Some Punditry

I'm not sure whether anyone would disagree with this, or whether it is completely uncontroversial, but I haven't really heard much about it either way. If you were a Democrat, you'd probably be rooting for Newt Gingrich, wouldn't you? Whatever problems or liabilities Romney has, the notion that we'd be swearing in "President Gingrich" in 2013 is inconceivable.

"illin'"-gate

I think the issue isn't whether "illin'" means something bad or good, since it's well-attested both ways, much like "bad" itself. The important distinction, to me, maps onto something like the "ser/estar" distinction in Spanish. In that case, "illin'" would be an "estar"-type word, and "wack" would be a "ser"-type word. If I say you're "illin'" I'm referring to your current state, but if I say you're "wack" I am referring to your essence. I don't think the two are directly substitutable and therefore, they are not synonyms.

Observations

I haven't been posting much, so this is an appropriate time for a miscellaneous fluff post.

1. I still can't make a comment on my own blog when signed in, I thought maybe that was a temporary glitch but I don't know what's wrong.

2. People always seem to think jokes about people from rural areas or the South having sex with their brother or sister is the funniest thing ever, but actually it isn't very funny. I don't have an ethical compunction against it, it's just cliched and played out. Tired, if you will.

3. Friday Night Lights is an incredibly addictive show but the quality isn't especially high. It's kind of hokey.

4. Ray Price's honky tonk material is superior to the later "countrypolitan" stuff, but the latter isn't bad.

5. I noticed that my rate of correctly guessing which ear bud went in which ear was incredibly high (they're marked 'L' and 'R') so I deduced that there must be some difference between them that was tipping me off. Indeed there is, they're shaped differently. Once I recognized this, I began to determine which bud went in which ear by consciously noting the shape, and at first my success rate was far lower than it was when the shape served as an unconscious cue. Now I know which is which, but the phenomenon was interesting.

6. Related to '5', what always amazed me about the Clever Hans story is how everyone took it as a debunking of the animal really being so clever, when it seems what he was actually doing is at least as impressive as knowing math.

Like A Rolling Stone

Here's something incredible:

April 11, 2005 - In, Like A Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads, Greil Marcus recounts the recording sessions for the 1965 Dylan hit.

Read an Excerpt

Recording Session 2 for "Like a Rolling Stone" / 16 June 1965, Studio A / Columbia Records, New York City

With Michael Bloomfield, guitar, Joe Macho, Jr., bass, Bobby Gregg, drums. Al Kooper is at the organ; Paul Griffin is at the piano; Bruce Langhorne is playing tambourine. Al Gorgoni and Frank Owens are not present.

Rehearsal take 1 — 1.53

Dylan leads the group into the song with a strong, strummed theme on his electric rhythm guitar. Paul Griffin has a loose, free bounce on the piano; Kooper immediately has a high, clear tone. Dylan stops it: "Hey, man, you know, I can't, I mean, I'm just me, you know. I can't, really, man, I'm just playing the song. I know — I don't want to scream it, that's all I know — " He takes up the theme again; Bloomfield and Gregg come in. The feeling is right all around; a rich ensemble is coming together.

Hoarsely, Dylan starts the second verse — "Never turned around to see the frowns" — and you can feel Bloomfield finding his groove. "You never understood that it ain't no good" — and it breaks off, just when it was getting exciting. From the control booth: "Bob, just you alone, so you can hear what your guitar sounds like, on this amplifier. Only you, please, for a minute." Dylan plays the lead-in, again, the rhythm behind "Once upon a time," a small, twirling dance around something that is yet to appear, and you begin to hear how the whole song is structured around those four words, that idea: how the purpose of the song is to make a stage for them. "That's enough," says the voice from the booth. "We can play it back for you."

Quote of the Day

"We as Americans have a right to a speedy trial, not indefinite detention," said Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.). "We as Americans have a right to a jury of our peers, which I would argue is ... not enlisted or military personnel sitting in a jury. You cannot search our businesses or place of business or our homes without probable cause under the Bill of Rights."
"You cannot be deprived of your freedom or your property without due process of law, and that, I would say, is not indefinite detention," added Kirk, who voted for the bill. "I would actually argue that no statute and no Senate and no House can take these rights away from you."

Well, that's a relief.

Stasis

I've said this myself, and nobody seems to agree with me. '80s nostalgia began not half way through the '90s. The first decade of the 2000s is over, and I have no idea what looks quaint or kitchy about the '90s--not enough has changed. Watch "The Wedding Singer," and then think about what the version of that about the '90s would be. Impossible.

Since 1992, as the technological miracles and wonders have propagated and the political economy has transformed, the world has become radically and profoundly new. (And then there’s the miraculous drop in violent crime in the United States, by half.) Here is what’s odd: during these same 20 years, the appearance of the world (computers, TVs, telephones, and music players aside) has changed hardly at all, less than it did during any 20-year period for at least a century. The past is a foreign country, but the recent past—the 00s, the 90s, even a lot of the 80s—looks almost identical to the present. This is the First Great Paradox of Contemporary Cultural History.

http://www.vanityfair.com/style/2012/01/prisoners-of-style-201201

UPDATE: The sketch comedy show "Portlandia" puts forward the proposition that Portland, OR is stuck in the '90s. Since I spent most of the previous decade in Portland and other parts of Oregon, maybe the world has moved on and I didn't notice.

Juxtaposed Quotes

‎Kristin Snicklefritz sez (hold your applause until the end): “After taking a good nights rest and reflecting on all the debate over property destruction, Anarchists, and the movement as whole, my current conclusion is that those decrying the property destruction, those demonizing Anarchists, those holding up signs and chanting “peace” like they’re at a damn A.N.S.W.E.R. organized protest march (with some subsequently committing violent acts against -people- to “maintain” that “peace”)… have no concept of what is going on. Without Anarchist methodology and organization, this movement a.) would not exist; and b.) if it existed would not be this successful; and c.) would not have gone from 0 to Port of Oakland shut-down in less than one month. I’ve heard cries for the Anarchists to leave, that if they want to “go against the movement”, they should start their own movement. Something that has been echoed by liberal organizers in movements over the past 10 years, since the Anarchists mobilized against the WTO. Well, they did start their own movement. Ladies and gentlemen, this is it. And now they are ironically being told to leave. Alright, but if they leave, they would like to take everything they brought with them to this movement. Direct Democracy through the General Assembly, the Consensus process, Facilitation, most of the proposals we all vote on in the GA, Food Not Bombs kitchen organization, communalism, communal infrastructure, a rejection of state authority to be able to police the occupied space, THE TAKING OF SPACE, protest medics, the book shields, taking to the streets without a permit, the chant “Who’s streets? Our streets!”, Security training, safer spaces, a refusal to liaison with the government by the government’s hierarchical terms and process, etc, etc, etc. Pretty much everything that makes this movement what it is, what makes it so very different from the liberal psuedo-movements we’ve witnessed over the past decade, what makes so people excited about it – Anarchists. If you want them to leave – Anarchists, Anti-capitalists, anti-authoritarians – they will take everything they’ve brought with them to the table out of this co-opted movement. Then we can all watch the movement cave in on itself in a matter of a week.”

But if militancy approaches work, it cannot be assimilated to it. Work is the activity on which the dominant world is based, it produces and reproduces capital and capitalist relations of production; militancy is only a minor activity. By definition, the results and effectiveness of work are not measured by the satisfaction of the worker, but they have the advantage of being economically measurable. Commodity production, by means of currency and profit, creates its standards and instruments of measure. It has its own logic and rationality, which it imposes on producer and consumer. By contrast, the effectiveness of militancy, "the advancement of the revolution", still hasn't found its measuring instruments. Their control evades militants and their leaders. Assuming, of course, that the latter still worry about the revolution ! So they are reduced to counting the material produced and distributed, the levels of recruitment, the number of actions undertaken; obviously none of these measure what they pretend to. Naturally enough from this they come to imagine that what is measurable is an end in itself. Imagine a capitalist who could not find a means of evaluating the value of his production, and so settled for measuring the quantity of oil consumed by machines. Conscientiously, workers would empty oil into the gutter in order to produce an increase in... production. Incapable of pursuing its proclaimed goal, militancy only gives itself the name of work.