Open thread 11/3/21
I don’t like this sort of music at all, although I’m aware it takes enormous skill. But this is an absolutely astounding human story, and I hope to watch the documentary Beato talks about here:
RIP.
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
are you really saying you don’t like jazz at all?
I certainly love his music and am also very interested in the documentary. I had read about his death and illness the other day and was curious about his comeback. I’ll seek out the documentary. The mysteries of brain function fascinates me.
Great video. Thanks for posting.
One of many things I don’t understand about electric guitar is how someone can have a unique “tone.” George Benson even mentions Martino’s tone in the interview featured on this clip. When I heard the two Martino clips Beato played I knew I had heard those recordings of Martino and recognized his playing.
I understand how brass and reed players can have a unique tone (I can almost always pick Miles Davis and Paul Desmond out when I hear one of their songs), human mouths differ, but how does that work with plucking strings?
I know there are a lot of alternatives with the mechanics; the size and shape of the body, the type of pickups, how the amp dials are set… But it seems like there is something more there, otherwise Benson or Beato could just use the same guitar with the same settings and match Martino’s tone*.
*Obviously, matching his ability is a whole, different matter, and nearly impossible!
If anyone is interested in amazing, jazz guitarists who had to reinvent themselves after a physical tragedy check out Django Reinhardt. Some claim he basically invented the idea of guitar as a lead instrument in jazz*. Like Martino, Reinhardt established himself as an impressive, amazing player who garnered attention from other guitarists, then he was badly injured in a fire, losing the use of two of the fingers on his fret hand!** So, that means it’s basically impossible to play guitar again, let alone play guitar at a high level. But, like Martino, Reinhardt somehow learned a completely new technique for playing and was able to re-establish himself again as the leading guitarist of his era.
But don’t take my word for it. Here’s what some guitarists you may have heard of have to say about Reinhardt:
*If you see any black and white footage/photos of jazz bands in the ’10s, ’20s, ’30s and ’40s, even big bands, if there is a guitar player he is playing rhythm. Strumming chords.
**Another guitarist who made a shift after damaging his fret fingers; Malcolm J. Rebennack Jr. You probably know him as Dr. John (“Right Place, Wrong Time”). Up until age 19 Dr. John was a guitarist. Then his ring finger was damaged in a gunfight during a particularly exciting gig. So he learned to play piano and that’s how we mostly know his music today.
IMO, the highest praise a musician – or someone in any field for that matter – can receive is that from his/her high-level peers. Jeff Beck, Les Paul, and Garcia are is good as it gets.
One of my closest life-long friends is a skilled multi-intrumentalist who still plays in several bands. As far back as high school, one of our gang tagged him “The master of the stringed instrument”. Now retired, Hig made his living – and a good one it was – as a masterful luthier who did a lot of first-call work on high-end vintage instruments. You would know the names of many whose instruments he repaired.
In bands, Hig played mostly country, country rock, and bluegrass and he spends most of his time these days on steel (as he calls it, “the electric table”). He is a highly skilled acoustic flatpicker and can twang with the best of them on his self-built solid-body electric.
We were talking about Jeff Beck once (I am a huge fan) and Hig said with a note of awe in his voice “I just like to listen to the sounds he gets from the instrument”.
I believe yesterday demonstrates that, even in regions understood to be very blue, basic, conservative principles can win. That’s good news. There really are a lot of us out there. Likely a majority. Possibly a significant majority.
The bad news is the Republican party is not a valid opposition to the Left. There are good people who run under the Republican banner; DeSantis, Walker, Paul, Cotton, and they are not shy about stating their beliefs and running on them. But the party? It either falls prey to the myth the Left and media portray that Americans are obsessed with race and gender and illegal immigration, OR the party simply isn’t interested in Federalism and the Constitution and is in on the grift.
Until mainstream Americans have a party dedicated to basic, American, Constitutional principles turnout and election results will continue to be chaotic. Which, sadly, means the slow slide towards Leftism continues.
Yeah, Pat Martino. I am old enough and a guitarist to know of him. The story is indeed amazing.
Call the Republican Party what you want.
At the moment (and it may be a long one) it—or rather, principled elements of it (and there are many)—provides a serious, practical alternative to the Party of Personal, Social and National Destruction (otherwise known as the Democratic Party).
IOW, you can vote Democratic, you can vote Libertarian, you can vote “Write in” or you can vote Republican. (Or you can choose not to vote at all.)
And one could argue that it doesn’t make all that much of a difference…except that such an opinion is becoming less and less tenable.
Clearly, however, there are more than some—including all those registered Democrats in VA who voted for Youngkin—who would (heartily) disagree.
(I imagine, though, that some diehards would INSIST that Youngkin DID NOT WIN the election as much as McAuliffe LOST IT. Well, sure! They should go ahead and “discuss it”. It’s—still—a free country. Still.)
Martino is one of those fantastic jazz guitarists that I’m ashamed to say (as a reasonably accomplished guitarist) I didn’t really know much about until a few years ago. I could talk all day about the various rock and metal virtuoso shredders, but outside of those genres I knew very little. I’m working to remedy that.
Last night’s results certainly mitigated a bit of my cynicism for the future of this country. If Republicans can still cover the margin of (D) voter fraud and thereby pull out a win, there’s still a little hope left in the world. Not everyone is completely insane. It’s just that things have to go horribly wrong for a long time under Democrat stewardship for enough voters to wake up. It’s just that it’s a slow learning process for a lot of middle class suburbanite moms who are evidently easily destracted by the various lefty moral panics ejaculated by the mainstream media and on social media.
Scott,
Regarding rock guitarists, Beck is my favorite, although, except for the first decade of his career he’s more aptly in the “jazz” genre. I guess that’s why they call it, “fusion.”
Thing about Beck is he seemed to spring, fully formed, like Athena, onto the scene. I don’t recall him ever, not being incredible. With guitarists like Clapton, or Garcia one can see their development through the years. But Beck? Bam! He seemed able to do it all from day one.
And, unlike those others, he hardly seems to play, even in his heyday. Cat would take time off and build hot rods, then decide to do a gig and a week later he’d be on stage sounding as awesome as ever. And he does stuff I’ve never heard most rock guitarists do. I think I’ve heard him say he rarely practices. He seems born to the instrument.
Interesting side note, Brian Setzer* is also a huge gearhead and mechanic. Interesting that the two of them find solace in such a physical, complex and gritty hobby that is often unkind to one’s fingers.
*Has any other guitarist ever led a Big Band?
Barry Meislin,
I’m not stating the Republican Party is not preferable to the Dems, but we have to be honest about the facts on the ground. Winning is what matters. It’s been 40 years since Reagan, yet many Republicans have the same, elitist attitude towards Trump that they had towards Reagan. Reagan was “a B movie actor” who was bringing all these, “weird, Bible quoting Southerners” into the party.
I should have put it this way in my first comment:
Youngkin’s victory (and Trump’) shows that populism is still…. popular. But I see the Republican party very, very reluctant go embrace populism. It seems antithetical to their very nature. Blue collar workers. Small town folk. Farmers. Bible believing Christians.
The Dems walk and talk like a populist party and movement. Leftists and media bias work with them to greatly exaggerate the popularity of certain political stances; transphobia, islamic phobia, critical race theory, a purported rise in white supremacy…
Dems misjudge what is popular, but they fight for what they believe is popular and work to increase the popularity of what they believe in.
What movement can you point to from Republican leadership that embraces populism? Pointing fingers and shouting when the Dems miscalculate (CRT in Public Schools) is not leadership.
Nonapod,
Sure, but look at how many things have gone wrong years, decades ago, that even the Republicans no longer fight against. It sometimes takes them decades, but the Dems eventually get their big ticket items over the line. And then the line moves and, in time, few people even remember where it used to be, let alone would vote to move it back.
During the first few moments of the video I suspected we’d hear a Jazz fusion musician … and that is pretty much where I would agree that in general “I don’t like this sort of music at all”.
Then I heard the first licks and thought, “Huh , it’s Bop-like so far. More traditional. And semi-bop is alright by me, as long as the melody line gets recognizably traced out at some point.’
And then I began thinking, ” … sounds a bit like Benson on speed” (with the base of that muted tone so identifiable with him, and with several others). And then it crossed my mind regarding mild bop flavored jazz or whatever it should be called [call it bop-pop] , to put up a link to the Green Dolphin vid of Coltrane in Berlin which is definitely, very accessible to anyone.
And then … Beato starts talking about and showing Benson, and mentions the piece by Coltrane, and I realize I have nothing to say that was not already anticipated and then stated in the portion of the presentation I had simply not yet encountered.
Re: Guitar tone…
Rufus T. Firefly:
There’s a ton of web pages on how one’s favorite electric guitarist gets tone. Santana once said that he could tell Jerry Garcia from hearing a single note. I’m not that good, but I feel I could almost. Others say that about Santana. I get that too.
Tone doesn’t just happen. As you suspect, there is much alchemy with the guitar, effects, pre-amp, amp, speakers and more. Garcia is a case in point:
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He was about purity of intent equaling the true output… what he plays the system reproduces perfectly. most players use tube power amps to ‘sag’ and compress the signal, that’s why they cost so much, solid state is “better” at staying true to input but most players use the analog/tubes to modify their sound. He used a tube preamp but a solid state 2.300 Watt McIntosh Theater stereo power amp precisely to avoid everything most players love about analog/vintage. His use of super efficient JBL D/K120 speakers could take incredible amounts of power without distorting at all… which continued this opposite of most/all others approach to sound, where the sound of the speaker distorting is something they want. Any distortion you hear from Jerry after 1969 is entirely preamp/effects/pedal based.
https://www.quora.com/What-makes-Jerry-Garcias-guitar-sound-so-different
_________________________
Of course, how someone plays matters. Garcia’s spiraling, melodic runs are a dead giveaway too.
After Garcia died, Patti Smith wrote a tribute, “Dead to the World,” to an unnamed magic musician. “Dead” for “Grateful Dead” was a clue, but the guitarist’s filigree play in the background cinched it.
Years later I read an interview where she spoke of Garcia’s importance to her. In fact for her next concert tour, she always put an empty chair on stage for Jerry.
I wondered why she was coy about liking Garcia. Perhaps because her fans then mostly hated the Dead, as I discovered in an online discussion where I advanced my theory about the song.
DNW: from the same 1960 tour (in Dusseldorf) that you referenced, here are Coltrane, Stan Getz, and Oscar Peterson doing “Hackensack”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beCGdmrP8Xc
With Peterson scatting to himself at the keyboard, like Glenn Gould. Must be a Canadian thing.
Wish we could go back to those days. Guess that makes me a Revanchist.
huxley,
You likely know Tucker Carlson and Ann Coulter are (were?) huge Deadheads and each has seen dozens (hundreds?) of concerts. It’s funny to imagine such waspy people, especially in their younger years, spinning around in a field of mud with the tie-dyed faithful at a Dead Show.
Hubert,
Gould and Peterson had so much talent their playing doesn’t even seem possible. Canada? It’s more like they came from a different planet, or galaxy!
RTF: Canadian Martians. Or maybe even…Hungarians.
Rufus T. Firefly:
I knew that about Coulter, though not Carlson.
Once Coulter even got to go backstage and hang with the Dead. The Dead epitomized the libertarian hippie spirit — not letting the government tell you every little thing to do. That was their common ground when it came to politics.
Coulter said the Dead were about freedom. She wasn’t wrong.
Reading this post ~good food for thought. Mainly a jazzbo of early jazz exclusively. Fusion was so soaring and my subjective response was similar to hearing Trance today…sorry true jazz aficionados (!) So this post put me in the mind of…contemplating Walter Becker.
Searching Becker’s style this AM I learned there were a great deal of session guitarists that Steely Dan used in production. Also, that a given guitarist’s choices in guitars can dictate or “announce” their distinctive signature playing; tone. As has been alluded to on this post feed. Learned a lot this morning. Thanks. I loved Walter. Saw them perform live—generosity meets pure genius. For decades I marveled at Don’s voice and the literate strong lyrics. Now with my Bose car speakers…it’s all about WALTER. Played bass too. Had a gazillon guitars. *PS went to Satellite and felt very stalkery….looked for age peer stranger. Will try again. Mornings?
https://youtu.be/clRq_C47S2A
Going to find Pat Martino on YouTube in remembrance
Last time I saw the Dead was on July 1, 1978 as part of Willie Nelson’s traveling 4th of July Picnic extravaganza. Venue was Arrowhead Stadium in KC, it was as hot as blazes. Typical mid-summer Missouri heat with the humidity thrown in as a bonus. They had fire hoses at either side of the stage to spray on the crowd. The bill was Willie, Waylon, Jessi Colter, Jerry Jeff Walker, and the Dead. Rednecks getting drunk and hippies getting stoned together under a merciless sun. (As a long-haired semi-redneck, I did both.) I believe the local band Missouri also played. Garcia was in fine form, he had however many tens of thousands attending that day in the palm of his hand. A great time and great memories, made even better by the fact that our seats were in the shade.
Hubert on November 3, 2021 at 2:30 pm said:
In a sense we can, and in so doing experience a kind of abstracted pleasure more or less free of the diminishing tumults and broils that loomed in some of those historical contexts.
As I implied, my own tastes are too mainstream to go way deep into bop where nothing recognizable exists any longer; apart from a virtuosity I am unable to fully appreciate.
Which is why your listening suggestion is simpatico.
It’s nearing Christmas, and this one always seems appropriate as we enter a chilly holiday season, with convivial grown-up get-togethers held in decorated houses … ice tinkling in rocks glasses, a fire going, relaxed and cheerful conversation … good looking women present …
and some mesmerizing background, naturally. Some of my favorite things, you might say.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWG2dsXV5HI
Have a rye Manhattan on me, Hube.
Copperdawg,
Steely Dan just may be my favorite rock band, if you can call them a rock band. I hate picking favorites, but it’s likely I’ve listened to them for more hours (days, years) than any other group.
If you are going down a rabbit hole researching their guitarists make sure you read up on Jeff “Skunk” Baxter. Also played with the Doobie Brothers. Also an expert on missile guidance systems who has testified before Congress. I don’t know if he’s ever come out and said so, but seems to be politically Conservative. Gutfeld used to have him on the old, “Red Eye” show. Fascinating cat and one hell of a guitarist!
huxley,
Bing’ing Carlson and the Dead turned up this huffpo post of a podcast interview they did with Carlson on the topic. Looks like the podcast link is dead (pun intended, of course), but this pull quote really makes me want to find it:
Copperdawg:
These days my routine is to hit Satellite around 10-12, then a second shift 2:30-4:30. Usually. It’s a good work environment, gets me out of the house and only costs two cups of Joe.
I’ve got Strang’s Linear Algebra (greenish-blue cover) and a few spiral notebooks plus a computer on the table.
After enduring endless posts about the Bee Gees, Neo finally writes about the kind of music that I most like, but then she says “I don’t like this sort of music at all.” Why oh why am I still here? I’m starting to feel like Neo’s mother telling her that she can’t become a hairdresser.
What’s worse, I have to admit that I really don’t like Pat Martino very much, but I can’t explain it. As a child, I played the string bass. We called it that to distinguish it from the other bass instruments in the orchestra. At that time, I’d never even heard of jazz. Much later, I taught myself to play the alto saxophone. I enjoyed both instruments, but was forced to accept that they were grim proof of my lack of talent. So, I’m not a musician, and I can’t articulate why I love the kind of music played by Pat Martino, but don’t like Pat Martino’s music. It’s a mystery.
As for Pat Martino’s medical history, it too is a mystery. Like everybody else, I look forward to the documentary on his life.
Wow, DNW! You really stunned me there!
No offense, you are wise on many topics I barely skim the surface on, but most of your musings on music haven’t seemed particularly elevated (aside from an appreciation of actual talent over noise), or so I thought, and then…
BAM!! You link to one of the all time greatest instrumental recordings ever put on wax! Holy Jamoley!!
I had no intention of clicking on the link, but was trying to guess what song you may have chosen, and then I saw your final sentence and thought, “What?! Can it be?!”
Well played, DNW. Very well played. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got another, good eight minutes until the video ends to immerse myself in it and enjoy it.
Ways a guitarist can influence tone (not sure why it should be different for electric vs. acoustic guitar):
1. Pick vs. fingers. This is huge of course especially if you finger pick, then there are all kinds of tone differences possible with your fingers.
2. If using a pick, type of pick – shape, stiffness etc. Also how you hold it
3. How hard you pluck
4. Left hand technique – how hard you grip strings, where in relation to fret
5. Where you play on the neck, near nut or closer to bridge, more upper or lower strings
I’m sure not an exhaustive list. But it is very mistaken to think that the only influences on electric guitar/bass tones are external or electronic.
Re: Canadians…
Rufus T. Firefly, Hubert:
Throw in Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell too. The Band were Canadians except Levon Helm (singing drummer of recent note). Ironic, because the Band had such an Americana sound.
Canadian artists who make it big seem to bring a deep, distinctive style to their work.
Also type of strings, there are many different constructions. Arguably this is “mechanical” however players will select strings in conjunction with the previous techniques to help achieve a desired tone.
First let me say I am about 0.0001% as talented as Django Reinhardt who was one of the greatest and most influential musicians of the 20th century. However last year I broke my left pinky finger and had to put it in a splint for 6 weeks. I had a gig on electric bass coming up and didn’t want to miss it especially since there were very few gigs in 2020. So I bought a short-scale electric bass and played it using only the other three fingers of my left hand.
I believe many guitar players actually play only rarely using the little finger. There was a saying about Keith Richards that he achieved his sound using “Five strings, three fingers and one asshole”.
In fact this illustrates yet another way guitarists can affect the tone of an electric guitar. My understanding is that Richards would use only five strings to get a deeper, “ballsier” sound out of his Fender Telecaster by reducing the overall string tension. Often Fender guitars are regarded as having a more piercing tone than others (especially Gibsons) but not as full, sometimes derided as “thinner” so guitarists may try to counteract that. A different route to the same end was taken by Stevie Ray Vaughan who tuned his Stratocaster down a half step.
DNW: Thanks for that sound and image from a better time. Rye Manhattan: excellent idea.
If you like Coltrane, you should check out Coltrane and Johnny Hartman, the greatest vocalist you’ve probably never heard of:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfSamj6Jtac
From 1963, before Coltrane’s “Ascension” phase, which is where he lost me. Listen to how Hartman handles “Lush Life”, a song that defeated Sinatra.
RTF, Huxley: Canadians pop up in the most unlikely places. The University of Alabama in Huntsville, for example, which has an NCAA Division I ice hockey team, thanks to you-know-who, eh? From the Wikipedia article on the UAH Chargers ice hockey team:
“Despite being a Southern city that might be considered unfamiliar with a winter sport such as hockey, Huntsville was, beginning in the 1950s, and still is to date, home to a large number of Northern-born (and possibly some Canadian) civilian professionals working in the aerospace and defense industries…”
Yeah. “Possibly”.
No Tim Hortons in Huntsville, though. Among the Yankee doughnut chains, Dunkin’ is rapidly makin’ inroads into Krispy Kreme country.
Hubert et huxley,
Bachman Turner Overdrive, The Guess Who, Neil Young and, of course, perhaps the greatest one hit wonders of one hit wonders*, The Kings!
https://youtu.be/sxkjvKBPQjo
*Well, at least if you were in High School in 1980. Oh, wait, “My Sharona” was released shortly before their hit. Hmmm…
Hubert,
Regarding, “Lush Life…” As a musician who has worked on several Billy Strayhorn charts, I assure you Sinatra isn’t the only human to be defeated by Strayhorn.
A true genius.
Since Skunk Baxter came up, I will say for my money his best playing ever was a two minute outro on the Doobies’ cover of Carole Bayer Sager’s “How Do the Fools Survive?”. There is virtually no guitar during the song – it is built around McDonald’s keyboards and a sax solo by Andrew Love. Then – bam! Skunk just lays it down for almost two minutes to a fade ending. A good friend who was a big Doobies fan told me he once read it took only two takes in the studio to get this solo.
Scott,
I think that’s why Becker and Fagen used Baxter so often; the guy could produce genius at the drop of a hat. Becker and Fagen were notorious perfectionists.
Re Youngkin:
Let’s have a thread in six months from today about the precisely zero effect his election will have had on the teaching of CRT in VA schools. And then another one in twelve months.
Good to be happy and guardedly positive today, but let’s pretend it’s a business (*). Measure results. Otherwise it’s just smoking the Cope-ium Pipe…. And you don’t even get an almond-eyed temptress in a qipao to light you up.
* It *is* a business. An agricultural one. The non-connected people of VA are the Cattle.
Scott and Rufus T. Firefly-
Thanks for noting Jeff Baxter again. I listened to the Doobie Brother’s mention.
*Musician, songwriter, producer, military advisor….and Muppet, dang he’s covered a lot of bases!
•Walter~sentimental favorite.
Re: Tone. You know it when you hear it.
Santana, Hendrix, Trower, Duane Allman, Clapton, Beck, Knopfler, Cale, Cooder, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jeffy Garcia, Alvin Lee, B.B. King, Albert King, George Benson, Ian Anderson, Winwood, Miller, Mayall and so many others. As someone says above, with these folks a single note to the experienced ear is enough to identify their work.
Like Neo, the sort of music highlighted is not my cup of tea, but I sure can appreciate the technical skill and artistry. His amazing life story is the icing on top.
Becker and Fagen were notorious perfectionists. –Rufus
They could get the top players and they did. Like this fellow, Victor Feldman.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Feldman
Feldman was musical prodigy, who played jazz with Benny Goodman, George Shearing, Cannonball Adderley and Miles Davis. Davis even asked Feldman to join his group.
But Feldman preferred to be a studio musician and played with Zappa, Joni Mitchell, Steely Dan and a list as long as your arm. He played the Latin percussion on Steely Dan’s “Do It Again.”
He wasn’t a typical session guy for rock bands, but he was good enough for Steely Dan.
huxley,
Just read up on Feldman. Wow. Quite a life. He played everywhere with everybody. And died way too young.
Rufus:
I met his son — a friend of a friend in LA. That’s how I got interested in Feldman. I said, wow, too.
I just ordered a Lavender Earl Grey Tea. Because curiosity. Does that make me a Soyboy? Or something worse?
Zaphod:
I’ve wondered about Lavender Earl Grey. I imagine the lavender would clash with the bergamot, but who knows what a few highlights of floral aroma might do for the Earl.
Left to my own devices, I wouldn’t have thought peanut butter and chocolate would go together.
Rufus T. Firefly on November 3, 2021 at 11:20 am:
YES! What you said about the “mediocrity” of the current R “party”. We don’t need total consistency, but do need a loudly supported and asserted core set of messages. Repeated often, including “NO”, “you lie”, “your wrong”, “go pound sand”, etc.
Why isn’t Tim Scott’s comment that “America is not a racist country” the lead out of every other R’s mouth?
And a couple of good follow on comments, too. Thanks.
@huxley:
Well the verdict is in: It’s Gay. There’s an extra tartness which messes with enjoyment of the tannins. Faint hint of lavender aroma, and the bergamot has been turned right down. Future hard pass for me for however many years remain allotted to this vale of tears.
Could be value in a thread about which unexpected conjunctions of peanut butter and X surprise and delight.
When I first came to Asia, I was surprised to see Mayonnaise pop up in some unexpected contexts. Potential for a Dave Chappelle sketch there.
Update:
Feeling decidedly queasy after drinking that Lavender Earl Grey abomination. Think I better start a GoFundMe like Hypersonic Hormones Sarah Hoyt and and raise $79K in an eye blink because Denver made her feel ill.
She must be doing something right to have that many fans pile on. I’d like to see Vox Day demand his minions pay him a tithe. Be interesting to see how much he could rake in.
About 5 years ago I read a magazine ad from a mail order company that sells watches for $100 and claims they are as good as $300 watches. The ad said “The greatest rock guitarist has this watch and loves it.” I tried to figure out who they meant and decided it was Clapton.
To me the “greatest guitarist” is the one that you like best. I like, among many others, Roy Buchanan, Steve Cropper, Clapton and Pete Townshend.
Recently caught a concert by (Beach Boys founder) Brian Wilson. Former Beach Boy Blondie Chaplin (a “colored” South African) played the !&$? out of a Les Paul on one song.
As a teenager I briefly played bass in a pickup band with Jeff Baxter. Nice guy, gave me some pointers on the bass. He used to play with Hendrix and could play the guitar with his teeth. No sure who taught who.
Are Covid Vaxx’s causing heart attacks? Or could heart pains suddenly getting attention, neglected for 5he past year?
Worrisome. That’s what these links tell.
https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/something-really-strange-happening-hospitals-all-over-america
Other Links:
https://www.conejoguardian.org/2021/10/21/ventura-county-nurses-blow-the-whistle-on-crisis-in-local-health-care
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/10/26/1046432435/ers-are-now-swamped-with-seriously-ill-patients-but-most-dont-even-have-covid
Same thing happening in Europe and Israel.
https://tkp.at/2021/10/29/deutliche-erhoehung-gegenueber-vorjahren-bei-neurologischen-und-herzproblemen-in-notaufnahmen/
@Wesson:
Eric Clapton is famous in the watch collecting community for his collection:
https://watchranker.com/eric-clapton-watches/
Wesson:
I think I would really enjoy buying an electric guitar.
I would have to figure out whether I was a Les Paul, Stratocaster or Telecaster kinda guy, then all the models, customizations and extras. Try them out. Plus where to get the best deal.
I enjoy a good shopping hunt.
But then I would have to learn to play guitar…
US Marines vs. People Who Don’t @#$% Goats:
https://asiatimes.com/2021/11/royal-marines-lay-a-beating-on-us-leathernecks/
Excellent article by John Derbyshire who has lived and worked in China and is married to the daughter of a PLA Colonel.
https://www.unz.com/jderbyshire/chinese-vs-american-authoritarianism-at-least-chinas-rulers-are-sane/
“You can say all sorts of negative things about the people who rule China today—I’ve said a lot of them myself—but they are stone cold sane. Not one of them, I am sure, believes that men can get pregnant, or that going easy on criminals will reduce crime, or that a three-trillion-dollar government program will cost nothing.
Having already tried lunacy, the Chinese are not likely to give it another run any time soon. So no, they are not going to adopt our style of governance.
Nor are we going to adopt theirs. Fundamental attitudes are just too different. The principal driving force in American culture today is white ethnomasochism—the hatred felt for their own race by huge numbers of American whites, and the sacralization of other races, especially blacks.
.
.
(Some of the usual stuff about how you might not want to get on the wrong side of the Chinese State. Mainly involving organs :P)
.
.
Again, however, memories of the Great Cultural Revolution are still warm in the minds of older Chinese like Xi Jinping, whose father was jailed and whose sister committed suicide in those years of lunacy. One of the most prominent of the lunatics in charge back then: Mao Tse-tung’s wife, Jiang Qing.
When I think of women with political power I think of Margaret Thatcher, blessed be her memory. When Xi Jinping’s thoughts turn that way, he thinks of Jiang Qing.
Back in imperial times, the old Confucian literati were deeply reluctant to give women political power, although women occasionally got it anyway through accidents of palace intrigue. A lot of Chinese today think that Jiang Qing proved the old Confucians were right.
Oh; slight correction there. When I think of women with political power it used to be Margaret Thatcher who came to mind. Now I find it’s just as likely to be Nancy Pelosi.
“
Read the whole thing. Derbyshire claims that on the whole he still feels safer in the USA but were you to ask him 10 years hence, he might not be so sure.
I don’t know why Derbyshire likes Thatcher so much. She’s famous for having said “There’s no such thing as Society” — and therefore is as deserving of eternal damnation as every other Race Traitor who ever lived. It was one thing to deal with a feral USSR-backed Miner’s Union… another thing to privatize all those nationalized assets into the hands of connected spivs who stripped and offshored them and to bring in the Big Bang which turned London into the money laundering Sodom and Gomorrah of the ages. Just had to wait a few more years for Tony Blair to swamp it with Unwashed Undesirables from the cesspits of the Earth.. but doubtless she’d have thought of that if she’d been in power much longer.
I guess because JD’s old. Not for changing.
Maybe because Derbyshire actually reads (or listens to) what Thatcher actually actually said in its entirety (i.e., in context)?….
From the following…
https://theconversation.com/why-theres-no-such-thing-as-society-should-not-be-regarded-with-moral-revulsion-136008
…we learn that Thatcher spoke as follows:
“Who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then also to help look after our neighbour and life is a reciprocal business…
“There is no such thing as society. There is a living tapestry of men and women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us prepared to turn round and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate.”
Thatcher is a person who elevated—and preferred to focus on—the individual over the group, the concrete over the abstraction.
In the end, it is a matter of definition. (And most certainly context.)
One really ought not rely on specious, decontextualized sound bites.
Barry Meislin,
Well said.
Might just have to concede your point there.
Still she did sell the family assets to a bunch of Plugged-in City Spivs and their Civil Service Buddies. I’ve met a few of their offspring.
And she did nothing to keep Britain British. Too late now. That ship has sailed.
Problem is, actually, that, actually, I actually revere Margaret Thatcher.
(Not to worry, overly. It was unrequited…. Yes! Actually!…)
A giant. OMMV certainly… (IOW, probably best not to raise the issue when talking to a coal miner…though I wonder whether in retrospect, some have come around…)
I’m going to dig myself in a bit deeper:
The problem with Thatcher’s formulation is that she speaks nowhere of a shared consciousness and association of a people with a place. Not random interchangeable economic units (whether they be family or individuals or an entire clan of motel-owning Patels) .. but a people and a land shaped by time to have some shared destiny. What she describes is Babylon 5 on a good day.
Now I realise (a) that this triggers some Blut und Boden (spellecheck wanted Biden there!) heebie jeebies in some, and that (b) in those Cold War days almost nobody was on that wavelength back then except for the man who should have been PM in a sane world, Enoch Powell… I don’t expect the Lady to have had the second sight. Well a bit.. maybe.
But.. today in the here and now, Thatcher’s formulation is not good enough. Not nearly. Life is all about reciprocity and staying out of the government’s way (except to loot social security) in family and widening circles in a Somali Clan… and London has those now, you can bet your boots.
Much hilarity here:
https://www.amren.com/videos/2021/10/why-artificial-intelligence-is-always-racist/
And people wonder why the Chinese are getting ahead in AI research and rollout.
Comment from the Derbyshire China Article:
“John Derbyshire has a good point, about the Chinese Cultural Revolution, et al. But, when I returned from China, walking through LAX airport to my domestic-flight gate, the transition was too abrupt and shocking. In the two weeks in China, I had gotten use to interacting with well dressed, well-mannered and intelligent people. In LAX, I was surrounded by pure 100% psychotic trash — people with earrings over their face, colored hair, obese people unable to fit into chairs, well dressed white women coupled to rap-dressed blacks, uncomprehending stupid people, people speaking in dozens of languages. No normal people at all. For me it was a frog in a boiling water syndrome. You just don’t know how bad it is until you see it contrasted, as I did.”
I totally get where this guy is coming from. And he only spent two weeks in China. Guess how I feel when I head back ‘home’ to the West? I find his level of disgust a trifle mild. I (on a whim) took myself out of the pot 30 nearly 30 years ago and so did not get Boiled Slowly.
Bbbbuuttt Muh Slavish Oriental Hive Mind.
FAOF: This is a good list. Additionally, it is the guitarist who dials in the tone to please him or herself as well as the music piece. The effect of the hands, ears and brain on tone of any guitar, electric or acoustic, is significant. IMHO, of course.
PS: I am not a fan of Martino’s style of playing, although I do appreciate the skill involved.
OK, but what’s the current word on the street from the average Joe in HK?
(Or are they staying mum for now…and keeping a low profile?)
I suppose they could talk themselves into “taking one for the Xi-Dream Team”…but somehow I doubt that’s the preferred consensus…. To be sure, they may realize that no longer have much of a choice. (No green hair for them!)
And in other (unsurprising) “news” it looks (once again) as though Biden doesn’t know what “Biden” is doing (or saying; or planning)…
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/biden-denies-garbage-reports-450000-payments-illegal-immigrants
(IOW, Where the hell is Dr. Jill when you really need her?)
The average Molotov Cocktail lobbing aggro Joe in the street has bugged out to the UK (except for the ones got caught and doing time). Your buddy Thatcher refused to grant their parents UK residency rights when the handover Joint Declaration was signed and UK washed hands of them (whilst letting half of Karachi and Ouagadougou plus the spawn of a hundred other dysgenic cesspits settle in the UK and feast on its corpse). Last year the UK finally agreed to provide a path to residency and citizenship for a large cohort of Hong Kongers and off they went. All they ever wanted was to be either left alone or given a way out. And it took the protests for them to shame the UK into finally doing the right thing. Many young professionals are taking the way out because they don’t want their children growing up here. In fact it’s almost too expensive for the middle class to reproduce in HK. What they make of being predated upon by the untouchable protected classes in the UK will be of interest in years to come.
It’s complicated. My objection to China’s actions in Hong Kong are (as you might imagine) idiosyncratic. In effect I object to the same thing I object to in the West: Great Replacements. There has been a deliberate Chinese policy to swamp the locals with their own distinct culture and attachment to place with immigrants from the rest of China — and they’ve been given preference in allocation of public housing and benefits in the most expensive real estate market on the planet. I don’t like seeing people erased when it’s their place and they made it.
Complicated further because if in some imaginary World the Hong Kong freedom demonstrators had ‘won’ — all they would have won was Drag Queen Story Hour for their children and Grandchildren. And a Nigerian drug dealer on every street corner. Rainbow World. GloboHomo.
The saddest thing about Hong Kong was the way the local elite sold out at the drop of a hat after the handover. China ruled through them for 20 years and they totally @#$%ed it up through corruption and complacency. Now all pretence of local rule is over and things are much more hands on. Imagine that the first senior official ever to go on a proper fact finding tour since the British left and bang heads about housing shortages and old people living in cage homes was the local CCP Boss. Because he’s the only guy not bribed by the local property tycoons — unlike the senior local civil service.
Suddenly in the last year, the property cartel has started doing corporate responsibility stuff. They are @#$%i%ing themselves because they know that they’re being watched and judged by people they can’t buy. For the first time in forever.
It’s a very complicated sad situation. China is crushing some locals to pacify the rest with one hand… and with the other they’re going to kick some powerful heads and put some indigent but deserving old farts in livable homes. Pick your poison.
My view is that if there has to be a Tyranny (and generally there does have to be — even where you live in due course: Technological development wills it and is simply a matter of Who Will Rule) then better it be a straightforward one where everything is clear about responsibilities. Singapore works well. The PRC is headed that way.
PS: People who live here or do business here always laugh themselves to tears every year when the Heritage Foundation Dinosaurs come out with their Economic Freedom Index. Hong Kong and Singapore always feature prominently at the top of these.
Let’s see… Hong Kong traditionally run by Property, Banking, and Stock Exchange (very cosy closed shop) Cartels. There’s a supermarket duopoly… each chain run by one of the two biggest property conglomerates. Just you try to start your own startup here… Better be able to do it in 400 square feet. I won’t bore anyone with rental and purchase prices per square foot, but suffice to say eye-watering.
But it’s a free market for hedge funds. So just start your own hedge fund, Bucko!
I don’t mind to pay not much more than 15% flat tax here.. but then get to see it line the pockets of those wonderful Free Market construction companies who build unneeded artificial islands and bridges to nowhere whose boards are stacked with retired senior civil servants in the finest British tradition. Sure as shit it hasn’t been spent on training more doctors or facilities for the top-heavy aging demographic. Still, at least it doesn’t get blown on IVF for trannies or CRT.
The above provided merely to suggest that the stuff that you read in the Bible ain’t necessarily so.
Singapore: Well that’s the Lee and Ho Family Concern. If you get big enough there, you’ll be made an offer you can’t refuse.
Zaphod: “My view is that if there has to be a Tyranny (and generally there does have to be — even where you live in due course: Technological development wills it and is simply a matter of Who Will Rule) then better it be a straightforward one where everything is clear about responsibilities.”
So, for example, Kansas City in the 1930s-1940s. Or almost any big American city at that time. Run by a Machine, but a competent Machine that got useful stuff done. Despite the (probably inevitable under any system) graft. It is true that somebody is always in charge, a fact that has implications for our notions of “good governance”. To put it another way: “Swedes don’t exist, Scandinavians in general do not exist, take it from there” (John Berryman).
@Hubert:
I get a bit of stick around here for maintaining that it always comes down to Who Whom. Sometimes more sometimes less disguised. But always.
Ditto for Who Sent You? It’s always there. Again better to have it out in the open rather than pretending it’s not there or hiding it away so that only the carefully-schooled know where to find an entree to the game.
And there are worse things in the world than Boss Pendergast. The Clintons, for a start.
Our current notions of Good Governance pay little heed to how we humans really are and the kind of chicanery and graft we invariably get up to. A Rectification of Names is in order.
But I think also technological imperatives are pushing us towards the need for a Tyranny. We’re going to get it one way or the other from the Tech Oligarchs, no matter what. I maintain that the Chinese for example are better off under Xi Jinping than they would be under Uber-dweeb Jack Ma — whose just conveniently been cut down to size.
PS: Berryman is new to me. I kind of like the preceding verse to the one you quoted from!
Zaphod @ 8:47am,
I won’t defend the tattooed, pierced, blue-mohawked masses of LAX, but one doesn’t have to get too far out of a Chinese city to encounter people of questionable rationality and behavior, or middling intelligence. And even within the sophisticated areas of the major cities one finds many “successful” Chinese don’t have a favorable view of marriage or child rearing (Nor do they seem happy. How does one say, “ennui” in Mandarin?) The one child policy resulted in a lot of wealthy, 30 somethings content to either wait for grandma and grandma and grandpa and grandpa to die off, or bleed them and mom and dad dry prior to the old folks shuttling this mortal coil.
I was distracted in an airport in China with a flight delay and returned to my family to find two men trying to lure my 11 year old daughter away. They were well dressed, however, so I’ll give you that.
The veneer seems glossier (streets are cleaner, as long as you don’t try to breathe the air), cars are newer (as long as you ignore the bicycles pulling carts full of rubbish), but I don’t get the sense there is much, true morality under the surface. Compliance with norms out of fear doesn’t mean ascription* to those norms.
*I was searching for a word and I said to myself, “Self, ‘ascription’ ought to be a word, because if it were, it would convey just the thought I need here.” “However,” I said to myself, “I have never heard or read it, so, sadly there is no such word.” But I typed it anyway and spellcheck seems to like it.
“Internalization” is the term we would have used in Intro Psych class to try and get at the idea of someone who truly subscribes to a moral code he is expected to conform to. So, when violating it he feels personal gulilt, rather than merely fears social shame or experiences remorse at being discovered.
You seem to be aiming at some slightly different notion or process
Zaphod: Berryman was Big in the 1960s-1970s. Mostly neglected now. He’d be cancel-chum today. White, male, “privileged” (Columbia, Cambridge, Princeton), drinker, smoker, womanizer, non-PC. The line you’re alluding to in Dream Song 31 shows that these governance problems are not new. We just managed them better back then.
Who-Whom: Agreed.
“There are worse things in the world than Boss Pendergast”: Agreed.
Our point of disagreement is on the continued relevance, resilience, and viability of the Constitutional Order. Who-Whom worked fine in this country as long as the right people were in charge and working from the right blueprint. Produced all those things you like: the Ford Mark 1A Fire Control Computer (victory in the Pacific!), B-29s, integrated circuits, the Saturn V, Apollos 11 and 13 (major slide-rule-powered save!), MIRVs, Star Wars (victory in the Cold War!), etc. In fact, it worked fine until relatively recently on the national timeline. The Constitutional Order can accommodate the kind of tough-minded, self-interested, shamelessly-hypocritical-when-necessary seriousness that you favo(u)r. For most of this country’s history, it did precisely that, and pretty damned well. The Trump Interlude, brief and imperfect as it was, suggests that it can work again if given half a chance. Indeed, the volume, scope, and relentlessness of the effort to destroy Trump and his supporters–and the panicked cries of “Whiteness! Vile Whiteness!” in the wake of the Virginia election–show that the enemy knows that it can work again. The problem is a thick accretion of lousy management and lousy policies, not the underlying design. Also ethno- and cultural masochism, against which pushback appears to be gathering, even in some surprising zip codes.
Consider the possibility that Normie has had enough. Karen too. Caste-signaling is all well and good, but not if it means that Meghan and Joshua will have to cede their places at the trough to vibrant diversity. As for the termite-like activities of your Favourite Usual Suspects, watch the ending of “Miller’s Crossing”. When I see Merrick Garland, Marc Elias, Michael Sussman etc., I’m reminded of Bernie Bernbaum–and his fate.
Speaking of the conceptualizing and naming of processes.
You computer programmers can probably answer a question for me.
What are the basic logical operations in computer code algorithms called at their most fundamental level? We are talking here of functions analogous to the propositional logic elements represented by logical “connectors”, i.e., the tilda/negation, the copula, the disjunct, the if-then symbol, conditional operators, and then the equivalence, identity, signs …. and possibly even simple predicate “statements” and/or propositional arguments such as existential instantiation, tautology, and maybe modus ponens and tolens.
Was having a conversation with a computer science grad, on artificial intelligence. I kept referring to logical operations … as being purely mechanical by analogy, and reduceable, I assumed , to a basic handful of elemental propositional logic operations from which compound statements are built.
He agreed about that, but I could not get out of him what these, or the analogous predicate logic connectives and relation signs are called in his field.
What term do you use?
Zaphod, Hubert:
Berryman’s “Dream Songs” is about a deeply unhappy, haunted man, obsessed with suicide and loss. It’s nice to have a catchy line of poetry to hang a thought upon, but one wouldn’t want to assume it supported a claim about social reality, any more than one would look to the rants of Dostoevsky’s Sick Man in “Notes from Underground.”
Here’s my favorite of the Dream Songs:
_____________________________________________
Dream Song 14
Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatingly) ‘Ever to confess you’re bored
means you have no
Inner Resources.’ I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes
as bad as achilles,
who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.
And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag
and somehow a dog
has taken itself & its tail considerably away
into mountains or sea or sky, leaving
behind: me, wag.
–John Berryman, “77 Dream Songs”
DNW:
Usually they are just called “operators.”
See “Operators in C and C++”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operators_in_C_and_C%2B%2B
However, if-then sorts of things organize code into expressions, statements and blocks.
huxley:
I wrote this 2010 post that featured that Berryman poem.
neo:
Berryman was another poet who committed suicide. I’ve often wondered about the correlation between poetry and suicide. Are suicidal people attracted to poetry? Does poetry encourage depression in some? Was suicide a social contagion among poets?
I haven’t been tracking today’s poets. But I haven’t heard of prominent poets suiciding lately.
Huburt:
Corruption and tyranny are not the same thing. Tyrannical regimes are just about always corrupt as well, but corrupt regimes are not always tyrannical.
DNW,
Your reasoning is sound. As huxley wrote, “operators” or “operations” may be what you’re looking for, but “syntax” also seems applicable to some of your question.
George Boole and his logic statements are all you need to know, philosophy-wise. It’s all built from there; layer upon layer. This is a decent explanation of the logic fundamentals: https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/l/logioper.htm
Computers can fundamentally do three things (and, even when the outward representation is non-numeric, like the words and punctuation for, “Enter user ID here:” it always reduces to numeric representation, ultimately in binary):
1. Store a value in a memory cell
2. Compare the values in two memory cells
3. Combine the values of two memory cells
But they can do those three things really, really fast!
Huxley says:
Ok. More or less the same as in the standard propositional logic you get in philosophy.
I was curious as to why he was not adjusting my nomenclature to his field. I figured he was just being polite, or missed the repeated references to my tentative use of the terminolgy in the context of our conversation.
Thanks to you then, and to Rufus.
Funny how you can read pages of material covering the use of a symbol or sign in a statement or argument ( as I did in going back through “Copi” to review), and read what it means in terms of immediate function; and what mental process (or operation) it represents; and what it is called by name e.g. “copula” or “tilde”; and yet generally see the term for what it is as a member of a relevant category -“operator” – (short for representing a mental operation), only mentioned once or twice in passing.
Getting instead its “personal name”, e.g ” tilde”, its specific function, e.g. “negation”, or some broad terminological reference to a “letter”, a “symbol”, or other not functionally specific, term.
She’s famous for having said “There’s no such thing as Society”
No she isn’t. What she actually said was this:
“I think we’ve been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it’s the government’s job to cope with it. ‘I have a problem, I’ll get a grant.’ ‘I’m homeless, the government must house me.’ They’re casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It’s our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There’s no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation.”
I’m sure that Thatcher would be too wary to make a virtually unqualified statement as to the fundamental unreality of society.
I would happily do so given certain stipulations. But I don’t think any politician could afford to point at the fact that when people are not associating there is no “society”.
The basic progressive/liberal/emotionally-needy-herd-creature is so enthralled by the idea of the supposed reality of extended “relations” that they cannot abide anyone who dissents.
Must be traceable to some mental tendency of theirs toward monism. As well as toward normalizing parasitism under the rubric of metaphysics.
@Rufus:
You did not supply all of the requirements. There are such things as branching instructions, sans which you don’t have a Universal Turing Machine ergo you don’t have a ‘Computer’. Boolean logic in silicon (or in cams and gears, or in hydraulic actuators and pipes or Martian ooglepoopers) is just a handy way to manufacture a UTM.
@DNW:
Have a look at Universal Turing Machine (powerful model of computability) and the Lambda Calculus (it’s functions all the way down).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Turing_machine
For a gentle introduction to the wonders of computation, the Little Schemer is the book to read. Can do it all on paper and in your head.
@Huxley:
Why commit suicide when you have a grant proposal in the works?
@Hubert:
If push comes to shove and we get some hats blowing away through the carpet of autumn leaves, well and good.
I’ll grant with Bismarck that the USA has some Special Sauce. Although I’m thinking of different Gods: Samuel Colt and John Moses Browning.
Still, many things niggle me. One being that forms of government should be matched to the genotypes inhabiting each polity. Ranted on that enough before. Another being that the US System in Yarvin’s words Leaks Power —> in many ways today NYT and Certain Harvard Faculty have more power to move policy than any of the constitutional branches. Ditto the federal bureaucracy. But I’d burn the faculty of Harvard first on the Pareto principle.
@DNW:
On the balance given your views on Community, I think it’s just as well you’re not living in Athens just post The Thirty.
Shaken. Not stirred.
@Rufus:
Plenty of shonky Chinamen out there. Still, I’d take my chances with them before a street full of Indians or Magic Americans.
I suppose I’ll have to face up to my telos and give up on the Yellow Fever and eventually be martyred as Apostle to the Appalachians or something. But not yet.
Damned if I’ll bother trying to save the Australians though. Beyond redemption.
Huxley: Guilty as charged. I’m a sucker for a catchy line. Berryman was definitely not a good role model. But, like other good poets, he had a gift for summing things up in a line or two. The one about Scandinavians in general not existing is pithy and funny. And my favorite Dream Song is #89: “In a blue series towards his sleepy eyes…”
As for the connection between poetry and neurosis, there were modern poets who led long, healthy, and mostly non-neurotic lives (Richard Wilbur, Stanley Kunitz, Archibald MacLeish, and–to a degree–Robert Frost, although the people around him didn’t fare too well). Then there were the psychological train wrecks like Berryman, Plath, Sexton, and Lowell. Perhaps damaged people are attracted to poetry as a way of trying to deal with the damage. Or they were. Poetry isn’t much of a thing anymore.
Neo: I understand the distinction. My point was that the big city machines are probably the closest thing we have had to what Zaphod was describing. The machines were certainly corrupt. They were also effective at delivering basic services. Were they tyrannies? Interesting question. Remember that the ancient tyrants ruled over city-states. Well, so did the machine bosses. If I had been a crusading newspaperman in Pendergast’s Kansas City, an inconvenient business competitor in Nucky Johnson’s Atlantic City, a “clean government” agitator in Frank Hague’s Jersey City, or a counterculture “activist” in Richard Daley’s Chicago, it might have felt like tyranny to me. But for most people? Probably not. And the machine bosses were popular. James Michael Curley was elected to his last term as mayor of Boston while under federal indictment and served out his term after returning from a five-month sojourn in the federal pen in Danbury, CT.
Zaphod: “Although I’m thinking of different Gods: Samuel Colt and John Moses Browning.” You and Winsome Sears:
https://twitter.com/WinsomeSears/status/1382787440579129345
LOL. I’m not sure what you are implying, although you seem to surmise that I have a particular view of “Community” per se; and perhaps in some sense I do: Being convinced as I am that a so-called evolving moral consensus never suffices for establishing a basis for moving from a mere descriptive to a normative and imperative (on some derivation) ethics.
I don’t give a f88k for example, how many sensitive types want to be buggered as a badge of inclusion: be they 36% or 72% of a given population. Their disordered desires*** neither establish any obligation to accept their wants nor any grounds for inducing one to a self-sacrificial behavior on their part. (***see following paragraph)
Now you might rejoin that “But that is what humanity has become!” ; i.e. developed into.
Well, again, where you and I most disagree as I see it, is around the principle and concept of “one [moral] humanity”. It is an assumption which I cannot imagine, how you imagine, is to be saved given your political anthropology.
My solution, is not to save it at all. It is to let the crazy white girls and the soy-boys, “evolve”, or self-define, into another moral species entirely.
And then to be dragged through the streets to their deaths by the moral engines of their own devising.
You save them, and you only save the monkey on your back.
Affinity and affiliation must be coupled together with a specific developmental teleology if moral precepts are to have any universal meaning apart from arbitrary coercive commands.
The radical Democrats and the oligarchs of Athens were both wrong: as they were operating on one version or another of might declares right: whether it be by few or many. That is why one laughs both at the Athenian catastrophe at Syracuse and the ultimate fate of the Spartans.
You on the other hand continually express the wish to save people [ostensibly for associative purposes] who you previously stipulate are honor-less, dishonest, conniving, self-dealing, moral vermin; this preservation, because presumptively we are all, at least metaphorical, devils.
Do you really believe that? Do you know no one with any sense of integrity and honor?
And if you did know one, what obligation would such a person have to the “devils”? – remember we are speaking figuratively here, and that for this exercise all entities “good” or bad” are presumed to be soulless organisms having no intrinsic value or eternal fate.
What are we trying to preserve, and why?
@DNW:
… Various Hemlock-warranting exemplars of DNW making Zaphod confront contradictions and sloppy thinking elided…
“What are we trying to preserve, and why?”
Very little. Temperamentally I’m a less head in the clouds version of the Archeofuturists. We have to go forward into the past.
“Affinity and affiliation must be coupled together with a specific developmental teleology if moral precepts are to have any universal meaning apart from arbitrary coercive commands.”
Agree that we need a State Religion and mandated public conformity to say the least.
And some of the peasantry will need to be preserved. Some are redeemable, it’s merely that they no-longer have what they’ve always needed: a class of gentry to show them the way.
Hate to break it to you, but the Devils were right about one thing: the Bourgeoisie *is* the problem. That’s who bailed on the peasants and proles.
By the way Hubert, I liked your reference to Miller’s Crossing.
Bernie on his knees pleading … “Look into your heart, Tom! Look into your heart!”
You know what they say about good deeds and their upshot.
https://vimeo.com/414197794
Damn and Botheration. Forgot to change my nickname back to Zaphod. Sorted.
Berryman, Plath, Sexton, and Lowell…
Hubert:
I was more addressing Zaphod than you on the catchy line.
B,P,S and L were the prime examples of the Confessional Poetry movement. All but Lowell committed suicide. Lowell was in and out of the hospital for manic depression. Plath, Sexton and Lowell were even patients at the same hospital. That’s a confluence which makes social contation seem a possibility.
However, you’re correct that there were also healthy poets.
I once read a study linking poets, especially female poets, to mental illness.
http://users.rider.edu/~baer/KaufmanBaer.pdf
I’d have to read it again. There was an interesting section on the possibility that writing poetry could anti-therapeutic. Instead of allowing poets to release pain, writing poetry embeds them more deeply into it.
It’s something I wonder about. I was in a group of Boston street poets for a while. We were a mess!
Zaphod on November 4, 2021 at 10:00 pm said:
No problem; no question of deceit or of anyone even being inadvertently misled.
There just could not possibly, be TWO of you.
Don’t worry, Zaphod, I don’t think any of us regulars had difficulty seeing the invisible man behind the nome de guerre, “Thelematic Lives Meta.”
Evil mathematic sleet?
Well, the real Zaphod Beeblebrox had two heads, so … leeway.
@DNW:
That would be a bit much. I’d settle, though, for being Triune. Neat trick if you can pull it off.
Just started on Treadgold’s History of the Byzantine State and Society per recommendation of a commenter here (sorry forgotten who, but thanks!) and very much into early Christian ‘heresies’.
@Huxley:
Grew up on the TV adaptation of Hitchhiker’s Guide and Head Number 2 was IIRC definitely unconvincing.
@Rufus:
I used Thelematic Lives Meta as a one off for a bit of idiosyncratic fun with Avi in the Durham thread. Thelema was name of the late ungreat demonic Aleister Crowley’s cult.
Zaphod:
Ah, the timeless production values of British sci-fi on the cheap! I imagine you’ve seen “Blake Seven.” I found the TV Hitchhiker’s charming.
Years later Hitchhiker’s got the big budget Hollywood treatment and meh. Still prefer the original radio version over all.
Zaphod wrote
>Eric Clapton is famous in the watch collecting community for his collection
Thanks, I didn’t know that. And thanks for link about war games.
@huxley:
I totally loved Blakes Seven and found it again a few years ago and went on a YouTube Binge. Apparently it’s on some streaming service now, too. Saw mention somewhere the other day.
Learned all that I ever could about Ethics and Morality from the character Avon 😀
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Darrow
Mind you, had a soft spot for Marvin the Paranoid Android, too.
huxley wrote:
>But then I would have to learn to play guitar…
Ha ha, I agree it would be frustrating otherwise!
Zaphod:
I’ve got “Blake’s 7” on BritBox!
It’s been over 40 years… Have to check it out.
Didn’t remember it was by Terry Nation. I was a big “Survivors” fan too.
@ Zaphod > “Excellent article by John Derbyshire who has lived and worked in China and is married to the daughter of a PLA Colonel.”
That was very interesting, and I want to amplify your final remark with an excerpt (links omitted):