Monday Miscellany and Open Thread

"Wedding Song" - Bob Dylan

From Planet Waves, a record that always struck me as powerfully romantic.

- Speaking of which, this is how I spent my Saturday.  (And I did not live blog it.)  It was a lovely ceremony and I was really pleased to be there.  I am sure you will all join me in wishing Roy and Kia the best.

- I enjoyed this piece on the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters by Erik Loomis at LG&M.  A. Philip Randolph, longtime leader of the Brotherhood, stands at the nexus of the labor and civil rights movements in the Twentieth Century and was the inspiration for the March on Washington in 1963. 

- Taegan Goddard links to an AP story that suggests that both campaigns agree that the race is down to only seven states -- Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, New Hampshire, Iowa, and Nevada.  No mention of Pennsylvania or Wisconsin from the Romney camp, and no talk of North Carolina from the Obama camp (which surprises me). The Romney strategy, which absolutely requires wins in Florida, Ohio, Virginia, and at least one other state, continues to strike me as trying to draw an inside straight -- but I don't think he has any other choice.

- Another thing I read today that I quite liked was this article about Venus and Serena Williams in the New York Times Magazine.  I remain a huge fan of the Williams sisters and hope they have a few more major titles left in them.  For tennis fans, there is also an amusing article about the 1977 U.S. Open, the last one to be played at the old West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills.

- Finally, Sullivan has a piece regarding apocalyptic thinking on the left, the breed of secular gloom and doomers who have long expressed a sense that mankind is destined to destroy the planet.   Notwithstanding my own frustration at the inability of Republicans to accept the reality of climate change, I remain an optimist about the ability of society to innovate and solve problems.  

What's up with all of you? 

-

Comments

[big bad wolf]

hmmm, not sure about that SC. maybe Romantic, and an attempt to insist on what was and seemed like it might be over what was, but i think not romantic. much of the album sounds like the first iteration of the issues that would show up again on blood on the tracks. i am usually not one to "find" the author in songs or books, but planet waves and blood on the tracks seem to correspond so closely with the events in dylan's personal life that i disbelieve his claims that they are in no way autobiographical. that doesn't mean they are strictly, but i think the personal leaks through on these records in ways they rarely did before or after. the important thing, i think, is that artistically the events seems to have galvanized dylan and led him to write some of the best songs of his career, wedding song among them. on the positive, Romantic side i am very partial to "something there is about you." i find "dirge" to be nearly overwhelmingly good.

i know elections affect more people, but, god, music and books are so much more interesting than the republicans.

[nancy]

Roy and Kia. Middle-age weddings. Oh my. The best. Believing in the future. Yes. Sweet. Sweet. A heartfelt toast to them. Hear, hear.

[Sir Charles]

bbw,

I hesitated over the use of "romantic" and then went with it anyway. Maybe "passionate" would be more accurate. As with all art, I think personal context may influence one's feelings. The bulk of time that I spent really listening to Planet Waves was when I was 19-20 and in love, so I think that colors my reaction. I also agree that the works is of a piece with Blood on the Tracks, which manages to outdo it with some of the most consistently great songwriting Dylan ever produced. But I think Blood on the Tracks is incredibly romantic -- or maybe as you put it "Romantic." So many of the songs -- Tangled Up in Blue, You're a Big Girl Now, If You See Her, Say Hello, You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go, Shelter from the Storm, Buckets of Rain -- are the most extraordinary love songs -- but yes, with a fairly deadly edge. It is the first record that I ever got drunk alone to -- when I was all of 18.

nancy,

I almost wrote words to that effect. I don't go to a lot of weddings right now. We are at the age where most of our friends have long been married and their kids are a little too young to take the leap. So we mostly have the occasional middle-aged wedding, and I must say that they are the most moving weddings I've ever been to. There is something so real and so hopeful at once in them -- people who know the score about life and love and plunge ahead nonetheless. Bride and groom here really were beaming. It was nice to be there.

[paula]

Did anyone post this?
Green Eggs and Sperm -- straight talk about sex, even an unenlightened Congresscritter could understand.
http://leap-of-fate.com/2012/08/24/the-talk/

Re: late weddings v. young ones -- they're different.
Ours is a third marriage for each and, although we knew each other as kids, I'm certain my husband I wouldn't have lasted six months if we'd tied the knot when we were young. Careers, material stability, notions on childrearing, dreams and tolerance for a spouse's quirkiness are so different later in life, when many of the stakes are not as high. Others are higher. Soon, we'll celebrate our 10th anniversary, and haven't killed each other yet.

[paula]

from pourmecoffee, on Twitter:
Tampa hookers offering the Ayn Rand special -- you do everything yourself and they just appreciate it.

[Sir Charles]

Paula,

The Ayn Rand special -- oh.my.god. That is seriously funny.

[oddjob]

One year ago today Irene was moving north along the East Coast and then flooding inland New England.

[paula]

i still have nightmares. There've been some good stories about the impact on small towns in Upstate NY, including this one: http://nyti.ms/NxAfOL

Here's an interesting graph, showing Irene's coastal track and inland flood levels: http://nyti.ms/PMf2mq

[kathy a.]

here's a graphic on isaac's appearance at the RNC.

and, there are reports that romney has a little discrepency on his one set of released tax returns: some $500,000 in deductions on his bain income, which are only allowable if he had an active role in bain, which he says he didn't. i have no expertise in tax law, but it does kind of burn my butt that my tax burden is a substantially greater proportion of my income than is true for mr. moneybags.

[kathy a.]

paula -- you guys went through so much with irene.

[low-tech cyclist]

Paula - that's even funnier than my idea that the hookers should just go Galt this week. Thanks for sharing!

SC - you're right about Planet Waves and Blood on the Tracks: very personal stuff from a songwriter who rarely wrote about himself. Jakob Dylan once said of Blood on the Tracks, "The songs are my parents talking."

[scott]

After being treated to Sullivan's musings that liberals who weren't enamored of the War on Terror were part of a fifth column and quasi-traitors, I gave up thinking that he could take a fair look at anything to his left. Sometimes he has decent instincts, but he has many blind spots, and his comic-book, stereotyped view of the left is one of them.

[Sir Charles]

scott,

I am not always enamored of Sullivan's analysis of the left, but it seems to me that here he was just describing the work of thinkers like Paul Ehrlich and Robert Heilbroner who had exceedingly pessimistic views about the future that did not come to pass.

I remember people talking about the world running out of oil back in the 1970s like it was imminent. Although our addiction to petroleum has significant downsides, the availability of oil has not really been a major issue over these past thirty or forty years and does not seem like it will be for quite some time to come. Indeed, the struggle now is to get people to use less oil without the natural constraints of scarcity prompting such behavior.

[nancy]

Mitt's going all in with the trust me theme. Yes. 'Trust me. Just ask Ann.'

"And after the convention, how do you see the Republican Party?"

AR: United.
MR: We're united now. You go and ask people who voted for John McCain: 'Are you thinking of voting for anyone other than Mitt Romney?' And you will have a very hard time finding someone who's thinking of voting in a different direction. ... We go to the convention with high hopes. There's a lot of enthusiasm for new leadership.
AR: It's a recognition that Mitt and I represent millions and millions of people's hopes. It's women's voices in my head right now.

What do they say?
AR: One is, they'e praying for me, which is unbelievably touching. The second is, 'Your husband has to save this country.' And they say it with such passion and conviction. I feel what they're yearning for and hoping for.

From Lynn Sherr's silly interview for Parade Magazine ; at breakfast tables across the country yesterday, all-American families were to be reassured with the 'trust me' theme, direct from Lake Winnipesaukee. Tone-deaf story visuals chosen without irony I guess.

[paula]

She hears women's voices in her head right now???

I bet she does, but she should listen a little harder.

[kathy a.]

sir charles -- people in the '70's actually did have to wait in gas lines; there was actual rationing of gas. we ended up not running out because of all the drill drill drill and conservation efforts, but somehow that evolved out of consciousness to the point where urban assault vehicles rule, we've had some bad oil spills, public transit is villified as too expensive in these economic times, etc.

heilbroner was leaning on the worst case scenario, but that's a useful voice. so are the voices on global warming and other environmental concerns; on poverty, malnutrition, lack of health care. the problems are real, and we are not moving as energetically as we could in the direction of solutions.

anyway, back to nancy -- i'm sending some special thoughts to ann today, but her thought-mail box seems to be full.

[Sir Charles]

kathy,

I remember both sets of gas lines, but particularly the second set as I was old enough to drive for that one.

But remember, both spates of gas supply issues in the 70s were the result of political moves rather than natural phenomena. The first crisis was due to the OPEC boycott of the U.S. following the Yom Kippur War and the second followed the Iranian revolution, which initially disrupted supply and was later exacerbated when Carter sought to cease the importation of Iranian oil, which prompted some panic in the market place. The first Arab oil embargo helped lead to a general meltdown in the U.S. stock market, which lost roughly 50% of its value in 1973 and 1974. The second oil shock pretty much killed Carter's prospects for reelection.

I think there is much to be said for reducing fossil fuel use, but the voices that suggested a complete depletion of these resources was coming relatively quickly were incorrect.

[nancy]

WA Rep.Cathy McMorris Rodgers is now to be the 'host' at the RNC, speaking each night and rounding out the party's back-to-the-fifties fantasy. One has to have been her constituent to fully appreciate how craven this move is, sending her out front to try to wallpaper over what the mostly boys have been up to. Woman is a vacuous party-line parrot. And they're rolling her out as a Sarah Palin do-over. This year's wholesome face of Republican womanhood -- 'what war on women are all you people talking about?'

[Crissa]

We did use up much of the proven oil reserves, and an amount equal to that has been consumed since. We've gone half a decade without proving there is more than we've consumed.

And the 'but the world didn't end'! arguments that we did avert disaster with regulation is stupid: It's saying we don't have to regulate because we regulated before? WTF?

The Wired article is full of fail. 'Chemicals haven't been proven to cause cancer'. WTF, talk about moving targets

[Jim S]

I am reminded of those who dismiss the year 2000 computer issues as something that was completely invented since nothing at all happened. While there were definitely those who exaggerated the potential problems one reason we didn't have hardly any issues was a lot of hard work by a lot of programmers and sysadmins who helped find potential issues and fix them before they could become problems. So it is with any potential problems that human ingenuity can address. The problem can't be addressed unless you see it coming and acknowledge it. That's why the global warming deniers are so pernicious.

[nancy]

How many times can a recently new hard drive die? Mine x three in the last year. Again. Supposed to be a new computer now. Hmm. We'll see. Applecare gang. Let's roll.

[nancy]

captcha. "Recourse". ya think?

[Crissa]

Oh, that sucks.

Of course, new drives will fail more often than old because of burn-in; things are just more likely to fail in their first n than their second n.

Watching Burning Man. Not there this year since we failed at the lotto.
http://www.ustream.tv/burningman
We've passed up tickets 3! times since planning on doing our roof this week - which we're also passing up because we failed to get the HELOC we attempted. Our best chance failed due to appraisal: The appraiser said we were most like a similar cabin without upgrades that got a tree through its roof last winter that sold this spring. Ohwell.

[paula]

A must read----http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/28/opinion/brooks-the-real-romney.html
Is this OUR David Brooks?

If you can't get behind the NYT firewall, let me know and I'll drop it into a comment box.

[low-tech cyclist]

Jim S - I realize this is a side issue, but with all due respect, consider me a Y2K denier.

The fundamental problem with believing in the existence of a serious Y2k vulnerability is this: it's astronomically improbable that nowhere in the world, from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe, was there a place that had sufficient computer dependency by the late 1990s to be vulnerable to the Y2K bug, but couldn't afford to hire knowledgeable people to fix it.

Somewhere, along the axis from developed to developing to agrarian countries, someone should have gotten hit by the bug in a nontrivial way if indeed there was a nontrivial bug. It's a big world, and there's no way that even an army of computer programmers could have gotten 100% coverage worldwide in dealing with the bug.

But that's what we apparently got: an entire world with nothing worse than the occasional bill being sent out with a January 1900 due date. It's beyond unbelievable.

[low-tech cyclist]

One of the ways around the NYT firewall is that they'll let you follow a link to their content, even if you've used up your 10 free page reads for the month. So here's a link to the David Brooks column that Paula gave the URL to.

[paula]

Thanks, l-tc!

[kathy a.]

paula -- that's hilarious!

it's what, 10 weeks until the election? i'm in campaign overload, and i don't even watch TV. this campaign season feels like it has already lasted several presidential administrations. one of my friends has completely lost her mind, and is posting (literally) dozens of political pieces daily on facebook; i agree with her, but really.... my in-box overfloweth with desperate pleas for campaigns and causes, on a constant basis; that also happens to be the bulk of my snail mail.

because of the vagaries of the electoral college, only a handful of states are considered to matter. and i hate that, both on principle -- every vote should count, and this system discourages participation -- and because there are other items on the ballots.

the west coast almost always hears a presidential race called before the polls even close, which sucks. california is so irrelevant that the GOP seems to have gone the extra mile, and made ridiculing the entire state a plank in the platform. way to press for national unity, guys. that's pretty much nothing compared to declaring all women's lady parts subject to the whims of dudes who know better; just one more way to piss me the hell off. how can a major political party run a national campaign that boils down to "yes, you ARE chopped liver" and "trust us"?

need to go find my happy place. it's around here somewhere...

[low-tech cyclist]

Speaking of lady parts, here's The Republican Guide to Female Anatomy for your viewing pleasure.

[paula]

omigod, l-tc, how come i never knew there were real adult people who probably went to school at some point in their lives and who were successful at whatever they did, but believed -- REALLY believed -- such bunk? I just thought (some) men thought we were stupid, wimpy and unreliable. Now it all makes sense! I've been working in the dark all these years.

[low-tech cyclist]

paula - most men, I suspect, will believe a lot of things about women if it saves them from having to try to understand them.

The business about women being all but unable to conceive as a result of rape only circulates among certain fairly limited circles of religious wingnuttery, fortunately. Unfortunately, those circles are strongly represented in today's GOP.

[low-tech cyclist]

Finally got around to reading the Brooks column. It was funny as hell, but it's hard to imagine Brooks writing it.

[paula]

Someone posted this on Facebook about the Brooks column:
Brooks is poking fun at us liberals, writing a tongue-in-cheek piece that mocks our conceptions of Romney. What he fails to understand is how close to the true Romney he comes; so close that we don't get his joke, and think that he is directly mocking Romney. The fact that most of us don't see his attempt to lampoon our distaste for Romney, however, means the joke is ultimately on Brooks, a hack if there ever was one.

I don't know that i buy the above. Maybe Brooks drank magic potion last night and sees more clearly today.