Guest Blogging

I’m guest blogging at Nashville is Talking this weekend… wish me luck!

More Please…

Mindy Smith is at the center of my non-classical music universe right now, but I fear overplaying her two albums… who’s got some recommendations for some comparable Country/Americana/whatever you want to call it for me to get to help diversify my country holdings without going into the pop/campy territory?

I’m leaning towards K.D. Lang and the Recliners, as I already am playing her Hymns of the 49th Parallel to death (by the way, the cover of Neil Young’s “Helpless” is utterly breathtaking). Ooh, I have just discovered Kate Walsh… not technically Country, but I feel an impulse buy coming on anyway. Also, ITunes recommends The Wailin’ Jennys and Rosie Thomas, and the clips of both of them sounds quite nice… who knew that “other listeners have bought” box could actually be useful? Anyone else have any other picks?

On Pork Legislation

What do we make of the fact that our Iraq bill is loaded with spending measures for all sorts of projects for our Representatives home districts? Dana Milbank pokes fun at the whole thing, but it should be obvious to anyone who has taken even the most basic introductory course on American Politics that this is always going to happen when Congress passes a big bill. Despite the noise being made by the President, it is very hard to justify killing a bill with a popular main theme just because the President doesn’t like giving aid to strawberry growers who have been hit by a rough couple of growing years.

Not that one suspects this is the President’s sole motive for wanting to veto the bill. he has made it clear that he does not support the actual bill either, and so he seems to be using the “shotgu” approach to attacking the credibility of the bill.

I wonder if there is really anything dismaying about any of the tactics being used by either side in this political fight. Congress is daring the President to veto a bill that funds Iraq troops, and funds lots of interest groups across the US, thus irritating an even larger segment of the population. The President is opposed to the bill and calling out the Congress for catering to special interest. It may seem weird to look at this and say, “see, the system works.” But I think that is precisely what this shows. Senator DeMint was outraged:

This offended the patriotism of a few senators, such as Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), who called on his fellow citizens to “stand up as Americans, not as spinach growers, not as milk producers, not as tree farmers.”

Apparently that the interests of special interest are only good for America when they serve Mr. DeMint’s favorite interest groups. More to the point, people aren’t forced to leave their particularities and their biases at the door when they participate in politics… it’s up to negotiation to filter out the truly egregious stuff, and it’s up to institutions, and not individuals, to approximate the public good in the political process. It’s up to individuals to accept the results as legitimate even when their interests lose in any particular instance. The only truly dangerous practices of politics in these sorts of disputes are ones that do damage to the rules of procedure and filters that are supposed to approximate the public good in the first place. That’s why today’s testimony in the USA firing scandal is of much greater import as news than the debate over Iraq allocations.

Can’t… contain…. excitment….

On finishing books

An interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education on finishing great books that are really long. this is a topic I am deeply concerned about, as I have about 500 pages left of Against the Day, 400 pages left of Don Quixote, and I have Anna Karenna but haven’t even started it. Not to mention wanting to reread The Spirit of the Laws, Politics and Vision, and hopefully get my hands on and read Tocqueville Between Two Worlds. Can it all really be done? Does it matter on some deep, cultural level? How much of this pressure to finish is our own and how much comes from wanting to impress others? The article concludes that the latter is clearly unhealthy, but the former problem is a much more difficult one to wrestle with.

What if we want to pressure ourselves to finish books that we’ve started? To pay better attention? To soak more enjoyment out of them? How do we handle this pressure? And ultimately, are the skills cultivated in order to create the necessary motivation to do what is best for us learned through a revelations about the experiences of reading by others who force us to see it? While I agree that snobbery is not helpful, a little pressure in the direction of getting people to sit down with some quality reading strikes me as a good thing. I’m going to finish my books, don’t give up on me, and I won’t give up on you either.

Former Jihadist on 60 Minutes

This is a pretty interesting video on last weekend’s 60 Minutes. Anyone know if we can embed CBS video onto blogs?

Shakespeare, Power, and Evil

This article is fantastic. Let me know if you almost broke into laughter at the thought of Shakespeare in a Clintonian accent when he recites the lines form Macbeth. I have always been fond of Henry V myself… as someone who has always been slower to come around to understanding his responsibilities than most, I can always relate to Prince Hal, and dream of one day having the same retort that Henry has to the Dauphin’s messenger. As I remember it, it goes like this:

And we understand him well, how hath come o’er us with our wilder days

not measuring what use we make of them

we never valued this poor seat of England, and thus, living hence,

did give ourselves to a barbarous license

that men are merriest when they are from home.

But tell you the Dauphin that I will keep my state, be like a King,

and show my sale of greatness when I do rouse me in my throne of France.

For I have laid by my majesty and plodded like a man for working days

But I will rise with so full a glory that I shall dazzle all the eyes of France,

Yea strike the Dauphin blind to look on us.

My recollection of the Kenneth Branaugh version is that he edits down this rejoinder by Henry… that always irked me because I love this part so much…

Anyway, since this is a new site, I thought I’d try to make more appeals for interactivity. What’s your favorite Shakespeare play? Who is your favorite character (Edmund the Bastard from King Lear gets an honorable mention on my list of favorites)? What do you think Shakespeare has taught you?

Landon Donovan 3, Ecuador 1

So THAT’S what the “import” button does!

So, I have now successfully imported all of my posts from both of the last two iterations of Cows and Graveyards! I didn’t even know that was possible, but I now have no use for Typepad and their overcharge-osity. I will be deleting the old sites in four days time just for any stragglers who may be out there. I have to say, I’m liking the WordPress so far.

Keep on Data Mining in the Free World

Despite its obvious flaws and nightmare stories that it generates, I think some sort of data mining operation like TIDE has the possibility to be a significant aid in rooting out terrorist and organized crime associates in the future, and, if managed properly, and if the technology is allowed to be further developed and refined, it could be a fantastic crime-fighting tool.

 However, programs like TIDE need to be accompanied by a reasonable amount of oversight so that they are not employed for paranoid or political purposes.  In this regard, going all the way back to FDR’s questionable uses of the FBI on critics of some of his policies,  we ought to be skeptical… not necessarily of the technology or the people working in law enforcement who are trying to get it to work effectively to help them do their jobs, but of the political leaders who can command it to serve ends that are less than acceptable.