Archive for April, 2011
 Okay, I’m afraid I have to punt on this one. Fact is, I never listen to music radio anymore. Never. There’s just no point. Once upon a time, if you wanted to get your ears on the latest, coolest tuneage, you turned on the radio. Now, if you want to get your ears on the latest, coolest tuneage, radio is the absolute last place you turn. So I never hear songs on the radio, except for whatever the sports talk shows play as they come out of commercial breaks.
The best I can do, then, is to remember back to a time when I did listen to radio. Full story »
 This is the toughest task yet in the challenge. There are plenty of songs I used to love that I don’t listen to much anymore. There are songs that I tolerated once but my patience has now run out on. But all the way from love to hate – that’s hard because with me love is earned for good reason and something pretty dramatic has to happen to flip me that badly. I thought maybe the best answer was “any song by Bob Seger,” because I liked him before Rock 92, a goddamned Classic Rock station in Greensboro, decided to play him every 15 goddamned minutes for goddamned years. Now I never want to hear anything by Seger ever again, just because he’s been played to death. And Chevy buying “Like a Rock” for its truck campaigns didn’t help a bit, either.
But then it hit me – it isn’t so much about a song, per se, as it is a singer. But we have gone love to hate, 110%, where one Yusef Islam is concerned. Full story »
When one looks at the US Constitution, it’s abundantly clear that it’s a product of a bygone era. The outlawing of slavery and universal suffrage are perhaps the most obvious examples, but there are other, less obvious examples. Would the authors have written the Second Amendment as they did if they knew the public might have had access to machine guns or military-grade explosives? Are bloggers worthy of “free press” protections accorded to journalists? And how would they have looked at the rise of corporate personhood and power? We can look to what the Constitution’s authors wrote and said in their own time for guidance, but ultimately we are reduced to guesswork. Furthermore, if we always rely on the brilliance of the past, we ignore our own brilliance in the present.
An argument can be made that it would be a good idea to reassess the totality of the US Constitution in a new Constitutional Congress in order to make our government responsive to modern realities. Given the political stagnation in the US today, the form and content of any new Constitution is probably impossible to predict and could easily be much better, or much worse, than what we have today. But even if you think an open Constitutional Congress is a terrible idea, the process of examining the modern shortcomings of our governing Constitution would still be a valuable endeavor.
I think it’s time to similarly re-examine the many axioms (a statement accepted as true as the basis of argument or inference”) of liberalism and how they relate to the modern world. Full story »
 I’m afraid to think about this one, honestly. I know for a fact that I’m complex and contradictory as hell, and it would be asking a lot to come up with a thousand songs that manage to describe me. Further, I know from experience that others see me in ways I often can’t begin to recognize, which only adds to the confusion.
So instead, let me offer a song that describes me by speaking to my values, to a dominant component of my self-image and to what I treasure in those around me – which may ultimately be the best way of describing a person, when you think about it.
Here’s Rob Dickinson doing “Intelligent People” live: Full story »
New radiation leaks at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant spurred Japanese nuclear regulators to raise the level of how great an accident it is from five to seven (“major”). Since that’s the highest on the International Atomic Energy Agency’s scale, it’s now on a par with Chernobyl.
Of course, Fukushima has emitted only a tenth of the radiation as Chernobyl, according to the Associated Press. In other words, if Fukushima is 7.0, Chernobyl was 7.999. But, AP writes of the Fukushima radiation leaks, “they eventually could exceed Chernobyl’s emissions if the crisis continues.” Full story »
 My life is complete–I managed to work Strother Martin and Barney Fife into the title of a post. It doesn’t get much better than that.
Strother Martin Bracket
Gingrich is our winner. A very interesting result. By far the most credible arguments in the comments section were made for Huckabee–commenters agreed he’s likable, generally competent, and seasoned while Gingrich is brilliant but carries more baggage than all the airlines in the world put together. Still the wisdom of the voters says that somehow Gingrich will manage to emerge from this bracket in the lead. Implicit in that, I suppose, is a belief that either the backing of the Tea Party is not the trump card most Huckabee-fans think it is, or more likely that all the carpetbaggers chasing that vote (Palin, Trump, Cain, ad nausem) will cancel each other out. Interesting. Full story »
"Marilyn Manson Talks About Lewis Carroll"
by Ron Riekki
cobweb tattoo, alice is never described as a blonde, hair like a pet, nine light bulbs, eyes sent to jail, a
recipe for schizophrenic—and at the time—aphasia, black, arterial bleed lips, wires, it’s very raw,
innocence demons, I have to scratch my groin while listening, calm calculated kind
cruelty
Full story »
An airstrike is one of the most horrendous phenomena on earth. But were I constitutionally capable of supporting them, I’d find it hard to resist those that the United States and NATO have called in on the Gaddafi regime.
Most progressives reflexively condemn foreign intervention by the United States; the use of armed forces is condoned only in self defense. In effect, though, they’re making common cause with a branch of conservatives — libertarians — not out of their principles of isolationism and respect for sovereign states (also known to libertarians as mind-your-own-business), but because of the United States’ poor track record.
However understandable, that response shuts the door on a room in our psyche. Perhaps I’m just projecting my own childhood trauma, but I think many of us have experienced the desperation of being picked on or bullied. We yearn for someone to intervene and come to your rescue. On a larger scale, no sadder story exists than the rescue that either doesn’t arrive on time or that isn’t even dispatched. In recent years, the classic case is Rwanda. Full story »
As noted elsewhere, I’m something of a music freak. Thousands of CDs. And I write about it, occasionally with a degree of seriousness. Being a cultural studies scholar (yes, I’ve presented papers on popular music at actual academic conferences), I have to admit that I’ve never fully understood people who don’t care about music as a dynamic artistic force the way I do. I mean, to each his or her own, but I think all of us probably have some bit of personal geekdom that renders us incapable of truly empathizing with those who don’t get it. This is mine. Full story »
 Rupert Murdoch probably thought that, at 80, he could ride off into the sunset and leave News Corporation in good hands—those of his trusty assistant, Robert Thompson, and his son James, who is being moved to the US from the UK to become the firm’s number three. Murdoch has built one of the most remarkable media empires around through a combination of brashness and acumen rarely encountered in the past couple of decades. (Unfortunately, he’s also created Fox News, a true force for evil and that bane of American politics, but that’s another discussion.)
But things are not going so smoothly here in the UK, and it may have ramifications for how the organization develops going forward, and indeed whether it will survive in its current form. Because the long-simmering scandal over phone-tapping by reporters for one of the Murdoch stable of newspapers here, News of the World, now looks set to explode, and it’s not clear the damage can be contained.
Full story »
Nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation are based in part on the premise that if the states with the most nuclear weapons dial down their numbers that those with fewer will do the same. Just as important, states without nuclear weapons will no longer be tempted to develop them. Sounds like a simple matter of leadership, right?
But today, not only conservatives, but generic realists, make the case that whether or not the United States makes significant strides toward global zero is of no concern whatsoever to states aching to scratch the nuclear itch. It’s explained as well as anywhere in a 2009 paper for the Hudson Institute by Christopher Ford titled Nuclear Disarmament, Nonproliferation, and the “Credibility Thesis”. Full story »
I probably ought to invoke my 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination. But nobody made me take on the challenge, did they? So today, instead of one song that’s a guilty pleasure, let’s just go for three strikes and you’re out.
If I had to pick just one, I’d start with this, which has to be about the dumbest and most appalling goddamned thing in the history of music. But boy, have I had fun on the dance floor to it or what? (Much to the chagrin of those who were with me, I should add.)
 Full story »
 Were he alive today, Al Capone would probably be a member in good standing of the US House of Representatives, representing the Great State of Illinois. We’ve all read about Capone, of course, and we know that back in the day thugs and gangsters fought the law. And the law won.
These days, however, the brighter minds among the criminal element have realized that riding through the streets spraying tommy-gun fire all over the place is an ineffective approach to attaining power and wealth. Instead of fighting the law, they all too often become the law. Full story »
I talk a lot about generational dynamics and have been known to criticize the collective shortcomings of the Boomers and Millennials. I’ve also allowed that my generation (X) has some failings of its own, and one of them is that our cynicism can get the best of us. In fact, sometimes it almost seems to define us. As much as I hate it, I think we’re going to go down in the history books as the Whatever Generation.
And I admit it – I have my own cynical streak, and sometimes it threatens to take over completely. Full story »
 It’s no surprise that the Republicans in the House of Representatives want to do away with the EPA’s rules on greenhouse gas emissions. But H.R.910, the bill to strip EPA authority over greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, provides at least two examples of how Republicans have chosen the blue pill of delusion instead of the red pill of reality. Full story »
It’s time to vote for the Strother Martin bracket.
(This is new for me, so hopefully this will work.)
 I know that there’s no such thing as a band that everybody likes, and I’m fine with the idea that some people can’t stand my favorite band, U2. I don’t always understand the objections, but so what. I am puzzled when people flat-out misunderstand fairly obvious poses, like Bono’s Macphisto or The Fly characters, which were explicit Pop Star parodies aimed at the vapid, corrupt nature of the modern entertainment complex. “Oh, look, Bono has bought his own hype!” Ummm, no, Bono is offering a critique of the hype, which you’d know if you’d pay closer attention. What, you think “IT’S YOUR WORLD YOU CAN CHARGE IT” is a typo? Full story »
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