poor people, being by nature evil, were likely to try to take away the money and the lives of good people. So government's main function was to keep the poor from doing this. Governments would establish a police force to keep poor individuals from hurting the good people and standing armies to combat any hordes of poor people who would act with evil intent upon the rich. And, of course, a taxation system to finance these two things. There wasn't much more to government than this.
And it was pretty much that way until the twentieth century.
In the early part of the twentieth century in the United States, people experienced a stock market crash followed by years of economic depression. Most were shocked to find out that the main cause of this was evil actions on the part of rich people. And if this weren't enough of a blow to conventional wisdom, people were amazed that they could not take for granted that being good would lead to wealth. The country was filled with honest, good people who were unmistakably and undeniably poor through no fault of their own.
The further development of U. S. government in the 20th century was one of a balancing between the twin goals of controlling the evil actions of both the evil rich and the evil poor.
Wednesday, May 9th
My ipod ate my pc
Shortly after moving to our present location, our family computer started having all kinds of problems. This was incredibly annoying, not only because, well, computer problems are annoying, but because of the timing. I tried all kinds of esoteric things to fix the damn thing, including pulling out hardward devices we never use (like the floppy drive and the phone modem) and turning various things off in bios and windows. Finally I ended up replacing the hard drive and the power supply. I have a friend who fixes computers as a serious hobby, and he tells me 99% of computer problems go away if you replace the power supply and hard drive. I also had a computer for music recording with 3 hard drives in it. Since at that time I only really needed 2 I pulled one out and put it in the family computer.
Now it's about a year later and I'm missing that third hard drive. So I had a brilliant idea. I installed trays in each computer and bought a single drive to swap between them. I use that drive both as a backup for my itunes music and as the source for audio samples for the software sampler in my recording computer.
This has worked great, but I'd been having more and more trouble with itunes on the family computer. Finally the poor tired pc locked up in the middle of a reformatting, leaving me with an unformatted ipod. Completely pissed, I decided I would move my itunes operations to my recording computer. This makes me rather uncomfortable since my ipod already ate one of my computers for lunch and I don't want it to eat the other one for dinner.
Lots of people tell me that macs are so much better than pc's. Exactly how much is "so much"? Sometimes I get the impression that they are thousands or millions of times better than pc's, much in the same way that some people's favorite obscure band is "so much" better than the mainstream pop. So is Vomiting Corpses thousands or millions of time better than Britney Spears? You tell me- I don't have time to listen to Vomiting Corpses right now.
I suspect that macs are better than pc's. I would hope they would be considering how much more they cost. But I've had remarkably few problems with my pc's until I've hooked up this Apple device to it.
If my current setup starts acting up, I suppose I'll have to get a Zune.
Monday, May 7th
May be the last time, I don't know (oh no!)
Nancy and I went to Panda Inn Friday night to eat. We were sad to think that there is at least a possibility that the health department could close them down permanently. I doubt that this will happen, but I suspect that they will get shut down for a couple of weeks, like the last time. It was a different experience to look at the menu and think that this could be the last time we ordered a particular dish.
Should I have gotten the sea cucumber? I didn't. I remember hearing somewhere that sea cucumber is not a vegetable.
I ordered the braised pork with preserved vegetable. This is a dish I was introduced to about 7 years ago, shortly after I started playing at Panda. The Chinese man that recommended it said it was Chinese bacon. Not exactly. I suspect that "braised" is a mistranslation and that marinated is meant. It is a really soft, melt in your mouth dish. Nancy ordered 3 appetizers and shared them with me. I looked over the exotic drink menu and realized that I had tried them all at one time or another except for the volcano. It was too big for one person and I didn't feel like drinking anyway.
Eric Etter was playing this weekend and we weren't able to stay late enough to hear him play. Next weekend I will play. That might be the last time.
I had been trying to order a particular picture of Mike that appeared in the dispatch Christmas day of 2005. The Dispatch has been wonderful about covering Mike's story. This particular article was about Mike's playing and the picture was of him at the piano at Panda Inn. The person in the photo department actually sent me thumbnails of every picture she could find, but the one I wanted to my great dissappointment was not there. A couple weeks later I got another e-mail and they had found it:
I've ordered it and I hope to have it in time to put on the piano next weekend as a tribute to Michael.
Our last fortunes at Panda?
Me: Pardon is the choicest flower of victory.
Nancy: Keep true to the dreams of your youth.
Nancy told me that when she was young she wanted to move out of state and raise St. Bernard dogs.
Saturday, May 5th
fear and hope
Shortly after 9/11 it occurred to me that conservatism was driven by fear. This was because of Bush's 90% approval rating and the massive support for the war. However, it also occurred to me that it would be unfair to make too much of this fact. I suspected that liberalism was also driven by fear, but just couldn't put my finger on what that fear was.
Christians love to say that "perfect love casts out all fear." While believing that this is true, I must also acknowlege that 1. perfect love has a long way to go in this world; and 2. people that don't fear don't live very long. If you have no fear that getting hit by a car will hurt, this can be a real problem.
And although it is unpleasant to be fearful ourselves and to deal with fearful people, instead of putting shame on other people for having fears it may be better to analyze our own fears and see what we can learn.
I've returned to a very basic definition of liberal/conservative which makes it closer to the progressive/non-progressive idea. My fear based definition reflects this, I think.
We all live in the past. By this I mean that we don't know the future and the present is merely a point. All of us are the sum of our past experiences and the conclusions we draw from them. We also all fear the future to some extent or another. The future is unknown, and fear of the unknown is a universal fear.
So I postulate that a basic difference between conservatives and liberals is how they view the future.
Conservatives hope that in the future, the rules will stay the same. They fear that the rules will change.
Liberals hope that in the future, the rules will change. They fear that the rules will stay the same.
What about moderates? I suppose it is possible that a moderate could be someone who faces the future fearlessly, but in the real world that doesn't happen. I would define a moderate as somebody whose fears for the future balance out: rather than being stuck in the middle a moderate is somebody who tends to be conservative in this- liberal in that.
The 9/11 experience shows that even people who are moderate and maybe even rather liberal can quickly swing conservative if the right fears are triggered. The reaction to 9/11 was driven by a conservative fear: the fear that in the future all the rules would be different.
Thursday, May 3rd
I'm so brilliant (NOT!)
Mother's season is upon us. It used to me Mother's Day, but thanks to unchecked and rampant commercialism, it has been stretched into weeks. So I get to be bombarded with catchy and not so catchy slogans and jingles in a valiant attempt to make me buy something really expensive for my wife Nancy that she doesn't really need. But one good thing this season was that after hearing "Every kiss begins with Kay" for the 2,942nd time in my life I realized that there was a pun involved.
Kay/K. Every kiss begins with K!
I'm rather proud of myself that I figured it out in less than 3,000 tries. But on the other hand I'm a bit troubled because it took me far less time to figure out the Cellar/Seller pun in "The Diamond Cellar."
Am I just getting old?
Maybe not. I used to deliver stuff to the Diamond Cellar/Sellar. So really if you count the number of times I read their name on mailpieces, it took me about 5,500 exposures in a shorter period of time to get it.
The doctor has put me in orthodics, and my foot is feeling much better. The down side is that other parts of my body are now hurting. Doctore told me this would be normal: as the orthodics force me to walk more efficiently, muscles that haven't been used correctly for years are bound to complain. I don't feel bad about it though, perhaps in part to regular dosages of SAM-e. The box tells me that SAM-e will elevate my mood. The reason I'm taking it is that I ran into Joe K. in the grocery store and he recommended the stuff as a natural anti-inflammatory. Joe K. lives on my route and occasionally goes to my church.
But I was reading the disclaimer on the box today and noticed this:
This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.
Wow, that really gives me confidence in the stuff.
Wednesday, May 2nd
The person in charge
3717-1-02.4(B)(7)
Violation: The person in charge could not state the required food temperatures and times for safe refrigerated storage, hot holding, cooling, and/or reheating of potentially hazardous food.
Years ago I used to be the "person in charge" at a local restaurant. I was the assistant manager and had to make a number of decisions that had the potential of affecting the health of... well... at least dozens of people if not hundreds. Sometimes this had to be balanced against other interests.
For example, sometimes an employee would bring some food to me. "This doesn't look so good... should I use it or throw it away?" These days restaurants are required to date all of their food, but back in the dark ages we had to rely on arcane methods to make such determinations. One time I asked my boss about some ham that looked pretty slimy. He told me that it just needed to "breathe." If you unwrap it and leave it in the cooler, he said, any bacteria that may exist will be killed.
At the time that made perfect sense to me. As I think about it today I realize that what was probably happening was that the ham became dehydrated, and therefore appeared less slimy.
Dating food is a simple and easy way to tell when food should not be used. The rules about time and temperature are not nearly so simple.
3717-1-03.4(F)(1)(b)
Violation: Potentially hazardous foods were being held temperatures above 41° F (5°C).
Correction: Hold cold foods at 41° F (5°C) or below.
Comments: OBSERVED BREADED CHICKEN AT 48F AND BREADED CHICKEN FILETS AT 47F AND BAGS OF BREADED CHICKEN AT 51F. ALL FOOD WAS STILL WITHIN THE 4 HOUR TIME LIMIT AND WAS PLACED IN THE WALK IN COOLER TO GET THE TEMPERATURES DOWN.
Status: Not Corrected - Further action required with a follow-up inspection
The danger temperatures for bacterial growth are between 41F and 135F. Therefore if food is being "held," it should not be within that temperature range. Of course, there will be times when food must be within this range. The heath department has guidelines for this as well: if food intending to be held for more than 24 hours is cooling from about 135F, it needs to be cooled from 135F to 70F within 2 hours, and from 70F to 41F within 4 hrs.
That is only one of the many rather complex (at least to me) rules about using time and temperature to control potential food borne illness in food.
In this particular violation, the health department is concerned because Panda preps a large amount of chicken at once. The health department wants them to prep a smaller amount so that they can get it back into the cooler more quickly. While understanding this concern, I also wonder if food being "prepped" can reasonably be equated with food being "held."
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