Month: December 2006

So, no insights on BUSTED: The Citizen’s Guide to Surviving Police Encounters, a 45-MINUTE You Tube video link e-mailed to me on “how to successfully refuse unwarranted police searches and seizures by exercising your constitutional rights”, also available on DVD from FlexYourRights.org. No review (yet) of the St. Elsewhere Season 1 DVD I got in the mail Friday. Don’t have the brain cells to ascertain if the middle name of Barack Obama will prove to be a political liability. But do go see A Charlie Brown Christmas, As Performed by the Cast of Scrubs, recommended by some guy in Buffalo.

Actual content tomorrow, probably.

What is the best concert or festival you’ve been to in your lifetime?

Answered here about a year ago, and nothing has changed in the intervening period. Not even seeing the Turtles. What I didn’t note was that the T Heads were on the tour that brought forth the Stop Making Sense movie, which I have never seen, although I have the soundtrack.

What music does your daughter enjoy that you are tickled pink that she likes?

She likes anything that’s danceable. I got a kick out of her dancing to London Calling. But she has definite dislikes, though I’m not remembering specifically, except that it was a song that came from the Gordon-sponsored Mixed CD collection; she thought it was noise, and I probably agreed with her.

I’m formulating my Top Ten Music, what are some ones that might have slipped my eagle-eye gaze?

This is a tough question. I mean, I know that Gordon turned you on to stuff that I figured you might already have hit upon, but apparently had not. With that caveat:

Miles Davis – Kind of Blue. It is on that ALL-Time list for a reason. Get it. In fact, why don’t you find the ALL-Time list or one of those thousands of Rolling Stone Best Of lists and tell us what you have, so your musical gurus can endlessly taunt you about what you’re missing?
Dave Brubeck. Don’t have a specific album in mind. There’s a Greatest Hits which I don’t have, and The Essential DB, which I’ve given as gifts, but you can’t go wrong with Time Out, which, last I checked, cost $7.99 on Amazon. All sorts of funky meters, not just 5/4.
Elvis Costello – Spike. No, I say again: EC is NOT just a singles artist. The nature of my fondness for this album is based on some of the same reasons I like The Beatles’ Revolver, which is that it’s musically all over the place. From the Amazon review: “you could call Spike the beginning of Elvis Costello’s super-eclectic period. The 1989 disc…offered everything from the bed rock New Orleans sounds of Allen Toussaint and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band to clanging rockabilly, Paul McCartney collaborations (including the sparkling pop hit “Veronica”), and a jazz-ballad standard in the making (“Baby Plays Around” ).”
Paul McCartney – Tug of War. I almost picked Flowers in the Dirt, which was recorded around the same time as Costello’s Spike (Elvis sings on a couple tunes, and reportedly gave Macca the push to actually allow the “My Brave Face” bass line to sound like Beatle Paul.) But I opted for the earlier disc. Paul’s solo/Wings output was always uneven, but this one is pretty solid. It has a fun duet with Stevie Wonder – and I DON’T mean Ebony and Ivory – plus a duet with Carl Perkins.
And speaking of Stevie Wonder – you might as well get his whole late 1972 to 1980 output (Talking Book, Innervisions, Fulfillingness’ First Finale, Songs in the Key of Life, Hotter than July), EXCEPT Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants.
Finally, I’m a big fan of the Johnny Cash American albums. While the third (Solitary Man) and fourth (The Man Comes Around) albums have great songs, and the first one (American Recordings) is a wonderful solo effort, I’m thinking that the second one, Unchained, might be a good choice if you don’t have it. It’s more “commercial” – don’t mean that pejoratively – in that he’s backed by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. I thought it’d be a big crossover hit, but it did more poorly than 1, 3 or 4. Actually, what you REALLY need is the fifth disc from the JRC box set, a greatest hits set from the four, but I haven’t seen it for sale separately.
If you asked me next month, it might be a whole ‘nother list.

You have any music that your wife won’t let you play when she’s around?

That said, I think I’ll be signing up my mom for the Remembering Site for Christmas. I doubt that she’d initiate preserving her memories on her own, but I’m betting she’d do it with me, or so I hope.

RELIGION

Remains of St. Paul may have been found – Yahoo!

Our church is getting involved with The Laptop Project.

POLITICS

Mixed reaction to Cheney’s daughter’s pregnancy, says CNN – fair enough. But Mary Cheney’s pregnancy affects us all? So says Janice Shaw Crouse, Ph.D., Senior Fellow at the Beverly LaHaye Institute, the “think tank for Concerned Women for America… a recognized authority on domestic issues, the United Nations, cultural and women’s concerns.” Feh. It affects Mary and her partner and their families. “The vice president and Mrs. Cheney are looking forward with eager anticipation” to the arrival of their sixth grandchild.” Good answer. Read it if only for the snarky comments on both sides of the issue. Haven’t seen such silliness since Dan Quayle went after Murphy Brown.

A Liberal’s Pledge to Disheartened Conservatives

Inside Higher Ed: Rethinking racial classifications
An Education Department plan to change the way colleges collect and report data on their students’ racial and ethnic backgrounds is attracting growing criticism. Opposition is coming from a group that represents some of the most elite private colleges in the country – as well as from officials of large, diverse public universities.

INFORMATION

Report: Students struggle with information literacy.
“Many students know how to use technology, but fewer know how to apply it to find what they’re looking for” by Justin Appel.

You might think the 2010 Census is far away; you would be incorrect, as this website will attest.

How To Conduct a Background Check

The World Almanac has a blog, now about a month old. This probably means more to me than most, since I’ve been reading the book since I was about 10. I may have told this story: my co-workers had a shower for Carol and me, during which they asked us to identify characteristics of the other. I was supposed to name her favorite book – which I failed to do (100 Years of Solitude), but she got mine (The World Almanac). Thing is, when she made her pick, before I revealed my answer, no one thought she was correct, which I thought was terribly funny.

The Small Business Economy: 2006,which, of course, covers the small business economy in 2005. It used to come out the April or May after the prior year; now it comes out in December.

Snopes confirms a gift card scam.

An alpaca pregnancy calculator from the Alpaca Journal.

THE DESTRUCTION OF YOUNG MINDS

Maybe it’s strange that there is a website or two dedicated to people opening boxes, but a front page story about it in the Wall Street Journal about the “unboxing movement” cracked me up.

Last month, Nik, in response to an August post of mine, wrote: Ah, Fantaco! Their “Chronicles” series helped really turn me into a fanboy for the first time. Picked up the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man volumes and that was it, hooked for life. Oh, dear. I edited both of those magazines! I’ve corrupted youth! Sorry, Nik.

MUSIC, GENERALLY

One of my favorite sites is Dead or Alive. I was disappointed, though, that the late Ruth Brown hadn’t made it onto the page. So, I wrote to them to that effect, and now she has.

Bank of America sings U2’s One. Described recently by Ad Age’s Jonah Bloom as “more toe-curlingly cringe-worthy than anything David Berent did on ‘The Office.'” So popular that it has been parodied as David Cross and Johnny Marr cover Bank of America guy covers U2.

BEATLES, SPECIFICALLY

One of my colleagues got really excited by this “John Lennon” Clip from The Cavern, until he discovered it was from the Cavern Beatles; a decent simulation.

Johnny Bacardi turned me onto a website about the REAL Beatles called What Goes On. It collects Beatle (and Beach Boys) news from all over. It’s where I found this story about UK rejecting music copyright extension, which would, presumably, put the Beatles’ catalog in the public domain there during the next decade. Practically, with the US law with a much longer term, what will this mean? I’m hoping this guy, who is an intellectual property lawyer, as well as a rock and roll drummer, might answer this. He just wrote this interesting Apple vs. Apple piece.

If there were something you could take after experiencing a painful or traumatic event that would permanently weaken your memory of what had just happened, would you take it? As correspondent Lesley Stahl reports, it’s an idea that may not be so far off, and that has some critics alarmed, and some trauma victims filled with hope.

When some traumatic event, such as a man jumping in front of a conductor’s train to commit suicide, or a girl being raped by a doctor at the age of 12, doctors who have studied and treated patients with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, have enrolled some patients in experimental studies of a drug called propranolol, a medication commonly used for high blood pressure … and unofficially, for stage fright.”

“Absolutely,” Magnus says. “Our breakups, our relationships, as painful as they are, we learn from some of those painful experiences. They make us better people.”
…
But while the ethicists debate the issue, the science is moving forward. Researchers have shown in rat studies that propranolol can also blunt old memories.
…
And now the U.S. military has taken note: Pitman recently heard from the Army that he will be receiving funding starting next summer to try the same propranolol experiment to treat American soldiers returning from Afghanistan and Iraq.

So, the questions:

1. Under what circumstances, if any, should a memory-blocking pill be taken?

2. Is the peace that comes with the end of a bad memory worth the life lessons that pain brings?

3. Would you ever take such a pill?

Yoko writes: “This year, though, on December 8th, while we remember John, I would also like us to focus on sending the following messages to the millions of people suffering around the world:

We pray for the wounds to heal.”

Two seemingly disparate articles I read this past week in the local weekly rag, Metroland, jumped out at me.

One was Reaching Out by Cathy Resmer. It describes Linda White, whose daughter was raped and murdered in Texas 20 years ago by a couple 15-year-olds. “In 2001, White and her granddaughter Ami traveled to a prison in Wichita Falls, Texas, where they met with [one of the murderers, Gary] Brown and a trained facilitator. The meeting, known as a ‘victim-offender mediation’ — or, more accurately, a ‘victim-offender dialogue’ — lasted eight hours.”

Conversely, a recent Wall Street Journal piece by Dorothy Rabinowitz really annoyed me. It read: “Most Americans, other than some fortunate few, have by now heard about the forgiveness movement, something of an industry whereby bereaved families seek out murderers of their …loved ones to deliver forgiveness.” She was describing a recent television program, Beyond Conviction – which I did not see – as a variation on the theme “where a woman at the age of 20 was raped by her older brother, now serving a 20-year prison sentence.” She seems to trivialize the notion of forgiveness.

Yet, I’m struck by a subtext of Yoko’s message, even as I read these words from her:
“As the widow of one who was killed by an act of violence, I don’t know if I am ready yet to forgive the one who pulled the trigger. I am sure all victims of violence crimes feel as I do. But healing is what is urgently needed now in the world.

Let’s heal the wounds together.”

I’m hoping that Yoko finds the healing she craves for others.

Oddly, the other Metroland article that hit me, seemingly more trivial, was “Giving Up ‘I Suck'” by Miriam Axel-Lute, which is here presently, and will eventually be here. Noting that she has burned the apple sauce she was making, she writes:
“I suck!” “I am so dumb.” “What a frigging idiot.”

But this time I paused and realized my baby daughter was sleeping in the next room. And I had to give it a little more thought.

My basic feeling is that there enough people OUT THERE who’ll tell you you’re an idiot; you needn’t be one of them, especially publicly. I’m hoping certain people will expunge it from their vocabularies.