Solzhenitsyn passes away

I am saddened to hear of the passing of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the great Russian writer who gave us The Gulag Achipelago and A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch. He was one of the great writers and great fighters for liberty. He will be sorely missed.

I read A Day in the Life... one afternoon as an undergrad many years ago. Unfortunately that is the only work of his I have had the pleasure of reading. In case you didn't know, he won the Nobel Prize in 1970 and was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974. He returned to the Soviet Union in 1994 after the fall of communism. Of couse, he didn't like capitalism either. The article states:

During the 1990s, his stalwart nationalist views, his devout Orthodoxy, his disdain for capitalism and disgust with the tycoons who bought Russian industries and resources cheaply following the Soviet collapse, were unfashionable. He faded from public view.

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tyson chicken, Eid al-Fitr, and idiocy

As part of negotiations over a new union contract, the Tyson chicken plant in Shelbyville, Tennessee, will close for the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr and the plant's workers will no longer enjoy Labor Day. The WorldNetDaily (Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars refers to the web site as WorldNutDaily; poke around a bit and you'll agree) posts the news story and includes a number of comments found at the Shelbyville Times newspaper forum page. The comments they selected for posting range from idiotic and 'how is it you don't fall down more often' idiocy, not that I expected anything less out of the WorldNutDaily camp.

One comment they cite: "If this holiday is that important to them, make them take it off instead of Christmas Day and allow ALL workers to be off Labor Day. Most AMERICAN families have some type of function on Labor Day," wrote one anonymous participant." I've often had to work (I teach) on Labor Day -- probably more often than not since entering academia (including my years as a grad student). Where was I teaching? State universities. In the United States. It is interesting to see that this reader suggests a holiday that should be celebrated May 1 (like everyone else in the world) is more important than Christmas.



This passage is especially idiotic. Let's count the logical fallacies:

It says union leadership made this request, makes you wonder who runs the union. I guess they are already working on a plan to replace Memorial Day, that means nothing to the Muslims so why should we have the right to celebrate it. Labor Day commemorates the plight of workers and the struggle of labor unions to improve working conditions for American workers. The Muslims will not stop until all of our rights and laws are changed to accommodate their beliefs. This will be a new America but it will be their America," said another.

Let's see -- slippery slope in the second sentence. Somehow the workers working on a given day means that "why should we have the right to celebrate it." So if some workers somewhere are working a given day then no one celebrates it? In that case, no one celebrates Labor Day because the university where I taught before still has classes that day. Staff is off, but I guess they can't celebrate it because the faculty still has to teach. Another slippery slope -- hard to believe that a minority of perhaps 1% of the entire population of the United States is going to transform the US. Dare to be stupid, I guess.

Not to be outdone by the stupid comments made by anonymous posters at a Tennessee newspaper website, the article reads: "Ironically, the company on its website also promotes a variety of traditional and customary Christian and secular blessings for food – its primary product." There is nothing ironic about this. They didn't change the holiday to "punish" Christians (that might have been the effect of eliminating Christmas as a holiday). They changed the holiday to accommodate the religious beliefs of over half their employees. The article notes that about 700 of the 1200 workers at the plant are from Somalia, who are mainly Muslim.

The article cites another commenter on the forum:

"This is America, founded by the blood of our forefathers and should not be challenged by Somalians, Hispanics, or any other immigrants. If they come to America, they need to learn our language and our ways. They can practice their culture in private if they so please, but not shove it down our throats. Would they let us go there and change there (sic) country? I have banned Tyson's products from my home for years because of the illegals they were hiring. I am sorry for the producers that are supplying them, but Tyson's has once again crossed the line with the American people. Labor Day was here long before Tyson's. What holiday will be next to be taken away and replaced to accommodate an immigrant. This stinks worse than the plant," said another anonymous forum participant.

This one is truly idiotic and downright offensive. How does what one plant does in one city (town?) in one state constitute "shov[ing] it [their culture] down our throats"? This person evidently does not work there and apparently hasn't even eaten their product for years -- and feels compelled to make his or her anti-immigrant bias known. It's hard to see how changing one holiday for another is somehow a "challenge" to our country by "Somalians, Hispanics, or any other immigrants (sic)." If the union negotiated for it, I assume it was something the workers discussed, with the possible trade off noted. The other holiday that would have been logical was the birthday -- if the non-Muslim workers had protested, I'm sure that that day would have been the trade-off.

This shouldn't even be in the news; it's only notable because Americans are petrified of Muslims -- look at how many emails have gone out about Obama being a Muslim (all false, check out snopes.com) -- and immigrants in general. They forget how many generations ago their own ancestors came and the culture that they brought.
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wikipedia, penn and teller on recycling

An episode of Penn and Teller's Bullshit from 2004 questions whether recycling is worth the effort. They say no, arguing that 1) it generally costs more to recycle than to produce raw materials (aluminum is the big exception) and 2) the big reason for recycling -- lack of landfill space -- isn't really an issue at all. They spend a few minutes discussing other reasons for discussing recycling programs, especially 'it makes me feel good,' which is fine, but isn't a good reason for justifying recycling programs, especially if they don't make any sense anyway.

I am curious about whether their arguments are valid or not. I watched the episode with a friend of mine who is committed to recycling. She didn't have an answer for Penn and Teller's arguments in the episode. I personally had supported recycling efforts until seeing the episode. I have not made a final decision on the validity of recycling and am in the process of seeking further answers.

For this reason I went to wikipedia to see if they had anything on the controversy (not that I trust wikipedia, but on topics such as this it doesn't seem to be a bad start). They cite a number of old articles on the topic, so their entry may not be up to date. For example, the article discusses the issue of recycling paper. To discuss this, they cite Steven Landsburg's book, The Armchair Economist, which was published -- in 1993. They write:

Economist Steven Landsburg has claimed that paper recycling actually reduces tree populations. He argues that because paper companies have incentives to replenish the forests they own, large demands for paper lead to large forests. Conversely, reduced demand for paper leads to fewer "farmed" forests. Similar arguments were expressed in a 1995 article for The Free Market.

The most recent source here is 1995. That doesn't mean that it's inaccurate, but it does mean that it's old and that conditions may have changed, making paper recycling more efficient.

Likewise, they cite old studies to signal the high cost of recycling programs. They write:

In a 1996 article for The New York Times, John Tierney argued that it costs more money to recycle the trash of New York City than it does to dispose of it in a landfill. Tierney argued that the recycling process employs people to do the additional waste disposal, sorting, inspecting, and many fees are often charged because the processing costs used to make the end product are often more than the price gained from its sale. Tierney also referenced a study conducted by the Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA) that found in the six communities involved in the study, "all but one of the curbside recycling programs, and all the composting operations and waste-to-energy incinerators, increased the cost of waste disposal."

Again, the course is very old -- a study from 1996. That doesn't mean that it's not valid, but again, conditions may have changed making recycling more cost efficient.

That doesn't seem to be the case, though. As Penn and Teller point out on their show, market forces help develop programs where they make sense. That is why it is easy to recycle aluminum cans (besides leaving them in trash cans for homeless people to collect) -- recycled aluminum is just as good as the original and is a lot cheaper.

Penn and Teller also note an important point about recycling in general: it is the third activity from the environmental pyramid: reduce, reuse, recycle. They are ranked in the order of efficiency: reduction is obviously the best way to lower the need for natural resources, but it is often impossible. It is also useful to reuse things as many times as possible. Recycling is the least efficient (and, as they and other economists claim, may not be efficient at all).

What this analysis leaves out, though, is the message that is being sent by the mere existence of recycling programs. Without them, would people think about lowering their use of natural resources? As we've seen with gas and oil, only when it surpasses certain markers. The line seems to be around or a bit over $3 per gallon; that's when news sources carry stories about people hyper miling and when people stop buying SUVs and start looking for more fuel efficient cars (don't get me started).

Of course, what these studies show in part is that not all use is necessarily bad for the environment -- trees used for paper are grown on tree farms, and these farms exist because there is demand for paper. If the demand for paper drops, these farms stand to disappear as well, leaving the world with fewer trees. It seems paradoxical, but using non-recycled paper may actually help the environment if these claims are correct!

In the meantime, I continue to search for more information. I throw my plastics into the trash. After all, Penn and Teller cite an estimate that a landfill that measures 35 miles by 35 miles (that 's a lot of real estate, but also small in another respect) by a few hundred feet (deep) would contain all the trash produced for the next 1000 years. Landfills apparently have value too -- they put golf courses on top and even produce energy.
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barack's birth certificate forgery myth busted

Someone mentioned a new layer to the urban legend filling people's emails saying that Barack Obama is not eligible to be president because he wasn't a natural-born citizen. Snopes.com puts an end to the issue citing his birth in Hawaii as closing the discussion. Except now a supposed expert claims that his birth certificate is a forgery (read about the forgery here.).

But that post was published Sunday, July 20. As I write, it is late Thursday, July 31. Almost two weeks have passed and not one major news source has covered this alleged smoking gun. A search of CNN and Fox News websites turned up no hits. The only hits I found about the forgery were on the internet, primarily in the blogsphere. Why is there no coverage of an issue that could make the candidate leading in the polls ineligible for the office?

I could only find a couple websites that questioned the report on Atlas Shrugs. One site mentioned simply that an Obama spokesman confirmed that it was his (Obama's) birth certificate. Not a credible denial. A poster there altered me to a website that addressed the issue.

This site investigated the claims made by Atlas Shrugs. Among other actions, they "e-mailed it [Obama's birth certificate] to the Hawaii Department of Health, which maintains such records, to ask if it was real. This site also questions the claims of forgery.

"'It’s a valid Hawaii state birth certificate,' spokesman Janice Okubo told us."

The research raised a lot of questions, so they kept digging and they also "circled back to the Department of Health, [and] had a newsroom colleague bring in her own Hawaii birth certificate to see if it looks the same (it’s identical)."

So far we have: Barack's birth certificate is identical to another birth certificate from the state, and a spokesman for the state confirms this.

They kept asking questions, and finally concluded: "If this document is forged, a U.S. senator and his presidential campaign have perpetrated a vast, long-term fraud. They have done it with conspiring officials at the Hawaii Department of Health, the Cook County (Ill.) Bureau of Vital Statistics, the Illinois Secretary of State’s office, the Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Illinois and many other government agencies."

That's at least five different government sites that would have to be complicit in the forgery for it to be successful -- and the number is probably double that. Considering the mainstream media -- with an opportunity to break a huge story (a political scandal along the lines of Watergate and Monicagate, not to mention the drama of The Manchurian Candidate) -- have remained completely silent. If there's a conspiracy here, it's how some people have far too much time on their hands and don't just fall down more often.
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Melodrama, mystical justice, and TV crime shows

Melodrama is often associated simply with women and soap operas with good reason. Soap opera are dominated by romantic relationships where emotions dominate and reason dissipates. However, melodrama is not limited to soap operas. Perhaps surprising to some, it dominates action movies as well -- thus putting Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwartzenegger on a par with daytime soaps, much to the chagrin of guys who watch action flicks in an attempt to show off their masculinity (or at least to retain their identity as guys).

Here I explore some ways in which crime TV shows are melodramatic, and observe some shifts in these programs.

In a book about hard-boiled crime fiction in the United States, Gumshoe America: Hard-Boiled Crime Fiction and the Rise and Fall of New Deal Liberalism (Durham: Duke UP, 2000), the Wesleyan University professor Sean McCann notes of the classical detective story:

Traditionally, the classic detective story celebrated the victory of public knowledge and civic solidarity over the dangers of private desire. It registered that victory formally by bringing the arcane knowledge and peculiar abilities wielded by the detective to bear on the challenge to the social order represented by the villain, suggesting thereby that there was no specialized knowledge that could not prove socially useful just as there was no strife or dissension that could not be absorbed by a healthy civil society (4).

The elements of the classic detective story, especially in McCann's terms, are a detective who has access to arcane knowledge and/or special abilities, a criminal who represents "private desire," and a social order that is threatened by the latter. The latter in fact is the cause of the crime, an act that destabilizes the social order, or at least threatens to do so, especially if private desire can overcome public knowledge and civic solidarity. This way, the victory of the detective is the victory of the society that he (normally) or she represents.

The classic version of this on TV is Dragnet, a show where the cops always solved the crime and where the criminals were almost always punished -- and were publicly identified. The original run of the show was in the 1950's after a debut on radio in 1949. It ran for 276 episodes in the 1950s, before another run of 100 episodes from 1967 to 1970. Perhaps nothing says more of its formula than its success: nearly 400 episodes over about 14 years, in addition to two different rebirths from the 1990s on. The show avoided issues of racial segregation in the Los Angeles police department and other hot topics in exchange for the endorsement of the LAPD (see wikipedia's article on the show here). Part of its formula for success were its straight-forward portrayal of police detectives who solve the crime. The show changes the formula of the classic detective story by making the detective a police officer -- in classic stories or novels the detective is often unwilling to participate or has no need to do so. Sherlock Holmes gives the appearance of not needing to work, though novels about him present an ambiguous portrait of this. Regardless, Sherlock is a bohemian and works only when the fancy strikes him. Police officers, however, have assigned shifts and represent a blue color version of the will of society to contain private desire. Indeed, arcane knowledge becomes markedly less arcane in Dragnet and other detective shows, especially in their police show incarnation.

In addition, Dragnet inspired other shows, perhaps most notably Law & Order. The original Law & Order, despite running for 18 seasons (19 beginning in January), was in danger recently of being canceled and it has inspired its own spin-offs, one of which (Law & Order: SVU) is currently the most popular of the franchise. It is a straight-forward plot-driven procedural, with the first half of the show usually dedicated to police investigation and the second half to the trial and legal issues. The biggest differences between LO and Dragnet are the inclusion of the legal issues and the significant change in that the criminals are not always found guilty. In this way, the show presents ways in which the private desire of criminals may subvert the social order. But the show's formula and the issues presented perhaps helped it achieve its peak popularity in the 2001-2002 season -- one that began a couple weeks after 9/11.

The threat that criminals pose, especially as when they manage to find loopholes in the system, is especially clear on SVU where sex offenders regularly escape justice and are free to threaten other victims -- frequently kids. The perpetrator's escape certainly seems to justify the perception that more cops are needed, but perhaps more importantly scare viewers, predisposing them to staying in and watching more TV. SVU is also more clearly melodramatic: Mariska Hargitay's character often paints the issues in terms of the victims and their feelings. Of course, Stabler represents this in masculine form and Munch routinely addresses the issues in terms of what they mean for Americans, either positively (more leeway for police mean less privacy for individual Americans, while more protection for victims means more threats for Americans). The show features different side characters and has a format that is more open than that of the original show; these characters -- especially the psychologist Huang (especially given the issues that the show raises) -- and its open format, in addition to its stronger melodramatic component, probably explain why it attains higher ratings than the original, even if its ratings are falling.

The melodrama of course continues: police detectives work to maintain and control private desire of criminals who strive to subvert the public order and place individuals in danger. Their inability to solve all crimes only adds to the tension: while they are often successful, a viewer does not know if they are going to solve the case or not.

Monk, as discussed earlier, fits the profile of a classic detective story. Monk is either unwilling or unable to solve crimes because of his lack of interest (despite his need for income) or because his many phobias interfere. However, it is his perception, heightened by his OCD, or his arcane knowledge (or a combination of the two) that allow him to solve crimes. His success rate signals a return to the classical model, where arcane knowledge trumps private desire, despite the obstacles that the detective's own mind create in the form of the OCD and its accompanying phobias (present from the pilot, where the criminal escapes due to Monk's fear of heights).

The popularity of these shows -- over 1000 shows in just these mentioned -- show the model to be a formula that works. Viewers evidently are happy to see justice work, even when they hear of criminals getting off in real life. While I have not watched enough of the CSI franchise to comment on its formula, the shows certainly present a positive role for technology to play a positive role in solving crimes. With the promise that technology offers, not only will all criminals be caught, but no innocent person will be sent to prison (or condemned to death, or executed, for that matter).

The melodramatic aspect of justice emphasizes one final point: the formula that justice often follows is a rational one, divorced from the emotions. This is perhaps most clearly represented by Jack McCoy's character on the original Law & Order who seeks justice -- and punishes those who seek revenge. But his emotional attachment to cases, perhaps best evidenced in his courtroom persona, betrays a commitment to what revenge represents: an emotional attachment.

This emotional attachment, even when in the form of revenge, is not something that should be ignored but embraces, argues the late philosopher Robert Solomon. Revenge has a long history and is found in the Bible. Its positive contribution to the topic of justice? Attachment to the cause of justice. While Derrida argues that justice is impossible based on the impossibility of creating laws that apply to its implementation in a legal system (and as such in a given application of those laws), he does not that the act of creating a legal system is a mystical act, one of a foundation. The mystical foundation of justice, however, is not just about the establishment of a legal code. It is about the foundation of a society to which one feels attached. One does not want to be an American because it's a rational choice: it is one that has a highly charged emotional one -- one that explains the fervor of patriotic and nationalist sentiments, evidenced especially in recent times (i.e., after 9/11).

I "feel" (sorry for the pun) that this explanation is rather brief. I will try to update in the future as it is part of my research (not that I have readers at this point...)

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Managua, an earthquake, and the revolution

Managua is Nicaragua's capital city and now boasts a population of over 1.6 million (1,680,000 estimated on wikipedia). It was founded as a fishing village on the coast of a mini-great-lake lake, the heavily polluted Lake Managua (apparently there is a program to decontaminate it that is supposed to finish cleaning its waters sometime this year (2008), also according to wikipedia). Nicaragua's population is listed as being estimated at 5.6 million, a number that represents a growth of almost 10% in little over a year after the census of 2005 (there must be a mistake somewhere, perhaps with the date of the estimate), when the population was 5.1 million. In any case, Managua has grown since I was last there in the early 1990s when its population was estimated to be about 1 million (in a country of 4 million) and has also grown in regards to its share of the country's population: about 25% when I was there to around 30% today.

Managua was created to place a capital in a compromise location between the colonial cities of León and Granada that dominated Nicaraguan politics, with the Liberal Party associated with the former and the Conservative party with the latter. Managua was perhaps not the best choice, given the two earthquakes that shook the city in the 20th century. In 1931 an earthquake shook the city and it rebuilt. The 1972 earthquake was much more tragic. It lasted only 30 seconds, but it destroyed 90% of the city (the center was never rebuilt) and shook national politics.

Nicaragua had been ruled by the Somoza dynasty since the mid-1930s when Anastacio Somoza (Tacho) staged a coup d'etat and took over the presidency. While he and his two sons were not always officially the president, all politics went through them and though it was first Tacho until 1956, then his eldest (legitimate) son Luis until 1967 (he died of a heart attack; I read a piece that mentioned a rumor that he was poisoned by his brother -- the family was certainly capable of doing just that) and then Tachito until he was deposed in 1979. Tacho was assassinated but his death failed to have an impact on national politics. Luis was a bit more benevolent, at least after the crackdown that followed the assassination. Tachito was hard-handed, perhaps as much as his father if not more so. In the early 1960s in the wake of the Cuban Revolution (1959), Carlos Fonseca and others began a guerrilla group dedicated to toppling the dynasty. Their group, the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) eventually split into three groups, with third group emerging as a sort of compromise group in an attempt to reconcile the different factions, as well as to broaden the appeal of the Sandinista movement in general. The two primary factions were the GPP and the TP (Guerra Popular Prolongada -- that's Prolonged Popular War and Tendencia Proletaria, Proletarian tendency, respectively). The former favored the gradual accumulation of forces in the countryside and in the nearly uninhabited mountains, while the former favored armed actions included bank and restaurant robberies in an urban setting. At seems that they complemented each other nicely -- one group in the mountains driving the National Guard soliders crazy and the other making public actions in the city that called attention to the movement.

In 1969, at about the same time that the Apollo mission was about to step on the moon, an incident with the urban group was televised (without sound). The National Guard (this was Nicaragua's army, set up by the United States during the early part of the twentieth century when they occupied the country; Somoza rose to prominence not because he was a good officer --apparently he was just the opposite -- but because he knew English) had discovered a house that had several Sandinista operatives inside. The GN (its initials in Spanish, for Guardia Nacional) surrounded the house (as was their custom) and the female members of the Sandinistas left the house, were arrested, and later tortured. Only one man remained inside, though the GN thought there were more. What happened was perhaps a decisive moment in the revolution as that one man -- Julio Buitraga -- held off the National Guard for hours. In a scene that seems straight out of an Ahnold or Rambo film, the house was fired upon, and Buitraga fired back. Eventually they knocked down the walls of the house, reducing it to rubble. Buitraga came out of the rubble, firing at the soldiers before finally dying. In the meantime, the TV audience could see the officers tremble with fear. Fear that they had of one guy.

The next key moment was the 1972 earthquake. It occurred December 23, just before Christmas, and destoyed at least 90% of the residences. In the aftermath Managua became one of the most expensive cities to live in the world (1973). The international community responded generously but immediately there were reports of Tachito and the National Guard hoarding the donations and not helping the residents. Roberto Clemente heard these reports and was on his way to Nicaragua to help ensure the delivery of foodstuffs and other aid to the common people when his plane crashed. The corruption of Somoza became public in the wake of the earthquake and the struggles of the US with Nixon's own corruption, Ford's brief presidency, and then the economic struggles that came to a head under Carter, especially with the sudden increase in oil prices in the late 1970s all eroded American support for the regime. Carter refused support to Somoza late in his reign and even denied him entry to the US. Jorge Eduardo Arellano, one of Nicaragua's more prominent intellectuals, downplayed the revolution and told me that Nicarauga didn't have a revolution as much as it had an earthquake. After the earthquake, with the corruption of Somoza plainly evident, support from his previous allies eroded until he had no allies. His time was up.

It would be reductionist to take Arellano's claim at face value, just as it would to take Omar Cabezas's account of the revolution at face value. Omar Cabezas won the Casa de las America's prize for best testimonio in 1982, the year before Rigoberta Menchú won it. Cabezas's book, La montaña es algo más que una inmensa estepa verde (translated into English with the title, Fire from the Mountain: the Making of a Sandinista, but whose title more literally translates as The Mountain is something more than an immense green wasteland), describes his intial period of entry as a militant in the Sandinista ranks, beginning with the period before he was burned, i.e., identified as a Sandinista, and forced to go to the mountains (he was a member of the GPP). His work, an absolute beautiful work in spoken Nicaraguan Spanish (he didn't write the book per se, he spoke with different people and others transcribed it for him; he actually wrote the sequel; it didn't do as well, though it is a nice view of the struggle and has a great glossary of Nicaraguan swear words -- Cabezas has a reputation as being... well George Carlin-like in his use of the language). One of the central points is the association of the mountain, the Nicaraguan landscape, with the Nicaraguan people and, more importantly, with the Sandinista Revolution. Of course, Cabezas is wrong: the revolution was won not in the countryside (though it certainly did help) but by the progress of the urban movement. The robberies in the city brough the movement both recognition of its presence and funds. Its urban actions like the kidnapping of an ambassador -- in his own home -- brought a lot of attention, money, and the release of several political prisoners, one of whom, Daniel Ortega, would later head the government shortly after the triumph (and again today). A later raid on the National Palace had a simliar effect. Young people (mainly boys in their teens) were quick to join the Sandinistas; they had been targeted by the Guardia during the 1970s and they decided to join, perhaps figuring that they were going to die anyway (I'm a little glib here; more work is needed on this point). They also contributed, as did the the turnabout of Somoza's former allies (perhaps out of interest in shaping the new government, realizing that Somoz's days were numbered, but also realizing in the process that Somoza had to go).

Was the Revolution an earthquake? Absolutely. Did the 1972 earthquake bring about Somoza's downfall? It certainly contributed, but without the presence of other actors, Nicaraguan history would certainly have been different.
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Wilco's Jeff Tweedy and the Ambiguities of Life and Love

I wrote earlier about unhealthy representations of love in pop songs, discussing Peter Cetera's "Glory of Love." Jeff Tweedy in Wilco has managed the opposite, to write songs that show a more realistic display of emotions that accompany romantic journeys.

One song is on his first post-Uncle Tupelo album, A.M. The album certainly still sounds like a country album, unlike his most recent material. Of course, Tweedy has from the beginning crossed musical boundaries, even if his experimentation has been somewhat limited. While a country musician, Uncle Tupelo recorded songs like "Gun" that fit in nicely with the so-called "alternative" movement of the early 1990s and sounded a lot like a punk song. For the record, Uncle Tupelo's "Effigy" is found on the No Alternative compilation CD. It has been commented that Tweedy has always tried to write the perfect song, or the perfect pop song. One of those attempts was UT's "Gun." Another attempt is the mainstream sounding "Shouldn't be Ashamed" from Wilco's debut album.

The song presents alternative situations in every verse. The song begins, "To live without a savior / to answer to His name." On one hand, you might not believe in God or care that one exists. On the other hand, maybe you do and go to church regularly. In either case, "You shouldn't be ashamed / you shouldn't be afraid." The situation of the second verse concerns anonmyity in modern society: "Like a kid behind the counter / remembering your name." Where in the world do cashiers know who you are? Hence the ambiguity as an otherwise anonymous situation turns out to be one in which the other person, the salesperson or cashier, remembers or recognizes you. Again, this isn't any reason to be "ashamed" or even "afraid." Depending on what you're buying or looking for, or how nervious or shy your are, you might easily feel one of these emotions.

The chorus makes the song into something of a love song: "'Cause if it's not like I told you / Then it's still your call / You should live how you want." The chorus begins, pointing out the conditions of a "deal" and a statement that should always be true ("You should live how you want"). Of course, life and the decisions that one takes have consequences and effects: "Stay with me" the narrator pleads, but then recapitulates and adds, "We should stay apart," the final ambiguity neatly stated. The chorus concludes, pondering the dilemma of modern life and these kinds of decisions, "Just shouldn't ever have to be this hard."

Love doesn't solve any problems in this song; it only creates new ones. Regardless of one's religious views or how anonymous one is in one's hometown (or elsewhere), love poses some tough decisions and doesn't make life easier.

The song continues with a situation reminiscent of that of the second verse: "Like a man on the sidewalk / Remembering your face." Of course, some random guy on the sidewalk should be just that -- random. As such, there's no reason for him to remember who you are. Maybe a store clerk -- especially in a store that one frequents, that might be understood. But a random guy on the street? Finally, this guy has a memory, "He remembers when they still wore gaiters / World war one." Signs of a simpler time? In any case, the narrator pleads for an easier life, this one "Just shouldn't ever have to be this hard."

These ambiguities would be developed in Wilco's breaththrough album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, on the album's first track, "I am Trying to Break your Heart." The song has six verses and a single chorus that isn't repeated, or seven verses (since it's not repeated, is it really a chorus?). Each of the verses except the sixth ends with a line that is both simliar and different in each stanza. The line begins "What was I thinking when" and ends differently, except the final line of the final verse is identical to the last line in the first verse (these two verses are also very similar). For complete lyrics, go here. For a live video of the song, go here.

The song begins with a man in a sort of haze (probably drunken, perhaps reminiscient of Tweedy's struggles with drugs): "I am an American aquarium drinker / I assassin down the avenue" and sets the context of the song: "I'm hiding out in the big city blinking / what was I thinking when I let go of you?" The song is situated after the end of a romantic relationship with the narrator thinking about getting back together: "Let's forget about the tongue-tied lightning / Let's undress like cross-eyed strangers." And later, "I'd always thought that if I held you tightly / You'd always love me like you did back then / Then I fell asleep and the city kept blinking / What was I thinking when I let you back in?"

By now the narrator has either realized his mistake in trying to get back together or his mistake in thinking about his lover in his own mind. He changes his tune and tries to turn the tables, suggesting that he's not vulnerable and in love, he is "trying to break your [her?] heart." In other words, he is trying to seduce her and is trying to convince himself that he doesn't really care about her.

That's not the case, though, as the song ends with a final verse that's nearly identical to the first: "Disposable dixie-cup drinker / I assassin down the avenue / I'm hiding out in the big city blinking / what was I thinking when I let go of you?" The reference to aquarium has been changed to dixie cups -- either the drinking has become rather informal or it is a reference to drug rehab. The music is sad throughout, though lightly upbeat, but seems especially melancholic here at the end (especially on the recorded version).

The narrator in these songs is aware that relationships are not a panacea for one's problems. "Maybe we should stay apart" is a reasonable solution, and seems to be the final answer on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot just as it was on A.M., released several years earlier. The love song will never disappear -- poetry about love has been around at least as long as there has been secular literature in modern languages (I hesitate to speak on classical Greek or Roman poetry; my thought is that there was love poetry but until I find examples, I best avoid silly errors). Though it may never disappear, there will be sappy, silly love songs and others that address the complicated and conflicted emotions therein (not that all such songs are bad, John Lennon's "Oh Yoko" has a certain charm to it, to name but one example). Tweedy's songs are among those that address these complications and the ambiguous feelings that result.
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Friends, dysfunctional friends, and Thanksgiving

My favorite episode of Friends is "The One with the Boobies," an episode that has Stephen Fisher play Pheobe's psychiatrist boyfriend who annoys her friends by analyzing them. Based on a single joke by Chandler, he deduces that Chandler is an only child and that his parents divorced before he hit puberty, calling it a "textbook" case of such behavior. He suggests that Ross subconsciously knew that he was marrying a lesbian, either because of low self-esteem or because he was trying to compensate for the attention he received from his parents due to a sibling who was perceived to be a failure. His best work of analysis is with the show itself: when Phoebe wants to break up with him he condemns the friends, saying that it is typical behavior of a dysfunctional group of friends. "Love me, need me, define me" characterizes their relationship and he says that it is ridiculous that they drink coffee "from oversized coffee cups that may as well have nipples on them." In this, he accurately summarizes the show, one that was incredibly safe and, excuse the pun, friendly over its lengthy run.

Perhaps nothing was more Friends than its Thanksgiving specials. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks someone wrote an article that I saw on the web talking about the choice of food for Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving, as Chandler unwittingly notes on the show, isn't about one's favorite foods (he would rather eat macaroni and cheese than turkey). The foods for Thanksiving are not people's favorite -- but they are comfort foods (Chandler chooses a comfort food of his own, perhaps in an effor to find solace in a holiday that was traumatic in some way for him). The thesis of the article I read was that Thanksgiving is a holiday about comfort -- and Friends, a show that never challenged its viewers or even convention, provided just that over the years. The TV sets showing Friends may well have had nipples on them, but that's precisely what the show offerred. That's why the show ended the way it did (with Ross and Rachel together).
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A benefit of expensive gas

I'm as upset as most people about high gas prices. Of course, I don't drive an SUV or pickup truck.

One thing I think they should do is have the drivers of fuel-inefficient vehicles pay an additional tax (either at purchase time or annually), with funds used for two purposes: half of the money should be earmarked for development of renewable energy, the other half should be used to offset high gas prices. My rationale? The price of oil is determined in large part by the laws of supply and demand. Since the drivers of SUV use a lot more gas than I do with my subcompact, not only do they use more gas, but they create a larger demand, raising gas prices for everyone. I don't have the slightest idea how much money such a tax would raise and perhaps the total would be a subsidy of less than a penny per gallon. If that's the case then all of the money raised should be dedicated to research into or development of renewable energy sources.

Back to the "good news" about high gas prices. People are driving less, buying more fuel efficient cars, and thinking about renewable energy sources. Ethanol has been a mistake and hopefully that experiment (especially the corn-based one) will end soon; besides using more energy to produce than it gives us (and cost inefficient as well), the investment in ethanol has the collateral damage of high food prices (talk about shooting oneself in the foot). Some of this is periodical -- should gas prices go down, people will return to their gas guzzling vehicles and driving, investment in mass transit will decrease and users of mass transit will drop, placing a bigger burden on taxpayers. Tom Tomorrow has a nice cartoon here.

Some benefits are bound to stick around. Today there was an article on cnn.com about the development of wind energy. The article also notes that China is gaining on the US in terms of harnessing the wind. The article is generally positive and notes that new lines being built in a Texan consortium "will accommodate about 18,500 megawatts of wind generation by 2012-- enough energy to power 4 million homes." Right now production is at just under a third of that, with T. Boone Pickens' project, that "When completed, his 2,700 turbines will be capable of producing enough electricity to power 1.3 million homes." That's apparenlty another third of the total potential capacity for the new lines to support. The more, the better, and I'm guessing that 4 million homes is potentially over a half of all Texans (about 21 million estimated population; I'm thinking 3 people per home; later I'll check the census bureau info and see how close that is). That 's a pretty strong statement for one of the largest states. Hopefully others follow suit.
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Monk, the classic detective story, and OCD

In many ways, USA's TV series Monk is a version of the classic detective story: an unwilling detective solves crimes through his arcane knowledge. In this case (sorry about the pun), Monk is not quite unwilling (he is a former police officer) but is somewhat incapable due to his OCD. Of course, the OCD serves as his "arcane knowledge" as in many instances he is able to pick up on details that others overlooked. In other instances, it is his attention to detail (a benefit of the OCD, it seems) combined with arcane knowledge that allows him to see clue where others do not.

One example is the opening scene of the pilot. Monk notices the odor of cigarettes in the curtains (other detectives apparently did not; it should be noted that a smoker probably wouldn't be able to pick up on the odor, but not all of the officers are smokers, though none are identified one way or another). Captain Stottlemeyer suggests that the murder victim was the smoker (why couldn't it have been any other visitor to the apartment?), but Monk noticed that the woman was a Calvinist and would not have smoked (unless she wasn't very devout, but perhaps the evidence of her religion also suggested that she was devout enough for that to be the case). The ability of Monk to connect the cigarette smoke (unnoticed by the other officers) and the clue that showed her to be a Calvinist (arcane knowledge), together make for a clue (one that bore out, in the end).

As a classic detective story and a show geared toward a mainstream audience (despite being on cable TV), and not to mention the limited budget, the plotlines tend toward the conventional and feature happy endings. Serious topics are rarely discussed and the crimes, while being "bad" activities, are not the rapes, child moletations, or dark conspiracies like one finds on Law and Order SVU or even Law and Order Criminal Intent (or even the original Law and Order). Monk varies from these shows in that the guilty party is always punished (except for the ongoing case of Monk's wife). It is a self-enclosed melodrama with the sugary melodramatic moments of Mariska Hargitay on SVU or the soap opera, or even the action melodrama of Stallone and Schwarzenegger films. It provides for happy endings (except for the resolution of Trudy's death and Monk never gets better) and light viewing.

Perhaps the only serious issue (it doesn't address single parenthood, despite both of Monk's assistants being single mothers) the show presents is Monk's struggle with OCD. Of course, the show does not provide a real-life solution for the problem: medication. There was one episode when Monk did take medication but he didn't respond well to it. In real life, there are several meds available and one of them is sure to help, though not all patients will have all their issues solved by meds or therapy. I recall reading a note about this, I thought on wikipedia (it's not there anymore, if it ever was; maybe it was an earlier version that has been modified since then or it was somewhere else), where the show was questioned for not solving some of the predicaments Monk finds himself in as a result of his quirks. Nearly every episode has him asking for a wipe after shaking hands with someone; in an early episode after asking for one after (or, if he was out of wipes, refusing to) shaking hands with a black man, he is accused of racism. The commenter was suggesting that he could avoid the racism charge by pointing out that he has OCD and responds the same way with everyone, making it clear that he is not racist. However, it should be noted that not saying that someone is mentally ill is the correct way of dealing with people with psychological disorders. Much of Monk's behavior, while explained by his illness, is not acceptable, and it should be pointed out every time possible that it is not tolerable. It was better for Monk's adapation and improvement of his condition that people think he's a racist so that he might someday shake people's hands without needing a wipe. In this aspect, I appreciate the show and what it does with his condition. At times I tune out during instances of that (like the phone call to 911 when he complains about his foster son's dirty diaper), though I have the choice to tune it out. Someone with OCD has to live with it. Those who live with people with OCD have to live with it too.
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The Glory of Love

In 1986 moviegoers were tormented with a sequel to Karate Kid. I won't discuss the movie in detail (Bill Simmons, the Sports Guy at ESPN, has a brilliant analysis of the trilogy here). The movie was on today and it brought to mind (my brain was about to bleed) the horrible Peter Cetera song, "The Glory of Love." Although I watched a bit of the movie, I was fortunate not to have to hear the song (this is why my ears or brain did not bleed, I think). Besides being insipid enough as a musical composition, the song is emblematic of unhealthy ideas about love and romance portrayed in pop culture.

The poetic voice in the song shows may too much attachment to his partner in lines like "I will never leave you alone" and "I could never make it alone." Furthermore, he is defined by his lover in lines like "You keep me standing tall / You help me through it all / I'm always strong when you're beside me / I have always needed you / I could never make it alone." While the "romantic" sentiment in these words may occasionally be nice (and an acceptable, if cheesy, sentiment), the lines "I could never make it alone" are enough for one to say goodbye to a romantic suitor. Anyone who uses these lines is someone who betrays a strong dependency and should be avoided as a real-life suitor at all costs! Any book that lists reasons why not to marry someone list a partner who says "I can't live without you" as someone who isn't suited for marriage.

Perhaps the only reasonable part of the song is the couplet that stood out in my mind (I'm really glad I didn't hear the song today; it's bad enough having parts of the song going through my head only because of the association with the movie I didn't really care to watch) is the part, "I am a man who would fight for your honor. / I'll be the hero you're dreaming of." Of course, this is pretty pathetic but a nice sentiment. What woman wouldn't want a guy who can be a hero or who will fight to defend her (even if she can defend herself, thank you very much)? The part of this that is discomforting is the idea that the woman needs someone to fight for her. Is she a prostitute or some social undesirable that her love interest needs to defend her? If you think you need to defend her, then aren't you accepting as well that she is a bit undesirable?

Of course, supporting these worries about the song, are the lines, "That's like a knight in shining armor, / From a long time ago." At least the singer has situated his views correctly -- outdated. But he continues, "Just in time I will save the day / Take you to my castle far away." So he needs a weak woman so that he can be a hero and then he's going to kidnap the woman, hide her away from the world in his castle. That reminds me of what I read somewhere about the origins of the honeymoon. Apparently the bride was kidnapped and hidden until she was pregnant. By then, it was assumed that her family would prefer the husband-kidnapper-rapist to having an unmarried, pregnant daughter. That seems to sum up the mentality of this song nicely.
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it's the economy stupid remix 2008

The phrase was popularized by Clinton's campaign back in 1992. The most recent Democrat to take the White House (though some speculate that both Gore and Kerry were robbed), it seems that the economy is up to its tricks again.

A Reuters piece by Alister Bull notes the studies of economists who use economic conditions to predict the winner of the presidential election.

Three separate studies showed the Democratic presidential hopeful winning between 52 and 55 percent of the popular vote on November 4, based on current gloomy economic estimates.

Any further darkening in the economic outlook -- many analysts think things will get worse between now and November -- would reinforce that election outcome.

These methods have been successful -- when applied (even retroactively) they "correctly predicted the winner of almost all post-war U.S. presidential elections."

I would like to know for which elections the model failed. Vietnam era? Kennedy? Daddy Bush? Gore? Bush? either time? Was there a pressing matter that shaped the outcome? Could Iraq or Obama's ethnic/racial heritage be that issue this time?
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suburban life is fattening

Not that we didn't know this already, but recent research confirms this idea. An article on WebMd notes: "People in the study who lived in the most walkable neighborhoods weighed an average of 8 pounds less than people who lived in the least walkable areas." Dead end streets that lead nowhere -- who would have thought that they were unhealthy? (/sarcasm) Suburbs are places that have stop signs solely to slow people down and maybe to give a better indication of the right-of-way of traffic. Kids might play in the streets too, but adults spend their time in a commute to or from work and then find themselves too far away from anyplace where they could exercise. In my own time in suburbs, I rarely see people running or riding a bike on the sidewalks. Occasionally there are people taking a walk after dinner or something, but the most usage the sidewalks get is when kids walk on them when cars are driving down the streets. Making matters worse is that suburbs are often simply residential areas that don't have nearby restaurants or stores that people can frequent simply by walking. When I lived in the city I walked to some many nearby stores. Now I live in a small town (without sidewalks, for the most part) and can't walk anyway. It's upsetting to have to depend on my car to get anywhere -- even places that are a (hypothetical) short walk away.

As a counterpoint, suburbs don't have to be fattening. I've seen reports of where neighborhoods are building more sidewalks or bike paths so that people can exercise. Easy access to parks with loops for jogging and fields for kids (and older kids) to play soccer, football, or baseball are necessary. Let's not forget basketball and tennis courts either. Suburbs may be able to provide these amenities but another problem is not the suburb itself. In fact, suburbs may have the ability to provide greater opportunities to exercise should they invest in them. One, the air is probably cleaner than the nearby city since the factories are farther away. Two, in newer suburbs there are still fields and rural zones that allow for the creation of nice nature parks and trails. Given the higher tax base of suburbs compared to cities, they may have the funds to make this investment.

One problem that has nothing to do with the resources are the people who live there. By this, I mean to refer to the lifestyle of its residents. If the suburb in question is fairly affluent, its residents work hard and may not have time to dedicate to exercise, especially when they spend more time in traffic due to their longer commute to a job in the city. This aspect is perhaps the most negative influence of the suburb on modern life: it affects the environment with the creation of greenhouse gasses (especially since it probably doesn't have mass transit or its residents fail to take advantage of it where it does exist) besides the obesity or "excess baggage" of its residents.

The solution may be on the horizon: high gas prices have people reevaluating their priorities -- people are moving, driving more fuel efficient cars, rethinking mass transit, etc. and the overall population shift has had jobs move outside the city to the suburbs as well, making a shorter commute for those workers (of course, then there are people who have the opposite commute from the city to their job in the suburb; I don't know how common this is but I have met people with simliar commutes).

But in the opposite direction, obesity continues to rise in the US. I though I saw a headline that said that nearly every American will be obese at some point in the future. I think the opposite is happening: America is coming to be dividing into two groups, the fit and the fat. And the latter group will continue to grow unless several changes are made including: access to exercise, declining prices of healthy foods, especially fruits and vegetables, and the promotion of overall healthy lifestyles. A byproduct of rising obesity rates is that fit people are considered "skinny" when they are actually healthy. This creates misperceptions as to what a "healthy" (by this, I mean someone with a reasonable BMI, an imperfect but apparently worthwhile indicator of a healthy weight) person looks like. For the record, I'm a few pounds over a healthy BMI, but I run races and do reasonably well in half marathons, where one finds a good turnout (always in the top 10% overall, recently as high as just outside the top 4% -- and I'm a few pounds overweight, according the the BMI index).
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Where do ya draw the line?

Besides being a great Dead Kennedy's song on their swansong -- Bedtime for Democracy, Jello Biafra perhaps best states his political dilemma. "Anarchy sounds good to me / then someone asks 'who'd fix the sewers?'/ 'would the rednecks just play king / of the neighborhood?'" Of course, true anarchy would have a response for both of these problems: the sewers would either be maintained by those who were willing to self-organize to do it (especially in the anarcho-socialist direction) or sewers wouldn't exist, and it's a false problem.

The second point is perhaps more distressing to the anarchist project. Or maybe not. But it certainly reveals part of the anarchist impulse: its primitivism. B. Traven, a noted anarchist of mysterious origins (either Chicago of Swedish parents or the illegitimate child of a Polish countess seem to be the favored hypotheses), situates the arrival of government in his aptly named novel Government as something that subverted their Eden. If anarchy privileges small communities, the technological advances of the past two hundred years or so would not have happened. Unfortunately, many advances have come about due to international competition and wars. That doesn't mean, of course, that we're better off. Of course, we couldn't have this discussion in this medium without those advances. Maybe we'd be better off living a different life in a radically different society, but all that is merely hypothetical in any case.

Maybe Jello Biafra, a professed anarachist I believe, should have known better than to ask questions that seem to be voiced by someone less familiar with anarchy -- someone who associates anarchy simply with chaos rather than radical self government. Maybe he was having doubts about anarchy or was merely beginning to express his anarchist tendencies. Of course, the voice in the song doesn't have to be him and may be someone else, asking the more important question of 'where do you draw the line?' Where do we decide that someone should intervene in a situation -- be it a squabble between a couple kids at school, a couple having a fight (or just not getting along), some thugs getting together and running amok, some armed groups in a country fighting over their place in the government there. When should someone intervene and when should someone stay out of the situation and allow the participants to resolve their differences -- in whatever way they can or want to?

After numerous school shooting incidents it is clear that something has to be done about bullying. After witnessing the terror in Rwanda or ex-Yugoslavia or the Taliban in Afghanistan it is clear that someone should intervene. Dictatorships in all of Latin America (Somoza, Pinochet, et al) should not have lasted even half of how long they did, but geopolitical interests governed those and other situations. We know that abused women (and men) stay in relationships that are dangerous for numerous bad reasons. It is easy to say that individuals should stand up to bullies and should even be taught how (but how do you make sure that the bullies don't learn these techniques; how can you make sure that you aren't going to 'create' bullies in the process?), but that doesn't mean that those methods are going to work. Many dictators have been overthrown -- Somoza, Porfirio Díaz, and Bautista being just a few examples -- through popular insurrection (directly or indirectly). Others simply died and the death allowed for a transition to democracy, as was the case in Spain. Others faced humiliating defeats and disappeared -- Argentina after the brief war over the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas). Other forged a gradual transition like Pinochet.

My main concern with an anarchic project is not the question about the sewers or even the rednecks. It's its primitivist component that disheartens me. The technological advances have enriched us in many ways, although they certainly have been bad for the earth and for those who live on it (witness the high percentage of individuals in advanced societies that have a bonafide psychological disorder -- about 25% for the US and almost as high in other places). Should we sacrifice our ability to move around this planet, to experience very different things, lest we create a climate that will force us to make radical changes in our lifestyle? As Jello put it, "I'm not telling you I'm asking you."
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