Perhaps my favorite pieces of music of all time – certainly of piano music:
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Open thread 10/17/23 — 59 Comments
Just read on Commander Salamander that the US Gov’t chartered a Cruise Ship to evac US Citizens from Israel and she has docked in Haifa. But before you can board her you have to sign a promissory note to reimburse the Gov’t. What kind of Mickey Mouse is that!
“WATCH: Tech Billionaires Realize They Were Wrong About Donald Trump
A group of liberal tech tycoons came to a realization about Donald Trump and Jared Kushner on their podcast recently.”
“All-In isn’t just any podcast, … Hosted by four investors-slash-entrepreneurs-slash-online-gadflies, All-In is where Silicon Valley’s money says what it really thinks. ”
“If you hadn’t heard of All-In before this moment, you likely weren’t alone; although it often tops Apple’s and Spotify’s tech-podcast charts, coverage of the show is somewhat circumspect compared with other well-regarded tech pods (Sway, Marketplace Tech). ”
• First read about this podcast in a Twitter post yesterday – original podcast is below – and now it is popping-up in blogs, etc.
• Did some research, and also posted what I thought was an interesting article on Chamath Palihapitiya (podcaster in sweater that made initial observation).
• The contrast between Trump and Biden – e.g., war, negotiate, solutions – is exponentially magnified when events that are too big to ignore occur.
“WATCH: Tech Billionaires Realize They Were Wrong About Donald Trump
A group of liberal tech tycoons came to a realization about Donald Trump and Jared Kushner on their podcast recently.”
• Meant to note the RedState link misses some key thoughts in the podcast that preceded the discussion of Kushner, etc. (not sure why they edited that way).
…featuring another spectacular cameo for Honest A. Blinken—what an actor!—and his ham-it-up sidekick, Pal Malley…plus a full cast of supporting characters (and we DO mean characters)….
The Speaker vote is underway in the House. First order of business, “call of the House” as to presence to vote. Members are still arriving, currently 424 present, 9 not voted, so nearly there.
It’s been a while since I commented here, though I read posts regularly.
Since the Hamas attack, I’ve been trying to double-check my moral calculations about the appropriate response, because I was aware that my reflexive response — something along the lines of “nuke Hamas and anyone they’ve ever met, from orbit” — was correct as an instinctive reaction against evil, but not an example of precise moral reasoning!
I want to get some feedback from the good folks here, in regards to the “laws” of war and “collateral damage.”
First, a bit of table-setting:
It seems to me that we ought to disincentivize barbaric modes of warfare, and incentivize more “lawful” prosecution of a war.
Morally, we distinguish between (on the one hand) regular soldiery who don’t target non-combatants, treat prisoners humanely, are found in-uniform, who follow lawful commands from a chain-of-command terminating in the lawfully-elected civilian leadership of a nation-state; and (on the other hand) terrorists who intentionally target non-combatants and torture/rape/starve/murder prisoners. The “regular soldier” may be an enemy, and yet still be regarded an honorable fellow; but the terrorist is regarded as pond-scum.
But, if the distinctions we draw are merely conceptual and don’t produce different behaviors, then the distinction is a “distinction without a difference,” at least in regards to disincentivizing the more barbaric forms of warfare.
What I mean is: If a captured Hamas fighter gets exactly the same “3 hots and a cot” that a captured downed Luftwaffe pilot would have received during the Battle of Britain, the bad guys of the world are going to ask, “Well, why shouldn’t I intentionally kill civilians, if the occasion seems to call for it, and it helps my cause?” But, if a lawful combatant is treated reasonably well whereas a terrorist is treated significantly worse, why, that changes the risk-calculus a bit, and hopefully makes warfare marginally less-barbaric over time.
For this reason, after the 9/11, I felt that something was missing when people were calling for terrorists to be treated “according to the Geneva Conventions” (by which they meant: “3 hots and a cot just like any regular soldier”). My reaction was always, “No, waitaminute, this is not a regular soldier. They don’t report to a chain-of-command terminating in a civilian government that’s a signatory of those treaties; they don’t fight in uniform; and most importantly, they specifically target non-combatants. If we treat them the same as a regular soldier, we are ignoring the evils that distinguish them from a regular soldier, and we’re undermining the incentives for which the ‘laws of war’ exist.”
That’s the table-setting.
Here’s how I’d like to apply this concept of distinction-drawing to the situation in Gaza:
The Hamas fighters do have a uniform, and they kinda-sorta have a government to which they report. But in every other way they are the vilest of terrorists. Therefore they ought not be treated with the same protections as honorable soldiery.
BUT, how does that factor into our calculus regarding “collateral damage?”
Let’s say that we’re fighting a regular nation-state with law-abiding soldiery, and we have a chance to take out one of their soldiers with a drone, but there is an innocent civilian standing right beside that soldier. It seems to me that because that soldier acts lawfully, the threshold for collateral damage being “acceptable” is lower. Rather than attack him instantly and without reservation, we might wait for the civilian to go elsewhere and then attack him, even though our opportunity might be lost.
On the other hand, suppose there is a terrorist and we can attack him with a drone. It seems to be that The Value Of Killing Him This Very Instant is very high, precisely because he is a terrorist. Consequently, we should calculate the “acceptable collateral damage threshold” for delaying the attack at a much-higher value.
If that’s correctly-reasoned, morally-speaking, then: Is it okay to attack a Hamas leader in such a way as to guarantee his death, even if it probably kills a thousand non-combatants nearby?
If not a thousand, what about a hundred? If not a hundred, what about ten? What threshold is justified?
It seems to me that precisely because Hamas fighters are terrorists, not regular soldiery, we are morally obligated to kill them even at the cost of many innocents. (“You blew up a whole building!” “Yes, there was a terrorist in it, and he would have gotten away, otherwise.” “But there were seventy non-combatants in the same building!” “Yes, seventy, but not seven hundred; so, the morality of my attack is unimpeachable.”)
I realize that much of the above is unrealistic: Real go/no-go decisions are messier than the sheer mathematical comparison I’ve given above. So, if your reply is merely to observe “it’s messier than that,” please don’t bother.
What I’m asking is whether the moral principles I’m articulating are sound ones: DOES our moral obligation to disincentivize terrorism LOGICALLY permit (or even REQUIRE) us to consider higher non-combatant casualty rates morally-acceptable, because doing otherwise means reducing the disincentive to terrorism?
Thanks, in advance, for anyone who takes the time to read and reply.
I am so poorly informed about this subject, but I would like to add a simple consideration.
Isn’t it true that here in the US there is a large group of citizens, who quietly dislike the Jewish community as a collective whole?
How does that reality fit into our collective (countrywide) decisions about prosecuting one Jewish person for some offense (real or imagined)? In other words–do we not prosecute for fear that that collective contempt will have a too strong influence on the jury’s outcome, thus providing an extended protection to the larger community, or do we prosecute with the fear that that collective dislike will prevent a possible outcome of a judgment of innocence by the jury?
How do we accommodate for this situation?
I hope everyone here understands that I do not mean to offend.
My dog’s such a goof. I’m having some fried yams and pork chop this morning.
I cut out the bone and gave it to him. Wanted nothing to do with it. So I tossed into the yam/chop mix and cooked it up.
He’s happily gnawing on it right now.
The moral dilemma about the killing of civilians outside a war zone by the use of drones, while targeting terrorists who pose a threat of imminent violence– a definition that is fuzzy and been made fuzzier is subject to the slippery slope argument.
Have we gone from using drones to kill enemy combatants in a war zone, to killing enemy combatants outside that zone, to killing terrorists outside a war zone who have committed acts of terrorists to killing associates of terrorists who are planning terrorist attacks at some indeterminate time in the future?
There is the infamous example of an American citizen who was droned in Yemen.
“When Obama has made the moral case for the drone war, he has claimed to uphold the highest standards in defending the nation’s security. “That means taking strikes only when we face a continuing, imminent threat, and only where there is … near certainty of no civilian casualties,” he told an audience at West Point in 2014. Last month, the administration gave its first self-evaluation of how well it had succeeded, claiming to have killed at most 116 civilians in drone strikes outside of war zones, compared with up to 2,581 “combatants.” (Independent estimates put the number of civilian casualties far higher.) But what do these numbers really signify? And can they help Americans grade the morality of the drone campaign as a whole?”
“Most famously, a leaked legal memo argued for a “broader concept of imminence” that permits defensive action even when a terrorist plot won’t unfold “in the immediate future.” There’s no reason, the thinking goes, to wait until the terrorist has his finger on the detonator of his suicide vest to take him out.”
Is Obama’s Drone War Moral?
The ethics of defensive killing
What you are describing is exactly what “proportionality” means in the law of war. Most people misunderstand and/or misuse the term. But it means that the target must be important enough to justify the number of innocent civilians estimated to be killed.
Only problem is that it’s impossible to calculate. How important is this particular target? How sure are we that it IS that target and that we’re not making a mistake? How many of the civilians around him are innocent? Does it matter that he has purposely located himself among those civilians in order to maximize casualties for propaganda purposes? How sure are we of our estimates of collateral damage? I think that there are so many unknowns that the calculation cannot really be made with any degree of accuracy.
Anne: ahhhhh . . .
See how much better that sounds than the accordion!
This is at least the second time in recent weeks that I have read a reference to Anne’s dislike of the accordion. Could someone supply me with a link to her original posting?
Another moral dilemma roiling the (self-named) queer community: it turns out that an Israeli company, Teva Pharmaceuticals, is the go-to source for the hormones used by transgender folk. If you support the Palestinians while being an Israeli trans person, you have a problem. As one such transperson states, “I am an Israeli trans woman who desperately needs Palestine to be free. I need this because I refuse to accept that the massacre of peaceful protesters in Gaza is something that my people keep doing. I need this because I understand that trans liberation and Palestinian liberation are linked.”
Part of the dilemma is that Teva’s products are reasonably priced, so that pro-Palestinian transpersons seeking alternative sources of their “life-affirming” hormones may have to pay more for them. “We are hoping to find alternative manufacturers for our trans siblings while never neglecting the low price, high-demand needs of our community.”
PA+Cat, part of the “dilemma” may be that the premise is faulty – “the massacre of peaceful protestors”. It is likely that either 1) there was no such “massacre”, Palestinians have a long history of making such things up (eg “Jenin massacre”), 2) the protestors were not really peaceful, maybe “mostly peaceful” if you follow my drift or 3) they were collateral damage to the longstanding Palestinian/Hamas policy of undertaking attacks on Israel from civilian areas so Israel cannot retaliate or defend itself without endangerng Palestinian noncombatants. If there are any.
FOAF–
I know that the premise is faulty, but good luck trying to convince anyone on the left (which includes a majority of trans persons) of that.
On a recent podcast Peter Zeihan did a Q/A on Israel/Hamas exposing his elite anti-Semitic prejudices.
_______________________________________
And then there’s Gaza uh where Hamas took over … what it’s been about 15 years now. Gaza is basically an open air prison that houses 3 million people. It’s about twice the size of the District of Columbia so it is one of the most densely populated places on Earth. Heavily industrialized lifestyle but no industrial inputs uh all the food all 90% of the food 90% of the energy is imported along with all the liquid fuels. So to think that this Zone could create a industrial power that could challenge Israel is of course laughable.
But to think that people living in a prison camp knowing that the height that they could aspire to to be mayor of the prison, that’s as good as it gets. Um you can understand why some less than savory ideologies might bubble Up, And why people might think that the situation is hopeless so when I go kill a bunch of people I don’t mean that as justification just as explanation.
For a bright knowledgeable guy this is pretty disgraceful.
No acknowledgement of the full evil committed by Hamas nor that the Gazans have any responsibility for the state of Gaza nor the Hamas Charter which decrees the literal obliteration of Israel nor the Islamic requirement to kill Jews going back to Mohammed.
It’s all Israel’s fault.
There’s more in the podcast. Peter Zeihan is sad, but typical of intelligent Westerners gone wrong without realizing it.
Regarding the post, I recently stumbled onto Music Snippet. It’s a Google Chrome extension that allows one to compose sheet music in Google docs. I can’t imagine what composers like Chopin could have accomplished with a tool like this!
There are some great scenes in the film, “Amadeus” showing Mozart scribbling sheet music like mad. He once (at least once) said, “I compose music as the sow pisses.” In other words, he could think of original pieces effortlessly and instantaneously. But getting that music on paper so musicians could understand and reproduce what was in his head was tedious, very time consuming and difficult. Handwriting hundreds of measures for each instrument in a symphony! The mere act of keeping it all straight in one’s head is a wonder akin to Magnus Calsen playing chess, blindfolded against 5 opponents simultaneously. But the physical act of writing it all out by hand must have been pure tedium and torture.
How much more great music would composers like Chopin have given the world with our modern, tech tools? Not only does software make it faster to write (with a computer keyboard and mouse) music, there is software that will take a midi input from a keyboard and write the musical score as it is being played. There is even software that will do the same with a microphone for vocals and non-electric instruments.
Or, is it the case that a genius like Chopin would not have developed such skills of concentration and memorization if he had access to modern, musical composition tools?
Rufus T. Firefly:
I’m sure with current music tech tools the old composers would have written more, but I’m not sure written better.
We’ve had great word processing tools since the 1970s but I’ve noticed no improvement in literature. If anything, literature has gotten worse.
huxley:
Thanks for the lowdown on Zeihan, not funny what gets revealed about the intelligentsia.
‘The Jews made them into murderous, sadistic, barbarians, or, oops freedom fighters.’
“Them,” aka, Gazamites.
Are Westbankeronians as evil as Gazamites?
huxley,
I think your analog to literature and word processing is apt; but I would claim that word processing did make me a better writer. I don’t think word processing made me a more creative writer; I’m not sure it increased the number or quality of original plot ideas I have had in my life, but it definitely improved my ability to write decent content for publication.
How long have we been spared the Boss’ penchant for the BeeGees?
Not long enough.
😉
She has an editorial or article in The Daily Mail.
Thanks much for that powerful link, om.
Yes, thank you om. There are a handful of people whose opinion on all this I have been seeking out. For some reason I’d overlooked her. Clearly a woman with a good mind, a good heart, and a shit-ton of courage – a true inspiration.
Gringo:
Could someone supply me with a link to her original posting?
No, but maybe this link will influence her to reconsider. The whole piece is great, the accordion comes in 4:30.
The Cowboy Junkies are one of my favorites, musically and of course Margo.
Oh, try a little Cowboy Junkies “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” for some soulful singing.
Rufes, Huxley;
I use a word processor for the convenience and versatility it provides. Rearranging, emphasizing, etc are so much easier and cut/paste beats every manual text movement hack.
I write in outline form and explode to final text via a number of passes. The ephemeral nature of digital text makes that possible or certainly much easier.
In front and alongside that I use a derivation of Data Flow Diagrams to plot my story arc and character paths.
Computer for the win.
David Bernstein has a new post at Quillette on Woke Antisemitism:
“There are two distinct but overlapping camps of the social justice left. The radical decolonization camp is made up of extremist academics, anarchists, and Black Lives Matter activists. It is anti-Western, anti-American, and antisemitic to its core. It would be easy to dismiss these people as ideological quacks—if it were not for their outsized role in US educational institutions. . . . Then there’s the reformist, DEI camp, populated by people who have been deeply influenced by the same forms of neo-Manichaean postmodern thought, but who seek not to overthrow the capitalist system, but to reshuffle the deck of power. Unlike the decolonisers, their antisemitism tends to be latent. They insist that Jews are white, place them in white racial ‘affinity groups’ and frequently downplay the validity of antisemitic claims as distractions from the important task of combating anti-blackness.”
I agree. Word processing makes outlining easy and incredibly useful. I first had access to a PC with a word processor in graduate school and I quickly learned to use it to greatly reduce the amount of time I needed to write papers. I quickly figured out I could take a “spaghetti against the wall” approach to writing my papers. It was more about editing than writing.
Just start writing about the topic, churning out sentences and paragraphs. Then, go back and re-read and move things around, expound on things that need expounding, delete things that are redundant, or unnecessary. I barely had to spend any time thinking about my first draft. Just type. I’m a fast typist and I could easily get 1 – 5 or more pages worth of text on the screen. Reading that first effort would lead to the actual paper. And, reading that first effort almost always showed me the best way to the final paper. I’d usually use 70% – 80% of that original material in the final paper.
And a “smart” table of contents and footnotes are a huge time saver!
To a large extent writing skill is a function of time spent writing. I recall Ray Bradbury held himself to writing 1000 words each day.
The less time spent with white-out and cutting/pasting sections of text with scissors and paste, the more time spent composing text. I believe I’m a better writer for word processing.
My point is that it doesn’t seem to have made the best writing any better.
Rufus:
I keep a second file to stash snippets of fact and dialog in, usually “Notes” or “Flotsam”.
As I speed write sections I use blue highlighting to indicate something I want to keep but move or say better. Red if I’m questioning myself.
Oh, I backup with great frequency.
Re: Spaghetti approach
Rufus T. Firefly:
I bet you would like my favorite writing teacher, Peter Elbow. His basic idea is that writing involves generating words and editing words, and it’s better not to do both at the same time.
His books “Writing Without Teachers” and “Writing With Power” recommend lots of spaghetti writing, which he calls “free writing,” before switching gears to the editing process.
Elbow’s books gradually freed me from the writer’s block of trying to make each sentence perfect before moving to the next one.
I’ve divided the elderberries between two casks and topped each off with a pound-ish of sugar and half the rum.
Sealed with wax.
Next year this time I should have 3 gal elderberry brandy.
Oligonicella:
DIY! Good for you.
What is elderberry brandy like?
Well, it’s one third more because I underestimated my berries. So 4.5 gal next year.
What’s it like? Heh. The ‘web’ referenced below is what I call my story DFDs.
I’ve been making brandy a while so……
Elderberry Brandy:
Friday, June 15th, 2007
I’m sitting here on Friday night trying to write something else and not getting past the web. And a fairly sparse web at that. At least the part involved with the text I was trying to write.
Ten bubbles so far with nice names, but no text. Wanted to fill with text. Wanted to put text somewhere.
Here.
Looking at a bottle of elderberry brandy.
If, through some miracle, you stumble across some, purchase it and quickly take it home. It is a rarity and one to be aware of. I wish you luck, because I’ve never seen it. Not for sale. I’ve made it and given it away, but otherwise, I’ve not seen any. Too damned bad.
Fortunately, the bottle is clear. I store it in the dark. But when I want to get some out to tipple, I like clear. I like the colors and especially that of elderberry brandy.
I have it against a white background, naturally. And have just sloshed it around. It is the deep purply-red color of the innermost return blood in your veins. You know, the kind where you think Well, at least it’s not an artery.
That purply-red.
Despite how that reads in print, it is a wonderful color when you think in terms of berries, simply beautiful. I make my brandy with a kick, a minor bite and the elderberry taste dominates even the alcohol. Dark and woodsy or like the weed filled lane where I picked them.
Just had a sip. Kinda stays in the back of your nose after it’s down. Very herbal. Other than that, it’s a sweet brandy. Be clean and wash everything washable, then mix elderberries, confection sugar, white rum in a crock in proportions you think fit, cover and let sit for 4-6 months, depending on how long you can wait.
Decant. Done.
Decant. Dunner.
Pilgrim’s recipe, I believe.
I make mine sweet and thick and – unless there’s bright light and white behind it – as dark as India Ink.
If you take the time and use something out of the ordinary, you can make something that doesn’t cost as much, has a unique taste and satisfies longer because the taste lingers instead of just biting and fading like the flavored brandies. Fruit roll vs lollipop.
Oligonicella,
Careful with the pork bones. Cooked bones of any sort are dangerous as they can splinter. A friend of mine almost lost her GSD to a stomach obstruction caused by pork bones – fortunately the emergency surgery was successful. The dog had been given the bones left over from the lunches of the guys building a wall on her property.
Raw beef bones are safe and they will keep your dog’s teeth white!
Molly Brown: I just put them in to soak. Hizi’s twelve. He’s familiar with all kinds of bones.
huxley,
Regarding Peter Elbow, his technique seems to apply well to me. However, I know people like my sister who are very good at the first draft.
My sister is a great writer (she’s won contests, prizes, awards). I am a mediocre writer but a good reader and a decent editor. I throw my spaghetti on the page (err, screen) and then I’m fairly capable at reading it unobjectively and determining what parts of it a reader would get something out of and using word processing tools to edit and create something readable*.
*For those of you know wondering why so many of my comments here are marginally readable, incoherent gobbledygoop; I tend to type quickly here and hit send, without re-reading what I wrote. Sorry!
(…as evidenced by the spelling of the word “now” in my footnote! 😉 )
Regarding writing tools: I recently discovered one called Scrivener. It includes a word processor which does everything I need, but its main purpose is structure and organization. I recommend it to anyone working on a book. You can break the manuscript into manageable pieces in a hierarchical structure (or compose it that way if you’re starting from scratch) and move those pieces around very easily. It will export the whole thing, or any part of it you choose, to any of the popular word processing formats.
It’s been a tremendous help to me, vastly better than having one gigantic LibreOffice file, or a folder full of smaller ones. It has a huge, almost overwhelming, array of features and configurable stuff (e.g. chapter titling), but you can get started with it and use basic features pretty quickly. Not very expensive and more than worth it to me.
The slogan there, “See the forest or the trees,” is a good summary of what it’s good for.
Re: Scrivener
Mac:
I downloaded a trial copy of Scrivener to check it out. It looked great for writing projects, but I am not currently working on one.
However, it does occur to me now that it would be a good idea for organizing my emails and comments in one place for backup and searching.
I recall looking over an assignment I had written in elementary school. There were a LOT of erasures. Teachers had continually complained about my bad handwriting, and I suspect that a lot of the erasures were attempts to make the handwriting more legible. It certainly wasn’t to correct spelling mistakes, as I was tops in the class. Ironically, as an adult I got some compliments on my handwriting.
Before high school, I enjoyed writing (ignoring the above erasures). Having been burned by the Junior Literary Critic approach to teaching composition in high school and college English classes, I developed a loathing for writing. As a Junior Literary Critic, I felt pushed into inventing symbolism and the like that I didn’t really see.
In high school, the English classes I enjoyed the most were two times when we were instructed to write an in-class essay on some topic far from literary criticism.
I found writing by digital word processing to be a joy. Writing became much easier- and much faster. I could easily correct spelling errors, or better said, Word and such systems could more easily locate them. No need to laboriously erase and then retype. Ditto poorly written sentences or phrases. I was generally too lazy to do much editing. What spaghetti I threw up on the wall, after correcting for spelling, was what I turned in.
Gringo,
Are you “right” handed and, if so, is it possible your mother or a teacher might have forced you into right-handedness?
I struggled mightily with handwriting in grammar school and my handwriting is no better as an adult. In subsequent years I’ve pieced together a lot of clues that indicate my mother almost certainly forced me into right-handedness and I would have otherwise been a natural lefty.
Rufus T. Firefly
Gringo,Are you “right” handed and, if so, is it possible your mother or a teacher might have forced you into right-handedness?
Interesting question. I am right-handed. My brother is a lefty- as was one of our grandfathers. My parents told me that when I was a toddler, they set me on the floor with a bunch of objects for me to pick up, as a test of hand preference. They informed me that while my preference was for the right hand, I was close to being equal in the choices. (60-40???)
As such, I doubt that my parents or a teacher forced me into right-handedness. After all, they let my brother be a lefty. One indication of “evenhandedness” is that early on I chose to use my left hand for my fork. After all, the fork is on the left side of the plate. I will pick up a glass or cup with either hand. In soccer, kicks to goal from my left foot were almost as good as kicks from my right foot. Though in baseball or basketball, I did as little as possible with my left hand.
Here is a possibility for the erasure/band handwriting. I was a stutterer, and in 2nd grade went to a therapist for stuttering. Stuttering resumed in junior high, but I finally conquered it by SLOWING DOWN. (Decades later, I have a low tolerance for service-reps-by-phone who speak too fast. Don’t worry, I tell them to slow down: “I’m not from New York.” )
I wonder if when writing in cursive, my bad handwriting came from my writing to keep up with my thoughts- writing too fast. Also note that as my body matured, I could write faster- which meant a greater ability for my writing to keep up with my thoughts. Which is why I got some handwriting compliments in adulthood.
Huxley, Rufus:
I’m right handed and I hate writing, cursive in particular. My hand cramps in minutes. I block print or type, typing preferred. Not forced training or anything, it’s just simpler to block print and I find cursive takes too much minute movement.
Which is kinda odd as I paint detailed realism with my hand close up, resting on a mahl instead of that hand hovering a foot away approach some do.
This was always so but once I learned typing, I bought a typewriter and never looked back.
Having read what Anne wrote about her accordion experience, I conclude that she is quite justified in her dislike of the instrument. It is not good parental practice to force instrument lessons on a child when the child has expressed a desire to learn another instrument.
I disliked accordion music until I heard Wierd Al and Flaco Jimenez. I wasn’t forced to take accordion lessons.
Concerning music:
We didn’t have the bucks for lessons of any nature so I started with a cheap guitar I bought. Then gave it to somebody. Flute? Same. Harmonica? There I stuck and became a self-taught fair player, but never stage worthy. Never driven either.
But I will sit in awe watching someone who truly understands their instrument.
Me too. The nuns weren’t happy with my cursive so I switched to block printing. I admit I was being passive-aggressive, but I also liked the look better.
In my twenties I discovered I had unconsciously copied my father’s architect handwriting.
huxley:
Cool story.
I switched because of discomfort but I kept block printing through life just so I could read my own writing later.
Oligonicella,
I learned harmonica for the same reason as you; it was the only instrument I could afford. I did become stage worthy and have made money playing. When I was 17 my sister was dating someone who had a spare horn laying around and loaned it to me, so I bought a Rubank’s elementary and taught myself that. Two years later I auditioned and made it into band in College. I’ve made a fair amount of money playing it over the decades. Well, let me correct that. I’ve played a lot of paying gigs with my horn, but there’s never been much money in it. When I got in my first blues/jazz band at the age of 21 I was very eager and gung-ho and kept getting the band paying gigs. My bandmates were all in their 30s and had been playing for years. Nice guys but they were a little annoyed at all the work I was getting them. They mainly liked to hang out in the drummer’s attic and jam. They gave me some great advice which changed my attitude; “There’s no money in this. Just do it for the enjoyment.”
The coolest harmonica I ever owned was a Hohner double bass, no draw. Learned to play it a little. Only piece I ever got down was Elephant’s Memory… something with a lot of sax bass.
Finally gave it to a friend who was actually in a band.
Just read on Commander Salamander that the US Gov’t chartered a Cruise Ship to evac US Citizens from Israel and she has docked in Haifa. But before you can board her you have to sign a promissory note to reimburse the Gov’t. What kind of Mickey Mouse is that!
“WATCH: Tech Billionaires Realize They Were Wrong About Donald Trump
A group of liberal tech tycoons came to a realization about Donald Trump and Jared Kushner on their podcast recently.”
https://redstate.com/videos/2023/10/17/watch-tech-billionaires-realize-they-were-wrong-about-donald-trump-n2165163
######
“All-In isn’t just any podcast, … Hosted by four investors-slash-entrepreneurs-slash-online-gadflies, All-In is where Silicon Valley’s money says what it really thinks. ”
“If you hadn’t heard of All-In before this moment, you likely weren’t alone; although it often tops Apple’s and Spotify’s tech-podcast charts, coverage of the show is somewhat circumspect compared with other well-regarded tech pods (Sway, Marketplace Tech). ”
• First read about this podcast in a Twitter post yesterday – original podcast is below – and now it is popping-up in blogs, etc.
• Did some research, and also posted what I thought was an interesting article on Chamath Palihapitiya (podcaster in sweater that made initial observation).
• The contrast between Trump and Biden – e.g., war, negotiate, solutions – is exponentially magnified when events that are too big to ignore occur.
https://youtu.be/2RAfff-oMKw?t=1034
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/06/07/the-pied-piper-of-spacs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wC_kuLSnuXk&t=6s
==
The harpsichord rules.
“WATCH: Tech Billionaires Realize They Were Wrong About Donald Trump
A group of liberal tech tycoons came to a realization about Donald Trump and Jared Kushner on their podcast recently.”
• Meant to note the RedState link misses some key thoughts in the podcast that preceded the discussion of Kushner, etc. (not sure why they edited that way).
• Encourage others to listen to that content too.
https://youtu.be/2RAfff-oMKw?t=1034
Theyre goofy.
ahhhhh . . .
See how much better that sounds than the accordion!
Thank you again Neo.
Ho hum….
Just another day for the “Biden” Administration….
“The Biden Administration Tries to Hide What It Knew About an Impending Massacre, While Leaving U.S. Backing for Iran Untouched;
“The D.C. blame game is about avoiding responsibility while protecting a policy that is written in blood”—
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/biden-administration-tries-hide-knew-impending-massacre-leaving-iran-untouched-hamas-lee-smith
…featuring another spectacular cameo for Honest A. Blinken—what an actor!—and his ham-it-up sidekick, Pal Malley…plus a full cast of supporting characters (and we DO mean characters)….
The Speaker vote is underway in the House. First order of business, “call of the House” as to presence to vote. Members are still arriving, currently 424 present, 9 not voted, so nearly there.
It’s been a while since I commented here, though I read posts regularly.
Since the Hamas attack, I’ve been trying to double-check my moral calculations about the appropriate response, because I was aware that my reflexive response — something along the lines of “nuke Hamas and anyone they’ve ever met, from orbit” — was correct as an instinctive reaction against evil, but not an example of precise moral reasoning!
I want to get some feedback from the good folks here, in regards to the “laws” of war and “collateral damage.”
First, a bit of table-setting:
It seems to me that we ought to disincentivize barbaric modes of warfare, and incentivize more “lawful” prosecution of a war.
Morally, we distinguish between (on the one hand) regular soldiery who don’t target non-combatants, treat prisoners humanely, are found in-uniform, who follow lawful commands from a chain-of-command terminating in the lawfully-elected civilian leadership of a nation-state; and (on the other hand) terrorists who intentionally target non-combatants and torture/rape/starve/murder prisoners. The “regular soldier” may be an enemy, and yet still be regarded an honorable fellow; but the terrorist is regarded as pond-scum.
But, if the distinctions we draw are merely conceptual and don’t produce different behaviors, then the distinction is a “distinction without a difference,” at least in regards to disincentivizing the more barbaric forms of warfare.
What I mean is: If a captured Hamas fighter gets exactly the same “3 hots and a cot” that a captured downed Luftwaffe pilot would have received during the Battle of Britain, the bad guys of the world are going to ask, “Well, why shouldn’t I intentionally kill civilians, if the occasion seems to call for it, and it helps my cause?” But, if a lawful combatant is treated reasonably well whereas a terrorist is treated significantly worse, why, that changes the risk-calculus a bit, and hopefully makes warfare marginally less-barbaric over time.
For this reason, after the 9/11, I felt that something was missing when people were calling for terrorists to be treated “according to the Geneva Conventions” (by which they meant: “3 hots and a cot just like any regular soldier”). My reaction was always, “No, waitaminute, this is not a regular soldier. They don’t report to a chain-of-command terminating in a civilian government that’s a signatory of those treaties; they don’t fight in uniform; and most importantly, they specifically target non-combatants. If we treat them the same as a regular soldier, we are ignoring the evils that distinguish them from a regular soldier, and we’re undermining the incentives for which the ‘laws of war’ exist.”
That’s the table-setting.
Here’s how I’d like to apply this concept of distinction-drawing to the situation in Gaza:
The Hamas fighters do have a uniform, and they kinda-sorta have a government to which they report. But in every other way they are the vilest of terrorists. Therefore they ought not be treated with the same protections as honorable soldiery.
BUT, how does that factor into our calculus regarding “collateral damage?”
Let’s say that we’re fighting a regular nation-state with law-abiding soldiery, and we have a chance to take out one of their soldiers with a drone, but there is an innocent civilian standing right beside that soldier. It seems to me that because that soldier acts lawfully, the threshold for collateral damage being “acceptable” is lower. Rather than attack him instantly and without reservation, we might wait for the civilian to go elsewhere and then attack him, even though our opportunity might be lost.
On the other hand, suppose there is a terrorist and we can attack him with a drone. It seems to be that The Value Of Killing Him This Very Instant is very high, precisely because he is a terrorist. Consequently, we should calculate the “acceptable collateral damage threshold” for delaying the attack at a much-higher value.
If that’s correctly-reasoned, morally-speaking, then: Is it okay to attack a Hamas leader in such a way as to guarantee his death, even if it probably kills a thousand non-combatants nearby?
If not a thousand, what about a hundred? If not a hundred, what about ten? What threshold is justified?
It seems to me that precisely because Hamas fighters are terrorists, not regular soldiery, we are morally obligated to kill them even at the cost of many innocents. (“You blew up a whole building!” “Yes, there was a terrorist in it, and he would have gotten away, otherwise.” “But there were seventy non-combatants in the same building!” “Yes, seventy, but not seven hundred; so, the morality of my attack is unimpeachable.”)
I realize that much of the above is unrealistic: Real go/no-go decisions are messier than the sheer mathematical comparison I’ve given above. So, if your reply is merely to observe “it’s messier than that,” please don’t bother.
What I’m asking is whether the moral principles I’m articulating are sound ones: DOES our moral obligation to disincentivize terrorism LOGICALLY permit (or even REQUIRE) us to consider higher non-combatant casualty rates morally-acceptable, because doing otherwise means reducing the disincentive to terrorism?
Thanks, in advance, for anyone who takes the time to read and reply.
I am so poorly informed about this subject, but I would like to add a simple consideration.
Isn’t it true that here in the US there is a large group of citizens, who quietly dislike the Jewish community as a collective whole?
How does that reality fit into our collective (countrywide) decisions about prosecuting one Jewish person for some offense (real or imagined)? In other words–do we not prosecute for fear that that collective contempt will have a too strong influence on the jury’s outcome, thus providing an extended protection to the larger community, or do we prosecute with the fear that that collective dislike will prevent a possible outcome of a judgment of innocence by the jury?
How do we accommodate for this situation?
I hope everyone here understands that I do not mean to offend.
My dog’s such a goof. I’m having some fried yams and pork chop this morning.
I cut out the bone and gave it to him. Wanted nothing to do with it. So I tossed into the yam/chop mix and cooked it up.
He’s happily gnawing on it right now.
The moral dilemma about the killing of civilians outside a war zone by the use of drones, while targeting terrorists who pose a threat of imminent violence– a definition that is fuzzy and been made fuzzier is subject to the slippery slope argument.
Have we gone from using drones to kill enemy combatants in a war zone, to killing enemy combatants outside that zone, to killing terrorists outside a war zone who have committed acts of terrorists to killing associates of terrorists who are planning terrorist attacks at some indeterminate time in the future?
There is the infamous example of an American citizen who was droned in Yemen.
“When Obama has made the moral case for the drone war, he has claimed to uphold the highest standards in defending the nation’s security. “That means taking strikes only when we face a continuing, imminent threat, and only where there is … near certainty of no civilian casualties,” he told an audience at West Point in 2014. Last month, the administration gave its first self-evaluation of how well it had succeeded, claiming to have killed at most 116 civilians in drone strikes outside of war zones, compared with up to 2,581 “combatants.” (Independent estimates put the number of civilian casualties far higher.) But what do these numbers really signify? And can they help Americans grade the morality of the drone campaign as a whole?”
“Most famously, a leaked legal memo argued for a “broader concept of imminence” that permits defensive action even when a terrorist plot won’t unfold “in the immediate future.” There’s no reason, the thinking goes, to wait until the terrorist has his finger on the detonator of his suicide vest to take him out.”
Is Obama’s Drone War Moral?
The ethics of defensive killing
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/08/obama-drone-morality/496433/
R.C.:
What you are describing is exactly what “proportionality” means in the law of war. Most people misunderstand and/or misuse the term. But it means that the target must be important enough to justify the number of innocent civilians estimated to be killed.
Only problem is that it’s impossible to calculate. How important is this particular target? How sure are we that it IS that target and that we’re not making a mistake? How many of the civilians around him are innocent? Does it matter that he has purposely located himself among those civilians in order to maximize casualties for propaganda purposes? How sure are we of our estimates of collateral damage? I think that there are so many unknowns that the calculation cannot really be made with any degree of accuracy.
Anne:
ahhhhh . . .
See how much better that sounds than the accordion!
This is at least the second time in recent weeks that I have read a reference to Anne’s dislike of the accordion. Could someone supply me with a link to her original posting?
Another moral dilemma roiling the (self-named) queer community: it turns out that an Israeli company, Teva Pharmaceuticals, is the go-to source for the hormones used by transgender folk. If you support the Palestinians while being an Israeli trans person, you have a problem. As one such transperson states, “I am an Israeli trans woman who desperately needs Palestine to be free. I need this because I refuse to accept that the massacre of peaceful protesters in Gaza is something that my people keep doing. I need this because I understand that trans liberation and Palestinian liberation are linked.”
Part of the dilemma is that Teva’s products are reasonably priced, so that pro-Palestinian transpersons seeking alternative sources of their “life-affirming” hormones may have to pay more for them. “We are hoping to find alternative manufacturers for our trans siblings while never neglecting the low price, high-demand needs of our community.”
You can read the whole sob story, along with the usual lefty virtue-signaling, here: https://www.them.us/story/israel-hormones-and-transitioning
I don’t know why I keep succumbing to these fantasies,
https://freebeacon.com/democrats/anti-israel-democrats-face-campaign-finance-woes-and-primary-challenges/
but if these clowns started losing primaries it would restore at least a bit of my faith in the human race.
Here you go, Gringo —
https://www.thenewneo.com/2023/10/10/open-thread-10-10-23/#comment-2702195
PA+Cat, part of the “dilemma” may be that the premise is faulty – “the massacre of peaceful protestors”. It is likely that either 1) there was no such “massacre”, Palestinians have a long history of making such things up (eg “Jenin massacre”), 2) the protestors were not really peaceful, maybe “mostly peaceful” if you follow my drift or 3) they were collateral damage to the longstanding Palestinian/Hamas policy of undertaking attacks on Israel from civilian areas so Israel cannot retaliate or defend itself without endangerng Palestinian noncombatants. If there are any.
FOAF–
I know that the premise is faulty, but good luck trying to convince anyone on the left (which includes a majority of trans persons) of that.
Caroline Glick Show, “The Real and Awful Reason Biden Is Coming To Israel”, show is premiering in progress, 32 mins so far: https://youtu.be/9xwPA57xOXA?si=3VObiUS0k-oRXxZE
On a recent podcast Peter Zeihan did a Q/A on Israel/Hamas exposing his elite anti-Semitic prejudices.
_______________________________________
And then there’s Gaza uh where Hamas took over … what it’s been about 15 years now. Gaza is basically an open air prison that houses 3 million people. It’s about twice the size of the District of Columbia so it is one of the most densely populated places on Earth. Heavily industrialized lifestyle but no industrial inputs uh all the food all 90% of the food 90% of the energy is imported along with all the liquid fuels. So to think that this Zone could create a industrial power that could challenge Israel is of course laughable.
But to think that people living in a prison camp knowing that the height that they could aspire to to be mayor of the prison, that’s as good as it gets. Um you can understand why some less than savory ideologies might bubble Up, And why people might think that the situation is hopeless so when I go kill a bunch of people I don’t mean that as justification just as explanation.
–“Israel, Hamas and Gaza: Q&A w/ Peter Zeihan”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxXJOqqNFVM
_______________________________________
For a bright knowledgeable guy this is pretty disgraceful.
No acknowledgement of the full evil committed by Hamas nor that the Gazans have any responsibility for the state of Gaza nor the Hamas Charter which decrees the literal obliteration of Israel nor the Islamic requirement to kill Jews going back to Mohammed.
It’s all Israel’s fault.
There’s more in the podcast. Peter Zeihan is sad, but typical of intelligent Westerners gone wrong without realizing it.
Regarding the post, I recently stumbled onto Music Snippet. It’s a Google Chrome extension that allows one to compose sheet music in Google docs. I can’t imagine what composers like Chopin could have accomplished with a tool like this!
There are some great scenes in the film, “Amadeus” showing Mozart scribbling sheet music like mad. He once (at least once) said, “I compose music as the sow pisses.” In other words, he could think of original pieces effortlessly and instantaneously. But getting that music on paper so musicians could understand and reproduce what was in his head was tedious, very time consuming and difficult. Handwriting hundreds of measures for each instrument in a symphony! The mere act of keeping it all straight in one’s head is a wonder akin to Magnus Calsen playing chess, blindfolded against 5 opponents simultaneously. But the physical act of writing it all out by hand must have been pure tedium and torture.
How much more great music would composers like Chopin have given the world with our modern, tech tools? Not only does software make it faster to write (with a computer keyboard and mouse) music, there is software that will take a midi input from a keyboard and write the musical score as it is being played. There is even software that will do the same with a microphone for vocals and non-electric instruments.
Or, is it the case that a genius like Chopin would not have developed such skills of concentration and memorization if he had access to modern, musical composition tools?
Rufus T. Firefly:
I’m sure with current music tech tools the old composers would have written more, but I’m not sure written better.
We’ve had great word processing tools since the 1970s but I’ve noticed no improvement in literature. If anything, literature has gotten worse.
huxley:
Thanks for the lowdown on Zeihan, not funny what gets revealed about the intelligentsia.
‘The Jews made them into murderous, sadistic, barbarians, or, oops freedom fighters.’
“Them,” aka, Gazamites.
Are Westbankeronians as evil as Gazamites?
huxley,
I think your analog to literature and word processing is apt; but I would claim that word processing did make me a better writer. I don’t think word processing made me a more creative writer; I’m not sure it increased the number or quality of original plot ideas I have had in my life, but it definitely improved my ability to write decent content for publication.
How long have we been spared the Boss’ penchant for the BeeGees?
Not long enough.
😉
https://cdrsalamander.substack.com/p/ayaan-hirsi-ali-still-the-lioness
She has an editorial or article in The Daily Mail.
Thanks much for that powerful link, om.
Yes, thank you om. There are a handful of people whose opinion on all this I have been seeking out. For some reason I’d overlooked her. Clearly a woman with a good mind, a good heart, and a shit-ton of courage – a true inspiration.
Gringo:
Could someone supply me with a link to her original posting?
No, but maybe this link will influence her to reconsider. The whole piece is great, the accordion comes in 4:30.
The Cowboy Junkies are one of my favorites, musically and of course Margo.
Oh, try a little Cowboy Junkies “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” for some soulful singing.
Rufes, Huxley;
I use a word processor for the convenience and versatility it provides. Rearranging, emphasizing, etc are so much easier and cut/paste beats every manual text movement hack.
I write in outline form and explode to final text via a number of passes. The ephemeral nature of digital text makes that possible or certainly much easier.
In front and alongside that I use a derivation of Data Flow Diagrams to plot my story arc and character paths.
Computer for the win.
David Bernstein has a new post at Quillette on Woke Antisemitism:
“There are two distinct but overlapping camps of the social justice left. The radical decolonization camp is made up of extremist academics, anarchists, and Black Lives Matter activists. It is anti-Western, anti-American, and antisemitic to its core. It would be easy to dismiss these people as ideological quacks—if it were not for their outsized role in US educational institutions. . . . Then there’s the reformist, DEI camp, populated by people who have been deeply influenced by the same forms of neo-Manichaean postmodern thought, but who seek not to overthrow the capitalist system, but to reshuffle the deck of power. Unlike the decolonisers, their antisemitism tends to be latent. They insist that Jews are white, place them in white racial ‘affinity groups’ and frequently downplay the validity of antisemitic claims as distractions from the important task of combating anti-blackness.”
https://quillette.com/2023/10/16/woke-antisemitism-a-reckoning/
Cowboy Junkies! Now you’re talking. And of course Margo.
Margo well, alright . . . but, but . . . accordion!: https://youtu.be/lvTqmuq8gNw?si=wulygNf1CEQQPHdd
Oligonicella,
I agree. Word processing makes outlining easy and incredibly useful. I first had access to a PC with a word processor in graduate school and I quickly learned to use it to greatly reduce the amount of time I needed to write papers. I quickly figured out I could take a “spaghetti against the wall” approach to writing my papers. It was more about editing than writing.
Just start writing about the topic, churning out sentences and paragraphs. Then, go back and re-read and move things around, expound on things that need expounding, delete things that are redundant, or unnecessary. I barely had to spend any time thinking about my first draft. Just type. I’m a fast typist and I could easily get 1 – 5 or more pages worth of text on the screen. Reading that first effort would lead to the actual paper. And, reading that first effort almost always showed me the best way to the final paper. I’d usually use 70% – 80% of that original material in the final paper.
And a “smart” table of contents and footnotes are a huge time saver!
To a large extent writing skill is a function of time spent writing. I recall Ray Bradbury held himself to writing 1000 words each day.
The less time spent with white-out and cutting/pasting sections of text with scissors and paste, the more time spent composing text. I believe I’m a better writer for word processing.
My point is that it doesn’t seem to have made the best writing any better.
Rufus:
I keep a second file to stash snippets of fact and dialog in, usually “Notes” or “Flotsam”.
As I speed write sections I use blue highlighting to indicate something I want to keep but move or say better. Red if I’m questioning myself.
Oh, I backup with great frequency.
Re: Spaghetti approach
Rufus T. Firefly:
I bet you would like my favorite writing teacher, Peter Elbow. His basic idea is that writing involves generating words and editing words, and it’s better not to do both at the same time.
His books “Writing Without Teachers” and “Writing With Power” recommend lots of spaghetti writing, which he calls “free writing,” before switching gears to the editing process.
Elbow’s books gradually freed me from the writer’s block of trying to make each sentence perfect before moving to the next one.
See https://peterelbow.com/about.html
I recommend both books without reservation.
Since this is open thread:
I got my casks washed and 3 gal of white rum.
I’ve divided the elderberries between two casks and topped each off with a pound-ish of sugar and half the rum.
Sealed with wax.
Next year this time I should have 3 gal elderberry brandy.
Oligonicella:
DIY! Good for you.
What is elderberry brandy like?
Well, it’s one third more because I underestimated my berries. So 4.5 gal next year.
What’s it like? Heh. The ‘web’ referenced below is what I call my story DFDs.
I’ve been making brandy a while so……
Elderberry Brandy:
Friday, June 15th, 2007
I’m sitting here on Friday night trying to write something else and not getting past the web. And a fairly sparse web at that. At least the part involved with the text I was trying to write.
Ten bubbles so far with nice names, but no text. Wanted to fill with text. Wanted to put text somewhere.
Here.
Looking at a bottle of elderberry brandy.
If, through some miracle, you stumble across some, purchase it and quickly take it home. It is a rarity and one to be aware of. I wish you luck, because I’ve never seen it. Not for sale. I’ve made it and given it away, but otherwise, I’ve not seen any. Too damned bad.
Fortunately, the bottle is clear. I store it in the dark. But when I want to get some out to tipple, I like clear. I like the colors and especially that of elderberry brandy.
I have it against a white background, naturally. And have just sloshed it around. It is the deep purply-red color of the innermost return blood in your veins. You know, the kind where you think Well, at least it’s not an artery.
That purply-red.
Despite how that reads in print, it is a wonderful color when you think in terms of berries, simply beautiful. I make my brandy with a kick, a minor bite and the elderberry taste dominates even the alcohol. Dark and woodsy or like the weed filled lane where I picked them.
Just had a sip. Kinda stays in the back of your nose after it’s down. Very herbal. Other than that, it’s a sweet brandy. Be clean and wash everything washable, then mix elderberries, confection sugar, white rum in a crock in proportions you think fit, cover and let sit for 4-6 months, depending on how long you can wait.
Decant. Done.
Decant. Dunner.
Pilgrim’s recipe, I believe.
I make mine sweet and thick and – unless there’s bright light and white behind it – as dark as India Ink.
If you take the time and use something out of the ordinary, you can make something that doesn’t cost as much, has a unique taste and satisfies longer because the taste lingers instead of just biting and fading like the flavored brandies. Fruit roll vs lollipop.
Oligonicella,
Careful with the pork bones. Cooked bones of any sort are dangerous as they can splinter. A friend of mine almost lost her GSD to a stomach obstruction caused by pork bones – fortunately the emergency surgery was successful. The dog had been given the bones left over from the lunches of the guys building a wall on her property.
Raw beef bones are safe and they will keep your dog’s teeth white!
Molly Brown: I just put them in to soak. Hizi’s twelve. He’s familiar with all kinds of bones.
huxley,
Regarding Peter Elbow, his technique seems to apply well to me. However, I know people like my sister who are very good at the first draft.
My sister is a great writer (she’s won contests, prizes, awards). I am a mediocre writer but a good reader and a decent editor. I throw my spaghetti on the page (err, screen) and then I’m fairly capable at reading it unobjectively and determining what parts of it a reader would get something out of and using word processing tools to edit and create something readable*.
*For those of you know wondering why so many of my comments here are marginally readable, incoherent gobbledygoop; I tend to type quickly here and hit send, without re-reading what I wrote. Sorry!
(…as evidenced by the spelling of the word “now” in my footnote! 😉 )
Regarding writing tools: I recently discovered one called Scrivener. It includes a word processor which does everything I need, but its main purpose is structure and organization. I recommend it to anyone working on a book. You can break the manuscript into manageable pieces in a hierarchical structure (or compose it that way if you’re starting from scratch) and move those pieces around very easily. It will export the whole thing, or any part of it you choose, to any of the popular word processing formats.
It’s been a tremendous help to me, vastly better than having one gigantic LibreOffice file, or a folder full of smaller ones. It has a huge, almost overwhelming, array of features and configurable stuff (e.g. chapter titling), but you can get started with it and use basic features pretty quickly. Not very expensive and more than worth it to me.
Web site:
https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener/overview
The slogan there, “See the forest or the trees,” is a good summary of what it’s good for.
Re: Scrivener
Mac:
I downloaded a trial copy of Scrivener to check it out. It looked great for writing projects, but I am not currently working on one.
However, it does occur to me now that it would be a good idea for organizing my emails and comments in one place for backup and searching.
I recall looking over an assignment I had written in elementary school. There were a LOT of erasures. Teachers had continually complained about my bad handwriting, and I suspect that a lot of the erasures were attempts to make the handwriting more legible. It certainly wasn’t to correct spelling mistakes, as I was tops in the class. Ironically, as an adult I got some compliments on my handwriting.
Before high school, I enjoyed writing (ignoring the above erasures). Having been burned by the Junior Literary Critic approach to teaching composition in high school and college English classes, I developed a loathing for writing. As a Junior Literary Critic, I felt pushed into inventing symbolism and the like that I didn’t really see.
In high school, the English classes I enjoyed the most were two times when we were instructed to write an in-class essay on some topic far from literary criticism.
I found writing by digital word processing to be a joy. Writing became much easier- and much faster. I could easily correct spelling errors, or better said, Word and such systems could more easily locate them. No need to laboriously erase and then retype. Ditto poorly written sentences or phrases. I was generally too lazy to do much editing. What spaghetti I threw up on the wall, after correcting for spelling, was what I turned in.
Gringo,
Are you “right” handed and, if so, is it possible your mother or a teacher might have forced you into right-handedness?
I struggled mightily with handwriting in grammar school and my handwriting is no better as an adult. In subsequent years I’ve pieced together a lot of clues that indicate my mother almost certainly forced me into right-handedness and I would have otherwise been a natural lefty.
Rufus T. Firefly
Interesting question. I am right-handed. My brother is a lefty- as was one of our grandfathers. My parents told me that when I was a toddler, they set me on the floor with a bunch of objects for me to pick up, as a test of hand preference. They informed me that while my preference was for the right hand, I was close to being equal in the choices. (60-40???)
As such, I doubt that my parents or a teacher forced me into right-handedness. After all, they let my brother be a lefty. One indication of “evenhandedness” is that early on I chose to use my left hand for my fork. After all, the fork is on the left side of the plate. I will pick up a glass or cup with either hand. In soccer, kicks to goal from my left foot were almost as good as kicks from my right foot. Though in baseball or basketball, I did as little as possible with my left hand.
Here is a possibility for the erasure/band handwriting. I was a stutterer, and in 2nd grade went to a therapist for stuttering. Stuttering resumed in junior high, but I finally conquered it by SLOWING DOWN. (Decades later, I have a low tolerance for service-reps-by-phone who speak too fast. Don’t worry, I tell them to slow down: “I’m not from New York.” )
I wonder if when writing in cursive, my bad handwriting came from my writing to keep up with my thoughts- writing too fast. Also note that as my body matured, I could write faster- which meant a greater ability for my writing to keep up with my thoughts. Which is why I got some handwriting compliments in adulthood.
Huxley, Rufus:
I’m right handed and I hate writing, cursive in particular. My hand cramps in minutes. I block print or type, typing preferred. Not forced training or anything, it’s just simpler to block print and I find cursive takes too much minute movement.
Which is kinda odd as I paint detailed realism with my hand close up, resting on a mahl instead of that hand hovering a foot away approach some do.
This was always so but once I learned typing, I bought a typewriter and never looked back.
Having read what Anne wrote about her accordion experience, I conclude that she is quite justified in her dislike of the instrument. It is not good parental practice to force instrument lessons on a child when the child has expressed a desire to learn another instrument.
I disliked accordion music until I heard Wierd Al and Flaco Jimenez. I wasn’t forced to take accordion lessons.
Concerning music:
We didn’t have the bucks for lessons of any nature so I started with a cheap guitar I bought. Then gave it to somebody. Flute? Same. Harmonica? There I stuck and became a self-taught fair player, but never stage worthy. Never driven either.
But I will sit in awe watching someone who truly understands their instrument.
Or better yet, a group of them.
I block print or type,
Oligonicella:
Me too. The nuns weren’t happy with my cursive so I switched to block printing. I admit I was being passive-aggressive, but I also liked the look better.
In my twenties I discovered I had unconsciously copied my father’s architect handwriting.
huxley:
Cool story.
I switched because of discomfort but I kept block printing through life just so I could read my own writing later.
Oligonicella,
I learned harmonica for the same reason as you; it was the only instrument I could afford. I did become stage worthy and have made money playing. When I was 17 my sister was dating someone who had a spare horn laying around and loaned it to me, so I bought a Rubank’s elementary and taught myself that. Two years later I auditioned and made it into band in College. I’ve made a fair amount of money playing it over the decades. Well, let me correct that. I’ve played a lot of paying gigs with my horn, but there’s never been much money in it. When I got in my first blues/jazz band at the age of 21 I was very eager and gung-ho and kept getting the band paying gigs. My bandmates were all in their 30s and had been playing for years. Nice guys but they were a little annoyed at all the work I was getting them. They mainly liked to hang out in the drummer’s attic and jam. They gave me some great advice which changed my attitude; “There’s no money in this. Just do it for the enjoyment.”
The coolest harmonica I ever owned was a Hohner double bass, no draw. Learned to play it a little. Only piece I ever got down was Elephant’s Memory… something with a lot of sax bass.
Finally gave it to a friend who was actually in a band.
Found it. Elephant’s Memory – Brief Encounter (by EarpJohn). Deep sax comes in around 2:00.
Mediocre band, a good piece.