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Friday, January 6, 2012

A Waffle Baker's Dozen I like the idea of end-of-the-year song lists not because I'm tremendously fond of lists -- I'm not really. It is because I like the idea of sharing notes, and lists accomplish that in a easy and offhand kind of way. Admittedly I no longer consume music the way I used too, the way younger people do: voraciously, competitively encyclopedically. I listen to one or two radio stations while at work and occasionally on weekends, with some ambient tunage leaking in from other media. The radio stations are WFMU from Jersey City New Jersey, and WZBC, Boston College's station, which I've been listening to since high school. Internet listening. The ambient? That would account for Mumford and Sons which I saw on television and heard in grocery stories, but never heard on WFMU (I admit I bought the two hits on iTunes). Or stuff like the Hyundai girl Jessica Frech. Who's ok, but she's no Miranda July. I checked WFMU's firefox artist search tool to see if they play any of Miranda July's things, they do. My methodology is to try to write down one song per day that interests me in some way, that I don't believe I've heard before or that didn't make an impression on me any previous time. That would be a lot of songs even on just work days of around 220, but I'm getting half that at best. Against these I place a host of asterisks, checks and other mysterious somewhat runic markings, which are a great puzzle to me at the end of the year. Work used to be more seditiously monotonous allowing me to devote myself to listening to the radio and metadata compliant annotation regimes. It is now getting getting thinner, pricklier (the least outsourcable), and by that process distracting and dividing me from music. In no discernible order: This firsrt one is really in the grey area between ambient and intential listening: Ed Schrader's Music Beat Rats (YT) which I had written down in my list, but came to mind most when I heard its refrain wafting across the parking lot one day from the direction of one of U. Maryland's smaller varsity fields. Soft Tags Appeal of Alice to the specter of water (Blue House) 2009. They have at least three lps out. They also do a song called Tesla on the Beach which is some sort of Philip Glass reference I think. Plus one called Tamerlane. Fireballs. This one is tricky because there are a couple of bands called the Fireballs. One from Melbourne Austrailia in the 1990's; a psychobilly outfit Fireballs (band) - Wikipedia. But it is the original Jimmie Gilmer and the fireballs from Raton New Mexico in the 1960's The Fireballs - Wikipedia, I applaude here for their cover of Codine (Bottle of Wine) 1968, a Buffy St. Marie song. Never heard a bad cover of codine, either you feel it or you don't. Bing Ji Ling - Wikipedia Hold Tight (Shadow to Shine) 2011. Bing Ji Ling is really one Quinn Luke. His stuff is retro-psych R&B. He records for Tommy Touch records Birds of Avalon - Wikipedia Shadowy End (Birds of Avalon) 2010. Quintron - Wikipedia Mysterious Rangers also Facedown in the Gutter (Sucre du Savage) 2011 reminded me of "Of Montreal" liked it one Guy Robert Rolston aka Mr. Quintron. Apache Dropout | Apache Dropout Teenager (Apache Dropout) 2011. Eternal Return of the Garage band. Not a bad song in their bunch. The website is Bandcamp, the Etsy of indie rock, which seems to be moving up on the attraction myspace has traditionally held in the Mu-sphere. Bill Callahan (musician) - Wikipedia Lapse (Stroke - Songs for Chris Knox) 2009. I wrote this one down as "I Remember" a repeated line in the song, but its actually called Lapse. Chris Knox is a well known indie rock figure from New Zealand. Callahan grew up mostly in Britain, but is from Silver Spring Md (where I reside). Also does a song called Faith/Void which doesn't sound anything like the Faith/Void Lp from Dischord, more in a Nick Drake/Go Betweens mode. He records for Drag City and lives in Austin Texas. Roky Erickson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Unforced Peace (You're gonna miss me) 2007. Accoustic, recorded in a mental hospital when his mother brought in a guitar and tape recorder. Not released officially until a few years ago. It is a transcendent song. I hear your heart singing (live) - YouTube: (Larger than Live) 2008 This is part of of an extensive set of recordings discoverable on YouTube I had never heard from my favorite band of the 80's, the Gun Club. Like Roky Gun club singer/writer is from Texas orginally. Outside of the early ep Death Party which I could never find, the songs I've been listening to are the Lps Pastoral Hide and Seek, Divinity, and Lucky Jim. These were recorded in the nineties when they moved to europe and I lost track of the band. I picked this song becase it contains the line Moonfish casts it's eye on you, while you oversleep. My top dozen or so listens of the year."Sorrow Knows" off of "Divinity is another song which is simply in its own sublime category. Cobra Killer | Free Music, Tour Dates, Photos, Videos -- Cobra Killer - Wikipedia Helicopter 666 Despite having looked over both their myspace and wikipedia page I'm not sure when Helicopter 666 dates from, presumably the early oughts. The band is/was two wacky Germans Gina V. D'Orio and Annika Trost. Lykke Li - Silent My Song on the Late Show with David Letterman 11-17-11 - YouTube (Wounded Rhymes) 2011. This one gets on the list because of the great difference between hearing of Lykke Li and hearing/seeing Lykke Li Asobi Seksu | Free Music, Tour Dates, Photos, Videos -- Asobi Seksu - Wikipedia I'm Happy but you don't like me (Asobi Seksu) 2004. Band consists of Yuki Chikudate and James Hanna with Larry Gorman on drums when they need him. Early stuff like this song was power pop in an 80's indie kind of way. Their newer stuff is dream pop (as they call it), often fairly hypno-trancey for that. Last not least Art Interface Secretaries from Heaven Someone played this song this year, which I don't think i've heard since 1984. It's not on YouTube but seemingly is on LastFM. Nothing like an early eighties synth-alt earworm to zombify your day. 10:01:36 PM    ;;

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Yule Event Log Again it is Christmas eve, and once more I have a pixel sized picture to share. This is a self imposed tradition but one I'm fond of. This picture attempts to represent a more realistic Christmas eve experience with only a modicum of elvery. The scene a mulled mix of technological frission is indoors a television is planted in front of an unlit fire place; however, the television is tuned to a channel showing a loop of a lively and warm yule log fire. Out side through the window although no one is paying attention Santa is flying by hot on his appointed rounds. There are other things in the picture -- assorted detail. This last year, coming to a close now was a eventful and somewhat savage one. Saved from being a grim one, I felt by the thought that the rum status quo was being given a run for its money, For once. While not being what one would describe as a technological optimist. Those are separate functions. Technology is not a path to freedom or democracy. Not necessarily a necessary condition, not a sufficient condition. I admit though it fascinates me. So in the season of faith hope and love. A salute to the visionary leadership of our toys, the lightness of spirit a good toy can bring. 11:56:19 PM    ;;

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Work I was asked recently by an old friend: "how can, why do, you do what you do. How do you live with such a life. You have nothing! Nothing." I attached bar-code stickers to library books for a living. Part of a minor semi-skilled clerical feat known as copy cataloging. The point is taken, there is not much there. Pulled short, I fall back on my pop-culture touchstones. The Gun Club "Carry Home" and the line "Oh but I didn't change, I just had to work". A line that captures the essential alienation of work, a potential of all work. Its been a long time since I expected work to be anything other than alienating. I don't have much invested in copy cataloging, yet the trace of original interest in the broader body of this work could still manifest itself in taking on the rigor of original cataloging, Resource Description and Analysis as they term it. This; however, is unobtainable behind the wall of professional librarianship. Likely I would default in any fortress storming exercise to some form of writing. About governing, the individual and the place of the individual within the whole. Certificates of societal validation are supposed to set goals institutionally gate-keep and organize ambition, for those who desire them, They shouldn't inhibit those who don't. Regardless certain points of achievement require certain outlays of effort either way. There are many types of work, requiring many different skill sets, some of which must be possessed innately, some of which can be learned. There are many different rewards for various types of work, which range from high compensation for both desirable and undesirable jobs alike and to a nebulous diaphanous sense of personal satisfaction of a body of work done, and done right. Which in many regards may be the the most profound sense of reward possible. Work may also be a substitution process of a kind, where one manner of work is done to provide space and means for another. A complex trade of circumstance, ability and affinities. Most, if pressed, would undertake work, whatever work was available, to provide for their table and to keep the wind and rain off that table. In the first instance work is all about the roof and food. human industry is about creature comforts. In subsequent instance, beyond thatch and barter, it is about pay prestige status. Any of these is fungible with one or more of the others. Kal Penn, for instance, had he not put his career on hold to take that job with the White House might be up to Harold and Kumar 7 by now (My suggestion: H&K vii/Kentucky Fried movie ii) -- Harold and Kumar open a Chicken Franchise with a secret recipe of 12 herbs and spices. He would have so much money, he could have Barrack Obama and Hugh Laurie come work for him. My instinct is that everyone has a right to a livelihood, the right to work. My second pop-culture reference kicks in about now Chelsea - "Right To Work". Always liked that song; Gene October vs Thatcher England. For those who claim only those who work ought eat, then the well-formed society, after caring for those without ability, ought provide a portion of work to every one who can do, this is is their due. It is I feel in accord with Natural Law to earning a living in the heart of the society. or be allowed strike out for a frontier. An implicit sub-contract of the social compact. At others times when this notion of work has pressed me I have looked towards a handful of definitions for clarity of categories and answer. Principally vocation and avocation. The romantic notions that there is a thing out there to engage with and create that is inimical to ones spirit. The work version of a soul-mate. One that can be obtained through a process of self knowledge and discovery. The concept of vocation [vocation - Free Online Dictionary] has broadened out to contain the idea of any work that is suitable and stable to a person, yet it still contains its core meaning of a calling (Latin vocare) to a religious life. Enough that vocation can still carry the connotation of a special and rare circumstance. Avocation [avocation - Free Online Dictionary] is the simple variant that speaks to a calling away from this centrally and looking instead to the spaces between compensated work to find the place where a person is drawn and feels engaged. It seems clear, considering this, that the matter of work involves a consistency with the self; with aptitude, education (aptitude for education). It involves As well ones chosen set of values. There is much work out there that would only be misery for someone with a personal code aligned against it even if he or she is a natural talent for it. It is a matter of knowledge of ones nature whether such contradictions can be contained or not. There is another dichotomy between the terms job and work. These are the terms of the situation, the french term for employment. A thing that can be considered to turn on the particular employer and task. I should say something perhaps about aspects of the organizational/industrial work place. A situation calling for institutional and leadership skills. I am aware that my workplace (like others) in search committee work regard management skills to come from prior management, not innate and fully formed in magical individuals. The (US) Navy, a previous situation of mine, officially stuck to the rubric that you can train leaders, in practice this was not emphasized far -- experience was. The Navy did have concept of deep selection (for promotion) attempting to identify exemplary leadership early. Trying to find a saddle point between youth and experience. I apprehend my workplace's institutional face as a featureless blank wall, but that is merely part of my ongoing sense of disassociation. It is the test of ones daily routine and habits to find the locus of meaning. There was a small article in the Atlantic online recently which I read only after I had written much of this. It dealt with the lowered expectations todays young job seekers face regarding not only pay but more poignantly expressing ones self through a job. I article points out that there was only a narrow window of higher expectation historically for this in anything other than exceptional scientific or artistically endeavors. A generation older than current new seekers I don't recall regarding it as much of a birthright though it was held as an ideal. The article also suggests that there is a danger lurking in mistaking the terms of the work /job dichotomy. Meaning is a trap if you expect it to be given. But while the impulse to find meaning in one's job may seem naive and vulnerable to corporate distortion, the drive to find meaning in work is not. Our modern tragedy is to mistake a job for work, and to expect any particular job to bring us not only opportunity and income, but meaning, exhilaration, purpose. Is Work Still Meaningful? - Atlantic To me work signifies positive engagement with a task, possibly involving a component of pride. Job is a stick that keeps wolves from your door, it is hours to endure. The weight of particularity behind income and opportunity. I think that everyone feels that the things they do or strive for give purpose, some reason for being. These are the terms of self fulfillment. The pinnacle of Maslow's hierarchy. The wrong work is a stripping of ownership, the alienation from labor, the elimination of purpose. Coming back for a moment to the notions of a good job distinguished form a bad one. There are facets of job prestige: money, travel perhaps, public visibility. Fame fortune adulation. These are all tangible facets of desirability. Through the filter of self actualization I would argue that there are others. Whether in regard to ones total situation does your work give you choice independence a measure of autonomy? If it does that you have freedom and the imperative to create, to fashion a true good. Worry about nothing else. 11:40:52 PM    ;;

Friday, November 18, 2011

Wreck of the Old 99(%) At end of the summer I came around to the opinion that the President's political skills were lacking. His mastery of legislative infighting, of the bully pulpit, political positioning, the executive office conceptually. President Obama's basic efficacy came into question. He seemed to continually betray a certain degree of in-experience. Others had the same lingering concerns, but I also thought it likely by mid summer the President and his advisors were transitioning to re-election positions and to their best guess of the landscape and personalities that they would face a year on. There was (is) nothing forgone about the election, reading the tea leaves right, he can still decide his own fate. The notable thing about the late summer was the depth and intensity of the anti government and anti institution mood in this country. The manner in which it both fed off of and drove disfunction Why the Massive Wealth of the 1% Could Ruin the Economy - Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee - Business - The Atlantic. It was tempting, at first, to write off the Occupy Wall street sit-ins as a Tea Party counter-protest. As if August's Tea Party tantrums directly spawned October's #OWS. But there had been signs for some time that there was a broad spectrum of discontent (and impatience) all drawn from a very real sense of insecurity as history moved on from the structure of the post war world to the emerging world of the twenty-first century EconoMonitor : Nouriel Roubini's Global EconoMonitor º Full Analysis: The Instability of Inequality. While this sense of unease was shared by both, each had their own set of antecedents. The surprising aspect of the #OWS events was the extent of their appeal nationally and internationally, occupy sites opened up in the US, Canada, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. There was even overlay of common-cause recognition by individuals involved in various Arab Spring demonstrations The Globalization of Protest - Joseph E. Stiglitz - Project Syndicate. The #OWS library was significant micro-institution even before its destruction when the Zuccoti park encampment was taken down and it was torn asunder. It attracted more than its share of media and enforcement attention. It had a symbolic nature as a seat of ideology for the movement (as well as its own web site Occupy Wall Street Library | The People's Library at Liberty Plaza Looking over the #OWS library via its Library-thing page OWSLibrary's books | LibraryThing just some of the books that attracted my attention were: Hedges / Death of the liberal -- Orwell / Road to Wiggen Pier -- Cavanough / Alternatives to economic globalization -- Zizak / Parallax view -- Tabbii / Griftopia -- Klien / Shock Doctrine -- Edward Herman / Manufactured Consent -- Hannah Arendt / Crise de Culture -- Joseph Stiglitz / Globalization and its discontents -- Stephane Hessel's / Indignez Vous -- Saul Alinsky : Rules for Radicals -- Alan Badiou / Meta Politics. A mix of journalistic commentators and academics of the left. All signaling a certain non conformism. A leftover radicalism from the anti-world trade movement of a decade ago. Mostly a mood of deep disenchantment at the state of the western world. My sister had bought one of these books, Hessel's (a leader of the French Resistance and postwar diplomat, ). A recent essay (reprinted in a slim volume Time for outrage! which I read and recommend highly. Beyond that, of political treatises on how to fairly organize and order a mass society, or trenchant economic analysis, there are some, but no torrent of flaming revolution. It's work to be a dissident in American society, but even then take care to signal it, segregate and channel yourself professionally and geographically to where this is acceptable. In communicating or agitating for genuine change the hard borders and boundaries of what is permissible will be found very quickly Will Extremists Hijack Occupy Wall Street? - NYTimes.com. John Rawls generated a bit of media mastication with the articles Rawls on Wall Street - NYTimes.com: and a week or so later by the Washington Post Justice, inequality and the 99 percent - The Washington Post. In the first is the idea the structure of a society should serve the entire society, this sits above any other possible notion of law or justice that can be conceived. If it does not serve, the public has the right to change it, this is the primary subject of justice. The second, in the Washington Post, has a thought that goes to latent assumptions lurking in the current structure. Life in our culture is the result of two lotteries: a pre-birth lottery of potential innate abilities and a post-birth lottery of social position and inherited wealth. Again the question is: what structure would you recommend if you had no information on what you would receive from these lotteries? Economic analysis is often best left to economists, at least until it is translated to human condition. I have seen some mention that the post-war economic order, "Bretton Wood", produced a world of complexity largely immune from proscriptive action, and a economic discipline incapable of being communicated effectively to the next generation of technocrats responsible for it. There are different ways of regarding the Occupy Wall Street movement. As civilly disobedient campers Republicans aim to discredit OWS - The Insiders - The Washington Post. This in accordance with their sedentary mode of protest, opinions of which vary little between sympathizers and non-sympathizers. The consensus is that the movement is undisciplined their message opaque. Another way of looking at them is as the engaged activist vanguard of the 99%. This requires distinguishing the 99% from #OWS. The two are not synonymous of course. They are side by side movements. The 99% is more generally a conceptual category for more conventional political engagement We Are the 99 Percent. That the Occupy Movement was an opening gambit for a longer conversation on change and expectations. Lawrence Lessig's notion of common cause between #OWS movement and the Tea Party was interesting and I thought welcome Lawrence Lessig Something More Than Polarization. Lessig got push back on this Lawrence Lessig: A Reply to the @EdgeofSports: Who Exactly Are the 99%?:, but his point is taken. These two sides of aspirational populist change are not about to form joint committees and work together, but they could do worse by considering Lessig's charge that our politics is caught in a spiraling cycle of well-funded interest that is corrupting governance. If nothing else the occupy movement found justification by the outsized and strident reaction to it by various mayors, police, right wing press outlets How OWS confuses and ignores Fox News and the pundit class. - Slate Magazine (such as the New York post), and studied indifference by the Main Stream Media. This spoke loudly of a reflexive recognition by certain elites of their stake and place in this game. Their interest in maintaining a muted awareness of wealth imbalance. The plain visibleness of their discomfort and reaction was an instructive gift. If the #OWS is a self selecting activist set. The 99% is the population they speak from and desire to speak to. The 99% are those who will most fully feel what is being called the Lost Decade IMF Chief: World Could 'Face A Lost Decade' : The Two-Way : NPR. The ten years it will now take to resume growth over population and regain full employment levels. Until then it will be a culture shaped by unemployment, crushing student loan debt, tight money - for starting new business. Glacial recovery that feels little better than recession The study that shows why Occupy Wall Street struck a nerve - The Washington Post. We are expected to live vicariously off the reflected light of the celebrities of a winner-take-all-culture. Signing off on laws and mores that make their success. And all of it one step colder and weaker than the most disdainful trickle-down theory of health, mental and material well being. Money, wealth, is essentially frictionless. Goods raw, finished, almost so, on wheels and portable. People; not so much. This is the meaning of globalization. The cost of the dislocation is borne by ordinary people. As that sinks in it is often with a dimmer view of our dismantled industrial sectors for those who realize all the ways they are affected. Globalizing free trade has been fought since the end of the cold war by trade unions, and later anarcho-radicals of the "Seattle Movement". Two decades of free trade agreements were acquiesced to on the notion that free trade would bring unalloyed benefit to all our lives. Now it is seen by many as having also brought along a financial economy unconcerned with, even at odds with the interests of the real economy and the ordinary people whose well-being depend on it. The 99%, to the extent they want to be thought of or think of themselves in any particulr way, are about middle class concerns and Arab Spring sympathies. Inevitably they gained a raised awareness of corporatism's ambivalent public utility and the financial worlds closed sub-rationality from the 2008 recession, much will never look the same again. The current flailing morass of the European Union places things in a sharper perspective. The problems in Europe resemble the foreclosure crisis of two years ago. A great deal of money pushed onto that which could not hold the weight of the en-valuation placed on it, done so in a distinctly obfuscatory manner - credit swaps and the like. And again it suggests a systemic failure of the international financial markets. Here between eager to please politicians, eager to be pleased populaces and trade imbalances that left Northern EU banks with cash to over-invest lazily. The implicit question is: what is the world we want? Does our chosen (given) economic system allow us by nation by region or by individual and enterprise to be just what we want no more no less. This is the argument for slow and artesian-al ways of being, ways denied. There were a couple of articles I read which looked at the economies of southern europe against those of northern europe (and the US) 4 Reasons Why Italy's Economy Is Such a Disaster - Jordan Weissmann - Business - The Atlantic. Much more of Italy's economy is taken up in small or midrange businesses for that reason and their craft approach to their products the hallmark of modern capitalism, economy of scale will never admit competition with northern factories. No token poverty is the result, but a thorough hollowing of a national economy. No country or people gets to choose their values or lifestyle, the economic system dominates and restricts choice Democracy is on the retreat in Europe - The Washington Post. There was a similar argument made for Greece. I mislaid the link for that; however, the argument ran that while Germans never get tired of identifying their southern neighbors and lazy and profligate, Germany largely created the modern Greek nation in the nineteenth century (another article explains some of this Goce - "Greece"-Made in Germany). Greece is marked by the stamp Germany put on it. A combination of romantic desire for a theatre of classical language and culture, and for what we now call a service economy. A southern playground of trade and unwound recreation. There is an inextricable character of growth in consumer-culture market capitalism. Populations always grow, aggregate demand grows. Always there is the pressure of scarcity against resource, Technological innovation must continually pace this pressure. This can produce a crisis of change. An ongoing destruction beyond creative destruction. A change that outpaces a culture's institutions ability to provide stability. Outpaces an economies ability to provide adequate level of employment, a livelihood for all who live. An economic culture that demands a frenzy of consumption. The Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court was a turning point, one that will become infamous with time. A moment that enshrined money, big money, as the dominant voice, nearly the only voice in our politics. A decision that placed all others into deliberate positions of subordination. Hierarchical structures always self replicate, ant-ethical by their nature from ever becoming different. New entities forms come and go, always in the same forms. There is no real change. This was a large part of the argument for the #OWS movement foregoing program liberalism and establishment institutions, and returning to the streets. It is not believed that any of the old-line desire change, or have the ability any longer to effect change. The future will hold either a crony market capitalism that is an instrument of existent wealth. How they would have and define it. Or rather something sustainable for the rest of us Is Modern Capitalism Sustainable? - Kenneth Rogoff - Project Syndicate. As the projection on side of Verizon building as protesters marched across Brooklyn Bridge after the breakup of the Zuccotti camp stated:Another world is possible. 8:24:05 PM    ;;

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Return of Ego Leonard The other week while I was preoccupied with the previous post something happened that I want to circle back to. This was that another oversized Lego figurine (2.4 meters) had washed ashore. This time on a beach in Siesta Key Florida (near Sarasota) Giant Lego Man washes ashore in Florida - Boing Boing. This must be the return of Ego Leonard not seen since '07. Or not quite; an Ego Leonard seems to have washed up on a beach in Brighton at the beginning of November 2008, according to this site Lego Man -- No Real Than You Are?. Now we another Ego Leonard or some pastoral plastic Martin Guerre at least. How many of these are there and how authentic? This certainly seems to be a companion of the first. Comparing the photographs and noting the comments section in the Boing Boing article reveals that the 2007 Ego Leonard had a blue shirt and is numbered "9" on his back (with nom de visite "no real than you" on his front). The Brighton Beach Leonard was also blue shirted possibly the very same as the Dutch one. The current Ego Leonard has a green shirt and is numbered "8". There seemed to be more interest this time around. Nobody paid much attention last time. I remember having to dig around online to find enough information to write up a post on it. That post got as many hits last week as this buggy normally gets in a month. The previous incident, in August 2007, a figurine washed up on a Dutch beach on the English Channel. The web site Ballardian The Drowned Giant: No Real than You Are: at the time compared the incident to the JG Ballard story "the Drowned Giant". This time around it attracted a fair amount of brief attention and from various points of the globe Lego man to stay in police custody in Florida | Stuff.co.nz:. The attention included a Metafilter thread No real than you are! | MetaFilter which hung off the Boing Boing post linked above but which didn't shed a whole lot of additional light on the topic. Other than it being a U.S. news story I can't really account for it being a bigger story this time around. The website that turned up previously No real than you are: is still there and active and still gives evidence of this affair's apparent Dutch origins. I remember last time thinking: Why no social media?" There was only the somewhat old fashioned website, which asked for response and input through email. Perhaps Facebook, I thought, is too cut and dried, too key-lighted for something as intermittent, and whimsical as Ego Leonard beachings. But no, Ego Leonard can be followed on Facebook, a YouTube channel, twitter (@egoleonard of course), and they sell T-shirts. I get the impression now that if you are wired into the Ego Leonard world, all this is slightly less mysterious. Sunlight and the tree on the terrace alt="Tree on the terrace" The enduring question is what is the meaning of all this? I'll stand by taking it at absolute face value. The continuing charge is finding beauty and purpose. No [less] real than you. The sounds like a challenge of some sort. To look for as the Ego Leonard site states: Luck solidarity everything green and blooming and without rules and restrictions. The picture included here is one one my favorites from this year I see this tree every day biking to work. The side walk runs along against an embankment. It often makes me laugh when I see it. I do note these ego leonards seem to become lost to the sea a lot. I wonder whether they seek tranquil beauty or a savage beauty. Is Ego Leonard an ambassador of child-like wonder or an agent of the sublime? 10:14:25 PM    ;;

Monday, October 31, 2011

Patchworked Nation James Gimpel came by McKeldin library at the University of Maryland College Park a couple of weeks back to give a talk. Part of the Speaking of Books... Conversations with Campus Authors series. Gimpel is a professor in the Government and Politics Department. This was the department I had my major in as an undergrad; though, that feels like a lifetime ago now. The occasion was the publication of the paperback edition of his book Our Patchwork Nation. The robust data and chart centric web site associated with the book Patchwork Nation is the best starting point for the whole concept. Ray Suarez has been featuring it in an ongoing series from around the country on the PBS Newshour so it had an as seen on TV quality to it. I looked forward to going to this for a week, but ended up missing most of the talk. I work for a living and mastering the nuanced approach to work doesn't include disappearing from your desk for an hour. I caught the Q&A at the end (on break), and was able to buy the book and get it signed. A few weeks later I've now even read the book, except for the appendix on their methodology at the end. I wouldn't want to skip that so I'll look that over this next week. This book seems to be a furthering of the concept of Gimpel's earlier book Patchwork nation : sectionalism and political change in American politics (2003) The present work being conceived as just one part of a larger project and being essentially a journalistic endeavor. In fact the lead author for this book is journalist Dante Chinni. Chinni is about the same age as his co-author, and is like Gimpel, I believe, a native midwesterner. The whole project is an analytic tool written on a grant to be used by a news consortium. To get beyond the red state / blue state map and discourse dichotomy. A point highlighted on back cover. The aim is to gain something of the granularity that marketers such as Claritas seem to have achieved. The organizers/participants of this project are the Jefferson Institute with the Christian Science Monitor, the PBS Newshour, WNYC Radio and others. Both authors maintain web blogs at the patchwork site: James Gimpel's blog | Patchwork Nation and Dante Chinni's blog | Patchwork Nation. This project tells us all politics is local. The real America is found by community typing at county level. The concept is that communities are more alike within their types than with more geographically contingent communities around them. They ended up with a dozen types after initial data sorts. Some were statistically obvious, some clearer in counterpoint to others. The twelve county types: Boom Towns Campus and Careers Emptying nests Evangelic epicenters Immigration Nation Industrial metropolis Military Bastions Minority Central Monied Burbs Mormon outposts Service worker centers Tractor country. The nine congr. district types (Patchwork.org only): Established Wealth New Diversity Wired and Educated the Shifting Middle Young Exurbs Christian Conservative Booming Growth Old Diversity Small Town America The book's strategy is to pick a representational county from each and write up a case study like description. At congressional district level the web site (patchwork.org) offers the choice of nine community types, which are similar albeit in somewhat broader strokes. I'm unsure whether this represents a rethinking of their original community typing or an application of it to existing congressional district statistics. While this may make the political analysis more shelf ready there is the obvious problem of how mutable and gamed congressional districts are. They represent little more than a parties desire to build safe seats from they can serve entrenched interests. Like most people I expect I ran a little validation exercise of the books concepts against the few communities I've encountered first hand as I read through it. My early childhood was in Plymouth (Plymouth co. MA - campus and careers). It was rural on the outskirts, still clinging to a shrinking lobster industry, but it had residential cachet and many nice homes along the ocean from downtown all the way around to Manomet. Mostly; though, I grew up in Holliston (Middlesex co. MA - Monied Burbs), a small town turned random Boston suburb. Like the surrounding towns that could afford to do so, it tightened zoning in a race to emerge as an upscale bedroom town. The most interesting place I lived in while in the Navy was Key West, (Monroe co. FL - Service Worker Center). It matched this category well, which covers tourist and vacation destinations. The military base and fishing industry then lending a seedy balance to an overabundance of preciousness. One thing about Key West which was not highlighted in the books description of this category is the role scarcity of resource can play in driving fortune in such places. Key West is an island like Martha's Vineyard, it was doing quite well, but the Conchs were definitely getting pushed up the Keys. My present apartment building straddles the Prince Georges | Montgomery county border in Maryland. My corner belongs to Prince Georges co. While both aggregate to Monied Burb, on the neighborhood level my area is mostly Hispanic with elements of Haitian and West African. This corresponds with the urban diversity of the industrial metropolis which is Prince Georges next best-fit category. The presence of the University of Maryland is not enough move it into College and Careers. I also am a little familiar with the Milton - Lewes, Sussex co. DE area which they mark as a Boom Town / Emptying Nest. The whole Cape Henlopen area is an example of a community of beach towns - a Service worker center - which became a regional retirement destination which attracted further attendant service influx and became a boomtown for that. The purpose and value of such a working project is in the end its explanatory and predictive power. There was a question from the audience during the Q & A on whether this schema delivers better insight than looking at municipal level breakdowns of the red and blue map. I've seen this map so I knew what he was talking about. Even in the vast red midlands the map is dotted with blue in places where you have more than a couple of street lights together. That map gives you the fact of an urban-tolerant self selectivity. Without giving you reason or nuance to appeal to. Any worthwhile description set ought to have some use or relevance beyond elections. Elections arbitrarily organize political power, but they are snapshots of shifting and amorphous attitude and even winning politicians often find out they only mean so much. Fostering an understanding that the different regions of the country, the differing communities with their individual histories and value systems, not only view particular events differently. They are often affected quite unevenly by the same events - such as the mortgage crisis for events writ large. But as well any event coming to the attention of the American people. Solutions as much as problems are experienced and viewed differently. Increasingly one of the most important activities for journalists, for any writer or story teller working in the American milieu as this short, but brilliant piece In the Land of No News exemplifies, is to use this insight of community difference and work towards explaining America to each other. 11:32:22 PM    ;;

Monday, October 24, 2011

Snakes on the road Recently on my commute to work, which is about a three mile ride by bicycle, I have observed a number of squashed snakes on the road. I saw enough of these road killed snakes not only along a lengthy stretch of the road, but day after day as well that I eventually fell into trying to reconstruct the structure of this phenomenon. The snakes are on the pavement close by the side of the road. Clearly having come out of the grass to warm themselves in the sun on the dark asphalt in the increasing cool autumn mornings. Even though they did not venture far out onto the road surface, this did not save them from getting run over. They are all juvenile snakes, as far as I can tell, none large enough to be an adult. Often appearing to be very young. How should one interpret this, I thought? Is this giving us better snakes or worse snakes? That is, I considered, whether the more adventurous and capable snakes were exploring further from the nest and getting runned over for their trouble, leaving lesser snakes to carry on. Or are smarter stronger snakes monopolizing the best and safest sunning locations, closer to the nest leaving weaker snakes to ranger further and less securely from home. Stopping at the false warmth and security of the tarmacs edge. Of course, one also has to entertain the idea that human beings have subconsciously evolved the automobile for the real purpose of cutting down the best and brightest snakes again and again. That only this has prevented our take-over by an aggressive population of super intelligent warm and rested snakes. Here, it seemed to me, I was a little thin on how exactly evolution works, but as a paid up member of the modern world I must know something. So off the top of my head and with no Wikipedia cheating I set out here my misestimation of evolution. Evolution involves random variation in individuals of a species in the first place. This is due I believe to damage or alterations to the DNA in the reproductive cells. From radiation, from free radicals, that sort of thing. Or simply the effect of DNA (or is it RNA) strands not always zipping themselves back up exactly as they came apart. This leads to distinction, not exact copy, of the individual in the next generation that is essential random, but apparently occurs at a rate over time that is effectively constant. These collectively are mutations to the species and consist of variations of morphology and other traits. Here I suppose we need to differentiate between evolutionary adaptation and behavioral adaption, although the capacity for the latter is an example of the former. The mechanism that drives this process is reproductive advantage. Whatever the details of the interchange between living things and the world, it is whether it confers a relative advantage in reproduction that determines whether a gene set is passed on through time and generations. I suppose this is where it gets tricky. To me it seems obvious that the environmental stressors through which this reproductive advantage are communicated must be considerable in both their extent and duration to have discernible effect on a plant or animal. That is, they must be persistent through years if not centuries and hold even across a given ecosystem. The stressors themselves matter little as long as they produce an effect. They can be organic or inorganic in nature. If organic, flora or fauna. They could be either climate or weather. Similarly a trait could impart a positive or negative engagement (or be part of a mixed chain of events) and this would matter little if the result is to move the gene set forward. If a trait is present in subsequent generations and if the genetics of that trait are amendable to further extension, this process of selection will produce an effect which from the outside will look like deliberate specialization, or in certain circumstances generalization. I believe that if conditions maintain, this specialization moves through differentiation to speciazation. Of course if things trend the other way the result is elimination and extinction. Survival of the fittest most assume means the most fitted with fang, claw and agro, but it really is a means test - a best fit to the environment. Profound changes are possible in the animate substrate of this world. My instinctive question at this point is "How does this affect monkeys?" I wouldn't need an infinite number, I muse, merely a sufficient number of monkeys left to an environment of Olivettis to rearrange the world. Monkeys are tactile creatures, and don't do well with laptops. Or with texting, no opposable thumbs, but one thing at a time. I'd put them on nice island somewhere. Maybe organize them into tribes: give some of them blue pencils. These could evolve into an editing tribe. With these typewriters and three or four generations of the monkeys time, the proper reward system in place I could achieve, not Shakespeare exactly, or Puskin but maybe a manifesto for the Occupy Wall Street (#OWS) movement. Since it appears they will never write one themselves. Their post modern ambition is to be the undefined defining moment. I am old school and un-reconstuctivist, and warm to statements of purpose and suggestion. Somethings along the lines of: Blast First this fortress walled street, barren of camels eye, a desert of needles. This carnival marriage of Dionysus and Pluto. Blast second these gimlet eyed tyros, and their politicians. Social Darwinists with their fraudulent game of private rules. Snakes edging out of the grass. Blast third this New England weather. 11:50:06 PM    ;;

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Petite At the end of the Summer I had two lines of thought on some events. One the recent evidence piling up that the middle class is under going significant changes The second "Great Contraction" Global Public Square - CNN.com Blogs. What I call the Doughnut Hole of the quintiles. It is nothing less than the back half of the middle class falling out Can the Middle Class Be Saved? - Magazine - The Atlantic:. It may be as much a sociological phenomenon as an economic one. In either case are there long term consequences to this. The other part of this is wondering what the Tea Party army sees (wants) in the future of their imagining, after they have "saved" America from itself. If you could point to just one thing to describe this and give an idea of the dynamics of it. It would be the concentration of wealth into the upper reaches of American Society. The top 1% even to the top 400 or so households have more money than the remaining 99%. Possessing with that more influence: political influence, financial influence, more shaping influence than any possible coalition however formed than the remaining vast majority can possibly counter. This one percent has the money and power to own the policy it desires. For the general population the only thing assuredly moving up is the US's Gini index. The Gini index Gini coefficient - Wikipedia is a measurement of income equality (or inequality. Where "0" represents all households in an economy having equal income and "1" indicating that a single household has all the economies wealth and the remaining households none. The US's Gini index has risen steadily over the last twenty years. It is measured as of 2006 at .45. It matches China in this and both countries mark similar levels of inequality, the upward trajectory matches India or Brazil. countries where a growing elite is leaving the rest behind. Significantly it is well above the Gini coefficients of Japan, South Korea, any of the larger Western European nations. Higher that any other OECD country Growing Unequal? Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries. One of the noteworthy things about this imbalance in the US is that the overrepresentation of the top quintile (and top slices therein) is reducible to incomes in a handful of geographically contingent counties Income inequality in the United States - Wikipedia. The reduction of the Middle Class is occurring across the middle income level quintiles, in the joints between the upper and lower middle class, and between minority and non-minority households American middle class - Wikipedia. It is occurring where a middle class stance was maintained through two income households over one income. Here if one income is lost the household assumes a more working class position Household income in the United States - Wikipedia. It also splits at Return to Education, increased education was always statistically significant. The difference was formerly diffuse and spread over a lifetime. It is now sharp; separating the professional, the white collar, from the gray and pink collar workers where the jobs and job categories are fewer and increasingly not paying as well comparatively. Statistical inspections of these populations indicate that the upper middle - professional class are holding their place while the lower middle-class is becoming indistinguishable from the working class and all associated social travail. Income inequality movement upwards over the last twenty-thirty years occurred almost entirely under republican executive regimes . Some speak of the three middle classes. The lower upper and both taken together. The broad middle class (that part of the US population that does not represent extremes) is where political power and the bourgeois (not intended as a pejorative) center lie. These people in whose interest the nation functions and in whose trust its institutions were vested. It is mainly the upper middle class that is the cultural wellspring of the US, to which pop culture holds the mirror and shows us nearly the entire vision of ourselves we have. Small Government equals no government. That's an overstatement of course, but less so than you might think. Once other institutions within a society carry more authority than government proper, or wield veto power over the society's activity; they are the government. Officials acting in the name of their office, politicians agents of the people in whom power is said to be vested vested, are ancillary to them. They are a government, the true government. A controlling element with options on the law, on the conduits of wealth, and machinery of coercion. But they are a government with a purpose and mission statement that includes only their own interests. To the people they are a parasitic and predatory force. Small government is a vacuum, and nature abhors a vacuum. The disparaging of government marks a doubt in the social fabric. A disbelief in ourselves as a national construction. We are left with the vague diminished idea that an individual automatic consumption is progress. To the free market system as it is channeled for us our binding as citizens is through our identity as consumers alone. Rather than as producers or laborers or wage earners. Only through constant consumption can our economic system hold course, only through pervasive marketing is demand for material and service goods not directly involved with the rhythm and challenges of everyday life. When this cycle of consumption and material identity cannot be maintained, when it only applies to a narrowing few at the top. A increasing sense of displacement and instability will replace it. The course of the last century the path is generally regarded as the path of progress and good government. It has been for that the path out of gilt. The slow evolution out of the injustice and inequalities of the gilded era. the discontent and instability those days wrought. This movement culminated in the roughly forty year period that contained the New Deal programs through to the Great Society programs, Social Security, Mortgages, Banking insurance, equal opportunity housing, and voting rights legislation. Programs that were more directly beneficial to the average person than earlier and equally important Anti Trust Laws. These pieces of legislation nurtured even largely created the expanded middle class which was viewed as the ballast of the nation. They were the process by which the wealth of the nineteenth century grudgingly bought itself peace in the twentieth with a quilt of social justice. At some point in the last generation or so wealth and its attendants have considered the labor and socialist parties that developed as countervailing force to plutocratic elsewhere watched them mature and fade. Further, they noted It didn't happen here, and decided history had ended and it wouldn't ever return. The ambition to form dis-enfranchisment into party and policy were not part of the true American psyche. So they concluded they were safe and undertook consideration of a rollback of their excessive precaution: a great unravelling of the Great Society, the New Deal, Gilded Era, Era of the Common man, the Enlightenment if they could reach that far. A lingering question in all this is what the republican party's long term vision for the country is. Especially given how desperately they want to regain power and how adamant that are that government accomplishes nothing until then. greatest evidence that republicans suspect that Keynesian stimulus spending has efficacy is how hard and how much energy they expend fighting it. I should say the Tea Party vision, given as how the republican party has seemingly capitulated to this noisome minority. The primary ethos exposited by this group is their small government creed. Repeated endlessly as though this was an end in itself. Shrinking the lake so the yachts of bureaucracy cannot float. Charming as this desire is, this gesture towards a Jeffersonian yeoman farmer myth is a willful ignorance requiring belief in a vision of America a unique people endlessly moderate in ambition, incapable of avarice, or the sort of irrationality we're sure possesses others. Blessed as we may be that perhaps eludes us. It is a fantasy chased willfully foolishly deceptively. The ancillary lines of smallness: no taxes no regulation all turn on the thought that with America no government is needed. We are simple folk who can find our own way from the barn to pasture without help or hinderance ScienceDirect - Cognition : The mismeasure of morals: Antisocial personality traits predict utilitarian responses to moral dilemmas:. Their obsession with the debt is admirable at least as as any obsession can be. With every repetition; though, one is more convinced that the greater part of this is an exercise in sloganeering. The debt can be brought under control. It has been with in the last ten years. For both parties it is largely only a grave concern when politically convenient. This makes it tricky as a issue. It fills a need for a symbol of disfunction and political wedge, but leaves the idea it will replaced quickly as necessary the obsession when debt is driven down. The fixation on debt and balanced budgets draws power from soft suggestions to budgets of a family household, is designed to be familiar and appeal to the defensive crouch of hard times. It is hardly restorative fortune requires positive outlay of effort and money. The analogy rather ought to be to farm or factory where a certain amount of debt is a necessary element to a successful enterprise. For all all supposed valuation of progress and prosperity. The deepest desires of this portion of the electorate seem to be for less, especially less change. They look back, a generation now, to Ronald Reagan and the dream of "turning back the clock". A campaigns image of the future as the past re-imagined. They ask for a repeal of the 20th century and for a reactionary demi-urge. Not Nixon nor even Goldwater, but an dispeptic fringe of the republic party is now on center stage. Those losing status, those with fear that those they disenfranchised will now disenfranchise them Study: Tea Party Members Cultural Dispositions 'Authoritarianism, Fear Of Change, Libertarianism And Nativism' | TPMDC . Do they believe de-empowering the federal government will bring about natural law utopia? Bring about a natural order of the deserving. It would accomplish nothing more that a hand-over of power. A flow from public to private power. Small Government equals corporate/theological government. These are the remaining positioned institutional interests. The loss of a forceful federal government to restrain or guide corporate interests leads to a divergence of wealth and national interest. Wealth globalizes and flows away from the state. You are left with an ultra wealthy minority whose process of wealth is either immune from the rest of the economy or even actively thrives on unproductive chaos and flux. This press for smaller government is a diminishing of public spirit. It is aimed without accident largely at federal exercise of authority not state and local power. A drive to roll back federal egalitarian tendencies. Their disdain for multiculturalism and ecumenicalism and everything these stand for is carried as a corps banner. The future is a vacuum of power to be filled with local exercise with no federal interference. Freedom in this narrow vision means the freedom from law. Freedom equals freedom to oppress. To subordinate, to dominate. The hand that some see holds them down is holding us back from injustice. There are ears attuned to the consolation prize for the abandonment of democracy. The rich gain a regime free from regulation of manufacturing and financial industry. From any meaningful degree of taxation. Conservatives of a certain downstream rank and file gain a hegemony of the local sphere. With the privatization of government process charity will be sufficiently benevolent only when poverty is sufficiently hidden. Private safety nets private concern for social justice equals no justice. Social justice carried out only in the least and most socially visible part. The vast reality of the coming poverty will not be recorded or accorded public space. No real event equates directly to the formation of a social compact. Some approximate it to greater or lesser degrees. A constitution or declaration of independence only ever follows at a dignified distance. A formalized echo of a given populations social compact. A social compact mobilizes the power and authority of a population, to regulate its actions, and dealings. It does so under the name government. It is in main the sense that a government is legitimate and represents the general will. A will which sharp or diffuse represents the conflicted desires of a people. A move to un-empower a government is a move to dissolve the social compact and return the population to the state of nature. If another institutional power center exists it either takes on an orientation to the general good, and by doing so takes on the role of legitimate government. If not what exist is not a social compact, but the state of nature. If anything marks this new aspect of conservatism it is their simultaneous criticism of authority and alarming embrace of it. Whether social power or institutional bureaucratic power, they disparage its rights and efficacy, and champion it by turns. Two sides of the same coin. When power is in its preferred form, the tendency is towards absolutism with this new right. They profess to no doubts and claim all answers. Their instincts are retreat in age of diminished returns, an acceptance of impoverished, nativism, isolationism masked by industrious bellocausity. All of it at all end an exhaustion re-imagined as Restoration. 11:52:05 PM    ;;

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Sufficient Subic In addition to posting pictures of RA5Cs every so often I've always wanted to write up stories of my experiences in the navy. I sketched a few out, but proceeded little further with them. One reason for this is that with twenty-five plus years separating me from these events, I found I remembered little in-the-moment detail, what I could remember was often frozen in an odd depersonalized manner. Events and experiences had to be cast in a different way than I would use tell a recent story. Sustained narratives, also, I found more complex than ordinary off the cuff web log writing. Both these were requiring of a different style of writing than I know how to accomplish. I intend to make a greater attempt to finish some these stories. This one due to its length has its home under Stories & essays, a part of this web log I don't use enough. I gave the story the name the Great Subic Sex Riot. The title is a misnomer. There is too little sex (by which I mean, none) to warrant it, and too much riot for comfort. It does get to the heart of the matter; though, and this was our view of what had happened at the time. I often feel I see differences in the Navy -- the whole military -- between then and now. As well between the current military and the American population at large. I like the basic idea of generational archetypes, a revolving set of framing outlooks Generations (book) - Wikipedia. It gives an appearance at least of explaining these differences and containing them. Perhaps the military as it has existed in the post war period forms a subculture to the prevailing generational outlook, forming an antipode to it. Or a culture that runs parallel to the main and is simply read at a slight difference, an offset indices. I might come back and look at these questions in greater detail later. What I want to accomplish here is to put together a story or a couple of stories that give a little window into the late days of the cold war before the Soviet Union slid into its last decade of decline. A glimpse of navy life as it went about its tasks in the post-Vietnam re-adjustment to all-volunteer enlistments. That if not completely, partly captures a way of being that was Subic. 12:49:50 AM    ;;

Sunday, July 31, 2011

End of the Fort Reno Season Now that the Fort Reno shows season is drawing to a close, I thought I might give it a small mention. This are a collection of small scale public performances mostly by DC area indie groups that take place through the first half of the summer on Mondays and Thursdays at Fort Reno Park, by Wilson Senior High and Alice Deal Junior high in DC They have saved the some of the best for last here with the Evens playing on Thursday 4 August FORT RENO 2011. This is Ian MacKaye (Fugazi, Minor Threat) and Amy Farina's band. This will be the best place in DC to be, the only place to be, between 7 and 9:30 pm this Thursday. 11:52:52 PM    ;;

Thursday, July 14, 2011

High Tea Time When I first thought writing about the debt ceiling, which was a month ago, I thought it would be fairly simple and straight forward Five questions on the debt-ceiling debate - The Washington Post. The general outlines of the event and the stakes were in in place by then, and haven't changed Our Mountain of Debt. Despite that it was a hard topic to keep up with. In the last week most of what is have written here I have seen written by others. I write as a blogger and more skeptical person than most, one willing to own amateur passions. When I see professional journalists hit my marks, that is a raw statement on the evolution of this unfortunate debate. One of the main contours of the argument is the notion that Big Government equals bad government. Bad and wastefull. It functions as central and animating principle. It would claim an absolute difference in intelligence and intent from individuals otherwise fished from the same ocean of citizenship. Big Government is believed to work to courses incorrect and work for courses incorrect. It forms a thorough-going politics of resentment against governance and rule of law. A stance of victimhood, this an irony of such depth it is difficult to describe. It places a premium on smallness, as someone who read portions of Schumacher's Small is Beautiful years ago, a wrinkle of nostalgia washes over me at this. But for this lot it is an end in itself, A panegyric of unexamined means. All of this signals (or follows) a loss of faith in government that is systemic, or endemic to democracy perhaps. This appears to play out of the achievement of virtual universal individual autonomy. The US as pinnacle of prosperity choice and freedom; moreover, open to the largest set of Americans ever. All of this largely brought about through the sustained efforts of the Federal Government. Yet this is where the discontent seeds from. The point where the contradictions push themselves to the surface. The Federal government is not by any means the only large scale institution in US society. We are a big country of big players, and the game requires big rules What Do You Mean, 'Government Is Too Big' - James Kwak - Business - The Atlantic. The withdrawal of faith from representational democracy hasn't tempered the craving for the so-called direct democracy. Rule by endless and directionless public referendums this is California's dreaming and the state is ever beacon to others. California is also one of the states that can't live without secession threats, in their case; separation from themselves Counties Propose Secession in the Name of South California - NYTimes.com. The great crusade against spending and the national debt is plagued by distorted notions. These are notions that it can all be resolved painlessly to themselves and anyone they know. The right budget is just a moment or two of common sense away. The freshman class of this congress combine a great deal of intransigence with naivety. But if you have paid close attention you will have seen this give way to grandstanding, and other juvenilen symptoms as the reality of the federal budget broke through their dissonance. Once they realized simple solutions and invisible cures, taking a knife to just the other fellows fat, weren't in the offing it became more empty talk and public mulishness than true action. I felt the stage was set on a day earlier in the year when the Republican caucus filed into the chambers, the weight of all existence pressing down on their shoulders. This thin brave line came and solemnly voted to cut off funding for NPR, thus balancing the budget and saving the world forever with one stroke. Of course later on some pointed out the government gives the same amount of money to Liberty University (founded by Jerry Falwell) alone as to NPR. I knew then there was nothing particularly discerning honest or serious about these house republicans. The no-new-taxes world the tea party and hard right speak of constantly functions as an empty shibboleth of identity Grover Norquist, the anti-tax enforcer behind the scenes of the debt debate - The Washington Post. The deficeit and debt ceiling it is critical to remember follows already legislated outlays. It isn't the place where you come to control spending, that is what the budget does. They don't make their stand there, where people expect you to put your money where your mouth is, but at a critical bottleneck further down the road, where they can simply withold cooperation. The instinct bent to high principle, to batten down and make being American about spending as little as possible betrays weakness. In polls of American awareness, our marking of funding levels for various initiatives - foreign assistance programs are off by powers of ten American Public Vastly Overestimates Amount of US Foreign Aid - World Public Opinion:. They have only an attitudinal or emotional grasp of federal spending. Under or over it is a creature of empty false generosity, an inability to recognize routine national security interests. Also problematic is the way this small and antigovernment mindedness will play out in national direction, in loss of national vision for big expensive things we do as a people. However the future of privatized space exploration plays out, it will not be a thing we do as a people. The building of the national highway system and other parts of our transportation network was an extraordinary expensive and focused achievement. A wealth multiplier without compare. It is now thirty to forty years old and the entire system will need to adhere to a strict maintenance regime to keep from degrading Decaying infrastructure costs U.S. billions each year, report says - The Washington Post. This will cost more than this country seems to have the stomach to spend anymore. They are also are exhibiting a near absolute cluelessness on the potential real effects of bond defaults. Inescapably it would make it harder and more expensive to borrow money it would make servicing the existing debt more expensive through higher interest rates. That there will be no default fallout is maintained first by the Tea Party caucus, and by figures like Michelle Bachmann Michele Bachmann's defaulty logic - The Washington Pos. They tend to wave it off with exceptional vagueness mimicking magical thinking, but most of them likely don't believe this, since they seem to be counting on the great disinclination of reasonable and substantive people to let this happen and meet their terms to prevent it. They keep up a vague monotone insistence that money is there (somewhere), that neither tame US markets or foreign markets will punish us just for not taking their money seriously, let alone actually not paying them. That rating agencies would never dare downgrade USA bonds. A face value belief that the "markets" will "understand" what the tea party thinks they're doing, and that some sort of shell game can be pulled off if the President simply chooses to do so. But there is little here that should be taken at face value Beyond a default: Catastrophic calculations - The Washington Post. Tea Party has not yet had its "we have me the enemy and he is us" moment. A Pogo nod not only to any belated recognition of the damage they have caused. But also to the fact that they don't seem to recognize that the budgets that exists -- that we are raising the debt ceiling to accommodate -- is already passed into law by congress. It is their budget. It is what the American people want, what they desire the system of government to provide them. Perhaps they feel that expenditures not clearly flowing to them, even if democratically authorized just should not be paid. The debt ceiling proxy war is power politics by a minority faction to force cuts from the budget created legitimately and democratically. It is certainly capable of being paid for if we would honestly own up to what we want, and look towards the ways and means of paying for it. Many on the right may be massively underestimating the way government expenditures wind benevolently through their own lives and the lives of people close to them Public Wants Changes in Entitlements, Not Changes in Benefits | Pew Research Center for the People and the Press:. And at that I await the inevitable Cheney moment when after regaining power (executive, both houses) the GOP suddenly recalls that deficits don't matter -- Reagan proved that. Any time they have an angle to play, deficits mean little to them The Chart That Should Accompany All Discussions of the Debt Ceiling - James Fallows - Politics - The Atlantic. Forcing a recession to destroy President Obama's public standing, isn't inconsistent with the Tea Party's thinking. If others say this is too Machiavellian, they won't have heard that from anyone in the Tea Party. The entire Republican party is adamant there is to be nothing, legislatively for Obama going into the 2012 elections. Votes that have occurred routinely before won't now The budget deals of Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Obama, in one chart - Ezra Klein - The Washington Post. An observable fact is that ultra-wealthy were affected very little if at all (and often came out richer) by recent recession. Driving the republican agenda more than a little is Paul Ryan's crowd, who are not anyone's rank and file but societal distorting wealth who are no longer interested in putting money into America. [In the middle of this debate a Pew Trust Survey on wealth disparity dropped which noted the tremendous hollowing out of the middle class -- minority representation in the middle class particularly which ought to have made every sit up and take notice Wealth Gaps and Perception Gaps: A Paradox of the Great Recession - Pew Research Center] There are elements on the right that are intent on undoing every liberal or democratic initiative from the great-society era onward, if not a rollback through the new deal to the gilded era. Significantly the programs that allowed the working class to move up into an expanded middle class. There is no longer danger of a true socialist party forming is the US, there are no concessions that need to be granted to the service classes to head that off. When I was going through a government and politics program, decades ago. The line on government programs was that social (engineered) mobility was inseparable from stable democracy, and social safety net programs were well intended, but suffered from the law of unintended consequences. Few openly challenged the ethical grounds of the war on poverty. Just how it was being waged. Now we are seeing the very notion of governmental noblesse oblige challenged. Empathy and concern for others is an optional and entirely private matter. High rates of unemployment by itself are of little consequence to them and are certainly by the right to be perfered over the least degree of inflation. What has changed is our place in the world. For the duration of the cold war and unipolar moment that followed it with every passing year we were ascendent and the doomed Soviet system diminished with every year. That no longer holds, or describes our place in the world of rising eonomies. Many, I believe see a zero sum game in the future, and are taking steps to lock in advantage now, and dismantle any excess of democratic process that might induce or allow change. The situation with illegal immigrants seems a campaign to remove some and effectively regulate the others into utter powerlessness, an ongoing subjugated dependency creating a labor and wage vacuum. One that would hold even if documented and native workers moved into that labor segment. In addition to this we see the virtual end of an era of legal remediation for any kind of work place discrimination. The Supreme court's dismantling of practically all grounds for class action suits Supreme Court dismisses women's class action lawsuit against Wal-Mart - CSMonitor.com. Tort Reform has reformed the worker out of law altogether The Attack on Trial Lawyers and Tort Law | Commonweal Institute. Wealth, big globalized money, will get bigger and remove itself from attachment to the US The wealthy will do the same by degrees attitudinally if not physically. The American worker, the American consuming middle class, will cease to be of particular importance to this wealth. 10:45:37 PM    ;;

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Notes on a Reunion There was a rumor a few months ago of a reunion for the first unit I was attached to when I was in the Navy. I didn't think on it much until I realized the proposed date was rolling near, so I delved into the new media (Facebook) to track down any information on the old unit (RVAH 7). I only go to Facebook about once a month and generally forget what I have left there between visits. I found a slow collection of online communiques had occured. Between Me Mark Edmunds and Kent Dotson. Thomas Grube, over the last few years. A Mike Byerly with some of the others. I had someone email me some years ago, who wanted to get in touch with LCDR Paul Habel, one of our senior pilots at the time, who had flown during the Vietnam conflict. I've heard recently from Chris Healy, who I only knew for a couple of months or so. He and a Mark Schwartz had rotated out of RVAH 7 as Mark Edmunds and I came in. I found my old supervisor Mark Ramsey on Facebook, who in turn seems to be in Facebook touch with some of the others. Kent Dotson, who was Edmunds roommate in the BEQ at NAS Key West left a message on my "Wall" saying that Mike Byerly was trying to organize a reunion in Pensacola this summer. While I can't confirm this, I did look over the group that someone created RVAH 7 Peacemakers. Well its not a group exactly, but rather an activity an organization a local business. A thing to contain the attribute of being "liked", that can support a wall, pictures, a discussion on it. It doesn't appear you can join it. I can't tell who set the page up either. I've got to get someone to explain Facebook to me again. Regardless; I think I will pass on this event. I've never been to any school reunion or similar event, I imagine with difficulty making small talk with people I knew only as a teenager, even as I recall them fondly. At the same time I know the majority of hits I get on Atomized jr. are for pictures of RA5Cs and other Navy things. There are two minor problems with this. It was, of course, only one part of my life, and very far back in the past now. I only want to revisit it so much. On the other hand I have all these pictures, and I do want these moments set down in writing and given their due justice. To that last point, it is genuinely hard to remember accurately and entertainingly that far back. There is the sense that while you can immerse yourself in the moment, with the aid of various tokens and tangibles, and create a brief intense deep recollection, you only get one shot at it for you damage the memory and overlay it with the sense of remembering. However, since I write for whomever is listening -- as long a memory and digital scanners hold at all; there will be more pictures and stories. SW Cay Somewhere in South China Sea taken by an F4 1979 I have a few pictures here to share. Call this catagory: RA5Cs vs. F4Fs. This first is another example of F4 photo intell This is a concept applicable from Sopwith Camels onward, the best camera in the world -- is the one you have with you. Who knew there were islands in the middle of the South China Sea? Always keep the local TPCs out on the table people. This particular island which sometimes carries the name S.W. Cay [Spratly Islands - Google Maps] has a light-house on it these days, and looks a lot more inviting now that some full trees have grown up on it. I think the Philippines are trying to develop some of their similar Spratelys as resorts. F4 over Diamond Head 1979, taken by RVAH 7 RA5C This next picture has the Diamond Head volcano in the background. Pictures like these were taken by the RA5C squadrons as favors and gifts for the other squadrons, they required a degree of co-ordination. I can't pin the date of this one down except, to remark VF-21 was with us on the USS Ranger's 1979 WestPac, so this may come from that same period. What this picture reminds me of are two trips round Oahu I took. One on the way out to the seventh fleet, and one on the way back to San Diego. On the outchop when we laid over in Pearl Harbor for a few days I was invited by Ensign Gent to go with him and two other officers from the squadron around the island in a rented car. It was a perfectly wonderful normal sedate and sober experience. Even a generation later while watching Lost on TV, I would see sections of hills and knew they were probably filming out on Rt. 83 on the north shore in or around Kahana valley. A bit over half a year after this first trip I joined a similar excursion, this time with friends from my enlisted peer group. There was different music playing in the vehicle. I recall Ted Nugent's "Stranglehold" coming around a least once on the latter trip which I don't believe I heard on the former. The only part of that trip I remember clearly is when we stopped to take pictures at Diamond Head (Along the highway running along the water's edge in this picture). That was in the morning. We drove counter-clockwise from there. Ended up back in Honolulu at dusk. If I took more pictures, they would be the only permanent record of the day which didn't end for many more hours. I suppose at the time I was tempted to read some sort of cultural message into these trips. White trash dereliction against class and refinement. Even then I knew that less dramatically, callow youth against even moderate age was a better fit. Our untutored moments shedding sparks of an enthusiasm sold wholesale to those too inexperienced to know different. I had few categories to fit experiences into back then. A glance over Facebook profiles and I see that the proletariat went on to degrees and middle class lives. Nothing but Blue Sky and a couple of RA5C's 1979 The third picture is from a set of color pictures taken during one of the flyouts of our three planes from NAS Key West to NAS North Island near San Diego. This would have been sometime between Thanksgiving 1978 and the beginning of February 1979. I can't determine who was flying the plane taking the pictures and strictly speaking that would be part of the story, I'm pushing artifacts out onto the internet with incomplete metadata, I do feel bad about that. It captures the RA5C with its own assets; a 3 inch right oblique Im guessing. I know a black and white version of this photo was used in our decommissioning booklet, in the center across two pages, but I don't think I've seen this color version I have online. An eternal moment in time, RVAH 7 planes in flight and all around them sky, nothing but blue sky. 4:07:56 PM    ;;

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Lithography Working in a university library copy-cataloging unit is OK, but far from interesting. Unless you actually care about RDA and FRBR. That's why I like the student assistants. Bright-eyed optimistic informed people who still find everything fascinating. Jake, our current student, is helping catalog a Persian collection. He reads and speaks Farsi as well as Turkish and the other Arabic languages. He also has an expertise in book binding and conservation. Grew up on commune outside Ithaca New York. And he knows Mona Eltahawy. I was describing what I liked about twitter and mentioned Andy Carvin's work, he asked if I had seen any of her tweets on Egypt (yes, of course). Jake says he's known her for twenty years. I've also learned some things about lithography from him. Arabic script is cursive in nature. Through the 18th and 19th centuries in print it had facets of illustrative design; mixed letter-size, and line pitch on the page - between primary content and commentary. Often combined with purely illustrative elements. It did not lend itself well to the disparate nature of the movable type printing press or early Linotype, although later photolithography technologies finally proved adequate. Publisher's in script forms seized onto Lithography techniques and held to them long after they were consigned to graphic art technique elsewhere. Lithography involves writing onto a stone, a slab of smooth limestone, with wax producing a negative image which when inked and printed produces a positive image on paper. The stone is acid washed after initial marking, the wax (or whatever hydrophobic substance used) removed. The ink will accrue on the parts of the stone containing the micro-layer of embedded wax, but not to the rest of the stone which is kept wet to reject the oily ink. The image transfers cleanly and sharply to the page. From a relatively unburden-some technique, a durable printing plate suitable for complex integrated text and design, long press runs and reprints. This is lithography's special nature and gravitas; crisp permanent, unchanging. Written in stone. As the year approaches the solstice the Arab Spring, gives way to summer. There is no going back, no undoing what has happened, what has been revealed. The depths of dissatisfaction Latest developments in Arab political unrest stretching from North Africa to the Persian Gulf - The Washington Post:. The discontent of the "Arab street" as a reality not just as a toy of the elites to bargain others with. The will for personal realization, for freedom, for a meaningful life and honorable standard of living. All this is forever written in stone. But what way forward? Between Tunisia and Egypt which saw nominally successful removal of inattentive ossified autocrats, against Syria and Bahrain, Libya and Yemen which saw suppression and civil war respectively what patterns can be seen? Both Tunisia and Egypt saw themselves as modern and secular in nature. At least in their urban centers as on the cusp of the first world. Tunisia's revolution started by a singular horrific and dramatic incident (the self immolation of the fruit stand vender Mohamed Bouazizi) that captured the public's imagination and galvanized action against blind corruption. Egypt had a corps of activists, the 6 April Movement, who had already been through a set of demonstrations and had made a detailed study of non-violent direct action Revolution in Cairo - Video | FRONTLINE | PBS:. In the other states where the revolution has stalled it seemed conditions were present that allowed the situation to slide towards a real or perceived bifurcation of the society. Clamp downs justified on the possibility of wholesale civil strife, or real civil wars started. Beyond these nations, many others are watching this situation. Countries with dissatisfied population or large disaffected minorities. Their regimes were studying these events to see the practical level of social media that associates with social control. Certainly among these are China, Vietnam, Burma, and North Korea Pyongyang Spring - By Sebastian Strangio | Foreign Policy. The outlines of the Beijing Consensus are reasonably well known; the willingness to bestow some measure of wealth and/or material well being on a population (or segment of a population) in exchange for their giving up politicss, self determination, even the mere ability to question decisions. A mercantilistic market economy playing to a tight set of closely held rules. All in the name of the harmonious state. Behind this in the shadows but always close is, the Damascus option. The willingness to shoot down your own people like dogs in the street. And at that it is not all across the fence. Oppression in Bahrain is cold vicious and deliberate Arab Spring: An interview with Bahrain's foreign minister. - By Lally Weymouth - Slate Magazine. Calculated to reduce the majority population to a suborned internal proletariat with second class rights of citizenship, work, and worship. Yet they are our ally Repression in Bahrain by Joanne Landy and Thomas Harrison | The New York Review of Books and brother kingdom to the Saudi's. There is no way however much they dodge it that US policy makers can avoid the fact that headquartering a US Navy Fleet in Bahrain legitimizes such behavior. That the United States in the last analysis enjoys and encourages the brute hobnailed order of autocracy when it suits us Time to Disband the Bahrain-Based U.S. Fifth Fleet - Toby C. Jones - International - The Atlantic. From reading George Orwell's essay on Ghandi [Collected Essays, by George Orwell] (which I think was twittered into my ken by Zeynep Tufekci): I see how non violent resistance draws its strength from a structured dependence on the opinion of a morally aware and sympathetic population. One that can directly or indirectly influence decision makers. Without that non-violent resistance has little ability to bring about change. This does not mean that the answer is violent resistance. the battle is towards a preparation of the population for months if not years before the move to direct action: wholesale public appeals to this population such as mass demonstrations and general strikes, occurs. Outside of some degree of defensive moves (barricades, symbolic actions, stone throwing against intrusive police elements) violence can only serve to doom a peoples movement. You alienate the pragmatic and bourgeois, and allow endless exaggeration of your own proclivity to disorder. If by some happenstance you take control of the state by violent means, it must then be ideologically and militantly guarded from all else forever going forward. All thought and aspiration of the people becomes the enemy. I also read not too long ago the book "Homage to Catalonia" which was Orwell's account of his time in the Spanish Civil war. This was Spain's semi revolutionary moment. A socialist government, against the Church and a Phalangist party determined to reassert their privilege and authority. Stir chill and serve as civil war. Orwell had gone to Spain to cover the war as a journalist. Once there he couldn't resist signing up with a militia, unfortunately for him his militia was branded Trotskyite and brutally suppressed by the Soviets who were underwriting the war. This was done at the expense of anything particularly Marxist about that struggle which the Republicans soon lost to Franco's fascists. Orwell's account of the bitter and bewildering factional battles fought well behind the front: with posters and manifestos, state police corps, secret prisons and secret prisoners, continues to be more than illuminating. The rulers reaction to suppress or control is a given, a constant of human nature. elites instinctively see themselves as having graduated from the morass of human travail, they view themselves as having grown beyond men, beyond the norms of those engaged in mere survival. These feelings are decorated with touches of mystical divinity by way of rationalization. They view it, right or left, as a natural course to channel limit and exploit the masses as dross. There is a clear and obvious role of social media in modern popular resistance movements, in organizing outreach and in-the-moment coordination. But as with any other portion of human technology it is a two-edged sword Web 2.0 versus Control 2.0 - Reporters Without Borders. The broad outline here is simple. To one side idealists to the other realists. Trenchant cyberoptimism is the redoubt of those that believe that the Internet has created a new place; where different rules, norms, and possible human natures exist. A kind of Noosphere (de Chardin's term) whose difference is predicated on its immateriality, the quality of not being the impinged by materiality. It is the transparency of thought, ubiquity of information, and convergence of awareness that supposedly characterizes telenets from bulletin boards, gopher sites, newsgroups, through to the two-zero internet. A libertarian wild wild west as entrenched in romanticism as anything has been. I would also include here those that believe that technology somehow forms a Just-in-Time shipping service of solutions to humanities most dire problems from some unfathomable un glimpsed warehouse. That is not what technology is or what it is doing. It is an iterative process in plain sight often accidental that takes hold in response to specific perceived inadequacies in other processes. Not generalities such as freedom or autonomy so much. Against this is the resilience of pre-existing patterns of hierarchical control. This view point has been forcefully treated at book length by Evgeny Morozov The net delusion : the dark side of Internet freedom (Book, 2011) The so-called "Dictators dilemma": to turn on or turn off the Internet As Egypt Shuts off the Net: Seven Theses on Dictator's Dilemma | technosociology. Left on it becomes an information war, a public relations battle between the state and peoples movements. Infrastructure particularly telecommunication infrastructure is dependent on the State BBC NEWS | Technology | Hi-tech helps Iranian monitoring. In the hands of a threatened regime this turns to Miji'ing your own. MIJI is a old acronym left over from my Navy days: Meakoning Intrusion Jamming and Interference. A bit of an awkward fit here, but it paints a picture. Meakoning : originally the practice of setting up false air navigation beacons to lure helicopters out into the Mekong delta to be ambushed, in this context is creating or co-opted networks designed to entrap activists. Intrusion : false flags on existing networks. Pretending to be what they're not, seeding bad information. Jamming : blocking, or degrading telecomm networks. Interference : filtering, the most predominant anti-internet tool, of either search or connectivity results. "You can't get there from here" These tactics, all of which seem to have been used, range from passive to active, nettlesome to insidious. Governments have learned that when their opponents use social media you can recreate a social network by observing mapping, identifying and arresting it ONI Home Page | OpenNet Initiative. And Western corporations are more than willing to supply the technology to accomplish this, see especially this report West Censoring East: The Use of Western Technologies by Middle East Censors, 2010-2011 | OpenNet Initiative. Two key elements stand out here. One is the need for preservation of anonymity so that the internet is not used as a weapon against one. The other is to avoid state controlled bottlenecks. Drawing a line between new technologies and old, between what we were trying to due with Radio Free Europe and the like, our avowed commitment to open access of information. The US Government is quietly assisting efforts to add occaissional mobile robustness to the internet or at least cell phone networks, to make harder to raise national walls against it U.S. Underwrites Internet Detour Around Censors Abroad - NYTimes.com. I also recall seeing mention that as part of setting up state nationalistic alternative to western social media, which as a matter of course will run their content through state intelligence offices, states such as Iran will use their control of telecommunication infrastructure to slightly and benignly degrade the performance of the western competitors to shape consumer response. This was somewhere deep in dry pdf I cannot find now. But it is easy to see the great interest authoritarian regimes have in creating face book and twitter clones. See for instance this Singapore university page on social media in Vietnam Digital Media in Vietnam - Digital Media Asia. Being merely manipulated is the highest level of autonomy achievable under the present regimes. 11:16:01 PM    ;;

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Cruisers : a Tale of two Movies This is a piece about TV or ships or TV movies; perhaps all that. About a year ago while flipping channels on my resolutely broadcast TV (I don't do cable) I came across an old movie that seemed to be one I had watched, thirty years before. A singular or small group of plucky Brits take on a German warship. It turned out it was actually a different movie which just deepened the experience, made it more of a mystery, more fun. I grew up with bad television, but it isn't bad prime time television that I remember particularly or fondly. Rather the avalanche of old reruns every afternoon of the previous decade's television. An even greater entertainment; though, was old movies, especially during the period when TV stations weren't too self-conscious to air black and white movies. That lasted about ten years into the sale of color televisions. Then Turner broadcasting decided they would "colorize" any remaining movies they cared to air or license. At one stroke 10,000 movies disappeared from popular culture. Some came dribbling back through VHS editions, some made the rounds of dedicated cable channels. Places where a candle in the window still burned for George Raft. I've never had cable, didn't even have a VHS machine until 1998 (I now have my sister Susan's vhs collection as she moved on to dvd and now Netflix). As the modern age deepened the movies one might find on TV, on a UHF channel on a Saturday, or late at night grew as a set and became acceptably tolerable. The element of find is critical, the happenstance, the serendipitous nature. The casual dismissability, the easy ability to turn it off if it gets tedious, or something else needs to be done. The history of movie programming in television is fascinating and I know of at least one book undertaking an academic study of the dynamics Hollywood in the age of television (Book, 1990) which I glanced through as I copy-cataloged it into U Md's broadcast archive collection. Even worse I enjoyed the New Bad Television era. Which is my name for the glut of new production syndicated television. This is a somewhat aging enthusiasm now, but I fondly recall Bruce Campbell, Tia Carrera, Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda (Lexa Doig, Keith Cobb), Cleopatra 2525, and Lost World. Bruce Campbell is of course back in "Burn Notice" a cable show which ch. 20 (the remnant of the mighty WB/UPN empire) is kind enough to broadcast in syndication on Wednesdays. Things are now looking up again with the move of TV from analog to DTV; every channel gets a handful of side-channels and in the expansion of the medium, broadcast gains a share of puzzling sport or local interest channels, as well as deliberate retro TV like RTN or Antenna TV and dedicated movie channels like the This channel. This is where this story starts. On such a channel I found a movie where Roger Moore and Lee Marvin along with Barbara Perkins are conniving to blow up a German warship full of sauerkraut-eating proto-Nazi's. They succeed, and it is ever so picturesque when they do. I came in around a half hour from the end. I realized by the end that it was not the movie I had seen twenty minutes of thirty years before, and I didn't manage to catch the name of this movie as the credits ran. The next day I went over to IMDB to try to sort all this out. The two movies I determined after a while were Shout at the Devil from 1976, and Sailor of the King from 1953. There are some parallels in these movies about blowing up ships. The two movies are based on books about naval battles concerning German light cruisers in world war i, both movies add a foreground story to a actual historic incident and changed or obscured the names of the ships, location and other facts. The movie Shout at the Devil (film) weaves in a complex plot about man and his daughter an American adventurer and thuggish acquisitive Germans. The film changed the ship to the larger, older and more gothic battlecruiser SMS Blucher. How much of the historical liberties originated with the book or the film I don't know. Also changed was the location from the flat hot and undifferentiated jungle of the Rufiji Delta, in Tanganyika, the film was still set in Tanzania but actually filmed on the rugged and incredibly beautiful Umzimvubu river near Port St. Johns, Cape Hermes Transkei South Africa. This is where I'd go if I ever had a honeymoon to go on. The historical incident was the Battle of Rufiji Delta - Wikipedia, on the Rufiji River, Tanzania, July 1915. Involving the light cruiser SMS Konigsberg versus British cruisers, land forces, some airplanes, and two monitors brought around from Malta. The SMS Konigsberg had attempted some commerce raiding in the Indian Ocean, but unforgivably had sunk the light cruiser HMS Pegasus in Zanzibar Harbor in September of 1914. By November of 1914 the British Navy had trapped the Konigsburg, but were unable to get up river to shell her This led to a long miserable campaign to put the ship out of action. Which they finally managed six months later sinking her with the aid of the monitors. Monitors were ships that looked like dwarf battleships, being essentially large gun turrets mounted on barges. The movie I had mistook Shout at the Devil for was Sailor of the King - Wikipedia, which is based on the book Brown on Resolution by C.S. Forester author of the Captain Hornblower series (who also wrote the book African Queen which is uniquely about two plucky civilians trying to sink a German warship). Sailor of the King was actually the second movie based on Brown and switched the time period from the first World War to the second. There are apparently alternate endings; in the American release Brown survives, this version also carries the title Single-Handed. In the book and UK release his resolution is -to the end. Signalman Brown, hero as ordinary seaman as Forester envisioned him, was played by Jeffrey Hunter who later went on to become the first captain of the starship Enterprise for Gene Roddenberry, but turned down continuing in the role, which was recast for William Shatner. The historical incident was the Battle of Mas a Tierra - Wikipedia, and the demise of the SMS Dresden at the Chilean island of Mas a Tierra (Robinson Crusoe island) during 8-15 March 1915. A German Task force was scattered after battle of the Falkland Islands in the opening days of the war. The light cruiser SMS Emden escaped into the west Pacific and Indian ocean for a legendary commerce raiding spree (before being sunk eventually by the HMAS Sydney). SMS Dresden low on coal was cornered by British cruisers HMS Glasgow and Kent and sunk at Cumberland Bay. In the movie Brown whose ship has just been sunk harasses and prevents the quick repair of the German ship until the Royal Navy shows up. By the time of these battles all the ships in these stories were around 5 to 10 years old in naval architecture design. The German ships suffered by having coal burning boilers at a time when warship technology was transitioning to oil. Coal was less efficient by weight and the refueling process took significantly longer and with the presence of coal dust was far more dangerous. All European navies were shuttling through ship design iterations rapidly, part of an overall extreme naval arms race. There was considerable uncertainly about the merits of the various armament arrangements and machinery such as the new steam turbine systems. These ships at any rate were superior to the US light cruiser design of the period, the USS Chester class. Although one of those ships the USS Birmingham had been the first warship to launch an airplane, that was one hundred years ago last November. I can round this out with one additional really random fact. I was copy cataloging a book of Paul Signac"s late period water colors into U. Md's collection a month or so ago. Signac famously painted "Portrait of Felix Fenton" in 1890 a work seeming to predict the pop art of the 1960's. The book was: Signac : les ports de France. (Book, 2010). One watercolor featured a cruiser sailing out of a harbor - which I attempted to identify, believing such a thing possible. The ship name given in the painting's title did not correspond to any French warship I could identify, but appeared to match the name of a minister in the French government of the time. I chalk this up to an aqua-tinted inside joke for lack of better information. The ship itself appeared to be the Suffren or one of her sister ships, a French heavy cruiser : French cruiser Suffren - Wikipedia. The Suffren was later known for an heavily disputed incident in 1946 [Vietnam - Google Books p. 47] where it or a pair of Corvettes under its protection bombarded the city of Haiphong, killing as many as 2000 Vietnamese citizens, allowing Marxist leader Nguyen Sinh Cung (later known as Ho Chi Minh) to sweep the nationalists aside turning his people permanently against the west initiating the first Indochinese war. No one appears to have made a movie of this yet. 11:34:28 PM    ;;

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. 2012 P. Bushmiller. Last update: 1/18/12; 11:24:45 PM.