Early Morning Light

At every moment in every spot in the world, light is different. If one could see that in aggregate, one would possess the all-seeing eye. If one can feel that in aggregate, one possesses the all-compassionate heart. If one understands all that in aggregate, one has the all-knowing mind. Light is the expression of the universe over it's own preponderant darkness. Light is the soul of life given to the universe as love.

Wise and Clever

Watch the video below. In case like so many of us elders you think the kids aren't thinking hard about the future, some are wiser than we know.

I guess this means I can stop circulating the petition to skip over their generation and pass the power and the money straight to our grandkids.

Dial M for Mayhem

In the beginning was the blank space. The data barrier was void and lo, it was good. Then came the round bracket. It was found to nest and the days of the never-ending cooder were upon us. Then came the curly brackets and all could C the structs before them but verily the semi-colon and the comma could not be banished from the land. Then came the pointy bracket with its faithful companion, the quotation mark to sweep all that came before them away. The data landscape was fruitful and the trees multiplied without number.

There are rumblings in the land of the Elder Edda of the monster, M. With spare incantations and in secrecy, it seeks to resurrect the curly by whose topology it will sweep all the pointy brackets into the bit buckets of the cloud hereafter around and anon.

Lo, the days of darkness have returned.

This Land Is Our Land

Remember when songs meant something? Here is an interview with Pete Seeger, a man who saw the entire span of modern American folk music and who as much as anyone made sure they did.

Little organizations doing what is right right near where it needs doing is the message. We can't count on the government and we sure as hell can't trust the bankers. We spawned a generation of rich sociopaths who believe they can steal right in front of us and there is nothing we can do.

I dunno. I know what we learned from people like Pete: we have to tell the story and maybe we better write some new songs.

Whoever makes the best biopic of Pete Seeger can tell the story about what is best about this country: people who keep doing the right thing.

Change is necessary but it only works if we know what is right. Is that corny? I don't care. It's right.

In Times Like These

In times like these we wonder where old friends are, who friends are and who are just the liars that litter the alleyways of streets where we took a wrong turn and stayed on that path a little too long. Then one day we run out of shoe leather and gasoline, feel that engine winding too shrill and the slide on wet roads from tires without enough tread left to keep up going forward.

Then someone sends a good song from an old friend and I remember how many people are on that road with me. Thanks Joe Cookbook. I thank the big guy for friends.

The Long and Winding Road

The bad news is I start the treatments for leukemia (NHL) today. It's a schedule of two weeks of steroids followed by 18 weeks of chemo in three week cycles. Every third week, they hook me up for four hours while I sit in a chair. It may be time to find something I actually want to read or set up a laptop for midi composition.

The good news is I get out of yard work for most of the summer and I can rent out the top of my head for Google Ad Space. :-)

I'll be fine. Steroids are an emotional roller coaster though so if I write whinier than usual, well, it's coals to newcastle. I'll see if I can compose a blues mass for the church choir. Hey, emotions should not be wasted. Minds should.

And I still have fine music.

THe Watchmen

Don't bother. If you have young children, don't let them see this. In fact, thumbs down. It has it's own audience, no doubt.

Normally I don't diss a film like that, but these guys are running ads that don't tell you the degree to which this movie is soft-sci-fi porn with full frontal of men and women, and some explicit gettin' it on. People who took their kids were dumbfounded.

And the plot sucks. Good CGI.

The Star Trek preview looks excellent.

Amazing Grace

Arlo keeps on the path he has been on since he was thirteen years old, straight down the middle toward a home he can see or just because he likes the road. Wherever he performs, he brings a unique but familiar perspective some might say is old Hippie talk, but others of us know is the gospel truth. At the core of the Hippie thing was peace and love. It's hard to object. Then togetherness. That's tougher. It gets tight in small corners and we start pushing against each other for space and air to breathe. We can push so hard that even while we have reasons good enough to make Officer Obie stop and think twice, we aren't making more room. We're making each other hurt.

The Guthrie family purchased the old church building where much of Alice's Restaurant was filmed. It is called The Guthrie Center. If you order CDs from his label, www.risingsonrecords.com, they come in a US Postal Priority mailer, meaning someone carefully put them in there out of the box and hand-sealed it then dropped it off at the Post Office on the way to shop for groceries. Inside the box with the rightly priced CDs is a form to send a donation to the Guthrie Center. I may send the money but I think I'll keep the form.

Arlo stayed on his path and that path led him straight home, straight to the heart of love and peace and togetherness. In the video below, he describes the Guthrie Center as a "Bring your own God" church. Maybe it gets crowded in there, but maybe in that church there is room for all of the people who bring their God and because they do, no one's getting hurt.

So he could be right. Maybe we should stay in that log until we outnumber the dogs outside howling. Breeding's got to be better than marching.

The Perfect Folk Song

I know a lot of Dylan fans. I've never been one. It isn't that I don't admire his songs but Bobby always came across to me as a bit mean and so do most of his fans. It's the We Are Too Smart To Care What You Think Brigade and well, I guess I don't follow that trend in folk music.

Then there's Arlo. For my time, Arlo Guthrie was and is the perfect folk singer. He is incredibly gifted as a writer, a wry commentator on the times, a fantastic musician, but through it all, he is funny, he is generous, he is kind, and he sees through the bullshit. He is never mean. Of all my heros in a lifetime of making music, writing songs and listening, he is still the one guy I want to sit down and pick with for an evening somewhere away from the crowd. He simply impresses me as a man who would be a good friend and teacher.

Here is the perfect folk song seen through the eyes of the leader of the first family of American folk music: Arlo.

Give A Damm

They say the times of change are upon us like the Sixties but without the good music and the sex. That only leaves war, drugs and politics which means the worst of the Sixties are back. What to do?

In a 1993 concert just before performing “When A Soldier Makes It Home”, Arlo Guthrie observes that after all the movements of the 60s, he found there are only two kinds of people: those who give a damm and those who don’t and there were always both of those on both sides of an issue. What surprised him was how over the years he found he had more in common with those who do give a damm regardless of which side of the issue they were on.

As we continue on during the times of change and internationalization, maybe that is the best badge to wear.

The Great Gazoo

Someone sent me yet another reference to Facebook's weak defense of their policy that once on Facebook always on Facebook. I tell them to try get rid of their MySpace page and see how that works out.

Relational databases make it difficult to remove related entities once in the system and used by other entities. Given the numbers of friends one befriends, Facebook is possibly a tedious thing to administrate. That said, people seem shocked as they begin to finally realize the Web's existence has a dark side manifesting in everything from intellectual property to keeping one's DNA private. Databases leak and if one is using free services without reading the terms and conditions one is a fool. The world does not protect you. It will let you starve while it buys back a dime on a dollar of your retirement account from the men who stole your water.

If I am in a bad mood, I describe the web as a man-made viral pathogen rewriting our cultural DNA quickly, quietly and without our permission. No one knows how this will turn out for those who turn it on and can't turn off, but if you don't mind being the naked emperor, it should be ok at least until dildonics come with a URI and that is not far away.

In a good mood, I think of the web as the Great Gazoo combined with Fred's two feet. In the first case, a self-admitted "undependable, bit of a kook" alien can raise havoc if you call on him. In the second, a car made of stone, wood and animal skins can take you on a wild ride downhill. If you get in, you may not get out. How good are your own two feet?

Did anyone forsee all of this? Sure. We even warned you. First we were told it wasn't a problem, then it was society's fault, then that we were sick people for wanting to hide information from the commons.

What do I have to say now? "Take heed. Don't ask for more than you can handle You may get it." Toodaloo, Dum-dums!

The Mirror Ball Mosh or Buffy The Umpire Slayer

To assess digital art in these modern times, there are ten critical criticisms:

1. Popularity: How many sites link to it.

2. Citability: How many reviews link to it.

3. Authority: Of the links, how many links link to the sites that link to it.

4. Covetability: how many copies were stolen.

5. Enviability: how many competitors ripped it off and changed the names to claim originality.

6. Originality: huh? Who would link to something they don’t recognize? This one doesn’t matter but I toss it in here to satisfy the need for a ten item list.

7. Authenticity: how many animals were harmed making the thing.

8. Cultability: how many forums are dedicated to proving the artist is wrong about the interpretation of their work.

9. Derivability: how many forums dedicated to proving the artist is wrong are right.

10. Extensibility: how many new pieces of art are created to *honor* the resource at the bottom of all of those links.

The best way to assess art is to find the average size of the pile on top of it that keeps you from finding it times the number of those looking for something like it divided by the number of those who claim to have it for a price they will reveal to you if you give them your social security number.

Protest Songs and The Punctured Pretension

A friend of mine is letting his freak flag fly with political protest songs on mySpace. I sang on some of those including Sly Stone's "Stand" and "Vicious Love Affair". Ground Level Sound still covertly records when no one is looking. Well... no one is but... we have a good time together.

Everything I know about protest I learned from Doug Kenney, Henry Beard and Robert Hoffman although it was Christopher Guest who finally nailed it to the masthead.

That song is A Mighty Wind years ahead of the time but somehow these days, it's even more relevant. We should stop to deflate our shoes occasionally.

Schadenfreude is for Losers

What an incredibly beautiful day!

I am amazed how far some will run to hide a truth everyone knows. Life in a golden cage isn't life at all.

The Perfect Sportscar

In the photo, I'm the whelp in the middle. My sister, Beverly, is standing and my younger brother, Michael, is front. He now looks much older than me proving it really is the mileage.

The car was called "The Shingle" by the men who built it. In the Fifties, we lived on Monte Sano Mountain, a hill on the edge of town that once had a resort for the northern wealthy to escape the heat but enjoy the charms of the South. We lived across the street from the site of the hotel long since burned to the ground and then only a chimney remained. The photo was taken down the street a few blocks and the house is still there. We lived in an old rock house that is also still there. The car is in a museum somewhere up north. I don't know where. I was away at college when Dad finally sold his proudest work to make bills.

The Shingle was infamous. It was the second car of two my Dad built with his neighbor and friends who were exceptional ex-Army Missile Command and when the photo was taken, NASA scientists. Dad had customized cars to run 'shine, and these guys got on like a house on fire. They wrapped the engine in special thermal blankets developed for heat shielding. The instructions to the driver was simple: put the pedal to the metal and leave it there. The car was a rolling wing and the air over it held it on the track even in curves. At the experimental track in Courtland, they would infuriate the Europeans who could not believe this 6'5" hillbilly was beating them with a piece of tin junk and a Crosley engine. The secret sauce was the two smiling men at every race wearing coveralls like my Dad and drinking coffee from his special thermos, both of whom would also help send man to the Moon in the next decade. Boys with toys.

Life as a kid was fascinating.

Follow Your Leader! NOT!

Obama makes a speech. Geitner makes a speech. The markets tumble.

Surprise! Why?

Where Ali Baba once had only 40 thieves, now he has 40000 and they are too old to learn new tricks. They want the money. They don't want conditions.

It was the wrong speech. Obama was selling fear and when it gets right down to it, people will be angrier with the man who took their hope than the men who took their money. He is still, when off teleprompter, a bit too much the minority professor who did well and feels entitled to respect because he won. Washington doesn't work that way. Heck, the world doesn't work that way. The big guns in the financial world and the Republican Party are looking at him and saying "Whatcha got? Whatcha gonna do about it?" and they mean in terms of real consequences. Otherwise, they stand back and let him posture.

Did we think this was going to be a Beach Party with Moondoggie making up with Annette and then everyone boogaloos to Dick and The Dervishes? Or does Erick Von Zipper dress in a suit and suddenly his gang becomes civilized? This is the scene in Gone With the Wind where the young men have parties with young women all gaily dressed thinking they are going to a summer lark called The Civil War. This is the beginning. It won't be civil.

Welcome to the reality of what the Kennedy Administration was like, not the rose-colored view in the rearview mirror through the fog of generational wish fulfillment. He was young, brash, occasionally out to lunch and all the world wondered if the kid had any moxie or plans. Enemies moved on us, the markets were a roller coaster, and the social agendas were all pushed at one time. It was scary. Then he was killed and the Beatles came to America to distract us and Johnson dulled us into self-medicating a generation.

By contrast, this isn't that bad. Feel better now?

The Lonely Bull

Odd bits of bull from the bullmeister:

Recommend: Herb Alpert at the Montreux Jazz Festival - 1996. Excellent!!

Don't Recommend: Paul Graham's blog on keeping identity small. Ok, so the Buddha was right: attachment to self is the root cause of suffering. It bears repeating from time to time, but blogs like that get into the Web Mythos as Yet Another Profound Insight but it is more rebranding of ideas best learned from the original master.

Recommend: Write your own funeral music. I'm working on a 'kyrie', or penitent choral piece suitable for the pre-Easter season. I'm using a seven note theme from a Beethoven piano sonata. Anyone who thinks I won't have my own music played at my last gig above ground doesn't know me very well. Why do it? Because as a habitual composer, it rounds out the season for my time here and there is a certain peace in knowing it is done. It doesn't mean I'm taking the A-train soon, but just that when I do, my bags are packed.

Don't Recommend: Java The Language. Why? After a decade of the mob beating on Microsoft and ASP.Net, today with the economy shredding, Java programmers are a dime a dozen and ASP.Net programmers cost mucho dinero. The law of supply and demand was not suspended. By limiting the attractiveness to young programmers, they drove up the value of ASP.Net. Karma.

Recommend: More patience with Obama. It takes more than a few weeks to sell a house. It takes a bit more to change Washington's negotiating strategies. Give him time.

Don't Recommend: paying with cash at Wal-Mart or Target. "What's that?" "Well, we call it money." "What's it for?" "Look at the number on the display. Now add the numbers on those green pieces of paper and see if it is the same. Ok, now see those round metallic objects in the drawer. Yes, good, now take out three of the big shiny ones and one of the small shiny ones. That's right. No, you can keep the dull copper one."

Sigh... the life of the lonely bull chasing the red flags of a society cheering for the gore!

Congratulations to T-Bone Burnett

Congratulations to T-Bone Burnett, Allison Krause and Robert Plant who won five Grammys last night with their Raising Sand group. T-Bone is the wise old regular on Jon Taplin's blog, but a veteran survivor of a long career in music. While the DJs will make much of Plant and Krause, the genius is the long-haired blonde fellow on the guitar with the mensch smile. If you don't know who he is, go to your favorite search engine and find out. If you do, go to YouTube and enjoy!

Way to go, T! Of course, this IS what the web and YouTube are good for.

Nothing From Nothing

There are increasing concerns about businesses relying on third parties for services that start out harmlessly, get the reputation for being vital (self-selecting self-promoting self-fulfilling), then change the rules and harm the business. It's the cliche of drug addiction but nevertheless, terms of service, quality of service, and so forth have not been suspended to make Internet wealth possible. Social networks, Twittering, etc., may be the next big bust except for the data mining services. They are fun but vital for business?

I'm not sure when, but somewhere in the next four years, the problems of the self-enamored web punditocracy that grabs any morsel of information from the middle of the long tail, pushes it to the top, then amplifies it as 'newly discovered facts' across the web will come front and center. Not only will overhyped technologies begin to evaporate, but the reputations of the names of those pundits will as well. Then 'cloud' will have meaning; it may become synonymous with 'foolish'.

Jimmy the Greek was a terrible handicapper. He was a great self-promoter. Then he made one prediction too many.

A Fading Geisha

The life of the office geisha is one of popularity and intense interest followed by sudden exile to a pen full of former geishas who once the bloom was off the rose, found they had to work harder than anyone else to justify their office space. Office cultures left to themselves will consume their young geishas like rats consume fresh cheese first and only bother with the aging cheddar when hungry or too lazy to reach the top shelf.

The hard thing to realize is that the geisha not only trades on beauty but trust and these are antithetical goods. Once she trades on the beauty, the trust evaporates particularly among other women. It is not they will hound her out but that they will slowly make her subordinate to them and if she doesn't like that, she has to move on.

It's an old story and most of us who have lived the office life know it. Every year will bring a fresher flower and no matter how hard one tries, pheromones fade in potency. The wise geisha cultivates her inner light at all times because it will grow brighter if she does not surrender to the frustration and disappointment of realizing that many around her who befriended her are fickle. Woe to the one who decides that the office life is the only one worth living. We usually discover these working longer hours for the same money fading and becoming bitter as those that do trust and love them fade into the distance.

If she is wise, she cultivates the inner light and does not break faith with those who did not break faith with her. Faith is not adoration or approval. It is truth, even the one she cannot believe though she heard every word they said. Sometimes the word needed is found not on the billboard of her beliefs but in the wastebasket of her frustrated desire.

Tell It All Brother

In Bay City, Michigan, Marvin E. Schur, a 93 year old widowed war veteran froze to death in his house because an unregulated power utility company sent a worker to put a filter on the man's power meter that cut off his heat if he used too much power. When he was discovered, he was wearing four layers of clothes and had icicles hanging off the blankets. The city expressed its dismay and regret, then raised the electric rates 3%.

In New York City, Bernie Madoff who stole the retirements of hundreds of investors is living luxuriously under house arrest. At CitiBank, they are having to explain how they could buy a luxury jet while being bailed out with our retirement money while giving out millions in bonus checks to the very crooks who can't explain where the bailout money is going. Nancy Pelosi stands on camera and blames George Bush but it is Obama's problem now and no one is stepping up.

Is this what we are? Did we get so mad at the crooks that we forgot to look in on the old man next door? Are we so numb and so protective of our jobs that we will hang a note on a door of this man instead of pounding on it until we find out who we are condemming to a slow painful death in the freezing winter?

Is this America?

No bloody wonder the world hates us. I can't get my head around it and I don't want to. Years ago my first fiance and I were walking in the middle of a heat wave when an elderly lady called out to us from behind a screen door. When we opened it, we saw a double amputee from diabetes with a hot jug of water next to her. She wanted us to move her old floor fan closer to her wheelchair. We did that then we called the police. The young officer came and took information, and within the week, a local church came and put in a window unit air conditioner. The lady died a few months later but not from heat stroke.

In Los Angeles this week, a man capped his wife and family because having both lost their jobs, they couldn't envision going on. They lost hope.

Times are hard and getting harder. People are hurting. Others are getting away with their crimes and I can only hope God or karma tends to them. But today I and mine are ok and I can be thankful for that.

But I can't get my head around that old man freezing over an unpaid $1100 power bill.

Don't accept it. Don't. Don't let an old man who went to war and came home to raise his family and lose his wife die alone with an icicle as his last medal. If we want to get back on our feet, we will have to start caring again.

Tell it all, brother, before we fall.

If You Could Read My Mind

Reflecting on the Google deal with publishers of copyright works and digitization, it occurs to me that the change is not simply one of access but form. One wonders if it has the same effect as single outlet systems have had on other media.

There was a time when MTV ruled the music industry when it became the only radio that mattered. In the beginning, it was experimental, fast and very trendy. The fly in the ointment was that instead of being a sound medium, it was a visual medium and popular music was driven straight into the New York fashion houses. Thus the infamous Bo Diddley statement live on camera to Chrissie Hynde, “You ain’t no musician; you a model.”

Anytime a single media outlet dominates a media type, the form of that outlet begins to shape the evolution of the content. Digitization of books will follow the path of online communications: it will shred the language. The pressure to write shorter sentences and use punchier but less evocative words is strong. You see it in the Twits and Tweets. You see it in comments such as “OMG put a period in that sentence”. Pop music publishing first in sheet music, then in radio formats killed the long form composition for any practical commercial uses. TV did irreparable damage to movie structures and topics.

If Google is the only access, expect the quick death of the novel and possibly other forms of print. Once it is on the screen, patience turns into umbrage. Add a high energy drink or two, and it becomes vitriol.

The redeeming thought is that hypermedia systems are multimedia systems and have their own forms of expression such as being able to embed the videos for effect or accentuate a point. That is good for new forms, but older forms do suffer. The consolation is that MTV wasn't able to hang on to its monopoly and today has very little influence. Radios are increasingly irrelevant in the day of the download. Pop music has never recovered but some form of it will return in the pop mashups.

Few can carve in marble as well as some once could two thousand years ago. Themes may be eternal but forms evolve. Still, a couple of nuclear airbursts can wipe out that Google library, so perhaps we are not yet ready to burn books for kindling to make room for new monitors. We aren't becoming Bradbury's Montag having to memorize a book to save it from book burning, but any complex instrument left unattended surrenders to entropy. Evolution is not continual improvement, but it is continous forgetting.

Caveat emptor.

You Know The Economy Is Bad When

You know the economy is bad when the wait staff at IHOP becomes unusually polite.

Bippity Bobbity Boo!

As pointed out elsewhere, the overwhelming choice of those answering Obama's Chicago web site call for votes for the change most desired of the new President was repeal of the Federal laws criminalizing pot. Predictably, Obama's transition team had to issue the terse statement

“President-elect Obama is not in favor of the legalization of marijuana.”

Because in the early campaign, Candidate Obama had hinted that he was for decriminalization, some of his fervent worshippers, umm, supporters, were dismayed. One asked, "What does this all mean?"

It means the current pipelines become stronger and if Obama changes his mind, they become the new suppliers of a bigger tax base. According to CNBC, California and the Federal government are already collecting millions in taxes from "product" grown in the Emerald Triangle openly and without fear. With ten more states having decriminalized, this only made the trade more interstate than intrastate. When dry counties go wet, bootleggers become distillers.

And the idea that these Mendocino farmers, the hippie's kids who figured out how to turn outlaw into entrepeneur botanists by increasing the potency a dozen times, who recruited the truck drivers and fishermen, who turned a poor region profitable, might be the new money on the block, well, that isn't acceptable in Chicago and Washington DC. If big money is to be made, the old Lords of the City will be the ones to make it.

And they don't know how to grow righteous reefer. Yet.

This is one where the wisdom of crowds or plain common sense loses to the political expediency of ensuring the lustre does not wear off the New Spiel before other agenda items are safely tucked into the Speaker's pocket. The herb goes under the bus with the gays just as it has with every election before when they dared to hope for common consideration.

No change but then, no surprise either. I get the distinct impression now as I did before the election that some people who work their hearts out for these candidates should take a job in the Beltway for six months to get the cold dash of reality that it brings. The day after the election, voters go back to being mice and pumpkins while Cinderella goes to live in the castle.

The Weight

A lot of needs are expressed, a lot of hands are out and all of them are real. The man tells us it is in ours to do and most of our problems are self-made or of the last administration, and quotes Corinithians telling us in effect to grow up.

There are words of hope in that speech, but the beginning of political cover as well.

Now comes the test. As Truman said, "the buck stops here". The mettle of Obama and his team will be determined not by the words but by the deeds and further than that, by what they do if they fail.

Some will say that means we have all failed but failure in politics is never a shared commodity. The man who holds the title holds the ring and if he cannot wield it, he either accepts that or he casts about for others to take the blame.

Obama will be held both to his ideals and to his promises. Let's see how those priorities stack up to the realities of diminishing supply and increasing demand.

The weight has moved on and the stakes couldn't be higher.

Birds Do It

There is considerable discussion about copyrights, intellectual property, and how all of that works in the brave new digital world on the web. Here is an article describing research into the evolution of bird songs.

Note where imitation, near neighbors, migration and competition for sex are strong determininants of the evolution of songs. Note where it is better to get one style and stick with it versus constantly having to hunt for the next new thing. Note that the preferences vary but how little the songwriter actually controls the environment in which they work, but rather have to adapt to it or find one where they fit.

Nothing about copyright impedes creativity. Territory can.

Apropos of the Daily News

Crediting my friend, David Blalock, for this one:

Who knew when this financial crisis began that 'bonus' was two words?

I can't improve on that.

Q-Bits

Odd bits that show up in my world:

Get a drawing of Akhenaten, father of Tutankhamen and the first monotheist, and put it next to a picture of Barack Obama. Spoooooky. Of course, put a picture of Nefertiti next to Michelle Obama and there is no comparison. A good friend of mine, David Blalock, pointed this one out.

We've been having a very long thread at Jon Taplin's blog on DRM, copyrights, and so on. What if all you had to do to copyright a song was to fill out a form and upload an mp3 on the web? Wouldn't that be cheaper? What if we treated songs like software and released alpha, beta versions and updates? Some of us (me included) do, but then I'm not part of the industry where rights to first recording and publication are a very big deal. One thing is certain, we get a lot of advice and criticism from people who don't do any of this for a living; they just want free music anyway they can get it. And yes, that includes Kevin Kelly.

Is it better to be good than lucky? Only if you want to get lucky twice.

So the manager tells him, "I'm sure the next person doing your job won't be as good as you are. Six people have had your job so far and every one of them was worse than the one before them.

The story of Noah and the Ark always seemed cruel when I was a kid. As an adult, I found out that the Bible was a heavily edited book and the parts of the story that would have made sense were in a banned book, The Book of Enoch. Oddly enough, it was an informative and possibly normative text in its day because even Jesus quotes from it. But he wasn't an authority then.... anywho, the flood not only got rid of the bad people, but several species of demons roaming the Earth in those days because wicked angels knocked up willing human women and their offspring were chips off the old block.

Or so the stories go. The power of text over time is one of the true wonders of life among the mammals... at least until blogging was invented and the power meter went sub-db. Copyright everything. Cheap tricks are the essence of the market when the customer wants it for free and you have to make a living off of volume instead of quality and originality.

The Mama Bear

Most of you know I am a musician by choice and once upon a time, career. To be specific, I am an acoustic guitar player. Although I can play other instruments and electric, I pretty much suck on most except acoustics.

Anywho...

I came across something acoustic guitarist should have: The D-TAR Mama Bear. It is a pre-amp for acoustic guitars. On stage, acoustic guitars are hard to make work right particularly in loud venues or rock bands. One reason is the guitar acts like a microphone and that means its internal pick-ups have to be turned down. Another is most guitars, particularly inexpensive ones, use a piezo pickup on the bridge and that is a very thin sound without reinforcement. As a result, guitarists have different combinations of pickups and live mics to get That Wooden Sound. It is all a compromise and can be a pain to manage in different rooms.

Also, an acoustic guitar, depending on the wood used, the design and the talent of the luthier (guitar maker, don't bother looking it up), only makes a limited variety of sounds.

Enter Mama Bear. This pre-amp not only enables a much quieter live sound, it acts like an emulator, software/hardware to make one guitar sound like another. These beasties are usually very pricey. The Mama Bear is right in that sweet spot between $300 and $400 that a weekend warrior can afford.

Go to the D-TAR page and watch the video with John Jorgensen if you are into this. It is well worth it.

Ave Maria (Gounod/Bach)

This is my musical gift to my friends this year.

It is a vocal, guitar, string arrangement of Gounod/Bach's Ave Maria.

UPDATE: This is the choral version (lots of voices).

Merry Christmas! I love you all very much.

len

Pickin' At Dads

Christmas is for music. Americana in the back bedroom without prose or professionals. Real folk is real folk. :-)

Jon Taplin's America 3.0 Presentation

Below I've embedded the You Tube presentation by Jon Taplin of his ideas on America 3.0. I recommend it for understanding the economic crises and some potential approaches to resolving these crises. I differ with Tap on some of the details.

1. Innovation is bred not invented. It is a cultural change problem to pick the right cultures at the right time and it is a funding issue as to what conditions must be met to receive funding. In my opinion, California is emblematic of the culture of consumerism and politically lacks the will to adjust its own lifestyle enough to warrant massive block grants. In short, if the automakers have to drive to DC with a plan in hand, California's governor will have to do the same and he shouldn't drive a Hummer. Tap is an unconditional cheerleader for the California Culture. I admit the need for lobbying for one's own but do be do be doo.

2. While the ideas of bottom-up open source America Needs A New Operating system are attractive to the geek in me, I am mistrustful of such metaphors in the details. Policies have to see to details or we will quickly devolve into another Spy Vs Spy episode where one power elite is substituted for a power elite. Nothing changes but the flow of wealth among two competing classes at the same level. In short, meet the new boss.

Let me give you one example. Standards are one of the means by which innovation is shared, but too often, covertly or openly, one of the means by which companies dominate and deny the commons what it needs to sustain itself: access to market.

How does that work? Company A receives a PAS standard for a platform with licensable plugins. Company A then requires all companies submitting the information for applying for the license to include relevant standards used to create the plugin. Company B submits required information including the fact that the plugin is based on standards approved by the same standards organization that provided the PAS. Company A rejects the license application renewal for an application that was approved one year prior minus the information about the standard used by the plugin citing that the plugin implements a technology that is competitive with Company A's technology in the same market.

One year earlier, that was Ok. One year later with the additional information, it is not.

That's cynical? It won't happen.

It did in a soon to be famous case where a proprietary specification was allowed to become an international standard. A very powerful company (NO, it wasn't Microsoft) then denied licenses exactly as described.

Before the power and credibility of the White House are dragged into the internal marketing politics of these companies and market cartels, policies must be clearer as to what can be claimed and what recourses third parties have in the face of exclusionary actions. If we are to use Federal power to drive innovation, we must first set policy for the intellectual property, how it is shared or licensed, and we must ensure that the elite cultivar chosen can suitably be rehosted or replanted in cultures different from that of the original. Otherwise we are completing the branded homogenization of America into a mall where only the bigger brands compete.

I have a few other minor quibbles with Tap's presentation, but in the main he has done an excellent job of outlining the history of economic collapse and pointing to reasonable actions. The devil is in the details and that is what we should be discussing.

Do take the time to watch his presentation.

Oh Happy Day

When very young, I played at the church coffee house, in the youth choir, and sweated in a too tight tie in an unairconditioned block building that was our church. As the folk-rock movement blended into those sounds, I was a comfortable kid music wise. With the Beatles and the Causes du Jour, I drifted away and then found myself like so many not liking country and not wanting to hang out and sing church music.

I don't think it ironic but strangely twisted that this year I find that in the next week, on Sunday during the traditional service, the choir will perform one of my new choral works (Epiphany), and that night, I'll perform my new contemporary work with the praise band. There are definite pluses. One, church musicians are better trained and nowhere near the level of arrogance of my old nightclub band mates. Two, they work for free so getting three guitars, drums, bass, piano, keyboards and a horn stack with four background screamers (ah, the good old days of the Motown sound) is reasonable without midi. I get to play the 12-string Rickenbacker stopping occasionally to hold my hand over my head and direct the other singers while I close my eyes and do my best Elvis voice with real musicians. Kitsch with class.

So the Byrds Meet Chicago In Memphis is not a bad sound for a praise song (The Gift). They play the arrangement the way I wrote it without complaint, in fact, with a grateful enthusiasm which is a big contrast from the band days. There is my son on horn, my wife leading the screamers, and me up front. Next time I'll write a marimba part for my daughter because asking her to play tambourine after many years of percussion lessons, well, that would be like handling a ukelele to Eric Clapton. He might play it but then he might not tune it first.

In traditional, I get a choir, a wind section with clarinets, flute and french horn, a bass guitar, a classical pianist and a director. They read the contrapuntal parts, comment on the simplicity and young ladies tell me how much they like the part I wrote for their instrument. I am referred to as The Composer instead of the songwriter. All I have to do is watch, listen, then stand up and bow at the end. Big juju.

And for both, the audience is guaranteed.

Next week, as recompense, I will be the "Special Music" at the traditional service, meaning it's just me and a nylon string singing Gounod's Ave Maria in Latin. It's a nice piece because the Ave Maria text fits the Gounod/Bach melody much better than with the Schubert which is a pretty melody but not originally written for the Ave Maria text. It's easy to play and a study in how to use diminished chords to change the tonal center without changing the key. It isn't easy to sing but that's why God gave me a falsetto.

So this is all pretty cool. I get to stretch in every direction but one: I dare not speak for as my daughter tells me and others, "Dad will open his mouth one day and we'll all get thrown out of church." And she's right. My sense of humor has no place in the congregation. "Ya shag one goat, ya know!"

But I'm glad, awfully glad for this week. Maybe it's worth my failure as a performer and after a lifetime of music, only making second rate. At least when I do these gigs, I rate, and at best, it's for a greater glory than my own.

I'm cool with that. Oh happy days.

Dirty Deeds

The scene in Mumbai though terrible is all too familiar to those who live there according to my Indian colleagues. They mourn openly and deeply.

While the pundits analyze and try to make the connections to the usual suspects, I recommend a BBC piece.

As I read some blogs, I find the also familiar comments attempting to tie the attacks back to American foreign policy. Sadly, this makes the critics of those the very people who ensure this attack will be followed by another through providing the exact reactions the killers want and the cycle is guaranteed to continue. I'm not excusing American foreign policy mistakes, but asking if those tieing the attacks to America are completing the attacks?

It’s astonishing to consider an ecosystem of call and response where if they provide the bodies, we’ll provide the reasons. Dirty deeds done dirt cheap.

The Power of the Word

All of the best times in my life began with the word, "Yes."

The Wounded Bride (from The Book of Hosea)

This was written for a service last Sunday morning taken from the Book of Hosea. As our assistant minister pointed out, the books of the prophets are little read but have a lot to recommend them. Prophets are not soothsayers in the Old Testament. They are reflectors of God's thoughts among us. Hosea was given a particularly tough assignment. I will set this to music eventually, but the piece that follows is appropriate.

The Wounded Bride (from The Book of Hosea)

At morning light
A trumpet blows
Answering the heavens
Dark and thundering skies
Are giving birth
He has torn you
That he may heal you
Strikes you down
That he may bind you
Comes to you in rain
To water Earth

Oh how he loves you
Oh how he loves you
Faithfulness and love abide
Hold to his goodness
Grace and forgiveness
This is the promise made
To the wounded bride

Dew rises from the flowers
First fruit of the tree
Like a bird
Our glory flies away
The door of hope is open wide
In a wilderness of pride
Crying to the mountains
Cover me

Oh how he loves you
Oh how he loves you
Faithfulness and love abide
Hold to his goodness
Grace and forgiveness
This is the promise made
To the wounded bride

len bullard - Nov 15 2008

The Way I've Always Heard It Should Be

Charles Cooper at CNet objects to the founder of Word Perfect contributing $1 million in private funds to groups who fought Proposition 8 in California. His argument comes down to "You are a Utah Mormon. Butt out of California's business."

There are two points to make before going further:

1. There is a determined effort to make this a campaign against the Mormons in some quarters even if Charlie is being subtle about that.

2. There is a willful effort to ignore that minority voting, specifically blacks and hispanics, is responsible for the proposition's success. Charlie is ignoring that altogether.

One could say this is demographic gerrymandering without too many reasonable objections. However one argues it, the gay community is once again discovering that the political coalitions it tries to become part of by claiming similar cause have a nasty habit of throwing them under the bus post-election. Caveat emptor.

All of that said, my opinion, FWIW as a heterosexual, is as follows:

1. The root legal problem is granting state authority to church institutions to perform civil unions. ('by the power vested in me by the State of...').

2. The root social problem is conflating a legal union with a sacred union.

The legal way out of this is to enforce separation of church and state by Federal statute. Churches should not have the vested power to perform legal unions (civil ceremonies) and the state does not have the power over performance of sacred unions (marriage). Persons desiring both civil and sacred unions are obligated to obtain them from the authorities entitled. The State is obligated to grant civil unions to those who are breaking no other laws. The church has full discretion over those to whom sacred unions are granted as they are currently (you discover a church is not obligated to perform a heterosexual marriage today if the couple violates the tenets of the church including membership or any other criteria the church imposes).

That part of this argument IS a Federal, not a State concern. Full stop.

As to the acceptance of gay behavior, history gives all the insight you need there. You'll find repeating behaviors that span recorded history and no evidence that the behaviors change in terms of evolutionary development. Do the best you can.

One more question for Charlie. You object to the private contribution of someone outside of your state into an issue which you assert is your State's to decide. Fair enough.

Should a State or other entity such as a company have the right to enforce social issues over other states or entities as a pre-condition of entering into a contract with that state or entity?

That is done now by California and Oregon and companies such as Microsoft.

Is it the same issue and if so, why doesn't that attract your attention?

Hang 'em High

I watched some of the ABC interview with William Ayers this morning. It is seldom I've seen such a self-serving bit of misdirection and semantic thuggery: or what it is, lieing.

Ayers skips around the central tenet of blind justice; it is the act not the end that is judged. However high toned his morality in describing his youthful indiscretion, the acts of the Weather Underground are precisely the same as the acts of the 16th Street Church bombers in Birmingham. Those men were brought to justice for a heinous crime. William Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn should be meted out the same. We are a nation of laws, not privilege, and he and his corrupt the very values they espouse.

Hang 'em high.

Circling Coyotes

Jon Taplin and his friends and I go round about some issues political and cultural, but make no mistake, Tap knows his economics. He has a very good blog up today discussing Paulson's new epiphany.

If you have friends who have friends, pass this on.

For the sake of friendship, here are gauzy moments for certain old men who when they were young loved her songs in chevron flight. Love is still the sweet antidote to bitterness because a good wine kept well doesn't become vinegar.

The first is the only Joni Mitchell tune I performed. Simpler, plaintive, and somehow a mirror of my mood then and now.

Stuck In The Middle With You

As the rage machine keeps firing itself up with old stereotypes and burning new scarecrows, here's a pause for the cause.

The pundits talk about Open Source as a new model for bottom up development of government. It's a bad idea because a) government is top-down by definition even if local and b) government didn't fail, the law did.

Some say we had too many regulations. Some say we didn't have enough. I say it is bad regulations and ineffective proof.

What if to write a new regulation two law makers were required to sit side by side and as one wrote the proposed regulation the other wrote the test that would fail if the regulation failed?

What about pair programming and test-driven design for regulatory law?

Who's That Lady

Today the left wing bloggers who are not attacking Sarah Palin are laying out a strategy to attack the last bastion of conservatism and noObamians: the American South. It seems they need a scarecrow and the white southerners, racists all or so it is blogged, are the new one. They fear a Southern rebellion against the New Boss and a reigniting of conservative philosophy. It isn't happening but it is the devil of their dreams.

It is the hallmark of the inexperienced politico to fight the last war instead of the next one. 2012 will be about The Wrath of Women not so concerned with political power, but who will not consider a declining lifestyle a necessary sacrifice, just an importuning arrogance by a new elite. Wrath isn't an ideology.

Nothing changed. Palin will have a rich vein of resentment to tap in 2012 and Hillary Clinton, who subborned herself to Obama, won't be able to make that trick work. On the other hand, four years is a long time and just as many Democrats fled to the Republicans in 2000 (eg, Senator Shelby), allegiances will be shifting and some unpredictably. The catastrophe of the Obama election for the gay community is but one example of a part of the Obama coalition already feeling the pain of having disregarded the realities of identity politics in the fine print.

The Republican Party will not be revitalized by a surge of the core values of the last 25 years, but a new set of values emerging from a new coalition of voters who find themselves mystified by a wealthy elite of technocrats who insist everyone can't live in the Emerald City but the unworthy can certainly pay taxes to it. If the Republicans want to make a comeback, they need a transparent plan that is neither punitive nor exclusive.

Rome did not fall because it was corrupt; it fell because it failed to produce anything of value except new laws for the provinces.

Lady Godiva

It seems the Democrats and the media are determined to provide Governor Sarah Palin with a mighty powerful career in national politics. The pounding continues perhaps because with the election over and no reasonable alternative for placing the rage, Palin is the scarecrow. One of the frequent criticisms is she is a beauty queen. I decided to find out if beauty queens are dumb broads who fade away with their crowns. Here is a short list of women who were beauty queen winners before they went on to other careers:

1. Oprah Winfrey - 1971 Miss Fire Prevention and Miss Black Tennessee

2. Vanessa Williams - Miss America

3. Jeri Ryan - Miss Illinois

4. Halle Berry - Miss Teen All American, Miss Ohio-USA, and first runner-up to Miss USA

5. Diane Sawyer - America Junior Miss

Not a bad start to a much longer list. It seems we place a high value on being able to survive the paegeant process. Good luck, Sarah!

Hayley Westenra

Here is someone new to my listening list: Hayley Westenra. She's a kiwi with a beautiful voice and face.

These selections are evocative for me spiritually and personally. It is a pitch perfect rendition of Ave Maria, and then a piece very few singers attempt: Kate Bush's original smash, Wuthering Heights.

Ave Maria



Wuthering Heights

Message In A Bottle

The blogs and comment lists are still crowded with the Get Even topic. Some are just now realizing that "Change" means Clinton III. I'm onboard with that. Making good use of the experienced in the Democratic Party is smart if the transition is to be smooth.

It will be hard for some to transition out of campaign rhetoric to policy making. Intense emotions are addictive as I said before. The Onion piece was funny because it is both precise and good advice. The more zealous supporters need to accept that the President-elect will be distancing himself from them unless they can start working on a more positive agenda. The Republicans will rail a bit longer but it is expected. Gently and without rancor: Proverbs 16:8 or Superbia ante casu.

Meanwhile, a young Senator is taking on a very heavy load given the drop in the market, the jobless numbers, the auto industry implosion, the sabre rattling from Russia and so on.

Change is not the mantra; S.O.S. is.

And for that load, young shoulders may be exactly the right resource.

The Onion Strikes Again

Thanks to Rob Koberg for sending this. Much needed laughter.

The Onion Strikes Again!


Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are

Longer Boats Are Coming To Win Us

Day 2 of the sigh of relief from the robocalls and the rage producing commercials. Life is good again.

There are mean streets' moments out there but they will pass.

Barack will bring us together

Actually no. We will bring ourselves together or not at all. Don't lay that on him. He will have enough to do.

I don't want no god on my lawn; just a flower I can help along.

This one was bitter to the bone. There is no magical manna from heaven to change that. We'll get back to our routines and time does the rest. If the Obama supporters want to make that happen faster, now is the time to drop the stoner rhetoric and get focused on the tasks at hand. Time spent on the Great Get Even is time and resources wasted.

Cause the soul of nobody knows how a flower grows

Bottom up systems rely on multiple individuals forming communities and topics of interest to explore problems and come up with the best alternatives. The illusion of the top is the existence of shared values that enable the goals to be selected and shared. If we want this presidency to be about change and restoring our image around the world, pick the one issue for which you have the most passion and knowledge and work with those who share it. Build a longer boat and pick a crew.

Mary dropped her pants by the sand and let a parson come and take her hand

Obama doesn't have a mandate or a landslide. He has a clean win of six points. The good news is that stops a repeat of the Bush/Gore let the lawyers decide it debacle. But be smart and realize that a) 47% thought otherwise b) the Democratic blowout of Congress didn't happen and c) the Republican Party isn't going away. Richard Nixon had a landslide and was roasted within two years.

Cause the soul of nobody knows where the parson goes.

I'm not sure if this is about change as much as getting back to being the country that works together without the demoralizing mind killing fear and paranoia of the last eight years. Look in your hearts and minds and ask if you really do put country first. If you do, drop the partisan rhetoric and pick up an oar and row.

Hold on to the shore or they'll be taking the key from the door

Miles From Nowhere

It's good to know the endless political commercials are over. It's good to be back to watching programs about UFOs the way a kid watches cartoons. The fun can come back to living without the constant harranguing. There are some people I don't want to see for a few months but then, I don't need to. Life is good.

If there was a real loser by their own hand in the election, it is the mainstream media. Trust in them is now at the same level as Congress.

And that makes what comes next devilishly hard. We are in uncharted waters and blind as a bat.

There are very high expectations for this administration worldwide. It will be best to make the most of those while we can. I don't expect them to last and Obama won with a fragile coalition. No one really knows what he has in mind and he didn't win a filibuster proof Congress. The Democrats are now clearly in the driver's seat but unless their maps are better than what I've seen during the election, we won't know where we are going until we are there.

I've the same advice here as on Taplin's blog: bottom up systems don't work by having a master plan. They work because different people put their hand to different tasks and if they share the right values, the illusion of the top is enough to hold them together.

Otherwise, this moment of drunk exhiliration won't last to Christmas. Find the passion you have and work on that. Some will choose energy, some education, some net neutrality, some world hunger.

Some will make it the full time evisceration of Barack Obama just as the left did to Bush and the right did to the Clinton's.

And that means we go nowhere fast.

Boiling the Barbarian

This election is almost over. No doubt, a lot of people are glad about that.

I didn't support Obama.

I voted for him. I am a Democrat.

I don't like many of his positions, I think his campaign was one of the most mean spirited I've ever seen, and some of his supporters are really ready for Thorazine, but all of that aside, he's our candidate and he will have to step up to the plate now. It is time for a change.

We're a nation of adventurers and gamblers so we roll the dice with Obama and if it comes up snake eyes, we'll try again in four years with Hillary. If we can take eight years of Bush, we can take anything.

From the news:

BLACK PANTHERS' BLOCK ACCESS TO VOTING STATION

Wow. Some of you must live in really mean neighborhoods. Here's what is going on in North Alabama:

People started lining up at 5:30 AM. When I got to the polls at 7:20, the lines were long and the cars were parked a mile away. We walked, we talked, we had a good time. In the lines, me and the two black women behind me joked about anyone hesitating inside the polling office (a church) should be immediately taken outside because after two years and a billion dollars, any one who still can't decide is not smart enough to vote.

We voted and headed out to Starbucks, Chick-fil-a, Krispy Kreme and Ben and Jerry's to get our freebies. Now it's back to work and life goes on better than before.

It's a bit of a party down here because everyone is glad it is over and glad to have the right to have our say.

America is Fabulous. Freedom to vote, freedom to be together, and free munchies. It doesn't get better than this.

So put down the bitter butter. You have your moment in the booth and then you have the rest of the day to enjoy it.

Why did I debate his supporters for months on end?

1. It was fun. Because I am a Southern White Male, I've been called names that would mean a fist fight in person. Life in the South is nothing like what the West Coasters make it out to be. After awhile, cultural stereotyping deserves a bit of nose tweaking and toe stomping. Having grown up in a town where only 15% of us were native Southerners and the rest are g---D---- Yankees who call us morons, well it becomes habitual.

Does the phrase "the pleasure of boiling the barbarian" mean anything to you?

2. Only by peering deeply into the darkness do our eyes ever open completely.

But today and for the last nine months, the blacks around me have been walking around with their heads up smiling. Today, I didn't see fear or loathing in their eyes when we joked. There was acceptance.

That can't be anything but good.

Sing it Ray! Let the good feelings wash over you.

The Virtue of Selfishness

Obama says about his plans to add to the tax burden:

John McCain and Sarah Palin they call this socialistic. You know I don’t know when, when they decided they wanted to make a virtue out of selfishness.

Since the left bloggers have been waging war on objectivism and Ayn Rand in particular, it makes sense that this would surface in Obama's speech. What it reveals is that despite his attempts to portray himself as a centrist, he is what he appears to be: a hard core radical leftist with a socialist philosophy of government and finance.

Obama says he can enrich the individual at the expense of other individuals but that is the oldest con after 'try it, you'll like it'. It only enriches the con man. When done to an eager mark, it is an act of confidence over arrogance. When done to a country simply wanting to be rid of confidence men, it is fraud against justice.

The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. - Ayn Rand -

The extreme objectivist position is that if a government gives to each according to needs and takes according to abilities, a society of incapable needy emerges. Experience shows that is too extreme. What happens is the needy move to the capable and unless the capable take more, they can't give more. This is called the 'free rider' dilemma in web communities. The response is usually to close the lists to real contributors with participation agreements for intellectual property that do not harm the commons but do not enable the commons to be pillaged.

Objectivism isn't wrong. Rand overromanticized her position but behaviorally, it is correct.

Selfishness isn't virtuous but neither is theft by a powerful minority in the name of an undiscriminated majority. It is the supreme confidence game which victimizes the poor and the rich simultaneously for the good of a few who are grabbing for wealth and power. In short, it is piracy, a very democratic institution, which, by the way, is why America is a republic.

Always A Woman

The gals at ABC, Claire and Katy, are discussing with their husbands why men like Sarah Palin. The comments are like those at Taplin's blog: men are obsessed by sex.

It's a cop out as explanations go. Men are obsessed about cars but they don't want them to run the country, just the track. Yes, NASCAR is a metaphor for life.

If a man's opinion about men's opinions counts, then I know why I like Palin:

She likes men. And she doesn't apologize for it.

She stands up to the media onslaught like a beauty queen and keeps smiling. Every day her media chops get better and yet her personality remains convivial and compassionate.

She is Caribou Barbie and you know what, that's a pretty good example to follow.

In other words, she's normal. After the slutarama starting with Madonna through Pink, or the hobnailed boots approach from Joy Behar, aka, Grandma Grumpy, it is attractive to see a woman act as if being a woman was a good thing but not a special thing.

Chalk it up to minority fatigue. Fifty years of majority-be-guilty has gotten very old.

Give us a woman we can love easily and we will love them forever.

Give us an ordeal and a deal is all it will ever be.

Palin represents something that angers a lot of women: a successful woman, standing proud, staying tough, and holding on to hers by rights without a fight.

When any of you can do that, you'll quit talking about womenomics and start running a country.

Palin may not be your cup of tea but she always a woman to me.

Original Inspiration

There is a text circulating among the Obama supporters that cause them to become weak kneed. It goes as follows:

Rosa sat, so Martin could walk

Martin walked so Barack could run

Barack is running so our children can fly

It is inspiring but not original. Here is the original from Flip Wilson:

"Before this church can do great things for God, it's gotta learn to crawl."

"Let it crawl, Rev" shouts the congregation, "Let it crawl."

"And when it's learned to crawl" the preacher continued, "it's gotta learn to walk."

"Let it walk," the congregation responds loudly, "Let it walk!"

Then, fixing them with his eye, the preacher shouted, "And when it's learned to walk, it's gotta run and we all know a church can't run without money!"

There is a momentary silence, then the congregation responds,

"Let it crawl, Rev, let it crawl!"

The Great Get Even

Some of the right wingers are comparing Obama to Chairman Mao. I don't agree.

What we are seeing is the immaturity of the current electorate in action. The Bush administration is like a starter marriage gone bad for two teen agers. Once they become spiteful, one will choose a new partner with the maximum potential to make the old partner mad. It doesn't matter if the new partner has glaring character flaws to any third party, the slicker the better because revenge is living well in the eye of the party out for revenge.

Obama is the Democrats introducing that revenge, the Great Get Even, to the American public and like a teen-ager out to settle scores, Americans are buying it. It will be six months before they realize just what a horrible mistake they have made. As an old song said, "We got married in a fever hotter than a pepper sprout"

Watch the entertainment as this new couple goes to battling the way they did in the Carter years, unless of course, Obama manages to get his civilian police corp established. Then it will be time to get a passport and get the hell out of Jackson.

The Swift Wind Turbine

For those of you interested in the greening of the planet, here is a wind turbine for the home. The Swift produces about 1.5kw at 35 decibels given average winds. So you mileage may vary and it isn't as inexpensive as some would like, but it is definitely a step in the right direction.

To make headway against our energy challenges, replacing a 19th century design grid that stores power by keeping it in cirulation on a nationwide system with small local grids that produce power close to the point of consumption is the key idea.

Localize. Localize. Localize.

Close the Barnyard Gate

First, Watergate, Whitewatergate, Travelgate, Cattlegate, Indonesiagate and now Troopergate and WardrobeGate.

Then there was the gate to summarize all of the Clinton gates: TailGate.

I think we've almost covered the barnyard with gates now and the animals are still getting out of the pens.

This should be the year we officially retire this meme. Let's call them scandals, high crimes and misdemenors so someone has to actually file a charge or indict before the innuendo consumes the news cycle for a week.

No video for this. Just a song.

Redistributing the Wealth

Barack Obama, in 2001:

You know, if you look at the victories and failures of the civil-rights movement, and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples. So that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at a lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it, I’d be okay, but the Supreme Court never entered into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society.

And uh, to that extent, as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution — at least as it’s been interpreted, and Warren Court interpreted it in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties: [It] says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf.

And that hasn’t shifted, and one of the, I think, the tragedies of the civil-rights movement was because the civil-rights movement became so court-focused, uh, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change. And in some ways we still suffer from that.

Sunday Will Never Be the Same

When I read the blogs from the left coast, I am never surprised that the doomsday suicide cults usually live in California. There is a concerted effort to get together and talk each other into a desperate stupor of demoralization and defeatism. America is never right, the rich are always thieves, and somewhere someone is always plotting to undermine their rights to sex, drugs or bad movies.

I think they are doing it to themselves but I try to avoid going there to check. The weird thing is that the people who have these blogs are richer than most of us.

In all my years, I've never seen anyone held down who worked for the wealth. I've seen artists and faux artists (say producers) do everything to keep a competitor's product off the street through lame critique, and I've seen software vendors dissing other vendors for not being socially progressive then shorting their stock. Still, America remains the destination mall of third world entrepeneurs. It is still the easiest place in the world to start a business or to launch a career.

There is a politics of depression. Some of these wealthy coasters are very good at it but I don't see them slowing down their consumption of energy or trading in their Lamborghinis for Hondas. I realize the cost of living is going up fast and I can't retire, but they are paying off higher mortgages and living in one of the most expensive areas in America in smaller houses. Somehow, I don't get depressed about that.

It seems the best way to make the unthinkable thinkable is to demoralize a nation, and Hairy Anna, Taplin and their friends are getting very good at it. Me, I'd rather read a textbook to learn a skill and make a dime than to get depressed and drop a dime. Things are still good in America and maybe if we just turn off the tube and work on our chops, they always will be. Today is Friday and that's a good day. Monday comes around soon enough.

Sunday will never be the same. Monday always is.

Useful Idiots

I'm not sure what to make of this.


Yuri Bezmenov
Uploaded by onmyway02

An Essene

A quote from one Alex Bowles expressing a point of view that says it well:

For me, the change we need isn’t about swings from left to right. It’s about moving from the darkness below to the light above. My hope is that we start to worry less about ideology, which has provided cover for all sorts of nefarious agendas, and, instead, start worrying about corruption as such. Until we start naming it directly - and punishing it accordingly - we’ll continue to sink.

Until we get our values right, the ideology doesn't matter, but my experience is that we pick our ideology in accordance with what we value, and then it is easy to tell the light from the dark, the Essene from the Sadducee and Pharisee. I value truth and as Gandhi said, the only way to know truth is through non-violence. As long as we lust for dominion, we violate truth.

Without truth, only darkness has dominion.

Anoushka Shankar

Here is a video for you that is simply breath taking, or breath giving. The artist is Anoushka Shankar, daughter of Ravi Shankar, demonstrating a mastery of sitar that few can claim and even fewer women have demonstrated. This is stunning and will give your day a wonderful respite from the rage and demonizing out there. Turn off the TV, avoid the political blogs, delete those emails your friends and family are sending you full of vitriol, and enjoy the serenity of her playing and marvelous spirit.