Friday, June 20, 2008

George Best  This is the time of year I call the summer radio doldrums. Indie or college radio wise - the stuff I've listened to the last 25 years - few bands release new material in the summer. It seems a good moment to review highlights from the spring. First of these was Ted Leo's improv performance of "A Bottle of Buckie" during the WFMU marathon. At some point in the wake of this, thinking about it more than the previous times I had heard that song. I thought "I have the rough context of things here, but what is a bottle of Buckie?"  Buckfast Tonic Wine!  Made by monks, drunk by Scots. A cure for all what ails you. Seemingly not available here in the USA.  At some point subsequent to that I happened across a description of something called Bovril. Not even remotely similar  Bovril - Wikipedia. But somehow it struck me as a product in an allied catogory: Tonics and health foods that aren't. Bovril nearly as I can make out is a salt beef extract in a nice liquid yeast suspension. Beef Tea they call it. Good in a mug, good on your toast. It was developed by John Lawson Johnston, a Scotsman, for the French Army during the Franco-Prussian wars, liquid beef. By 1890 it was incorported as the Bovril company and was based mainly in Argentina. The name was from Bovine + Vril. The latter taken from an elixer in a novel. Johnston's son and thereafter, became the Lord Luke Johnstons of Pavenham, a hereditory peerage, for their contribution to civilization. The 2nd Lord Johnston merged Bovril with the Marmite company. Both were sold to Unilever sometime in the 1990's. Vril was the mysterious liquid in Bulwer Lytton's 1870 novel The Coming Race. Edward Bulwer-Lytton may be best known as the originator of the phrase "It was a dark and stormy night"; the opening line of his novel, Paul Clifford. Vril was the bath tonic medicine and food of the Vril-Ya, superhuman beings living in chambers beneath the earth. It was one of first science fiction books predating many of Verne's, and has a bit of a history to it . The whole subject is a real rabbit warren of weird. If only Buckie and Bovril were sold at my local Safeway, I'd buy them every week. A tonic for the troops.  Another high point of spring time radio was when WFMU dj Joe Belock played one Count Five song three times during a single show. Reminding me only of a time back probably in 1976 or 1977 when I heard a dj on WBCN (a commercial station) do that with Aerosmith's "Dream On". I quote: "Oh Wow... I think I need to play that one more time..." That was album rock radio back when it meant something.  My fall-back, if radio goes down the tubes, is TV commercial music. Sometimes this sorta thing sticks with me sometimes it doesn't  There's good music all over TV commercials and very diverse too. The trick is to identify it know it and who does it, and complete the Re-Conquest of Cool. Tangentially I wish that Jamie Lamm TV show "Fearless Music" aired in DC. I only get to see it at the beach. I've heard the Clash for Nissan, their cover of Toots and the Maytals "Pressure Drop". Sometime ago if I'm not mistaken Wilco was selling Volkswagen. Kings of Leon, who used to sell Volkswagens, I think are selling Fords now with their song "Red Morning Light" which, I admit I like. I can't fully recall the car commerical (morphing dessert landscape etc.) that had some lovely ambient electronica going on. I wasn't paying attention. Now, if they had been advertising bicycles...  I see that the Wedding Present have a new album out. Now there's a reason to listen to the radio - I'd like to see somebody play that. There are plenty of reasons to listen to the radio. Back at the beginning of the year I heard a couple of good songs by a band called Starlight Desperation. I liked what I heard, then people stopped playing them. Same thing with the Los Angeles outfit Dengue Fever albeit a different style: worldbeat jazz and 60's Cambodian pop rock. Really nice song crafting. I heard a song called "Caroline". Holy Yard Truama, I thought, now that's some genuine psych garage rock right there. Turned out to be a band called Pierced Arrow. This band more or less used to be the band Dead Moon. The guitarist, Fred Cole, was in the 60's garage band the Lollipop Shoppe. Some might remember their song "You must be a Witch" (was that on the Savage Seven soundtrack). I used to play that when I was a college radio dj.  One that I missed getting on my end of year list last year was Caribou's "Melody Day" I was reminded of it through the FourTet remix. I like the video for that song; possibly the most Canadian thing I've ever seen. You can find your own link to that, but I'll give you this one - I believe this is the singer's father: Results for 'au:V P Snaith' [WorldCat.org].     What ground me up a little was that people not playing more Thao Nguyen (and the GetDownStayDown Band), a Falls church VA native who has a new record out on Kill Rock Stars. Her songs compare well with Laura Veirs and people play plenty of that. At least I have it in my iTunes. See the video's up at KRS killrockstars (she was the subject of a KRS vodcast also). See them live this summer in Boston New York and DC, 12, 13 and 14 August respectively, be carefull though, she has a Bag of Hammers. Another pleasant surprise this spring was the new album "Liars and Prayers" from the Thalia Zedek band who has been in indie bands such as Uzi and the Dangerous Birds since the early '80. It's good, better than good. its crunchy. I admit an attempt to look up any performance on youtube, led to me spending an hour watching Thalia Sodi videos.    I believe due to the current high cost of aviation fuel all scheduled live performances of the Helicopter Quartet by Karl Stockhausen Helikopter-Streichquartett - Wikipedia are grounded. Best sit back with a Bovril bagel a Buckie, comfort food for your inner hooligan, and read a couple of chapters of Borstal Boy (with the TV on in the background). 11:57:54 PM    comment [];trackback [];

Thursday, June 12, 2008

BvC (bike v. car)  There was a Christian Science Monitor article on hybrid envy last week. This is the envy of your friend or acquaintance who has gone out and got a hybrid-engine vehicle.  Hybrid Envy is chic, the article questions, but not bike envy?  As the author states: ...During the month that I drove it, three different people complimented me. And yet, during the seven years we have been carless, only one person has complimented me. Hybrid cars get compliments - why not my bike? | csmonitor.com He shouldn't hold his breath on this.  Oh here's a word that ought to be out there in someone's dictionary: prius-pism. Use it however you like.   It got me thinking; though, there are mixed sensibilities at play when people consider the bicycling communities: commuter biking versus messenger biking versus the spandex circus. How people see the first is colored by the latter two. Kamikaze riders who have elicited the slim advantage and economic niche for bike couriers into a personal and impenetrable law of the street. As well recreational riders whose sense of entitlement, probably carries over from their $350 rims to whatever overwrought motor vehicles they actually travel to work in. The commuting biker has to prepare careful negotiations and endure mediation of their choice and ethical stance to get it accepted as a matter of principle at all. I don't drive. I don't own a car. I never have. This is a normative choice which I press against perception of habit or simply 'my way' of being. I weigh getting a car, what type of car I might get, against my need for a car, against continuing without one, all the time. I wouldn't have anyone think I don't. For me it's an old choice but not a settled one. You can't place much stock on gaining credence for what you do, just do it.  I saw a faint thread running from this to Slate's review of the Planet Green network  The dreadful Planet Green network. - By Troy Patterson - Slate Magazine:. The author, Troy Patterson, declared it an "embarrassment to the earth" and dismissed it as another lifestyle conspicuously consumed. The environmental publication Grist responded with piqued reaction, but fails to deal with Patterson's centrally placed showcasing of the Planet Green's own general manager calling it "eco-tainment," as quoted in the New York Times  A not-so-rosy review of Planet Green | Gristmill: The environmental news blog | Grist:.  I don't get cable, so this affair will smoothly bypass me. But I'm not as inclined to regard such a channel that harshly. There are stages of going green; which is a consciousness raising process. Affirmation of green as a good, observance of some primary conservation efforts, and finally the one-thing-barrier to true observance of green living. The one-thing barrier is simply a reference to whatever one thing each of us has as individuals where we draw the line and declare that our notion of practicality wins out. In aggregate this keeps any useful green on the other side of acceptance. This will be a multi generational struggle occurring across the American ideological divide. This is a caution towards those who would position green only as a progressive issue, or cease to care about it.  Meanwhile in another green world I, and thousands like me, continue to negotiate the traffic engineered streets. A Salon Table-talk piece: outlines the raw feelings on the streets The wheel thing | Salon: . That piece's genesis is this Chicago Tribune story  Bicyclist who struck SUV door and was hit by passing vehicle dies of injuries -- chicagotribune.com:. Bicyclers are increasingly apprehensive about commuting on the streets at all. I ride along the Northwest Branch Creek bike path to work in the summer (which however is owned by M.S. xiii), and dread the winters when I must keep to the streets. For pedestrians and bikers the streets are getting wider to cross, narrower to ride on. The walk lights shorter, the yellow trap bigger, and with right turn lanes the cars never really stop coming. One thing I am always aware of on the road is that those in vehicles carry an semi-conscious assumption that there is an operative hierarchy of weight and horsepower on the road into which bicycles scarcely figure. In the automotive world of the United States, the world of carbon tire-prints; less is more, so they say, but none means nothing. - - - Addendum:  In my inbox today (18 Jun 08) was an email summary of a new University PR web log. Their idea is if you're not reading it and haven't pinned up the RSS feed, they're still going to email it to you. Information not only wants to be free it wants to insist upon itself. In this case it was worth the drum beat. There was a good article in it on the Universities initiatives on commuting to work by bicycle  Between the Columns, University of Maryland » Making Bicycling a More Popular, Safer Option:. They even are thinking of setting up a committee. Public bureaucracies shed meeting bodies like a cat sheds fur, but they claim this has improved conditions at other universities. There is an accompanying video segment which includes scenes from roads which are part of my daily travel. Where the rider/narrator goes under a bridge, that is the underside of New Hampshire ave. directly ahead of him will be the underside of Piney Branch. This is about three miles from campus and quite close to where I live. A moment later in the video he is on campus heading in the other direction. A bit further he is filmed riding by the Architecture building and Prienkart field house. This is the exact spot I was when I realized the women I was checking out on the opposite sidewalk was actually Trân. 11:16:28 PM    comment [];trackback [];

Saturday, May 31, 2008

Lunch  There was a morning one day last spring; I was biking into work. I work in a library at a large public university so invariably this involves emerging into a roiling bustle of people as I get on campus. On the other side of the street I saw a beautiful women, lovely and graceful. She was in plain fact hot. "I never get to know women like that" I thought. However; as I passed and glanced over I realized it was Huyen Trân. For the remaining fifth of a mile, till I got to the bike rack and locked up, this gave me a few things to think over.  One thing I've never done in the seven or so years I've been writing to this web log is write about food. I know I eat. Well, indirectly I know this. The government's height to weight ratio scale advises me, for the data points at hand, that I am in no imminent danger of starving. I thought perhaps I could write a little about lunch which is really my favorite meal. More particularly by way of illustrating contrast, some of my lunches against some of Trân's   A word about my lunches. If asked in the late afternoon all I could really tell you is that it was probably ham and cheese, or tuna fish, maybe hummus (if I bought lunch out at the food coop that day), but I would be fairly certain it was a sandwich, because it's always a sandwich.    Now let's consider five Viet Girl lunches. These are not recipes, I don't know enough about food to set down recipes, more breve descriptive statements based on observation and some restrained inquiry. To the ends of my limited ability to even describe such things. However, I can assure you these all appeared smelled and tasted completely wonderful. Concerning containers and heating, generally it was her preference not to use microwave reheating but to set a tupperware or gladware type container into a larger one of very hot water. For details beyond my notes you will have to ask her. Rice (generally ordinary white rice often but not always with soy sauce as accompaniment); mustard greens, a pickeled egg. Rice; lettuce & celery, ground fish, with fish sauce and lemon. Rice; pulled squid (thin, perforated almost sheet-like in appearance), with red pepper, lettuce. Rice; thin tenderloin roast beef, mint, in a thin lemon, garlic & red onion broth (the beef boiled briefly in water salt lemon, skimed, squeezed, dried, then introduced to the broth.) salted and peppered to taste. Rice; shredded pork, a thin cabbage soup or maybe it was a stew. Bonus round: Rice; a little ground pork, a green onion, with a single, but very large goose egg. Obtained, I was told in Germantown, near Gaithersburg.  As rice seemed to be the unifying principle to Trân's lunches. Some thoughts on rice are appropriate here. What is rice? Rice - Wikipedia. Rice is a simple grass. There are two (domesticated) species:  Oryza Sativa, and Oryza glaberrima. There are three types of the former which constitute most of what we know as rice: Indica, Sinica-Japonica, Javonica. These break down by how they are grown. In a field nourished only by rain water is dry rice. Or dependent on irrigation systems or river flooding and immersed in water for most of their growing cycle is wet rice. This rice is most common and is of traditionally higher yield, but natively rice is a marsh grass and evolved to take in nutrients in a water bourne environment. What meaning has Rice though? At one point Nina, another coworker who is from the Philippines, happened by, "Rice" she said, "My husband likes rice - everyday - I do not like it so much." Trân glanced up at her and briefly a look passed over her face as if some grand apostasy had appeared before her (it was very similar to the look she gave me when she learned I was protestant). She declined to respond. Rice is food. A synomyn complete in itself for the entire idea of nourishment and health. One might almost say Rice is life. If that seems an over-statement, that did not stop the FAO from giving a book that title a few years ago Rice is life : International Year of Rice 2004 and its implementation [WorldCat.org] ). Even Rice Almanac lets you know from the cover how it feels Rice almanac : source book for the most important economic activity on earth [WorldCat.org].  In marketing rice: purity and wholeness a perfection of appearence are interwoven completely in the trade. The milling process involves cleaning pearling buffing and polishing steps (with talc) before rice is presented for grading. The best rice is unbroken and jewel-like in appearance. Rice is the embodiment of culture, ways of life. The measure of seasons and days. In the transplanting of the seedlings, a hand-measure of aesthetic and orderly line across the land.   Rice exemplfies systematic agriculture, the effect of technology old and new. Rice was a tricky crop and required study of weather, nature and accumulation of knowledge to master. In the last few hundred years it was understood that rice wanted civil engineering; vast manufactured irrigation systems extending hundreds of square miles in order to flourish. This led to rice's triumphant rise from luxury crop; desired and with ancient pedigree, but not dominant. Not widely available at affordable cost - to an international traded commodity and dietary staple. It is with this over arching idea that Latham opens his overview of current rice practices Rice : the primary commodity [WorldCat.org]. This is a small and somewhat recent book on rice. The big book on rice is Grist's Rice [WorldCat.org]. The last steps in this story are the green revolution of the 60's and 70's, building on the now reliable crops that irrigation systems engendered. And establishment of all-critical milling operations closer to regional centers of production. So that surplus rice could be made a commodity, traded and earn money for the farmer. Since Latham wrote his book, which I read most of, Vietnam has assumed one of the top positions in international rice trade and even has a web site dedicated to just that  Vietnamese Rice | Home.   Success brings challenge, though. The rate of ever-increasing yields is tapering off, the rate of world population increase is not. Demand and price are up considerably particularly this year. There is increasing fear that rice could become unaffordable to some dependant on it. This has placed a critical focus on Catholic Charities such as Operation Rice Bowl.  In Asia nearly all cultivatable land is already in production, although in many places capital investment in infrastructure (irrigation) has waned dropping productivity. There has been a diminishing return to investment on new hybrid introduction which must be continued to stay ahead of pests. The increasing costs of modern fertilizers for the hybrids already narrowed the measure of yield against cost. All this has left the International Rice Research Institute - IRRI.org or Rice Web (IRRI)  the premier rice reseach institute in Los Banos, Republic of the Philippines, set up with Ford and Rockefeller foundation funding in the 1960's looking for a new break through or new land to bring under cultivation  Addendum:  Feeling guilty for have reworked Trân's lunch recipes into a single paragraph rather than a fuller treatment I had originally intended. I talked to her about these few things on rice I had just learned.  Discovering then that after Saigon fell and for the years her father was imprisoned, her mother ran a small rice farm, ten acres or so, in the Mekong delta. Somewhere in the vicinity of Vinh Long I think, and this is where Trân lived when she was young. Their farm even included its own milling, polishing grading, and packing facility. Which she indicated was largely run without the contributions of electrical power. She knew all about voracious planthoppers, the problem of lodging stalks, and the protective little fish (and crabs she says) that live in the flooded paddies, which are mostly smart enough to swim away with the water when the paddies are drained. She allowed herself a moment to reflect on the modest fullness and self sufficiency of the small farm life. Trân, it turns out, knew more about rice culture than I will ever be able to learn. But even this teaches me. 11:45:18 PM    comment [];trackback [];

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Re: Public  Natural disasters reveal a societies structure. They reveal a cultures hidden joints and weak points. These parts are habitually papered over by the surplus of normal give and take an appear non-the-worse for it. But strong winds strip this away: China: 40,000 dead, 5 million homeless after quake - washingtonpost.com , Myanmar Raises Cyclone Toll to 78,000.  Particularly emergencies reveal the nature of the governing elites relation to the people. They do that with growing clarity through three phases of a disaster. Immediate reaction: the first responders. These are the actions of the police, fire and health professionals in the affected area.  The next phase is the aftermath, when the central government reacts and directs additional resources to the area to provide relief for the exhaustion of initial efforts. The last phase is the restoration of normalacy and efforts to bring the area back into national productivity. Things are cleaned up and rebuilt. Peoples input is heard, and the bureaucracy is examined. What joins all this is these are all points where resources and money are allocated.   All societies aim at a certain ideal state. One of harmony; balance and prosperity.  Towards this end they claim a government by for and of the people. In practice quite universally a bipartite affair: the governed and the governing. What we really desire is to not be left ungoverned. That these halves remain a whole. It is an unmistakable marker of illegitimacy when a government does not respond well to a crisis.  Political theory traditionally had its ideas of how a society ends up with a governing structure. Social Compacts, moments of singular unity when agreement passes through a group and they become a people. It doesn't make much difference in the end whether this moment is a mystery, mysticism, or memory, as long as the people concede it must have happened. The government gains authority and responsibility. They set a cultural optimality and set it above the level of individual experience. The good of the many outweighs the good of the few, is more critical than the unfettered autonomy of the one.  From this arises a model of order, and a repression of anything deviating from that order. This order good or bad will result in general happiness or suffering respectively. Which is judged and felt by the individual, whose well-being in the end is tied to the ability to take actions and make decisions to bring their own life and body back into balance. Even the perception of good or bad order is a perception of individuals tied to their own set of experience convenience and adjustment.   A society perhaps can be thought of as a set of lines. A main line possessing a vector, a direction arising out of the discourse of myriad adjacencies. A separate far smaller parallel line representing the ruling regime which attempts to control the discourse and direction of the first. The distance across is the public space and the primary control is to allow only the public voice in that space. The ruler to the ruled, a public voice of referendum (when allowed) to the ruler. No other institutions or processes can be allowed in that space.  Both Burma and China are authoritarian states. China nominally a republic of the people. Burma, in its guise as Myanmar, no more than an experiment in military tyranny. In both (and they are certainly not alone in this) power and privilege flow together readily to form a sustaining elite, a local nobility. China's rulers appeared to be concerned for its citizens. Alongside its own primacy of course, but the military and bureaucracies turned with a single and efficient face and headed out Teams Struggle to Reach Earthquake Survivors. Data was collected, needs assesed, media coverage organized. More singularly briefly China's people seemed ready and able to care for themselves. Critical public space was allowed open, to fill with spontaneous emergence of citizen assistance, philanthropy and covenanting identity Chinese Open Wallets to Aid Earthquake Victims. The party warming to its practical side seems inclined to allow this for now. As long, I expect, as no group declares or intimates it cares more or can do more for the people than the party Can Charity Change China? - WSJ.com. The Burmese junta demonstrated absolute unconcern for the people of Burma Myanmar Farmers May Miss Harvest, and even appeared aggrieved that the people's misfortune called for some action or appearance of sympathy on their part. The US Navy which after the tsunami a few years ago was able to move supplies in at critical junctures has been disallowed and must sail away U.S. Navy Waiting for Junta's Permission to Deliver Burma Aid - washingtonpost.com. The generals have from the day they invalidated the election of 1990 and placed Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest never been less than Parasitic and Unobliging. Even a month after cyclone Nargis their denial their callous murderous disdain is untouched Myanmar Warned Over Forcing Cyclone Survivors Home - NYTimes.com. But I must not think bad thoughts. It is simply that the Burmese Generals, Than Shwe and the rest, believe manfully in the highest good: order. Order and obedience. The State Peace and Development Council maintains this. The three main objectives of the Union of Solidarity and Development are: 1) Non-disintegration of the Union 2) Non disintegration of national solidarity 3) Perpetuation of sovereignty.  Now I am, again un-troubled (see 2:57) and one with the lotus. 11:54:02 PM    comment [];trackback [];

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Carrier I watched the entire ten hours of PBS's documentary CARRIER | PBS (the life of an Aircraft Carrier) the other week. I think I was the only person of those I know who did. That put a bit of a dent in what all else I got done that week, but it was worth it. I was immersed engaged captivated. I spent most of year once on one of those things. A television special like this answers two questions for me: What was going on around me back then, what was it all about? And who was I then? The first because you never see more than a small slice of the total reality of a ship like that from your own perspective. Secondly you remember just enough to have this, let you understand how you may have appeared to others. Big Grey and Underway The USS Ranger with VF 21 probably in the socal op area for the 1979 Westpac. There were no real false notes that I saw in this documentary. I attribute this to the care of the film team, to their decision to live with the crew for the duration of the cruise and not just drop by to grab footage and clear out. Also they understood that the ship is (in any given instance) its crew not the steel. This, they said, was advice from the captain, and there is a quote to this effect prominently displayed on the documentary's web site. Further they understood enough to film the demographic center of the crew. Which largely is a peck of people in their first few years out of high school. The command master chief makes this observation at one point, he wouldn't need to say that to anybody whose been on a carrier. I don't think I ever met the Ranger's Master Chief. Of course I was with the air wing not ships company [technically detached to ship's company] and besides I took strenuous effort in those days to keep as much distance as I could between myself and any chief petty officer. Officers especially fighter pilots have had their lives vastly detailed and romanticized elsewhere in popular culture so that they need only be brought in to round this story out. The film makers followed a select group of people around for the cruise allowing them to represent the crew at large and get to know some individuals well enough to see what things meant to them CARRIER . The Crew | PBS. I thought this worked well and there four crewman in particular that I saw myself relating to. First of all AN Christian Garzone: because he was a cut-up. He clearly lacks that instinct for crisp military severity, but beyond that he was a serious intelligent, and sincere person, and painfully young. He, I identified with. AOAN Chris Altice also. He was a lot like all the people of my cohort who I knew well: A fretter, not really sold on the Navy. One foot in one foot out. Frankly that described most of us then. SSgt Randy Brock was the image of the non commissioned officers (e4-e9) I admired and would sometimes imagine becoming, but their reality, people on their second and third enlistments, was not my reality then, and I don't think I understood them very well. Or gave them their due. LCDR Kevin McLaughlin was like many of the officers I knew. Being enlisted I didn't know any of them well, but the familiar officers. The pilots who would come down to the CVIC for post flight debriefings. The ones like the pilots in my own squadron. Something about LCDR McLauglin also reminded me of the 1630s I worked with. The documentary did not appear to talk to anyone from my own rating. The documentary made be more aware of the frission of my own changing attitude towards the Navy over the years. I've always had a natural sympathy with sailors and those in service, but I've thought about it more the last several years, and have worked towards a greater understanding of the life they lead, and the work they do, while at the same time arriving at a much sharper view of what is called National Security and the role of the professional military (and its attendants) in a nation which intends democracy. Dreams; though, are the final realm of how you feel. I've had reoccuring dreams of embarking on a second cruise, dreams of intense mundaneness, which began as soon as I left the fleet. I imagine if I could I'd do it again. A ship has a history and life beyond any particular crew of course CARRIER . The Ship | PBS. But if you know these stories, you know the ship, the ship abstracted. The documentary got all the key things in place, the work, the ports, military life of an airfield. The emphasis on everydayness sometimes masked the critical and highly visible nature of a forward deployed carrier. The purpose and progress seemed distant. You get close to a central truth of carriers if you view them through the lens of being a special type of air-base. Their movement potentials a facet of their whole only. Their primary nature as an air power military instrument. All the same, the logic of their best use, is understood through the traditional notions of sea-power. The emphasis placed on the thirteen carriers required the Navy evolve as a hybrid institution (even further allowing for Marine airpower dedicated to the separate idea of ground troop support to coexist with it). This has made the Modern U S Navy a very complex entity. CV 61 catching some rays on a quite day A good deal of the fun with a show like this is looking for the differences (and similarities) between the USS Ranger then and the USS Nimitz now. Primarily - going for the big and obvious: women and email on board ship. We didn't have that. I wrote the same thing here six years ago, at that time it was a real eye-opener. This was on the occasion of an NBC documentary on 17 April 2002 on life aboard the USS John C Stennis, CV 74. I see I even wrote then (06 May 2002): "It seems to me every five to ten years somebody runs a piece like this - one of the networks, Frontline, Nova, somebody - and I usually watch it." I believe the Stennis is the ship that replaced the Ranger in the fleet. John Stennis, a US Senator, was a democrat. I didn't even know DoD let ships be named after democraters, warms my heart it does. It was interesting to see a fuller look into gender integration at sea, and a couple of years after the previous documentary. It largely confirmed my suspicions that with a little practice this is a viable way of crewing a warship. Which undoubtedly makes long at-sea periods less of a mind warp (which really kicks in only when you get back to port) and makes rotating to shore billets easier for everyone. Email still strikes me as a bit of a double edged sword. I saw that while they shut down email at times to preserve operational security, Email, ubiquitous communication with home in general seemed to be the accepted norm. Curiously overall it didn't seem to make people happier than the rather sketchy fleet post office mail I recall. Many would think I'm wrong here, but it's a matter of formalism, of unity of principle. The distance is the reality here. Hourly communication with home only allows elements of closeness an illusion that isn't real to enter. I can see this making things more difficult for many. Another thing that frankly surprised me was how much the tools, the mission and daily life were essentially unchanged from my cruise on the USS Ranger USS Ranger Museum Foundation. Its still planes, wires and catapults. Even with these 3rd generation nuclear super carriers. These ships CVN-68 Nimitz-class are essentially just bigger versions of the Ranger Forrestal class aircraft carrier - Wikipedia. The biggest difference the nuclear power plant debuted with the USS Enterprise just a few years after the USS Ranger (though not again for a decade until the USS Nimitz) The other essential modifications were accomplished with the USS Kitty Hawk and subsequent ships Moving the island back behind the second starboard elevator and moving the port elevator to aft. The jets are incrementally better, Guided munitions have come into their own, but it's still jets and jet pilots. Nothing substantially different is slated to replace it Gerald R. Ford class aircraft carrier - Powerset.The areas of concern are still Korea Taiwan and the Persian Gulf (although the Shah is less of a concern). Its still about being prepared to keep the sea lanes trade routes open which means its still about high-granularity maritime surveillance (though they didn't say so). For the people it's still about water and port calls. Some of the documentaries most evocative scenes were the rough weather scenes. I can still remember an episode on the Ranger where briefly our task force entertained the idea of squeezing by a typhoon in the straits of Formosa north into the Philippine sea to continue routine flight operations. The Typhoon enforced its own ops plan and we ended up spending three days north of Luzon with it, while it passed by. I recall the protractor we taped to the overhead with a nut suspended from a thread so we could measure the angles the ship took to. It can be really amusing (in a warped sort of way) when a big ship like a carrier starts to roll in a heavy sea. While none of the ports they made matched the concentrated debauchery of Subic Bay, they seemed to have fun. Guam only contained aspects, more civilized bar hopping experience, sand and sun like a day-out on Grandee island (the recreation facility at the mouth of Subic bay). We visited Pusan and Phattya beach, stopped at Yokuska twice. I visited Tokyo on one of those occasion. They visited Kuala Lumpur and Bahrain. And they visited Perth, which the Ranger never quite made it to - due to the incident. I'm still bitter about that. C'mon it was 600 ft long and three stories high, w'dya mean you didn't see it? The Navy in todays world, may seem difficult to get a grasp on. The wars we find ourselves fighting now are not the Navy's fight. The Nimitz came and went from the Persian Gulf on that cruise flying several hundred sorties I imagine, of only uneventful reserve air support. Here as it often has been over the history of the United States; the Navy's role, its participation in defense, is strategic defense. Keeping the lid on - on all the various cans of worms out there. Simply by being sufficient potential force to answer for any action. I admit to a certain tendency to read between the lines here and for all the noise about the sprung threat to the homeland, to see in the quiescence of the carriers, that the danger of certain vectors of radical Islam, while real, are not a major strategic threat. And are undoubtedly capable of being dealt with smaller, smarter, and logarithmically cheaper than they are now. Since world war two we've had an army group in Germany a portion of another in Korea. Large but formaly established units with dependent facilities. Air force squadrons cycle between stateside and forward bases, England, Turkey. Since the first gulf war the Air Force also took on onerous enforcement of the Iraqi no-fly zone from bases in the middle east. The Army is now in the middle of one of the longest set of repeated field deployments into an active combat zone in its history. Navy life; though, has always been about deployments and separation, it's never been a comfortable family life. Whether ships were sailing into hostile waters or not when you're out there, you are away. 9:35:19 PM    comment [];trackback [];

Friday, May 9, 2008

Blast! Somewhere in the course of writing the previous post one of those hay fever related spring-time colds caught up with me and pretty much brought mental forward progress to a halt for a few weeks. The FEC post seemed weak and I lost interest in it and began writing on the PBS Aircraft Carrier 10 hour special which aired last week. Inspired by that, I also began working on some stories from my own days living on an Aircraft Carrier, and the people I knew then. I regard myself as being promised [Jordan E., I haven't forgotten] to write up as many incidents events as seem worthy, that I can still remember. You have to get to a precarious balance of storytelling and remembering to make the exercise worthwhile. I want to stay with the real people I knew, and not invent or combine people or incidents for effect if I write these. It was a while ago now, and requires some effort and technique to get back there. I had made a start on a couple of these, and was pleased with them so far. This is where things take an unfortunate turn. I had my backpack stolen the other day. In this pack, which I carry to and from work on a bicycle daily, were (amongst other not-less consequential junk) my iPod, A digital camera (a new and rather nice Sony DSC) and my Alpha Smart Neo, a portable word processor, on which I had taken to doing all my draft writing. I had filled up all eight registers with a great mass of at least partially coherent writing. This is now all gone. This is the second time in four (five?) years I've had a camera and iPod stolen. I am less than content on this score. The FEC piece was still somewhat fresh in my mind, plus I had an outline in the MacBook for it. So I was able to reproduce that without too much trouble, or loss. There was the piece where I compare what I bring to work for lunch against what Tran brings - some small discussion of rice occurs. For the Carrier post, which I will rewrite next, I have only a scribbled outline on paper, and some other thoughts I remember from writing. For the stories; I set down some notes today on how I was approaching it, but come up with only patches of the words and sentences I wrote. I worry a little from having lost and retyped files before, that the replication often seems more ossified and hurried than the original, rarely improving on it. However, the way I write perhaps it won't make much difference. 9:29:41 AM    comment [];trackback [];

Sunday, April 27, 2008

FEC MIA I guess I had grown used to coverage of an election season being seasoned with comments to and from the Federal Election Commission. If not garnering whole articles in the media then references sprinkled throughout the political coverage. But mention of the FEC has been in the breach: Unlike most election seasons for the past thirty years there has been little reference to the FEC this season (FEC_Wikipedia). This is not a case of someone one with a web log having an original thought and turning that around. When I took my sense of absence to Google News to see what would return for question I saw that two recent two events were driving it back into the news now. Confirming a general view I have that there is nothing that is not agenda driven. There may be facts, raw information after a lesser manner, though not news and no opinion without PR agenda With the FEC Inactive, the Complaints Fly | The Trail | washingtonpost.com. But I'll play along. First there was the Democratic National Committee (DNC) Lawsuit against the McCain campaign for their dance macabre with public financing. Egregious especially for their ability to apparently use such cash flow as virtual collateral for loans that would render resorting to public finance an unnecessary move. Despite the seeming sanguinity involved, as a legal case it is apparently weak and of vague merit. I don't think the legal issue was precisely the point Marc Ambinder (April 14, 2008) - Does The DNC's Complain Against McCain Have Merit? The press coverage, the public comments tendered, the demonstration that resort to the courts was felt necessary because the FEC itself had not dealt with this was. The other event was the ex FEC chair Robert Lenhard withdrawing from renomination effort when it became evident the republican candidate he was twinned with was never going to be acceptable to the democratic leadership. Before disappearing into that good night of the private sector it was arranged for this to make a fat and visible federal diary page entry in the Washington Post FEC Nominee Withdraws Name After Long Impasse - washingtonpost.com. I imagine Sen. Reid's calculation about damage not done by non functioning FEC figured into this. The FEC currently has only two commissionors in place where six are mandated No FEC quorum means no FEC decisions - UPI.com. The republican nominee Hans von Spakovsky is the point man for ideologies whose political viability is tied to a general rollback of democratic franchise. Through all this the FEC will still operate at low level bureaucratic level all existing rules and requirements are still in place. Data collection on candidates activities will continue on autopilot. Any higher level decision making and rulings will be absent as this article in the Mother Jones details: Out of Commission . This FEC is a creature of congressional stalemate FindLaw's Writ - Hasen: The Collapse of the Public Financing System for U.S. Presidential Campaigns Blame Congress, Not the Candidates, it represents the preferred bipartisan outcome of existing office holders. Many in Congresses are already the handpicked representatives of some regionally powerful home interest to which they owe their first allegiance. Hollowing out the FEC simply encourages more powerful interests to own the remainder of them. Government by and large is the practice of balancing general vs. special interests. The former diffused in their needs and lacking formal organization except by the mechanisms of the vote. Most federal agencies dedicated formally to the general interest of all Americans have a dedicated constituency of particular organized institutional or corporate interests. It can only be hoped that in the competition of these special interests something approximating the public interest emerges. The FEC has politicians as its interested parties. They are mainly interested in consuming its services in the negative, in regulation that does affect them, but perhaps ties the hand of their opponents. There is little interest in a robust and empowered agency with ability to cast light into all their shadows. For the general public its hard to feel ownership in something that doesn't appear to deliver concrete benefit or be yours at all. For myself I never gave the FEC much thought until it seemed that the private though publicly promulgated political conversation of web logs might either be onerously regulated or left unprotected to bitter partisanship attack both of which would serve to chill it out of existence The Free Press, Mankato, MN - Our View: Do not regulate political bloggers. It was easy for me to see any relationship with the FEC completed in that. If the FEC is to survive and hold any relevancy at all it must do as some here have pointed out and develop a real constituency. This constituency must be broader than just the elected politicians who pick its members and set its budget. Ways must be found of breaking or placing at greater remove congresses control over the FEC's affairs FixtheFEC.org. I don't think the FEC can operate like other federal commissions holding meetings setting out occasional notifications for public comment on rule-making, but otherwise sitting back and waiting for organized interests to encircle them. I do not think either that public interest groups attempting to operate in behalf of the broad public have sufficient gravity behind the to replace the public. FEC must get out and take their concerns to the American people and the concerns from the people. I know that the commission and bureaucratic set are disposed towards the attitude that you learn nothing sitting in high school auditoriums and listening to yahoos. They are neither congress nor the wealthy to create congressmen in such places only the people, fingers brushing the empty eddied air around an increasingly distant government. 11:20:07 PM    comment [];trackback [];

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Diesel Only A commingling of a few of my favorite obsessions presents itself. A confluence of gulf stream and arctic waters. A virtual  nor' easter of fun. First off an enduring category of referrer hits to the web log remains pictures of Ra5c Vigilantes. This is the plane of one of my units when I was in the Navy, RVAH Seven, or Reconatkron Seven in that full Navy quasi acronym style. Until I run out pictures I'm happy to oblige. This is a picture of a RVAH 7 Vigilante in USS Forestal colors flying over what I have always believed to be Stone Mountain Georgia. The pictures I put up here on Atomized Jr. are compressed and resized images of old photo's I've scanned. Usually to around 4x3 inches and 30kb file size. For all these scans; though, I still have the original tiff image and often a larger jpeg already made. If any of these really strikes your fancy, you can always email me, or leave a comment, and ask for a higher resolution copy. I should also point out also that while wandering through a hobby shop with my nephew I found a small book on the A5 which gives a nice history and description of the plane through its various incarnations and includes pictures of RVAH 7's planes even during the period I was in the squadron North American Rockwell A3J/A-5 Vigilante [WorldCat.org]. Regulated to history, but at least it's documented history. This in turn presents an opportunity to mention that I've heard a lovely restrained cover of New Order's song "Love Vigilantes" recently. I mention this simply because it has the word Vigilante in the title and because it moves things off in a very different direction. It's sung by Laura Cantrell on her new lp Trains and Boats and Planes (Diesel only records). (That link is to apple's phobos server which when eaten by your browser will prompt it to open iTunes). She also does a nice version of Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, the Gordon Lightfoot song, on the same record. Laura Cantrell is a former Dj at WFMU in New Jersey Laura Cantrell - Wikipedia. After hearing her version a couple of times I decide to revisit a mystery which has plagued me about that song. I have always associated the song Love Vigilantes with a short story I read once a long time ago. I've been trying to remember this story for twenty years. This time after an afternoon of intermittent thought I decided that the name of the story might be Night Flight and tried that against the Internet Speculative Fiction Database and came up with the name Josephine Johnson. A short story called Night Flight by Josephine Johnson was published in 1944. From its reprint history I could see I probably read this in a Ray Bradbury edited collection of short stories which may still be among my sister Ann's books. I went upstairs to the stacks to find the collection The sorcerer's son, and other stories [WorldCat.org] which is what McKeldin (a library at the Univ. of Maryland) had that contained Night flight. It is an unassuming surreal and very short tale of soldiers flying from their barracks and camps back to their homes and loved ones at night. The New Order song has a few other things going on: a sharper sensibility. But this is the story I had read before and is what I've been trying to remember. I was intrigued by some of the other stories. as I read through the whole collection over the next few days. In the "Story without End" a father starts an indifferent story to distract his two squabbling children. A hero is described traveling through a snow storm carrying a magic bag to save a village from a dragon. Eventually he simply ends the story perfunctorily. The dragon is vanquished the village saved. The bag never enters into it. The son is satisfied but the daughter, a little older, feels cheated and observes to herself later, ending the story: "He didn't know what was in the bag." A good observation for a story teller. I've read so much in my life written by people who didn't know what was in the bag. A near and common example, television shows like Lost. Three seasons in and I am no longer sure they know what's in the bag. Its only television I suppose, though saying "its only television" makes me feel ungrateful, and un-American. Johnson's stories I realized after I had read a few of them were sly, craftier than I had first thought. I'd also recommend the Rented Room. It made me wonder what sort of writer she was The wikipedia bio has very little on her Josephine Winslow Johnson - Wikipedia. Not a fantasy or science fiction writer, not a home magazine writer. Not trafficked in the same circles as Peter Taylor, O'Conner or Welty though she published stories in the Virginia Quarterly Review. There is a clever and gothic undercurrent to the stories which keeps them safely out of the ordinary world which would forget them. 11:37:55 PM    comment [];trackback [];

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Tempest UCC The United Church of Christ (UCC) the denomination I belong to recently decided to buy a full page ad in the New York Times. Which as you might guess not is not inexpensive. This idea came from one of the New York City Congregations, but was quickly embraced by many others. Doing what we can under the circumstances, a quick-whip around with the internet hat was necessary to raise the cash, which the head office does not have on it. This went smoothly, the thing was done and it ran I believe on 02 April Full-page UCC ad appears in The New York Times . Enough money was raised to even buy a second ad in USA Today a week later on 11 April. The text of this one was different from the first and continued the conversation UCC's full-page USA Today ad invites nation to 'sacred conversation on race'. The preceding links lead to the press release (with links) that accompanied each ad, here are direct links to pdfs of the ads: ny-times-ad.pdf (application/pdf Object) and usatodayad.pdf (application/pdf Object) for those who want to cut to the quick. The need for this step came from the strident and imprecise press attention surrounding Sen. Obama's Trinity Church (UCC) in Chicago and its former paster, Jeremiah Wright. A few weeks ago this controversy gained an above-the-gatefold article in the Washington Post's Sunday Outlook section He's Preaching to A Choir I've Left. Which some quipped was more attention than the denomination has ever had before in its history. We felt the need to state clearly that we are not the church that hates America. Traditionally we lay claim to a greater legacy as a church that was one of the foundings of the nation. Beyond the Church's concern to reaffirm who we are, I began to think about the meaning of Rev. Wrights demonization by sectors of the media. In the first place removing voice, denying standing, delegitimizing feeling. In the second place decapitating leadership by misrepresenting what Rev. Wright was about. Portraying him as strident unrepresentative and extreme (the first to gain the second) Fox anchors O'Reilly, Hannity, fire back at Wright :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Barack Obama . He could not be called extreme, if in fact, many if not most felt as he does, if he spoke for others. I did see one commentator who took considerable chance in this debate by pointing out that many of Martin luther King's speeches particularly the earlier ones had levels of stridency that equaled or exceeded Rev. Wrights. He may be preaching to the choir, but the whole congregation is awake. Beyond a soon familiar bundle of pull quotes; rhetorical tub-thumping pinned to the line. They had little about the man. His entire life, the testimony of his work and those who know him Obama's Minister Problem - WSJ.com. The notion that he was a hate filled radical did not connect with the fact that he made his living as a UCC Minister. Stylistically Rev. Wright seems different from the Congregationalist ministers I've known: Rev. Sangree, and John Mack. I have the feeling that this is mostly just style. I can recall Rev. Mack in a sermon speaking on how he came to doubt the effectiveness of the mass protest march particularly as we moved into the current era. This did not affect his appetite for social justice nor diminish his desire to speak towards it. His own style moved away from stridency and effusion, for quieter moments of more certain engagement. The real statement those that demand that Sen. Obama or the UCC cleave themselves from Reverend Wright are making is to say that that they have no right to their opinion, or no right to leadership at all if they have dis-comforting opinion. Addendum 16 Apr 08... Since again I haven't managed to kick a post out the door before additional events overtake it. I can take a moment to consider Sen. Obama's recent statements to the effect that small town Americans living in what has for 30 years now been referred to as the rust-belt seem to him bitter at the experience of several successive presidencies taking little or no interest whatsoever in their plight. Well it was not good to have said this. It can only seem like a comment on, not a comment with. It does not demonstrate solidarity Democrats must renew bond with working class - The Boston Globe. At the same time there is little point in others with their own distances to overcome stepping forward to tell small towners how they should feel about this. Further to connect this with the first part of this post. If it does not work to marginalize Sen. Obama as akin with angry common and extreme opinion, the process from there is to marginalize him by portraying as elite and condescending whatever he says. Both have the equal intent of locking him away from the American people. 11:31:11 PM    comment [];trackback [];

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Teflon Inc. My sister, Susan, and brother-in-law, Douglas, were talking about teflon in cosmetics the other day. I had a tough time believing that this was a big problem, but apparently with certain cosmetics like lipstick it is. Toxic elements in cosmetics in general is more widespread than I would've believed. I figure the guys out there are thinking "Well I don't use lipstick, I don't see how that's my problem." Yeah, keep thinking that one through. PTFE is what teflon is Polytetrafluoroethylene - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. There are variants FEP and PFA. All are plastics or more formally polymers. The major difference between the former and latter two is that PTFE is hard, non malleable, requiring that it be milled into its final shape or application, FEP is mold ejectable, but has a much lower melting point. With both it is the presence of the compound PFOA (pentadecafluorooctanoic acid), a suspected carcinogen part of the manufacturing process, that is the problem. I can't imaging the attraction to cosmetic products, but teflon is supposed to be the only solid surface that a gecko can't stick to. It is uniquely slippery stuff. This was something they had heard from the news shortly before. Nearly as I can figure it was probably this article which they had probably seen CapeGazette.com - Covering Delaware's Cape Region - Stacy Malkan book they were down at Cape Henelopen over my nephews' spring break. The article was a review of a book Not just a pretty face : the ugly side of the beauty industry [WorldCat.org] by Stacey Malkan, there is also a web site for the book by the publisher and author Not Just A Pretty Face. The book came out of the work she does for a foundation Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. From the Safe Cosmetics web site there is a link to a further website: the Skin Deep: Cosmetic Safety Database itself part of something called the Environmental working Group. I point out to my sister here that this is the same web site we discovered while talking about this. This database concentrates on cosmetics but contains data across a wide spectrum of consumer and household products. It is limited by state and federal regulations covering covering ingredient disclosure. There is a fairly massive loophole there covering the "fragrance" category which is a proprietary catch-all. This explains why this db often lists fragrance as the most concerning ingredient. It's simply that the product is suspect, but the disclosed ingredients are compounds with known toxicity profiles that do not account for the concern. In a similar vein I heard a NPR piece on another aspect of environment toxins, Consumer electronics. The problem of recycling batteries (particularly rechargeable batteries), cell phones, and computer parts which are neither biodegradable nor landfill friendly. The key here is to find a green way of dispossession. The claim was made that if you piloted to the online version of the piece After the Techno Lust, There's Always E-Cycling (NPR is radio after all) they had a list of web database resources such as E-cycling Central: Find a Recycler or Rechargeable Battery Recycling that allow you to find standing recycle programs and special recycling events by local area. It didn't seem to list the recycling set-up at the Mom's organic grocery on Nicholson (or is it Parklawn?) that it know is there, but that's the point, really, many of these recycling efforts are small low key and hard to find. 11:58:49 PM    comment [];trackback [];

Saturday, March 29, 2008

FCC No. 9 It has not been the best of times for FCC Chairman Kevin "Pincher" Martin Congress dons rubber glove, prepares probe of FCC chairman. First there was Rep. Dingell's (D. MI) little request; for virtually all paper-work the FCC has produced in the last 10 years. The FCC's own data on consumer complaints system is so chaotic as to cast all doubt on any attempt to ensure net neutrality FCC living in the dark ages; a threat to net neutrality aims. Then there was a strange story that some staffers were going to wear black to work one day as part of a silent protest of his chairmanship FCC insider: This place is hell; silent protest planned. Now with a brief press release illustration that even Fox doesn't care what they think:  Fox to FCC: your analysts' sexual fantasies not our problem. Not that the FCC really wanted to be moral content cops to begin with. Others wanted that for them. Its nice to be feared, but if you growl and they don't flinch what then? There has been some good news, the auction to sell off the VHF spectrum space being vacated by television was successfully completed. Raised more money than they figured it was going to. Additionally since analog channels were spaced out fairly widely there is considerable "WhiteSpace" spectrum to be allocated and put to first use as well. These were the gaps between allocated analog channels of vhf broadcast. Google seems to have an idea of a national wide broadband cell phone service in this space White space (telecommunications) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Soon though the FCC may find itself between a rock and a hard place on the matter of the Sirus - XM merger. The Department of Justice has decided that the absolute monopoly in satellite radio this would create is; however, not anti-competitive, leaving  intact another display for the museum of free market antiquaries. The general line of reasoning, the same used for local market media merger, is to count all possible allied human activities as being substitutively competitive, or to count every possible way of delivering a glob of entertainment to your door step as competing. Content diffusion or medium diffusion as competition. Of the three major dailies Justice Dept. Approves XM-Sirius Radio Merger - washingtonpost.com I saw covering this Justice Dept. Approves XM Merger With Sirius - New York Times only the WSJ seems to have actually bought this arguement.  XM, Sirius Move Closer To Improbable Merger - WSJ.com : "The combined company will face stiff competition from traditional broadcasters, iPods, mobile phones and other emerging ways for consumers to access music and other programming. Still, the Justice Department's approval marks a big step forward..."  It is as though in the 1890's railroad barons told the government: "what are there no mules, no horses, no donkey dog or cat carts? We can envision vast fleets of rats from New York City yoked together and pulling (something like) a ten-car train down to Philadelphia, and back, every day. The chill thought of that kind of competition will keep us honest, trust us." Seriously though the idea of routinely regarding any activity in an given economic sector as having conceivably occurred against another is aggravated nonsense. It is a softening of the edges of a concept that collapse the category. Major League Baseball may decide it competes against cinema, hiking footwear, or kayaks; things to do on a week-end after all. But that is not a rational to allow it to form a corporate cartel with the NFL, NBA, PGA etc. to fight this. Anti-Trust: the government isn't even trying anymore. Another matter that seems to have dropped off the map, although it is not likely it has, is the final arrangements of royalty schedule that SoundExchange was trying to levy on behalf of the RIAA. That after some initial public and congressional attention things became murky, is not really mysterious. Public policy is increasingly becoming a war of attrition against the public. In-transparency or opacity disguises intent and eliminates judgement. The issues surround this were actually treated in a Washington Post feature last Sunday Name That Tune-In: Who Will Emerge as The Future of Radio? - washingtonpost.com. Mostly it dealt with what it termed "next radio" all the internet and digital solutions precipitated on the death of terrestrial radio and the urgency of keeping people paying somehow for recorded music. Mostly the article pointed up the least common denominator banality of music services like Pandora. These services attempt to discover what you and people with exactly your tastes like and then give you just that, What you get sounds what like you've got. Marc Fischer, the author, in a deft moment allows a twenty-something proponent to state that the days of mass culture and pop groups like the Beatles are over. Before noting the decided top-forty tendencies of some of these services. None of these so far is "next radio" and to reiterate my biases I believe the strategy is to keep any of these start-ups from becoming too successful until existing industry players can figure it out and occupy that space themselves. Latter in the week Diane Rehm (NPR) built a show around that article with a handful of guests including Fischer WAMU 88.5 FM American University Radio - The Diane Rehm Show for Thursday March 27, 2008 . The concept of iPod fatigue is interesting; the notion that a digitized and ubiquitous music collection even of very large proportions will eventually become overly familiar and drive people back to something like radio. Of course I also believe that if it appears music culture needs a next radio it is because radio was rarely done well over the last 30 years. I like the idea of a service that would allow me for a nominal fee to listen to (as opposed to buy and store such as iTunes) or share a given song or playlist, but these would be songs I knew of already. I've long since thrown in with free form radio. Radio where the flow of music is not predictable nor often familiar, but is intentional and an implicit argument emerges from the segues. A minor irony, as part of initiatives designed to boost small local radio, WFMU, my favored radio station, which I listen on the internet when I do, is being allowed to build a repeater in Manhattan across the Hudson river from their original base. Without increasing their transmitting wattage at all they could double their terrestrial reach. Moves like that which cost the FCC nothing can often be the difference whether a community radio station with bills to pay can remain viable or not. LPFM has its uses to the FCC; making up-market consolidation more palatable. It's an acceptable bargain to the low numbers side. 11:49:01 PM    comment [];trackback [];

Friday, March 21, 2008

Beijing Olympics There are increasing media indications that any organization with any kind of grievance against the Chinese government in Beijing, is going to use this year's Olympic games to press home their concerns The Olympics are the perfect place for a protest. - By Anne Applebaum - Slate Magazine. They will disrupt, interrupt and replace the message and news of the day with their own. They will not stand beside the scoreboard with their bill of particulars. Their passion will dictate they throw the scoreboard over and settle their own scores. I do not know what to make of this now obvious inevitability. I imagine the soapbox of Olympic attention must seem an enormous and delectably high podium. Broad and lonely boards, crying out for viewpoints of integrity to be shouted from them. China is a very large nation. It is a rather repressive nation. No especial offense is meant by that, with a read-through of the speeches and public comments of the leadership you will hear them say that themselves, as a point of pride. It is a nation that generates stark winners and losers. Leaving the unsettled latter adrift in its wake. Tibet is one of the aggrieved, they are not even voluntarily part of the Chinese nation, run as a internal colony, an imperial dumping ground. The Tibetan people have been around for thousands of years diffused beyond the borders of the administrative unit China would mark out for them. Tibet; additionaly, has the Dalai Lama; a noble spiritual gravitas-weighted reminder of the claim that Tibet is a God defined independent nation. Or at least an autonomous region. "Free Tibet" is a celebrated cause world wide, no less an inspiration to its own people. On this account and for what other affairs that can get organized well enough fast enough the Beijing Olympics will be fought. Fought through campaigns for public opinion. This is fine, PR is the world's Lingua Franca. Propaganda the only real mode of intentional communication between those without personal connections. Between states and publics. Corporate's and publics. Between publics. Among this debate I have begun to hear calls for the pinnacle statement that could be made for such an event. That the US and other nations should boycott the Beijing Olympics. I disagree. So far these calls are coming mostly from the left and will probably be ignored. It will become a concern if they spread to that distempered land where the neo-Wilsonians meet the neo-conservatives. They remind me of the calls mostly from the right that we boycott the 1980 Olympics in Moscow 1980 Summer Olympics boycott - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, which we did by order of the President Carter. The Russians had invaded Afghanistan. There could be no thought of play, it was decided, and there was none. Four years later a communist-and-alientated-nation block boycotted the summer games in Los Angeles, in turnabout fashion 1984 Summer Olympics boycott - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (no-one missed them). The PRC being only recently in the Olympics stayed away from Moscow but came to Los Angeles. Most of the wailing and bemoaning on that occasion came from the right, over what black and godless heart would stoop to spoiling games come to Ronnie's own promised land. The question was examined in several books following this Power, politics, and the Olympic Games [WorldCat.org] and consensus to emphasis the neutral internationalism of the games seem to gain, but that may only have been interregnum Olympic turnaround : how the Olympic Games stepped back from the brink of extinction to become the world's best known brand [WorldCat.org] . I think it is a mistake also to say that that these are Beijing's Olympics. The Olympics belong to the Olympics. To the set of athletes participating most of all. To the International Consortium and Bureaucracy that organizes them. Beyond that to the Olympic ideal of international non-pecuniary athletic competition which forces a path however indistinct on even the Olympic committee Sally Jenkins - IOC Needs to Step In Or Perhaps Move On - washingtonpost.com. The host nation stands to gain great prestige and honor if they can bring about successful games, but faces great risks to the same if they cannot, and enormous costs. If their society and the culture which forms it, can be only just so open only so natural (not showing the seams and gunmetal beneath). If their industry and wealth can provision the Potlatch feast. If the air of their cities can be clean enough for men and women to run and jump at the highest human ability. The Olympics at end posits and asks whether or not we believe there is even the mere idea of pan human endeavor, of recognizable human excellence. If there is a plane of humanity call it human being which sits above the localized and angry strife of everyday fear and worry from which all things emanate. S