Civilization v. Celebrity
Foul language warning, though nothing you won't expect if you know who Mike Tyson is.
I have never seen a celebrity called out like that before. Not just any celebrity, either, but a former heavyweight champion of the world who is a demonstrated violent felon.
This host has some guts.
More Richard Thompson
A version of a Child ballad, King Henry V's Conquest of France, making a little fast and loose with history:
A version of another Child ballad, the ubiquitous "Cruel Mother" ballad; this one fills out most of each verse with "Edinburgh; Stirling for aye; the Bonnie St. Johnstone lies fair upon Tay":
A version of another Child ballad, the ubiquitous "Cruel Mother" ballad; this one fills out most of each verse with "Edinburgh; Stirling for aye; the Bonnie St. Johnstone lies fair upon Tay":
More on Trash
Skip ahead a few minutes, and you can hear an Oxford scholar talking about a hundred-year old find of trash that includes, among other things, lost sayings attributed to Jesus in the early period.
In a hundred years of work, they've gotten through a very small percentage of the trash. Old copies of the Iliad, tempting fragments...
The author's top three finds:
#3: A copy of the Book of Revelations' passage with the Number of the Beast, the earliest known copy we have... which gives a different number.
#2: A non-Homeric version of the story of the Iliad in which the Greeks lose the Trojan war.
#1: Turns out one document that they found in the trash mounds over, and over, and over, and over... well, let's call it a "romance novel."
In a hundred years of work, they've gotten through a very small percentage of the trash. Old copies of the Iliad, tempting fragments...
The author's top three finds:
#3: A copy of the Book of Revelations' passage with the Number of the Beast, the earliest known copy we have... which gives a different number.
#2: A non-Homeric version of the story of the Iliad in which the Greeks lose the Trojan war.
#1: Turns out one document that they found in the trash mounds over, and over, and over, and over... well, let's call it a "romance novel."
28 weeks later
The Ebola epidemic, as expected, is getting worse: about 3,600 infected and 2,000 dead so far. More ominous is the even more complete breakdown of a medical system that could only have been described a rudimentary even before 79 healthcare workers died of the disease. Hysterical rage is setting in:
“A US federal air marshal has been quarantined after being attacked by a man with a syringe, suspected to be containing an Ebola-spreading substance, at the Lagos international airport,” read a report out of Nigeria in the International Business Times on Tuesday.
Today's outrage in education
A young piano prodigy's parents would prefer to leave her in public school in Washington, D.C., but then she'd have to give up the piano competitions she keeps traveling to--while maintaining stellar grades--in order to avoid exposing her parents to truancy charges. So now she's home schooling, a solution that suits no one involved.
Retirement and satisfaction
Statistics about Americans' retirement planning have a tendency to be a bit alarming. This AEI article by Andrew Biggs and Sylvester Schieber takes an interesting approach, which is to examine the effect of children on retirement savings. Apparently there was some recent scare-mongering about a discrepancy between the savings of families with children and those without. Biggs and Schieber note that families with children spend a lot while the kids are at home or in college, then cut way back. They don't drop their standard of living, though, so much as keep consuming what they always did, not counting what the kids consumed. Parents save, therefore, not to permit themselves to adopt the standard of living common among childless people with equal income, but to preserve roughly the same standard of living they were used to, which of course makes sense.
The childless Texan99 household always adopted a standard of living significantly below that of my colleagues, even those with children. Apparently they weren't as fanatically focused on retirement as I was; many of them seemed terrified of the idea of retirement, to be truthful. In any case, if we get along in our working years at about the level we'd like to preserve in our retirement years, we'll be able to save a lot more than most people think is ordinarily prudent for whatever income we have. It's not about the income, anyway, it's about getting used to whatever standard of living the income permits. People are remarkably flexible that way. The big thing is to be uninterested in how other people live; even if their incomes are comparable, their circumstances often are not, depending on how large a family they choose to raise and how prudent they are about emergencies and the future.
The childless Texan99 household always adopted a standard of living significantly below that of my colleagues, even those with children. Apparently they weren't as fanatically focused on retirement as I was; many of them seemed terrified of the idea of retirement, to be truthful. In any case, if we get along in our working years at about the level we'd like to preserve in our retirement years, we'll be able to save a lot more than most people think is ordinarily prudent for whatever income we have. It's not about the income, anyway, it's about getting used to whatever standard of living the income permits. People are remarkably flexible that way. The big thing is to be uninterested in how other people live; even if their incomes are comparable, their circumstances often are not, depending on how large a family they choose to raise and how prudent they are about emergencies and the future.
1,000 years of pop music
Sumer is icumen in, lhude sing, cuccu. Here, summer is on its way out, finally, and we're looking forward to the first day we can open the windows with about the same enthusiasm that our forbears in England looked forward to the warm season.
"Sing it loud, Cuckoo." That word lhude, according to the linguistic podcasts I'm enjoying this week, is related to the one found in Ludwig and Ludovicus (a/k/a Louis, or Clovis), and in that context means not so much "loud" as "famous." All those names mean "famous leader," but were transformed from a title to a proper name, much as though we started to name kids "Boss."
These linguistic lectures adopt a leisurely pace. I came in at around lecture 28, by which point the topic had advanced only to 5th-century Roman Britain, when the locals were still speaking some form of Celtic or Latin, and Old English was merely a glimmer in the eye of some European shore-hugging Anglo-Saxon-Jute-Frisian types between modern-day Denmark and Holland who were beginning to feel pressure to relocate somewhere across the water. Now I think I'll go back and start with Lecture One.
"Sumer Is Icumen In" is not Old English. Though it's one of the oldest preserved pieces of English music, it dates from the 13th century, post-Norman Conquest, and therefore features Middle English. If there's already a French influence in there, though, I can't see it; I'll have to await that lecture in the series. Maybe it was a traditional song and therefore something of a linguistic throwback.
Ezra Pound parodied the song in a winter version: "Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us, An ague hath my ham." In his Grand Oratorio "The Seasonings," P.D.Q. Bach rendered it as "Summer is a cumin seed."
YouTube has the whole Richard Thompson concert, which looks worth a try. I may spend all of today listening to things and hardly getting anything read at all. Update: Oh, yeah! This is long, but well worth listening to, if only for the verison of "Oops, I Did It Again," madrigal style.
"Sing it loud, Cuckoo." That word lhude, according to the linguistic podcasts I'm enjoying this week, is related to the one found in Ludwig and Ludovicus (a/k/a Louis, or Clovis), and in that context means not so much "loud" as "famous." All those names mean "famous leader," but were transformed from a title to a proper name, much as though we started to name kids "Boss."
These linguistic lectures adopt a leisurely pace. I came in at around lecture 28, by which point the topic had advanced only to 5th-century Roman Britain, when the locals were still speaking some form of Celtic or Latin, and Old English was merely a glimmer in the eye of some European shore-hugging Anglo-Saxon-Jute-Frisian types between modern-day Denmark and Holland who were beginning to feel pressure to relocate somewhere across the water. Now I think I'll go back and start with Lecture One.
"Sumer Is Icumen In" is not Old English. Though it's one of the oldest preserved pieces of English music, it dates from the 13th century, post-Norman Conquest, and therefore features Middle English. If there's already a French influence in there, though, I can't see it; I'll have to await that lecture in the series. Maybe it was a traditional song and therefore something of a linguistic throwback.
Ezra Pound parodied the song in a winter version: "Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us, An ague hath my ham." In his Grand Oratorio "The Seasonings," P.D.Q. Bach rendered it as "Summer is a cumin seed."
YouTube has the whole Richard Thompson concert, which looks worth a try. I may spend all of today listening to things and hardly getting anything read at all. Update: Oh, yeah! This is long, but well worth listening to, if only for the verison of "Oops, I Did It Again," madrigal style.
What Are The Chances?
Racketeering charges?
Perhaps there is some strange computer virus that selectively trashes records inconvenient to incumbents, like the “glitch” that erased part of Nixon’s tapes. How else to explain the fact that this is the fourth announcement of an ever-expanding computer calamity connected to Lois Lerner to emerge from the IRS? First it was just Lerner’s computer that was affected, then those of her closest co-conspirators, then “no more than twenty” computers, and now an ever larger batch of burned out workstations.Here was Remy singing about it when it was just seven hard drives...
Even more interesting, the IRS has apparently not yet shared this newest tidbit with Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, the distinguished and courageous jurist presiding over Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
Not All of Us
I won't be looking up any such stolen naked images, and I don't expect any of you to do it either.
A Spirited Woman
I've slapped a boyfriend across the face, hard, and more than once, and shoved and struck too. Now, you might say these were extraordinary circumstances, or that because I'm a fairly small woman striking a much larger man it's not so bad, but the fact remains that if the tables were turned, such behavior would be considered appalling.Your grandpa was right. Sometimes the only way to get a man to listen to you is to knock him upside the head. That's true for other men, too: once in a while, a man just needs a good knock on his door.
When I sounded out some friends, several of them admitted to lashing out physically at a boyfriend, and while no one was exactly pleased with themselves over it, it also didn't seem like the Big Deal it obviously would be were a boyfriend doing the same thing. I can't speak for others, but in some ways, I feel like violence was encouraged in me; people always found my temper, with its foot-stomping, drink-tossing, vase-smashing theatrics, to be hilarious, largely because I am so small and because it comes out so rarely. Like my grandmother, I was "a spitfire," my grandpa always said approvingly. As a result, I didn't work to curb it as I should have, probably feeling in some way that it even denoted "spunk" or something, and doubtless there was some half-baked, unacknowledged idea of "lady's prerogative" at work, a double-standard I'd consciously have mocked.
The double-standard is wise and proper, though, because if he knocks you back he could kill you.
Separate but what?
If anyone was hoping that the WaPo editorial page would get more respectable with the advent of Jeff Bezos, this article is bound to prove a disappointment. Andre Perry argues that it is an important function of the public schools, at least on a par with the task of educating children, to provide jobs to disadvantaged teachers. Thus, movements to limit teacher tenure are a stab in the heart of black professionals.
This argument has always seemed implicit in the attitudes of many progressives, but I believe this is the first time I've seen it made openly.
This argument has always seemed implicit in the attitudes of many progressives, but I believe this is the first time I've seen it made openly.
Canto
Via AEI:
Lending and spending with burning ire
The people cannot control the government
Ex-Im! Fall apart! The center must not hold;
Set anarchy loose upon the world
The blood-dimmed tide be loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence be drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of cronyist intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely de-authorization is at hand.
Kartoffelsalat! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of Irish sand;
A plate with potatoes, red onion and chive,
Bacon bits and warm vegetable broth,
Prepared in Germany, while all about it
Wind shadows of shameless export subsidies.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of scarcity
Will come to haunt my people in a faraway land,
As yam and tater, taxpayer-financed,
Slouch toward Munich, never to return.
Lending and spending with burning ire
The people cannot control the government
Ex-Im! Fall apart! The center must not hold;
Set anarchy loose upon the world
The blood-dimmed tide be loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence be drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of cronyist intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely de-authorization is at hand.
Kartoffelsalat! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of Irish sand;
A plate with potatoes, red onion and chive,
Bacon bits and warm vegetable broth,
Prepared in Germany, while all about it
Wind shadows of shameless export subsidies.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of scarcity
Will come to haunt my people in a faraway land,
As yam and tater, taxpayer-financed,
Slouch toward Munich, never to return.
A Reliable Alternative Energy Source
Trash.
“A good number to remember is that three tons of waste contains as much energy as one ton of fuel oil… so there is a lot of energy in waste,” Göran Skoglund, spokesperson for Öresundskraft, one of the country’s leading energy companies, explains in the short video below. That means that the two million tons of waste incinerated each year produces around 670,000 tons worth of fuel oil energy. Sweden even helps to clean up other countries in the EU by importing their trash and burning it.
Thanks again, Lord Keynes
Japan struggles with the stubborn refusal of its citizens to agree with the approved economic theories:
The world's third-largest economy contracted at an annualized rate of 7.1 percent in the April-June quarter, according to updated government figures Monday. The initial estimate released earlier this month said the economy contracted 6.8 percent. Business investment fell more than twice as much as first estimated.
The economy's contraction was expected after Japan increased its sales tax from 5 percent to 8 percent on April 1.
* * *
Surveys show the public opposes a further tax increase, though increases are needed to counter ballooning public debt, which now is more than twice the size of the economy.
The revised data Monday show business investment fell more than twice as much as estimated before, or 5.1 percent, while private residential spending sank 10.4 percent in annual terms.
"Theoretically, there should be no impact from the consumption tax increase on corporate spending or long-term corporate planning, but a large number of Japanese corporations seemed to see a large impact from the hike on final demand," said Junko Nishioka, an economist at RBS Japan Securities in Tokyo.
Can fish think?
Another post from the consistently interesting Phenomena site (the source of Not Exactly Rocket Science weekly updates), about fish send signals to eels about tunnels where prey may be hiding and can be flushed out, to the mutual advantage of the fish and the eels. It's charmingly entitled "When Your Prey's in a Hole and You Don't Have a Pole, Use a Moray."
The judicious mind
Phenomenon blogger Virginia Hughes, facing jury duty, has done some research into the role of stress in making us excessively judgmental. She concludes that a prospective juror would do well to embrace relaxation techniques, which seems sensible. It also occurs to me, however, that if we want people to judge us with calmness and temperance, we would do well not to put them under stress. Many of civilization's proudest achievements are the ways we signal to strangers that we are not necessarily an immediate threat.
Grid parity
That's the PC term for comparing the cost of conventional electrical power and PV (that's the PC term for what we troglodytes call solar power). A new study cited at Greenbuilders claims that a handful of states, including Texas, my Texas, already have reached grid parity, with more on the way. The calculation includes heavy federal subsidies set to expire in 2016.
Casa Texan99 is interested in solar, notwithstanding our climate skeptic character flaws, because we enjoy independence and because there are more reasons to favor renewable energy sources than mixed-up anxieties about carbon poisoning. That is, I don't consider CO2 a toxin, but that doesn't mean mining and burning fossil fuels produce no unpleasant effects of any kind. On the whole, I believe they produce benefits far outweighing the costs, but I'd move to solar power for my home in a heartbeat if I thought it made economic sense.
As my husband points out, though, this study, like most, glosses over durability and the time it takes to recoup upfront capital costs. From what he hears the solar panels are getting cheaper, but they aren't lasting the advertised 20 years, either. In some states, the upfront capital investment is addressed by leasing arrangements, but a few states, like Florida and South Carolina, have outlawed these. In South Carolina, for instance, public utilities so far have succeeded in arguing that a company that installs solar panels on a homeowner's roof and then charges them for the power produced is a utility that must jump through all the usual monopolistic hoops.
This Grist article points out that our society can be unpredictable about which emerging industries get the red carpet treatment, in ways that don't necessarily line up with our usual assumptions about libertarian trends:
Casa Texan99 is interested in solar, notwithstanding our climate skeptic character flaws, because we enjoy independence and because there are more reasons to favor renewable energy sources than mixed-up anxieties about carbon poisoning. That is, I don't consider CO2 a toxin, but that doesn't mean mining and burning fossil fuels produce no unpleasant effects of any kind. On the whole, I believe they produce benefits far outweighing the costs, but I'd move to solar power for my home in a heartbeat if I thought it made economic sense.
As my husband points out, though, this study, like most, glosses over durability and the time it takes to recoup upfront capital costs. From what he hears the solar panels are getting cheaper, but they aren't lasting the advertised 20 years, either. In some states, the upfront capital investment is addressed by leasing arrangements, but a few states, like Florida and South Carolina, have outlawed these. In South Carolina, for instance, public utilities so far have succeeded in arguing that a company that installs solar panels on a homeowner's roof and then charges them for the power produced is a utility that must jump through all the usual monopolistic hoops.
This Grist article points out that our society can be unpredictable about which emerging industries get the red carpet treatment, in ways that don't necessarily line up with our usual assumptions about libertarian trends:
It’s been interesting to watch this play out in light of the Wild West atmosphere that so often surrounds technological breakthroughs. I’ve been reading American Odyssey, Robert Conot’s history of Detroit, and I’m continually surprised at how easy cars had it in the first few decades of their creation. They killed people left and right, but it was was years before “drivers’ licenses,” “insurance,” or “parking tickets” came on the scene. Airbnb, Uber, and Lyft were able to muscle into long-established monopolies and get comfortable before facing any major pushback, and the first major online retailer, Amazon, was able to go nearly two decades without charging the sales taxes that brick and mortar stores had to.
It’s not that this kind of preferential treatment for new technology is fair. And to be sure, solar has gotten some breaks over the years as well, particularly at the federal level. Solar may have widespread appeal to everyone from hippies to libertarians. Yet it’s still having to fight to claw its way into a surprising number of markets, while other industries get to zoom ahead.I wouldn't want to minimize the headaches the "distributed power" causes for electric utility companies. I've been involved in a dozen or more power utility bankruptcies, and the administrative nightmares caused by allowing people to force utilities to run their meters backwards when their co-gen power was being produced were always a big part of the intractable disputes. But it does seem as though we make it unnecessarily difficult for people to generate some of their own power. I was pleased to see that South Carolina appears to have taken some steps recently to reduce the barriers to solar leasing.
Ghostbusters
It's the 30th anniversary right now. For a week or so, you can see it in theaters.
I took the family today. I hadn't seen it in ages. It's a surprisingly good movie. Almost everything that happens on screen is beautifully wrapped up in building out the plot and its universe. Well worth a few minutes, if you happen to have some time in the next little while.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)