tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67317502024-03-07T12:56:35.611-05:00The Kalamazoo PostIf you've got an opinion, defend it.Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03056377038486402824noreply@blogger.comBlogger949125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6731750.post-73990486823802062632021-04-30T06:21:00.004-04:002021-05-05T00:43:59.107-04:00Music Homework<p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Jay’s assignment.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Jay: "So, I'd like to try an experiment with the 3FBC group. Nothing invasive, but for fun.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Jay:</span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Here are the parameters: </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">"(1) put together a list of songs from your past that you find remarkably evocative of a time and place;</span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">"(2) keep the list to an average of 1 song per year;</span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">"3) these don't have to be your favorite songs, just songs that are overwhelmingly evocative - when you hear them, you immediately go to a specific time and place;</span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">"(4) if it helps, think in terms of decades;</span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">"(5) but recognize that you may find more songs in a given decade than in another - as long as it averages out to 1 per year, that's ok</span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">"(6) you may also find several songs that happen to fall in the same year - again, as long as the overall list averages to 1 song per year, no problem.</span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">"(7) please keep track of the year that the given song came out; this will be interesting to consider as we review the lists."</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">______________________________________</span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I’m sure everyone thinks the era in which they grew up had the best music, but they’re wrong: 1970’s/ 1980’s album rock was objectively the best. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">1976 is where I’ll start. I was 15 years old. Sure, we listened to the Beatles and Led Zeppelin, but Journey, Boston and Foreigner were the new music, “our” music. Jackson Browne Running on Empty (1977) was the folksy alternative. Springsteen’s Born To Run (1975) was the anthem of working class white kids on the Southside. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">1977: Supertramp’s Quietest Moments, Kansas’ Point of Know Return, Clapton’s Slowhand, Cheap Trick’s debut album, Foghat LIVE and Fleetwood Mac Rumors. My crowd didn’t really listen to punk or country or shitkicker rock like the Clash, the Cure or the Ramones. The Eagles’ Hotel California was a watershed event. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">1978: Dire Straits, Blondie Parallel Lines, Queen were great, but Some Girls from the Rolling Stones had the vinyl WORN OUT. Somewhere in this era the Beatles Sgt Pepper was re-released for some reason and we couldn’t get enough of it. Southside kids all revered Styx and REO Speedwagon like gods. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">1979: Kevin Cronin from REO graduated with my English teacher Brother Casey in 1969 from my high school. One day in April 1979, a month before my graduation, I was walking to Bro Casey’s class and turned the corner in my usual stupor and bumped into this skinny long-hair wearing jeans (WAY outside the dress code). I looked and couldn’t believe it. Kevin--fucking--Cronin!! Right in front of me. He was coming in to give his buddy Bro Casey some tickets to this weekend’s concert at the Amphitheatre. Casey could do no wrong after that. Other music we listened to were Tom Petty Damn the Torpedoes, Supertramp’s Breakfast In America, Van Halen and the Cars. Disco was verboten and that German techno-noise was frowned upon. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IwXh_7dsEgo" width="320" youtube-src-id="IwXh_7dsEgo"></iframe></div><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><p></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">1980: I was at the Big U of Chicago and my musical experience took a turn. My new crew was more eclectic and decidedly less “Southside.” Ska was a big deal and we listened to The Specials til our ears burned. Elvis Costello got a lot of play and when alone I seemed to crank AC/DC more than was healthy. Somewhere during this time Pat Benatar became a minor obsession, to the point that I found a girl who was her doppleganger and we dated for a while. (This isn’t as odd as it seems since 62% of all girls in 1980 wanted to be Pat Benatar, I just found the best impersonator-- she was indistinguishable in every way but talent.) </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">1981-85: I transferred to Univ of Illinois and the cornfields brought new roommates and bigger, crazier parties, big ten football tailgates with Lynyrd Skynyrd blaring, more Styx, more REO, more Tom Petty, more beer, more weed. Some of the downstate kids played outlaw country and my Wisconsin cousins turned me on to Jerry Jeff Walker, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Garth Brooks, and David Allen Coe (“You never even call me by my name”). I met Kelly in 1983 and she was never a big country fan, so we listened to Lionel Ritchie, Springsteen Born in the USA, Madonna’s debut album Like A Virgin, The Police, Prince When Doves Cry, U2 and Bon Jovi. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">1985-1994: Medical school was devoid of excess music but the OR’s in West Michigan were filled with country music: Brooks & Dunn, Dwight Yoakam, The Dixie Chicks, George Strait, Clint Black, Alan Jackson, Suzy Bogguss… Still love that music: fond memories of hysterectomies and ectopic pregnancies. To this day I can’t place a laparoscope without a steel guitar playing. </span></span></p><p><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The rest of the 1990’s: We moved to Kalamazoo and went to concerts by Lyle Lovett, Junior Brown, BB King, more blues, and some country. Jack Johnson became a favorite. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Now I listen mostly to classic rock and country. Stevie Ray Vaughn, Beatles, Clapton, REO, Journey, Foreigner, ZZ Top, CCR, CSNY, AC/DC. COUNTRY: Alan Jackson, Kenny Chesney, George Strait. I have a new appreciation for George Harrison. Some of the newer country artists that find their way to my phone are Florida-Georgia Line, Jason Aldean and Luke Bryan. </span></span></p>Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03056377038486402824noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6731750.post-67966323742609480722016-03-24T17:58:00.002-04:002016-04-24T23:16:30.841-04:00Book Review: The American Civil War: A History of the Civil War Era<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj58OlWhZyvwW9b062lPS5TKixHxdpGNKjlLtxfVnSd6mC0lwMPKqlpG_kY-BARfOPqStWkz7u07UX-3eo-6amWqq739SfysmJYsBOIj3rn4hjhh8qbTdUy_tR1AFuDznaPg2zU/s1600/civil.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj58OlWhZyvwW9b062lPS5TKixHxdpGNKjlLtxfVnSd6mC0lwMPKqlpG_kY-BARfOPqStWkz7u07UX-3eo-6amWqq739SfysmJYsBOIj3rn4hjhh8qbTdUy_tR1AFuDznaPg2zU/s320/civil.jpg" width="231" /></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Five stars out of Five.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Required reading.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In this concise and tightly written book, history professors Gary Gallagher and Joan Waugh cover the essential events surrounding one of the formative eras in American history. This could function as a text for an introductory college course, an advanced high school program, or as an overview for anyone interested in the Civil War.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-f6077abd-aa92-fc19-80a8-cc2ea739f2ff" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Beginning with the lead up to the insurrection, covering the major battles and interaction of the principal characters and finishing with Reconstruction and major themes that persist today, The American War is a short but remarkably detailed history. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some things I learned that I had not realized: Lincoln won the election of 1860 from among four candidates and a profoundly divided electorate. Disappointed with the outcome of the election, seven states in the Deep South had seceded before Lincoln even took office in March 1861. Maj Gen George McClellan, Lincoln’s first commander, was actually opposed to the abolition of slavery and eventually ran against Lincoln for the presidency in 1864. When tallying up property wealth, Mississippi and South Carolina were counted as the wealthiest states because of the value of their slaves. The South truly expected support from Britain because of their reliance on cheap cotton. Lincoln hated slavery but supported segregation and, to the castigation of black abolitionists Frederick Douglass and Robert Purvis, Lincoln proposed setting up Central American colonies for former slaves. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This book, however, is much more than disparate facts. The authors are professors with a deep understanding of the nuance of many of decisions and circumstances of this often confusing era. The value of this tome is the narrative that is carefully crafted to give the reader an understanding of why things happened instead of just a laundry list of events. Just enough detail is provided regarding the way of life in the North and South, highlighting the differences in industrial versus agrarian cultures.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In a mere 250 pages, one comes away with a sense of the inevitability of the Civil War, and also a better understanding that we are still fighting many of the same demons today. The book is extremely well-written, with maps and grayscale pictures complementing the text. While it lacks endnotes or footnotes, there is a prodigious bibliography in the back for readers to pursue topics in more detail. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The American War is highly recommended and I’d go so far as to say that it should be required reading for every American, easily read in a few days.. It’s short, accessible and thoughtful. [Disclosure: the book was provided to me for the purpose of writing a review.]</span></div>
Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03056377038486402824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6731750.post-17949313949271379762015-09-25T14:27:00.001-04:002015-09-25T14:27:33.316-04:00<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17333223-the-goldfinch" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="The Goldfinch" border="0" src="https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1378710146m/17333223.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17333223-the-goldfinch">The Goldfinch</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8719.Donna_Tartt">Donna Tartt</a><br />
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1356153501">4 of 5 stars</a><br /><br />
This is a big thick book with excellent character development and quirky plot. There were times when I thought it was wonderful and couldn't stop reading, and other times when I found it annoying and over-done. <br /><br />The story follows Theo Decker from the age of 13 until his early adulthood. He is dealt a rotten hand when his mother is killed and he is left to his own devices for survival and maturation in New York. Others have noted the resemblance of this work to Dickens' bildungsroman David Copperfield, and indeed, Donna Tartt is masterful at sentence construction, depiction of mood and description of characters, very much like Charles Dickens. Of course she spent 10 years on this opus-- an average of four days per page-- so, I guess it should be crafted well.<br /><br />Tartt is best when educating the reader, from art history, furniture refurbishing, and even illicit drug use. She is a wealth of information, both useful and not. Tartt is also surprisingly adept at describing the moods and motivations of adolescent males. Odd.<br /><br />Actually, I found this novel more closely akin to Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage: the pained existentialism, the reckless lifestyles, longing for love, the struggle for meaning. Maugham, however, wrote a semi-autobiographical work and it seemed more realistic and pertinent where The Goldfinch is fantastical in most plot twists.<br /><br />Certainly, I can see why The Goldfinch is acclaimed. The writing is smooth as butter and the story is compelling, although it devolved into a Robert Ludlum-esque thriller in the final 150 pages, which I found mildly annoying.<br /><br />Read the book. Better, read Of Human Bondage. <br /><br /><br />
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/5410681-tony61">View all my reviews</a><br />
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Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03056377038486402824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6731750.post-78152945143807133292015-01-25T00:14:00.000-05:002015-01-25T00:18:57.730-05:00Movie Review: Birdman<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Michael Keaton played the best Batman way back in the 1989 dark comedy by Tim Burton. Viewers would be better off renting that masterpiece than shelling out $7 for his latest vehicle, Birdman. Themes and acting were great. The filming was distracting and the plot, especially the ending, was annoying. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are better reviews written elsewhere (like <a href="http://www.film.com/movies/review-birdman">here</a>), but I am surprised by the sheer number of top ratings --100 out of 100-- at metacritic and a Rotten Tomatoes score of 92%. Am I missing something?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Keaton’s character adapts a short story to Broadway and then goes into debt to produce, direct and act in the play, opening himself up to humiliation and professional and financial ruin.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ed Norton plays a Broadway pro whose self-confidence wanes when not on the stage. Naomi Watts is a fledgling actress concerned that this play will define her career. Emma Stone is Keaton’s daughter and Zach Galifianakis plays the lawyer and best friend.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s billed as a dramedy and the personal dramas are valid, but most of the jokes are inside baseball stuff for the Hollywood and Broadway crowds that those of us living in the Flyover aren’t too concerned with. Who cares if Keaton’s character isn’t respected as a “real” actor? </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many of the reviews remark on the novel way the movie is filmed, with continuous shot-on video making it seem that the whole movie is done in one take. Big whoop. Hitchcock did that in “The Rope” 50 years ago before all the cinematographic tricks. And I noticed the shot-on camera dance about ⅓ of the way through, so if a semi-skilled laborer in a square state can figure it out, it’s not a big deal. Frankly, it became distracting.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The biggest problem is the plot, especially the ending. Keaton struggles, he remembers past glory, he deals with anger, he goes through the dark night of the soul, he anticipates new glory, he resolves issues with his family…. all good stuff. Then the writer doesn’t have an ending ….Keaton the Birdman flies away, or some such bullshit. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There’s probably an Oscar in here somewhere because the writer flagellates Hollyweird by portraying a moviestar as a legitimate actor. Kudos for that I suppose.</span></div>
<br />Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03056377038486402824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6731750.post-86149583775954198762014-11-02T12:39:00.002-05:002014-11-02T12:39:26.718-05:00Book review: Antifragile: Things that gain from Disorder, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP0AOzJfd5cPuuHOA83fVhq8lBcYBcG8PBKPtJaa6tYVEztUMMTQ-vGO1FchI_0e2PiCt51ZKhtuh6jcSv5AwjgV3NS1AHHFhHZuzUWaLKUo2dCINpHnJbM_9foe4K_4T5PEK2/s1600/antifragile.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP0AOzJfd5cPuuHOA83fVhq8lBcYBcG8PBKPtJaa6tYVEztUMMTQ-vGO1FchI_0e2PiCt51ZKhtuh6jcSv5AwjgV3NS1AHHFhHZuzUWaLKUo2dCINpHnJbM_9foe4K_4T5PEK2/s1600/antifragile.jpg" height="320" width="210" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nassim Nicholas Taleb is unique in stimulating thought while often annoying and exasperating the reader. He is likable yet solipsistic, intelligent yet pedantic, compassionate yet abrupt. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is the second of his books I’ve read (actually listened to the audio version), the first was </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Black Swan</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> back in 2007-08. Reviewed </span><a href="http://kalamazoopost.blogspot.com/2008/03/black-swan-by-nassim-nicholas-taleb.html" style="line-height: 1.15; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">here</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and in re-reading that review I’ll affirm my 5 star rating. Taleb’s influence was critical to my reassessment of the capital markets in 2008 and his admonitions supported some gainful personal decisions at that time.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Antifragility is defined as the quality of something to benefit from disorder. Unlike a poorly constructed UPS package of wine glasses that will shatter if disturbed, something that is antifragile will actually gain strength if disturbed. This is not to be confused with robust, which is merely something that is</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> less </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">likely to be damaged with disorder, ie, a well-constructed UPS package of wine glasses. Antifragile takes it a step further to an entity that is actually </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">improved</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> with disorder.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nassim Taleb says that great thinkers have only one great idea which is refined and adapted over time. Darwin had natural selection, Einstein had relativity, and presumably, Taleb includes himself with the idea he now calls antifragility. I did mention he has an ego, right? Putting Taleb’s high self-opinion aside for a moment, I’ll grant that Antifragility as a followup to the Black Swan does deserve a place at least in the minor pantheon of cultural memes, albeit a few notches below Darwinism, but yeah.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As an example in nature, Taleb refers to the ability of any species to adapt to environmental stressors as antifragile. Antifragility is everywhere in nature: the weak succumb while the strong survive and reproduce. Cultural examples are depicted by Adam Smith’s idea of the “invisible hand” that guides markets opaquely by rewarding beneficial actors and punishing the weak. For the record, Taleb later notes that the right-wing corporatist understanding of Adam Smith is incorrect and Smith never used the word “capitalist”, but that is another issue.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Platonic, or top-down, management is differentiated from bottom-up, or empiric, reality. Plato’s idea of a philosopher-king, like a soviet style central planner who has some special understanding, does not jibe with what we observe in the world. Rather, the world is populated with adapting individuals and evolving ideas, some of which will die off and others that will survive. Taleb extends this notion from business and banking to other fields as wide-ranging as medical care and even religion.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Upon listening to a short interview of Taleb regarding this book, I was a bit unsure if I’d agree with his assessment of health care, but having finished the book, I’ll accept that he has it mostly correct. Medicine is best when it embraces the empiric, guided by what we see that actually works….what Taleb calls the heuristic: the rule of thumb. Treating numbers, like mildly elevated cholesterol levels or arbitrary blood pressure “abnormals” with medication can lead to iatrogenic (ie, doctor-induced) harm and needless cost. The best examples of pharmaceutical development are rare-- eg, antibiotics and vaccines-- while things like cholesterol-lowering statin medication, developed for only the worst hereditary hypercholesterolemias, are now prescribed to lower mildly elevated levels without evidence of benefit. The human body, much like capital markets, is too complex to adhere to such top-down models since such things as long term sequelae and side effects are impossible to predict </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a priori</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The best medical practice comes from time-tested heuristics, otherwise known as rules of thumb empirically shown to be effective. All else is waste and danger.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The asymmetry of information in medical care is what renders it complex, not only the asymmetry of knowledge between doctor and patient, but also--especially-- the asymmetry of resources between corporate actors and those of us in the trenches. If Big DrugCo floods the evening news shows with advertisements for their latest wonder drug, there isn’t a whole lot that will keep that drug from making it into medicine cabinets around the country. Eventually enough patients and practitioners will succumb to the influence of the moneyed interests. Restless Leg Syndrome has no less than six FDA-approved remedies. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Taleb was an options trader back in the 1980’s, buying mostly out-of-the-money puts and calls on various asset classes, which earned him enough money to retire at an early age to philosophize. He develops the concept of antifragility and how to achieve it, what he calls optionality, by placing a bet on a perturbation in the system. A small bet can become a big winner if that perturbation is large enough. For example, a put option (a bet on a crash) on the stock market would have lost small amounts every year from 2001 to 2007, but then would have resulted in a windfall if held through the debacle of 2008. Options are insurance for when the rare cataclysm, ie, Black Swan event, occurs.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Antifragility</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is not a how-to investment book, it is a philosophy book. Taleb rails against those individuals in business and government he calls “fragilisitas” who engage in activity and promote policies that increase fragility in the economic system. Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin, Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz are his favorite foils because they call for supporting weak actors who make bad decisions while ignoring the possibility of fat-tail events, those rare but devastating occurrences that can destroy entire systems. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Taleb, however, reserves special disdain for Alan Blinder, a former Vice-Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, who took the cynicism a step further. As a bank official, he enacted all manner of confusing regulations and then parlayed his “inside expertise” into a cottage industry upon leaving office, advising clients how to navigate these regulations. Furthermore, Blinder started a company that took advantage of FDIC deposit insurance for large corporations by splitting their colossal capital accounts into smaller accounts that would qualify for the FDIC protection. When asked if this were ethical, Blinder replied only that it was perfectly legal, while he collected prodigious fees from his clients. Taleb uses this as an example of the introduction of fragility into the economic system by cynical application of asymmetric knowledge and influence.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I enjoy Taleb’s passion and ranting, but it occurs to me that much of his self-admitted “anger” is misplaced. This fragility is inevitable. Relax and be entertained. For the vast majority of us the opportunity or inclination to act unethically is nonexistent, but a few sociopaths will always exist, so why bother fretting about the inevitable? Herb Stein, a Nixon White House economic advisor in the 1970’s, when dismissing the two-pronged dangers of the budget deficit and the trade deficit, coined Stein’s Law. To wit: </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” While Taleb never mentions this particular maxim, I think he would embrace it nonetheless. In fact, for all Taleb’s withering banter about fragilisitas and fat-tails and black swans, I sense that he is all too aware of the inexorable nature of humans to embrace harrowing fallacies that lead to destruction. It’s what we do. After all, Taleb successfully navigated the options markets to make a bundle of cash, so while luck likely played a role he does have some concept of risk management and the human propensity to ignore risk. Taleb’s first book was a technical tome on financial options called “</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dynamic Hedging</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">”, so he definitely gets it.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On a more personal note, I enjoy listening to the spoken word versions of Taleb’s books, and I search my podcast app for any interviews of Nassim Taleb. One interview on some economic webcast actually took my breath away because of the eerie similarity of Taleb’s personality to that of my father, Vince. The passion, the erudition and even the speech cadence is uncannily similar (the audio books, unfortunately, are read by a polished professional actor.) Not many people can expound on Seneca one moment and the next give a fairly accurate description of how skeletal muscle fibers function. This is like my father, who could explain how Jungian symbols of the collective unconscious correspond to the three levels of consciousness of the Huna religion one day and the next would give a textbook explanation of quantum mechanics and radioactive decay (he was a radiologist, later turned psychiatrist, by profession). As they say, all that plus $8 will get you a six-pack of Anchor Steam.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Individuals who have such profound and wide-ranging interests are rare and usually misunderstood. Their humility is masked by their intellectualism. Taleb’s humility is manifest in his admission that specific predictions about almost anything are impossible, hence the concept of Black Swan events and the importance of protecting yourself against any and all major cataclysms. He notes that financial commentators are forever trying to predict the “next Black Swan”, completely bolloxing the concept that such things are inherently unpredictable. You cannot know, so be humble. Optionality in a broad sense is the only mitigation available. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My father also had a firm grasp of this idea that increasing fragility, or entropy, is natural and he gave excellent advice about becoming antifragile, although he had different terminology. Amidst all the discussions about the Caeser’s Gallic Wars or conjecture about whether he could harness the noosphere to control a roll of the dice, pearls of wisdom would occasionally wiggle out. Unlike Taleb, Vince didn’t have an editor so it usually took effort by the listener to keep the conversation focused. Eventually, I gleaned that economic disasters occur once every generation or so, for Vince it was the Great Depression and World War II, and at the time of our discussions it was the crushing inflation of the 1970’s that followed Vietnam. Shit WILL happen. The Great Recession of 2008 was inevitable in some form, and the next crisis is already in development somewhere. The best protection, the optionality, is to learn a useful skill that even the Russians or Red Chinese will need. Fix furnaces or cars, or deliver babies; that will never go out of style and you will have insurance against fat-tail events. Be thrifty, be skeptical, pay off your mortgage. Relax, the rest is entertainment.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nassim Taleb’s </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Antifragility</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> synthesizes several fields of interests into an overarching theme. He discusses the problems of agency, actors who lack skin in the game, the failure of even the best economic and biologic models, the human tendency toward bias, etc. My short review cannot do it justice. As a sequel to his previous works, </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fooled by Randomness</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Black Swan</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, this book successfully depicts the nature of the human condition, culturally and biologically. Read it, you’ll be richer for it. </span></div>
<br />Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03056377038486402824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6731750.post-64119812594666873242014-10-01T15:19:00.001-04:002014-10-01T15:20:05.791-04:00Obama hatred, and my response<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJVhnwWzGMf-tKJj-1LddfCMol9E5SRQPlLG8_I8fUpicePqtiorEvCNsJdXN7M7Gwq6JN_3jJgbqt_lYNYJYtOjoIjjyha4NNGYrgr96BjrFGrJ-iH-SC1Z1JHcXhYAnqqqDZ/s1600/obamaanti-christ.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJVhnwWzGMf-tKJj-1LddfCMol9E5SRQPlLG8_I8fUpicePqtiorEvCNsJdXN7M7Gwq6JN_3jJgbqt_lYNYJYtOjoIjjyha4NNGYrgr96BjrFGrJ-iH-SC1Z1JHcXhYAnqqqDZ/s1600/obamaanti-christ.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJVhnwWzGMf-tKJj-1LddfCMol9E5SRQPlLG8_I8fUpicePqtiorEvCNsJdXN7M7Gwq6JN_3jJgbqt_lYNYJYtOjoIjjyha4NNGYrgr96BjrFGrJ-iH-SC1Z1JHcXhYAnqqqDZ/s1600/obamaanti-christ.gif" height="222" width="320" /></span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;">I got into a back-and-forth at another website with my internet buddy MJ, who is one of these guys who just takes indiscriminate swipes at the current President. Fine, he's entitled to his opinion, but since the website is mainly financial and not politically oriented </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I asked politely on what he based his intense dislike. Are there some specific misgivings he has that justifies the constant haranguing? Here is MJ's answer and my subsequent response:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">MJ:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> "Anthony [that's what they call me there] you made me reflect some. That’s good. On what do I base my condemnation of Pres. Obama? On reflection it is not so much his failed policies like Obamacare or his stimulus with its nonexistent “shovel ready jobs” or the Unrealistic budget proposals that have resulted in the “continuing resolution” or the failed sequester gambit that has decimated the military. As you say most presidents have some of these. Maybe not of the magnitude as his. But they do.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">"No, I think its more the culture he and the first lady have allowed and promoted. The namby pamby, PC, everybody gets a trophy, no one is accountable, deny-wait-stonewall and it will go away culture. This culture has created the IRS, Fast and Furious, Benghazi, denying domestic terrorism like Fort Hood and recent events in Oklahoma, Vet Admin, Man running in White House, ISIS and Illegal immigrant surge, scandals (and some I am forgetting). The inappropriate vacations and golfing. Failed School lunch menus. Legislating via regulation….. It is second rate at best.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">"He is running along the ice as it falls in behind him and Hillary will speed that ice fall as fast as she can so she can right the ship in 2016. Obama is already under the bus. I can hear it in your posts."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">And MY RESPONSE:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">That’s a good list to reflect on, MJ. I’ll grant that I take issue as well with some of those items. My curiosity is what criteria you use to include some of them. Some are based on something tangible: like loss of life in the Fast and Furious scandal, or wasted money somewhere (where?), or ignoring IG reports that showed Vet Admin problems. Yes, those were problems that the president should account for, and has not.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Others are bad judgement which may be just part of having a large complex government (IRS scandal) with tentacles all over the world in war zones (Benghazi).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The ones that show me it’s capricious judgement on your part are the intangible “perception” problems that are just piling on, like “everyone gets a trophy” (what is that?), “PC culture” (huh?), “namby-pamby”, or the way he salutes or the clothing the First Lady wears… I mean, come on. Bush took 3X the vacation days that Obama has; presidents take vacations. Get a grip on your pointless anger, dude.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Then there are the issues that are just plain false: illegal immigration is at a multi-decade low. Also, budget resolutions were agreed upon by House Republicans for purely mutual political reasons, nobody wanted to go on record having voted for an evil Obama budget. You should know that these are pure BS.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">So, from your list, I can find three substantive issues. Fine. Impeach him over Fast and Furious.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">But then you have to look at comparable issues from the previous administration(s) and decide who showed worse judgement or was more willfully criminal. I think being president is probably a tough job, and mistakes happen which can cause death and are visible to everyone, but they happen.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I would judge that Bush made much worse errors of judgement and engaged in outright corruption and coverup. After stonewalling the 9/11 Commission Report for a year, it came out in Chapter 8, titled “The System Was Blinking Red”, that the Bush administration ignored MULTIPLE clues that an attack was imminent in the summer of 2001. Google it, it’s about 20 pages of fuckups, any one of which, if found, would have foiled 9/11. He missed it. Fine. Sh*t happens. Did Obama miss anything of that magnitude?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Then we blunder into a war against the advice of UN weapons inspectors that costs us $2 Trillion and kills over 4K US soldiers, and we lose massive credibility in the world community. We’re laughing stocks. “Curveball”, a source that was never even interviewed by any American agent, was the sole source for the bio-weapons threat that was proved to be pure BS. And you’re worried about how “everyone gets a trophy” political correctness is hurting us? Get real. The there’s L. Paul Bremer and his inept management of the Green Zone, losing $12 billion that just went unaccounted for. Oops– I wonder how many RPG’s and IEDs that money bought.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I guess the 12 embassy bombings under Bush weren’t as important as Benghazi? Or the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut under Reagan, after he was warned that the security wasn’t adequate, that killed a few hundred soldiers. No, Benghazi is much worse I suppose, as shown by the half-dozen GOP-led committee investigations that failed to show wrongdoing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Then there are the outright willful crimes: The Plame affair was a treasonous offense, the US attorney firings was felonious corruption, NSA wiretapping, Halliburton getting no-bid contracts despite Cheney having been the CEO. Nothing done in the last 6 years even comes close to any one of these. Even if the IRS scandal were willful (not likely), and came from the White House (very doubtful), the damage done by it pales in comparison to even one of the Bush/Cheney crimes. Look up Ahmed Chalabi– who sat NEXT TO the First lady at the SOTU address–to see how our intel was played by self-serving operators. Ugh.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Bad judgments: Abu Ghraib torture (don’t tell me that dictum came from a 2-star general), failure to kill OBL at Tora Bora (wtf?), black site renditions (if they happen that’s one thing, but for god’s sake don’t make it a public spectacle), the same for waterboarding.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Then there were the boondoggles like $1 Trillion dollar Medicare Part D, $800 billion bank bailout--Google “this sucker could go down” or "Hank Paulsen on bended knee to Nancy Pelosi", very dignified. And the financial near-Armageddon we experienced on his watch, loss of millions of jobs– MILLIONS.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">So, yeah, we can lob grenades at Obama for golfing too much or screwing up Fast and Furious that killed a border agent or ignoring the IG reports on the VA, but I think when you total up the corruption, wasted money, and bad judgement, the current administration looks like Utopia.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I don’t know what else to compare Obama’s presidency to, and maybe the sum total of the last 20 years or so merits a re-thinking of the USA in general, but don’t try to tell me that Obama is some kind of outside the norm evil, or 3-standard deviation inept executive.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I’m not making excuses, just trying to join your “reflection” with some comparable examples from a previous administration. If Obama is a corrupt, evil idiot, what does that make Bush and Cheney?</span></div>
Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03056377038486402824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6731750.post-88797422824456225372014-09-01T07:10:00.005-04:002014-09-01T16:17:09.966-04:00Sean Hannity elevates lying to an artform<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8H2QdOKd0FR-QVlvMY-0nDy711IAVtGc_EvTASWtMgfrMUybBJslul6WuTGPFOqfzGsla5FzP8iLlg0cbXMbPuOjnIj6rJs-l0SeeLriKzPi-k4XZN-mI7wE_Sv6JccNUNc_V/s1600/hannitysmith.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8H2QdOKd0FR-QVlvMY-0nDy711IAVtGc_EvTASWtMgfrMUybBJslul6WuTGPFOqfzGsla5FzP8iLlg0cbXMbPuOjnIj6rJs-l0SeeLriKzPi-k4XZN-mI7wE_Sv6JccNUNc_V/s1600/hannitysmith.jpg" height="209" width="320" /></a>I've been trying to engage in more life-affirming activities which means ignoring the ill-informed haranguing about current events. I'm taking a break from my moratorium to point out my appreciation for Sean Hannity's lies which are so elegant that they can be appreciated as art.<br />
<br />
Recently, <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/online/sean-hannity-and-stephen-a-smith-battle-over-michael-brown-shooting/#ooid=s3d3FybzqiGvl-dV6Ta1Fs7o1oYFQdGx">Sean Hannity interviewed sports analyst Stephen A. Smith on his radio show</a> (the Ferguson discussion begins at 7:00) ostensibly to discuss the racial implications of the Ferguson shooting and aftermath with a "reasonable black man". The interview morphed into a dissertation of lies and prejudices without any journalistic acumen or even an attempt to arrive at the truth. To wit, listen starting at the 7:00 mark.<br />
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Five points:<br />
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1) Suborbital fracture. Hannity broaches the now debunked canard that the police officer had a suborbital facial fracture, implying that Michael Brown beat him up. This is bullshit, and any respectable journalist, commentator or just plain human being would try to corroborate that incendiary factoid before presenting it as fact. The fracture story was made up out of whole cloth by some divisive liar (Gatewaypundit) who has a <a href="http://crooksandliars.com/2014/08/gateway-pundit-jim-hoft-spins-tall-tales">long history of incendiary lies</a>. Hannity knew this, and if he didn't know it, then he is a poorly informed moron.<br />
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2) Protestors are bussed in. Hannity then lies about the the number of non-Ferguson residents who were arrested. <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/ferguson-arrest-suspects-area-records-show/story?id=25038886">ABC reports</a> that of the 78 arrests, 58 were from the Ferguson area.<br />
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3) Michael Brown was threatening. Hannity spews the unproven and unproveable conjecture that Brown threatened and rushed at the officer before taking 6 bullets at close range. This is all bullshit, reported as fact. If Hannity wants to investigate something, why doesn't he look into the absence of bodycams and dashcams in Ferguson. We learned over the ensuing 5 days that the Ferguson Police Department has all matter of assault vehicles, MRAPs, body armour, helmets, tactical weapons, etc, but they cannot afford a $100 bodycam? WTF? And since we have no official video, why spew BS about what you think "might have" possibly happened?<br />
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4) No police report. Hannity goes into detail about the alleged activities of the fateful day, but has no problem that a police report has not been filed two full weeks (now three as I type) after the incident. The allegations outlined are all based on hearsay and flawed eyewitness accounts. If Hannity were a truthful journalist he would at least mention that he is engaging in blind conjecture and that the police are not forthcoming with their side of the story. At the same time the FPD took the time to release the Quiktrip video of Michael Brown's strong-arm robbery. Why the asymmetric release of information if not to shape the story. A journalist would recognize this as brazen.<br />
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5) My final point is subtle, but nonetheless an important weapon in the arsenal of the liar. Stepehn A. Smith was invited to first discuss his suspension from ESPN for alleged sexual harassment and Hannity commiserates with Smith for the first 7 minutes of the interview about how these issues are hard to figure out and the unfairness, yada yada, yada. This is done to disarm the "reasonable black man" for the real discussion: how race in Ferguson unfairly cast blame on a white cop who shot an unarmed black kid. Smith has been de-fanged by the frank conversation of his alleged wrongdoing and much less likely to call out the host when he subsequently lies like a rug.<br />
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Hannity is a master.
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<a href="http://pmcdeadline2.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/inferno__130716202125.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://pmcdeadline2.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/inferno__130716202125.jpg" height="320" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">I listened to the audiobook of Dan Brown's Inferno. He follows his usual formula of phrenetic chases with Robert Langdon and a beautiful, intelligent compatriot, ala James Bond. Langdon is his geeky protagonist who always finds himself in a mess and must save the world using his wits and vast knowledge of some ancient text, this time it's Dante's saga poem The Inferno.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">Hewing to the formula, Brown puts Langdon in remarkable places, this time it's Florence, Venice and Istanbul, perusing works of art and architectural wonders, and of course, running through the streets away from the bad guys. Langdon uses his insights on history to uncover the mystery of the story and save the world. This episode involves an evil genius who was developed a vector virus designed to reduce human fertility and thus save the planet from being overrun by our species in a Malthusian catastrophe of overpopulation.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">While not garnering the positive reviews of his past books, Inferno was a commercial success and spurred popular interest in Dante as well as increased travel to Italy and Turkey. It does stimulate desire to see the cathedrals and museums described in the book.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">One complaint I have is the length of the book. Sure, Brown is extremely readable and the plot moves fast, but hours of chase scenes (on the audiobook) is too much. No editor was available? Another issue is the absence of explanation as to how this vector virus renders humans infertile. What is the mechanism? How do they know it will only affect 30% of the population? The third quibble is the presence of not only one, but TWO evil geniuses. Come on.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">Putting the small problems aside, Inferno does what it is supposed to do: keep the reader interested while getting educated about architecture, ancient literature and art. Mission accomplished. Brown's forte is not molecular biology and reproductive medicine. Fine.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" />Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03056377038486402824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6731750.post-60022839141057228872014-08-27T14:46:00.003-04:002014-08-27T14:46:51.744-04:00Book Review: Catherine the Great, by Robert K. Massie<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.texarkanagazette.com/content/uploads/pictures/2011/11/Book-Review-Catherine_Mill.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.texarkanagazette.com/content/uploads/pictures/2011/11/Book-Review-Catherine_Mill.jpg" height="320" width="214" /></a></div>
<br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">4.5 stars out of 5. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">I read this book as part of a reading group recommendation, not because of some overweening compulsion to dive into Russian history. Massie is most famous for writing <i>Nicholas and Alexandra</i> (published in 1967 and made into a movie in 1971), the story of the last Romanovs who were exiled and killed after the 1917 Russian revolution. Massie, an American from Kentucky and educated at Yale and Oxford, has also written books on Peter the Great and other European history topics. This current volume is published in 2011; Massie has been around a long time.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;"><i>Catherine the Great</i> is a big book, approaching 600 pages including the must-read author interview in the back. She was born into a small Prussian principality in 1729, the daughter of a financially struggling duke and a socially ambitious mother who was only 16 years her senior. The story begins with Empress Elizabeth of Russia, the daughter of Peter the Great (reigned 1682-1721), who took the Russian throne in 1741 and her first order of business was to secure the succession of power by finding a wife for her nephew-- and Peter the Great’s grandson-- Peter III. Answering a summons, Catherine (known as Sophia as a child) and her mother moved from Prussia to St. Petersburg to be formally courted.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">Catherine married the odd Grand Duke Peter, heir to the throne, at the age of 16, but did not conceive the desired offspring for seven years, when Paul I was born. The paternity of Paul has always been questioned and Massie makes the case that his father was one of the court members. Upon Elizabeth’s death in 1761, the power transferred to Peter III, who reigned for only 6 months before dying under suspicious circumstances. Catherine, an outgoing, attractive and intellectually curious woman, had made significant political connections during her decade and a half living in the Russian capital, and much intrigue has been entertained as to the cause of Peter’s death. Catherine grasped the throne with the help of the military and immediately assumed leadership with poise and skill.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">Several themes emerge from her reign. Her long tenure (1762 to 1796) was marked by social reforms for serfs (analogous to slaves in the US), expansion of the Russian Empire, and incorporation of Enlightenment values into the Russian Orthodox rule of law. She was famous for keeping her compassionate pledge to never execute a Russian citizen during her tenure, and she made every effort to grant criminals--even revolutionaries-- their day in court.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">Catherine navigated the troubled diplomatic environment between France and Britain, keeping Russia safe during the Seven Years’ War (1754-1763). Massie makes the point that this was actually the first world war with battles fought as far away as India and North America, where it was known as the French and Indian War. Britain was the considered winner, taking land from France, but alliances had been cast that partially set the stage for World War One fifty years later.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">The Russian empire was the most populous in the world with over 100 million citizens and Catherine increased trade, land and military power over her nearly 40-year reign. She courted the ideas of the French philosophes, invited Diderot and others to spend time in St Petersburg, and corresponded with Voltaire for decades. French was the primary language spoken in the Russian capital. From these humanist values she broached the notion of freeing Russian serfs but was met with vehement opposition from the nobility whose wealth was directly related to ownership of serfs.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">To say her reign was complex is an understatement. Catherine quelled populist uprisings as serfs fought for their freedom while appeasing the nobility by granting certain rights for those same serfs. The American Revolution in 1776 and French Revolution in 1789 tested Catherine’s dedication to humanist values and she walked back many of her Enlightenment values in favor of her notion that the best form of government was benign dictatorship. The unwashed masses, while deserving of a certain quality of life, were just too ignorant to be trusted with governance. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">Parenthetically, Massie makes the point that as sketchy as our view of Russian human rights might be, the fact remains that Russia in many respects led the move away from treating humans as chattel and eventually Catherine’s great-grandson formally freed all serfs two years *before* the US freed the slaves. He points out that our sense of moral superiority is misplaced, since 15 American presidents owned slaves, including the writer of Declaration of Independence.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">Catherine is responsible for acquiring the Ukraine and Crimea (in the headlines today) from the Turkish Ottoman empire. She established, with the help of her consort and close adviser Grigory Potemkin, the strategically important seaports of Sevastopol and Odessa on the Black Sea. The derogatory term “Potemkin Village” comes from this era when Grigory built cities and towns along the Dneiper River after the bloody Turkish wars in order to show Empress Catherine the magnificence of her newly won territory as she traveled the river to the Crimea. Massie says that much of the disdain for these towns is misplaced, manufactured by his political enemies; the towns, while built quickly, eventually did become important centers of commerce and strategic military outposts.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">Robert Massie is an excellent writer and no matter your desire to know Russian history, this book is highly recommended. His narrative is remarkable for presenting complex ideas about military strategy, human rights, advantages and disadvantages of women as leaders, and international alliances with ease. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">One note on the paperback Random House edition is that it fell apart quite easily; maybe the glue was not intended for the Arizona desert. Also, the book would have been improved with maps of the military adventures.</span>Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03056377038486402824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6731750.post-45698966644811774162013-08-06T13:10:00.001-04:002013-08-06T13:12:55.038-04:00Nobody pays $384 for a physical therapy visit<span style="color: #444444;">The headline from a <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/for-a-stiff-neck-nearly-6000-in-physical-therapy-seemed-too-much/2013/08/05/5c6b9f52-e9af-11e2-a301-ea5a8116d211_story.html">WaPo</a> op-ed reads:</span><br />
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<h1 property="dc.title" style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; line-height: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 4px; padding: 0px;">
<span class="entry-title"><span style="color: #444444; font-size: small;">For a stiff neck, nearly $6,000 in physical therapy seemed too much</span></span></h1>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">The author is a patient who had physical therapy prescribed for a simple musculoskeletal problem.</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">My insurance company sent me notification it was “seeking additional information about these charges,” which would mean a “delay in payment” for my PT treatments. My insurer had been<b><span style="font-size: large;"> billed</span> </b>$412 for my first appointment and $384 for the second. I can hardly blame the company for wanting to know the justification of such <b><span style="font-size: large;">costs.</span></b></span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Now I understand why the front desk seemed so eager to have me use my maximum of 12 visits before the end of June: I was leaving nearly $5,000 worth of<b><span style="font-size: large;"> payments</span></b> on the table. [bold mine-- Tony]</span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: #444444;">Notice the confusion of bills, payments and cost.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444;">The author assumes that the insurance company gets no discount and will pay the full $384 billed for the physical therapy appointment and the thousands of dollars of visits. It's satisfying I suppose for health care consumers to read these bills and feel that they have found the real reason, the Holy Grail, of the health care cost crisis, -- $6,000 !!!! OMG!!!--so they fire off an op-ed finally enlightening all of us on the true nut of the issue.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #444444; font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.5em;">Of course, it's way more complicated than $6,000 in bills. Every insurance company and payer, even cash payer, negotiates a discount to the amount billed. In fact, the amount billed, the $6,000 is a compete fiction. Stop talking about it. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; line-height: normal;">There's a discount. It might be $100 or $300 or $50.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #444444; font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.5em;">For a nation ostensibly built on the notion of capitalism and finance I continue to be astounded at the lack of sophistication of the arguments regarding health care finance.</span></div>
<span style="color: #444444;">If the Washington Post can publish such an inane op-ed then there is no hope. We should be way beyond the griping about the $384 charged for a physical therapy visit. Nobody ever pays $384 for a physical therapy visit. The insurance company gets a discount. Medicare gets a discounts. Medicaid gets a BIG discount (if it's covered at all). Even cash customers negotiate a discount.</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #444444;">Maybe it's a problem that we really don't know how much is reimbursed for that visit. Fine. But nobody PAYS $384 for a physical therapy visit.</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #444444;">Let me say it again, nobody pays $384 for a physical therapy visit.</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #444444;">Nobody pays $384 for a physical therapy visit.</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #444444;">$384 was the CHARGE, not the payment, NOT the cost.</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #444444;">Get it?</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #444444;">Nobody pays $384 for a physical therapy visit.</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #444444;">Please, if you are an editor for the Washington Post, the USAToday, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, or a producer for any news network do NOT conflate charges with payments with costs. Don't embarrass yourselves by publishing op-eds and letters like this without explanation. You are morons.</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #444444;">Nobody pays $384 for a physical therapy visit.</span>Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03056377038486402824noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6731750.post-85666928792353226542013-07-08T07:09:00.000-04:002014-09-01T16:23:26.782-04:00The Cost of Prenatal Care<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">The</span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/08/opinion/the-high-cost-of-childbirth-in-the-us.html?src=recg&_r=0" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;"> New York Times has a lengthy article</a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;"> concerning the lack of price transparency in prenatal care and the apparent price gouging that occurs. This follows the theme of other news items covering the crisis is health care economics.</span><br />
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Like many reports on this topic, the NYT fails to differentiate adequately between costs and charges. The comments typically devolve into hand-wringing about the lack of “price” transparency and a flurry of opinions about how the system should be reformed.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fine. But let’s define terms. “Charge” is the nominal amount on the price list by the hospital or doctor. This figure has almost no meaning since every insurance company and government entity negotiates a lower price for their members and risk pool. This refers to the upfront, non-discounted fee on the list.</span><br />
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Cost” is the bottom line bare-bones amount of money needed to provide a service or supply, before profit. “Profit” is the net between what a good or service costs and the actual amount collected by the provider. I have no idea what "price" refers to.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW5DvEZ1BkExT5QSqCPEXnwf6tBcvcFb0in0mfZiz9No7bXtUM7NhxzOU3jcRHpUyGoW-OuQKJv-sCYzO6VSvl8k_b6bWvZ-TnSJdolN9DBmrSgmTv26kokDF2lgZSvgFIcYtz/s1600/30procedures-intl-cost-popup-v3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW5DvEZ1BkExT5QSqCPEXnwf6tBcvcFb0in0mfZiz9No7bXtUM7NhxzOU3jcRHpUyGoW-OuQKJv-sCYzO6VSvl8k_b6bWvZ-TnSJdolN9DBmrSgmTv26kokDF2lgZSvgFIcYtz/s400/30procedures-intl-cost-popup-v3.png" height="235" width="400" /></a></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The table shows the “amount paid” for prenatal care in the US versus other nations, but this is not completely accurate or at least only partially defined in the article. The table has a line below stating “amounts paid are the actual payments agreed to by insurance companies or other payers of services, and are lower than billed charges.” So far so good, but this still leaves out a clarification of how much disparity exists between payers, for example private insurance versus Medicaid. Who pays what amount? Medicaid typically pays 50% of what private insurance would pay, so the $9775 figure is meaningless because the range might be $3000 to $15,000. And the actual cost, not addressed in this article or this chart, to the hospital/doctor might be $600 or $16,000. Who knows?</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another example of incomplete reporting is the discussion of obstetricians’ charges and collection. The NYT article says “[obstetricians] often charge a flat fee for their nine months of care, no matter how many visits are needed,... That fee can range from a high of more than $8,000 for a vaginal delivery in Manhattan to under $4,000 in Denver, according to </span><a href="http://www.fairhealth.org/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fair Health</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, which collects health care data.”</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Useless reportage. They are referring to a charged fee and not the actual collected amount as negotiated by insurance companies and Medicaid (Medicare provides relatively little prenatal care since older and disabled women are less likely to get pregnant). How much is actually collected? Answer: it depends and varies A LOT. In my experience, our practice in Michigan charged $3600 global fee but then it would be discounted 40-75% with Medicaid paying less than $1000. Nobody ever paid $3600 because even the 1 or 2 cash paying patients every year got a steep discount negotiated upfront.</span><br />
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A “charge” is completely without pertinence. Administrators and bean counters know the bare-bones “cost” of particular services and supplies down to the penny but they are loathe to make that information known. </span><br />
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The other poorly kept secret is that privately insured patients subsidize Medicaid patients who are receiving steeply discounted prenatal care. As an aside, I always wonder why any young couple bother to get married and pay for benefits. Being frank, from a finance standpoint they’d be better off having their kids out of wedlock while the woman can qualify for Medicaid. The father could make a 5 or 6-figure income, let the state pay for the prenatal care, and pocket more money. Why the hell not? Actually I’m sure some do make that conscious decision...but that's a digression.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The most important figure is not the “price” or the “charge” but the actual “cost”. The supplies, IV bags, gloves, gown, the epidural, 8 hours in a labor room, nurses’ salaries, etc, all have known costs. From there we can determine how much profit can be reasonably tacked on: 2%, 5%, 50%? Let’s get the numbers. Then they can be extrapolated over a population, knowing that c-section rates are 25% and NICU admissions occur at a certain rate, etc.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To put a table that says “amount paid” is useless and to talk about “charges” is less than useless. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How much this cost disclosure would help individual consumers of health care is debateable. Given all the asymmetric information I doubt it would help much at all. The value to knowing the cost is for payers-- Medicaid, Medicare and insurers-- to negotiate pricing from a more meaningful vantage point. Like most medical services, prenatal care is not a product that can reasonably be purchased by an individual looking at a line item price list. The costs should be borne by the entire society as a risk pool. I don’t care how much cost disclosure is available, no individual would be able to anticipate all the possible outcomes in labor and pay out of pocket for a complicated hospital course and, say, 12 weeks of neonatal intensive care. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This topic of charges and cost and profit is pertinent to the entire health care debate, but the thought of healthcare as a free market that would benefit from individuals knowing “prices” is wishful thinking. There is no free market in health care. If the ER doctor says your chest pain warrants a cardiac catheterization you don’t shop around for the best price. It might seem like we are empowered if we use our HSA debit card to pay a hospital or doctor’s bill, but it’s all a ruse; the real costs, the big ticket items, cannot be negotiated by a single person with an HSA account.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The kicker is that there is an organization that really does know the costs and uses that information in the real world: Medicare. They have the largest database of costs and Medicare negotiates fees based on this vast knowledge, called the resource-based relative value scale, or RBRVS. This is why Medicare is so damn efficient compared to private payers and state-run Medicaid, but that's another topic for another day. </span></div>
Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03056377038486402824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6731750.post-18919167274864371732013-06-27T15:52:00.004-04:002013-06-27T21:16:38.934-04:00Book Review: Body by Science, by Doug McGuff, MD, and John Little<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Five Stars out of Five. Highest recommendation.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-26b7737e-8730-ff75-f340-2796ecf5b0cc" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">STOP. Read this book before you do one more exercise routine.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">McGuff is an Emergency physician with an avocation for fitness and John Little is a professional fitness trainer. Body by Science is subtitled “A research-based program for strength training, body-building and complete fitness in 12 minutes a week.” The authors cite empirical studies relating workout regimens and formulate a specific routine to most efficiently build muscle while burning fat.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAdwFtXsogY72NmsI1_Q8HgCsWIdvxZ7CA2vRLu9Rjomov8jxta6c02WMz4Z7XG80fsZC7DJTz4iEtN1tLppYUyxHWe49KYC-egtCyD8A_SV-IMekAxmoI99Kh3p-vrVX-WmCh/s255/body.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAdwFtXsogY72NmsI1_Q8HgCsWIdvxZ7CA2vRLu9Rjomov8jxta6c02WMz4Z7XG80fsZC7DJTz4iEtN1tLppYUyxHWe49KYC-egtCyD8A_SV-IMekAxmoI99Kh3p-vrVX-WmCh/s255/body.jpg" /></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many of the principles outlined here are in contradistinction to modern convention about exercise. For example, the authors show that prolonged aerobic activity--such as long distance running-- does little to contribute to overall fitness and almost all runners have chronic injuries that limit their long term well-being. Most individuals can achieve their fitness goals more safely in very little time per week; likewise, most faddish regimens-- Tai Bo, Crossfit, P90X-- do little more than waste your time and can lead to serious injury.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">While I am usually skeptical of anybody who purports to know a quick and easy way to achieve a difficult goal, I have to say that this book has extremely useful information about metabolism, biochemistry and muscle kinetics. The authors explain the evolutionary rationale for the exercise routine they advocate and also discuss diet, limiting grains and emphasizing whole foods. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On the savannah, prehistoric man evolved to exert himself in short bursts of highly intense activity: avoiding predatory lions or chasing game. Successful individuals were also able to endure famine and dehydration and certain body habitus were selected. Today, endomorphs who store body fat are often looked upon as less fit than, say, Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone, who are ectomorphic with more lean mass. Counterintuitively, however, individuals who have adequate fat stores are able to survive seasonal food shortages better than ectomorphs.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In fact, Stallone and Schwarzenegger are genetic mutants who likely would not do well on the prehistoric savannah. Large muscle mass inefficiently burns calories even at rest and these individuals, while looking fit in modern civilization must consume an inordinate amount of resources to maintain their basal metabolic rate.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The purpose of any exercise routine is not to look like Stallone. First of all, it would be impossible for most of us. McGuff and Little explain the genetics of muscle development and review the specific mutations discovered over the last decade, including myosin light chain kinase and myostatin genes among others.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The kernel of the book is the Big Five workout, encompassing slow movements using the largest muscle groups in the body. The authors liken exercise to a medical prescription, looking for the dose that will give the greatest benefit with minimal side effects. The BIg Five includes latissimus pull-downs, chest press, seated row, seated military press and leg press. The safest, most efficient method is to use Nautilus or other progressive cam machines.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Loss of muscle mass-- sarcopenia-- has deleterious implications as we age, limiting our activity and increasing our risk of injury. Building muscle is all-important to overall fitness, and the authors cite studies that show this regimen not only build muscle but also increase aerobic capacity and flexibility. Complex routines, such as Crossfit, on the other hand, are more likely to lead to injury and other practices like stretching actually can lead to muscle weakness.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The key to the Body by Science workout is to continue each exercise in a slow sustained movement until muscle failure. Done properly, you should feel quite uncomfortable at the end of each exercise. Think Neanderthal running from a Lion. The upside is that nothing builds mass and aerobic capacity as quickly as high intensity exercise ending in muscle failure.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The authors recommend 5-7 days rest between workouts. Youtube videos are available to view by googling “Doug McGuff doing the Big Five” or “Body by Science.” The videos make the routine look deceivingly easy, but with heavy weights and slow sustained muscle contraction your heart rate and respiratory rate elevates. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The review of diet is also important. I have always worked out and would consider myself fit-- able to run 5K’s and lift weights-- but chronically overweight. McGuff and Little are quick to implicate the workout industry in giving false expectations that exercise alone can lead to weight loss. Nope. The fact is that I eat too damn much and no amount of exercise will make up for that.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Personally, I found this book an invaluable and readable review of metabolism, genetics and muscle function. It has changed the way I exercise, reducing my risk of injury and increasing the efficiency of each workout. I still do other things, namely an hour-long highly intense full body aerobic regimen with a trainer, but the Body by Science workout has become a weekly added ritual. I have noticed a significant increase in lean muscle mass, as measured by my trainer, and a generally improved sense of well-being.</span>Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03056377038486402824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6731750.post-31296044490209804262013-06-27T13:16:00.002-04:002013-06-27T13:19:09.839-04:00Book Review: Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaG1tzwj9jY527byF0j1E8CVocsVmHBwfm7npbITTTqCiWdZiGWbjH6yUsJZrMjz7UEqZNEEiDNWR9esTsC0q8c52ZfoyCE_oAlld4ACVqAyUpSHK0yF61PVnjRkOhdtHtzwqS/s800/lolita.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaG1tzwj9jY527byF0j1E8CVocsVmHBwfm7npbITTTqCiWdZiGWbjH6yUsJZrMjz7UEqZNEEiDNWR9esTsC0q8c52ZfoyCE_oAlld4ACVqAyUpSHK0yF61PVnjRkOhdtHtzwqS/s320/lolita.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Four stars out of Five.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Set in post-War United States, this story recounts the obsession of a European immigrant with adolescent girls, and Lolita in particular. Nabokov writes in the first person as the protagonist Humbert Humbert is awaiting trial for pederasty and murder. The account is a memoir of Humbert as he pursues the affection of Lolita the daughter of his landlady, taking the girl on a cross-country trip, engaging in illicit behavior and eventually the murder of her paramour.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-48702dc1-869f-2602-20c1-fbbedbabae8d" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I read this book because it’s on nearly every list of the best books of the 20th century and I had no idea what to expect. In order to make a fair judgement since the topic is beyond controversial I purposely read no formal reviews of the book prior to starting. The book is almost beyond description.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On the one hand, the primary theme-- pedophilia-- is a contemptibly bad notion to incorporate as the primary topic of an entire novel, but Nabokov seems to have purposely chosen such a theme for the challenge of constructing a readable full-length novel on a tough subject. He succeeds in spades.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nabokov exhibits his mastery of language, playing with words and phrases to entertain the reader, which is quite impressive given that Lolita is his first novel written in English, a language he learned as an adult. Nabokov expounds on the difference between European continental lifestyle versus the United States middle-class style. Darkly comical, Humbert relates his opinion of the fatuity and lack of couth in America, all while engaging in the most vile acts imaginable.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nabokov uses this novel as a vehicle to mock psychiatry and psychoanalysis. Humbert misleads psychiatrists and, just for fun, consciously confirms their biases toward unproven hypotheses about psychopathology. Another theme is the ease with which Humbert, a good-looking man of means, can easily skirt laws and conventions of behavior by virtue of his appearance.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Much of the book traces the travels of Humbert and Lolita across the United States by car, making this a road story of sorts. He describes the people and places from Connecticut through the Midwest and mountains and out to California.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lolita, the novel, defies description. Nabokov seems to be attempting to make Humbert a sympathetic character but in the end Humbert becomes self-loathing, recognizing his flaws and the damage he has done to Lolita.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For the writing style and language this is among the best books written. Recommended.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span>Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03056377038486402824noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6731750.post-17228403382111902562013-06-12T12:42:00.001-04:002013-06-12T14:32:11.808-04:00Book Review: Destiny of the Republic, by Candice Millard<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOiCLI9rIOsFW5uSe255m8G_X6EgDstb_-trk5flj-nk0D6O3BHb9qoIaUQkhNta2sNW-EMyA8sM-dSFFP_VFOC3VA99kbK4GX_8p_-ZQc-hCoxhAFYKJ0SJdCGbTduiggdI8g/s1600/10335318.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOiCLI9rIOsFW5uSe255m8G_X6EgDstb_-trk5flj-nk0D6O3BHb9qoIaUQkhNta2sNW-EMyA8sM-dSFFP_VFOC3VA99kbK4GX_8p_-ZQc-hCoxhAFYKJ0SJdCGbTduiggdI8g/s320/10335318.jpg" width="210" /></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Three Stars out of Five. Recommended.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">James A. Garfield was an unlikely selection for president in 1880, having won the Republican nomination only after he was drafted at the convention due to an electoral impasse. Within months of the general election he was shot in a Washington, DC train station and subsequently died.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-2dd16118-393d-8539-1c5b-0746fb0fbcf2" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Millard presents a favorable view of Garfield, the man, Union Civil War General, husband and father, and President. Her glowing depiction recounts his unification of party factions and calm demeanor under duress. Unfortunately, the reluctant Garfield only served as president a few months before being killed by Charles Guitaeu, a mentally disturbed office seeker.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One subplot in the story is the poor surgical care that Garfield received following the shooting. Conjecture is that his wounds were not life-threatening and that he died of fulminant sepsis due to the unsanitary practices of Dr. W. Willard Bliss, his attending physician. Bliss, the same physician who attended Abraham Lincoln following his shooting 16 years prior, did not ascribe to the latest medical advances about hand washing and sterilization of instruments that was advocated at that time by British physician Sir Joseph Lister.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Millard also describes the frantic efforts made by Alexander Graham Bell, the young teacher and inventor, who tried to devise a method for finding the errant bullet sitting in Garfield’s abdomen. Before xrays (invented 20 years hence by Marie Curie) doctors had no way to image the patient looking for foreign bodies such as shrapnel and ammunition rounds. Bell contrived a prototype metal detector using electric current and capacitors for doctors to identify metal fragments in soft tissue.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dr. Bliss, while inclined to help Garfield, was reluctant to allow a non-physician like Bell to attend to his patient. The device was implemented incorrectly and therefore failed to detect the bullet. Bliss, the other physicians, Garfield’s family, the nation, and Bell all watched as the President deteriorated and finally died of overwhelming infection two months after the shooting.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Millard’s book is easily read and provides a concise account of the the seminal events of the period. My only misgiving is trivial, i.e., that her characters are simplistic, either paragons of virtue or despicable villains. Oddly, the killer Guiteau is perhaps the most complex persona presented, shown to be conflicted, ambitious and mentally disturbed. Alternatively, Garfield and Bell apparently have no faults and Bliss is seen only with contempt.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Regardless, this is an educational book regarding events in US history about which I was unfamiliar. Her style is similar to Erik Larsen or David McCullough. Recommended.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span>Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03056377038486402824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6731750.post-88612053763485237222013-05-31T23:57:00.000-04:002013-05-31T23:57:30.419-04:00Book Review: Midnight's Children, by Salman Rushdie<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<a href="http://www.salman-rushdie.com/files/2009/11/MidnightsChildrenlarge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.salman-rushdie.com/files/2009/11/MidnightsChildrenlarge.jpg" width="207" /></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Four stars out of Five.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One Amazon reviewer likens </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Midnight’s Children</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to a detailed tapestry with layers of characters and events and symbols. Rushdie’s creation is indeed so complicated yet delicious in it’s imagery and emotion and history.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-2b32484b-fdd3-883d-55cc-effeed83a294" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The book is a novelized history of the nascent Indian republic after it won independence from the United Kingdom in 1947. The new nation is personified in the protagonist Saleem Sinai who was born at the stroke of midnight on August 15th, the moment of the official transfer of power. Rushdie, who was actually born earlier in the year 1947, writes mostly in first person with the Saleem’s family and life taking on many features of his own.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As in his other fictional works, Rushdie inserts magical realism, combining supernatural powers and phenomena with real events to give a more colorful and effective treatment of history. This is similar to Kurt Vonnegut’s use of time travel and interplanetary travel in his autobiographical novel </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Slaughter-House Five</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Both authors promote their political opinions regarding real-world events that they had been part of or had observed.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Midnight’s Children</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is also a saga of war and the transformation of a nation, similar to Margaret Mitchell’s </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gone With the Wind</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Additionally, both works have a main character who personifies the culture-- Scarlett O’Hara, the Old South; Saleem Sinai, colonial India-- experiencing evolution as a necessary adaptation to change that they encounter in the world. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At times I found </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Midnight’s Children</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> frustrating in the sheer number of symbols and thematic motifs that must be interpreted. Knowing Indian history beforehand would be helpful as well. I read as a companion text the Reader’s Guide from Continuum Contemporaries written by Norbert Schurer. He adds much value to</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Midnight’s Children</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by providing some historical context as well as pointing out much of the symbolism. Also, Sparknotes has some helpful analysis.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Salman Rushdie is a serious writer and</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Midnight’s Children</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is an award winning novel that is not for the faint of heart. Not only is it lengthy, but it contains advanced vocabulary, lots of characters, heavy themes and weird literary devices like run-on sentences and giving characters magical powers. Unlike Mitchell’s </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gone With the Wind</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, readers of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Midnight’s Children</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> not only have to wade through history and war and a long family saga, but also supernatural symbolism, religion, social ills and enough leitmotifs to drop a pony. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Annoyed, I had given up reading </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Midnight’s Children</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> at page 100 a few years ago but finally completed the task this month. A few months ago I read Rushdie’s non-fiction memoir </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Joseph Anton</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (reviewed<a href="http://kalamazoopost.blogspot.com/2013/03/book-review-joseph-anton-by-salman.html"> here</a>), and was thus motivated to finish </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Midnight’s Children</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> now in advance of the recently released movie. Nobody will absorb all of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Midnight’s Children</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> at the first reading, but it is an impressive piece of writing.</span></div>
Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03056377038486402824noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6731750.post-59513329183977511712013-05-04T19:01:00.000-04:002013-05-04T19:01:42.302-04:00Book Review: The Signal and the Noise, by Nate Silver<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">
<a href="http://www.splicetoday.com/vault/posts/0003/9407/rsz_nate_silver_large.jpg?1354053550" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: #444444;"><img border="0" height="200" lua="true" src="http://www.splicetoday.com/vault/posts/0003/9407/rsz_nate_silver_large.jpg?1354053550" width="320" /></span></a><span style="color: #444444;">Five stars out of five.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444;">I remember watching the TV series <em>Quantum Leap</em> years ago, starring Scott Bakula and Dean Stockwell who traveled through time and lived at the whim of ever-changing Bayesian probabilities. Whatever predicament they encountered has associated chance of solution or death as spit out by Stockwell’s computer named Ziggy. As the conditions changed, say, a bad guy presents himself, Stockwell would translate the changing probabilities: “Ziggy says you have a 85% chance of dying.” With a bad guy vanquished, it would change, “Ziggy now says you have only a 15% chance of dying.”</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444;">Nate Silver’s <em>The Signal and the Noise</em> explains the phenomenon of prior probability that subsequently changes with conditions that was first presented as Bayes Theorem three hundred years ago. Silver is a professional poker player who made his “f**k you” money by selling software to analyze baseball statistics. Recently he became a phenomenon of sorts by successfully predicting all 50 state elections in 2012 and currently writes the always informational “five-thirty-eight” blog for the New York Times.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444;"><em>The Signal and the Noise</em> is a more comprehensive discussion of Bayesian probabilities and how they affect almost everything humans do. An engineer friends says that every high school kid should read Silver’s book just to get an idea of how probability works and to hone critical thinking skills. I cannot disagree.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444;">Okay, Silver is concerned with more than the theory of Thomas Bayes, he begins by discussing the huge explosion of data available to humans beginning with the Gutenberg printing press and evolving to the electronic databases today. He also points out that humans are unduly flawed because we too often seek confirmation of our own ideas instead of critically parsing all this information. Political pundits are notorious for</span></div>
<span style="color: #444444;">stoking the confirmation biases of their customers, which has been shown by the likes of Dick Morris and Karl Rove claiming to “have the math” only to be embarrassingly wrong on the outcome of recent elections. But they aren’t embarrassed-- they aren’t paid to be correct, only to confirm bias.</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span><span style="color: #444444;">Silver also uses the baseball player Dustin Pedroia as an example of the failure of Big Data. On paper, or more accurately, using computer stats, a guy like Pedroia should never have made it into Major League baseball: he’s too small, too slow, not a very powerful hitter and can’t throw very well. Instead of failing, Pedroia is an all-star and a winner. What gives? There are intangibles, data is never able to be completely known. All the stats in the world cannot always be interpreted perfectly.</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span><span style="color: #444444;">Separating what’s important (the signal) from confusing interference (the noise) is the key to forecasting any natural event or human phenomenon. We are good at forecasting some things like weather and hurricanes, but poor at predicting other things like earthquakes and terror attacks. Silver is an excellent explainer of how we know things and the limitations of that knowledge. He uses a wide-ranging array of interesting stories: from bird flu and climate to Donald Rumsfeld and poker. Refreshingly, I find no ideological or political preferences in his discussion.</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span><span style="color: #444444;">This book is highly recommended.</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span><span style="color: #444444;"></span>Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03056377038486402824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6731750.post-91325837139437341762013-04-05T15:11:00.000-04:002013-04-05T15:11:39.542-04:00Congratulations, Dr Oz !!<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://youtu.be/iigL-QhdKXg?t=3m30s" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwpqSHjltBsgz1nT8y71FO_wOfqq7EHrN7XyDEPdxfPdBOyGL0Jd4q-ANDM8b8jVG7ZJ_DNt2FodWk4sO5iESIx2CM7_B-_7xHQC1yC4fmUtTK6HRHIOVKx4KJzBeNvnU6eBHP/s400/oz.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Quack of the Year !!</td></tr>
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<a href="http://youtu.be/iigL-QhdKXg?t=3m30s">[Video here]</a></div>
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Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03056377038486402824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6731750.post-12019832832275905282013-04-04T11:05:00.002-04:002013-04-04T11:05:54.059-04:00The GOP and animal f**king<div style="background-color: black; width: 520px;">
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<iframe frameborder="0" height="288" src="http://media.mtvnservices.com/embed/mgid:cms:video:thedailyshow.com:425055" width="512"></iframe><br />
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<b><a href="http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-april-3-2013/red-brand-redemption">The Daily Show with Jon Stewart</a></b><br />
Get More: <a href="http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/">Daily Show Full Episodes</a>,<a href="http://www.comedycentral.com/indecision">Indecision Political Humor</a>,<a href="http://www.facebook.com/thedailyshow">The Daily Show on Facebook</a></div>
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Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03056377038486402824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6731750.post-28425680320238272802013-03-23T00:54:00.002-04:002013-03-23T00:54:59.706-04:00Book Review: Joseph Anton, by Salman Rushdie<a href="http://www.audiobooksonline.com/media/ss_size1/Joseph-Anton-Salman-Rushdie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.audiobooksonline.com/media/ss_size1/Joseph-Anton-Salman-Rushdie.jpg" width="284" /></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">I've never been a fan of Salman Rushdie's genre of magical realism and I've never been able to finish one of his novels, yet I found his memoir "<i>Joseph Anton</i>" compelling. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">It's a memoir emphasizing Rushdie's plight as an object of a </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">fatwa</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;"> called by Muslim leaders and supported by the Iranian government because of his alleged disparaging portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad and his wives in the novel <i>The Satanic Verses</i>.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">Critics have argued that Rushdie was careless and should have known that fundamentalist Muslims would take issue with his work, <i>The Satanic Verses</i>, or that Rushdie intended to purposely insult Islam for publicity. Rushdie argues against these ideas very convincingly, but more importantly, so what if he "should have known"? Western enlightened society is built on the foundation of personal civil liberties, and paramount is the protection of everyone's right to express ideas, no matter how disagreeable.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">Rushdie is an excellent writer but the 600+ pages is lengthy. I frequently thought as I listened--I borrowed the Audiobook from the library-- Does his publisher employ editors? Twenty-two hours of audio! But now, having finished, I can say that the length of the book is necessary to truly understand the complexity of the person Salman Rushdie and the events he endured. He effectively portrays his weaknesses as he honestly admits to heavy alcohol use that damaged his relationships, among other shortcomings.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">Another criticism is that Rushdie put publishers, book store clerks and other personnel at risk by insisting that his right to free speech was upheld. Bullshit. Nobody entered into their interactions with Rushdie and The Satanic Verses against their will, and it was Muslim leaders who instigated violence. The publishing industry is the true guardian of such freedom and their professionalism is praised by Rushdie throughout the book. Rushdie mentions the sorrow he felt when translators of <i>The Satanic Verses</i> were attacked, one killed and another injured, by Islamic fundamentalists, but we must all remember who are the criminals in this situation, and it's not the novelist. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">Further critics argue that Rushdie has not shown proper gratitude for the protection and expense put forth on his behalf by the British government and the agents involved. Again, bullshit. Rushdie exhibits gushing praise for the "prot" agents who ensured his safety, although he often voices frustration with the Bureaucracy of Scotland Yard. An example of supreme frustration is that the British government had anti-blasphemy laws on the books until very recently, and these laws, while originally enacted centuries ago to protect Anglicanism, the laws were expanded to prohibit negative opinion of any religion. These laws have been expunged following, and perhaps because of, the Rushdie </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">fatwa.</em><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">Like others I found Rushdie's use of the third person confusing at times, but who am I to argue with an accomplished award winning author? Deal with it. Hillary Mantel uses the same literary device in her historical novel Wolf Hall about Thomas Cromwell. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">Rushdie exhibits traits of self-confidence, what others might call narcissism, but there is a distinction between pathology and mere personality traits. I cannot imagine any interesting and successful writer lacking such high opinion of himself or herself; detractors should get over it. Rushdie has lived an interesting life which he has explored with effective introspection. As memoirs go this one is very, very good. He gives a clear impression of his emotions and motivations, his anger and frustration as well as the love and gratitude he feels. Moreover, Rushdie educates the reader on the events of the day and how they are affected by religious ideology and the deadly political and personal ramifications. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">More recently, Salman Rushdie has been interviewed and while he quickly cops to his lack of god-belief, he has a nuanced respectful view of Islam: while he may not agree with the tenets of the faith, he recognizes that it's the </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">leaders</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;"> of Islam who have made the grievous violent overtures for political purposes. </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">Followers</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;"> of Islam need to be more vigilant of the true meaning of their religion and not allow it to be co-opted by mullahs for political motives.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">Rushdie never apologizes for writing <i>The Satanic Verses</i>, never expresses regret. That is the true message of this story: we have a choice to make as members of a free society, we can stand with the fundamentals of freedom of expression or we can allow assholes to steal our freedoms. The choice is ours. No matter how much or how little we may enjoy a particular writer's work it is our imperative duty to defend his right to express the art.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><em style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">Joseph Anton</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;"> is a well-written account of the life of a writer enduring a harrowing assault on his freedom and threats to the life of himself, his family and his colleagues. Rushdie provides an introspective and sometimes humorous (parts are very funny, especially his close encounter with a Playboy Bunny!) rendering of the experience. He addresses detractors (John Le Carre is portrayed as a willful moron) and supporters very effectively and makes the case for the unabridged freedoms of an open society.</span>Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03056377038486402824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6731750.post-72504404775452068322013-03-19T17:08:00.001-04:002013-03-19T17:09:48.038-04:00Warren and the big banksLet me preface this with the statement that I think Bernanke has done a fine job given his tools and the depth of the crisis. He has called for fiscal solutions to augment his monetary policy and his calls have been met with Congressional gridlock.<br />
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Sen Warren voices the frustration that taxpayers should have with the <i>de facto </i>corporate welfare that seems to never end. Meanwhile, Congress is debating how much of Social Security benefits will decrease for workers who have paid in their entire lives and former Sen Scott Brown, whose place Warren has taken, is now employed as a bank lobbyist and paid Fox News commentator.Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03056377038486402824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6731750.post-1824354270856412742013-03-18T13:27:00.000-04:002013-03-18T13:32:21.231-04:00Dinesh D'Souza: My favorite nut<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/75/Dinesh_D'Souza.jpg/220px-Dinesh_D'Souza.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="color: #444444;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/75/Dinesh_D'Souza.jpg/220px-Dinesh_D'Souza.jpg" width="179" /></span></a><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit; line-height: 25px;">Dinesh D'Souza is one of my favorite wingnuts for several reasons. First of all, his craziness is entertaining as evidenced by the following CPAC appearance. (Watch <a href="http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/311531-14">the CSPAN video</a>-- not embeddable-- it's great.) Second of all, D'Souza entered Dartmouth in 1979, the same class that turned me down after my application and interview. Essentially, I assume that he took my spot, and it's a clear case (in my mind) of affirmative action, the bane of his brand of boot-straps faux meritocratic conservatism; after all, he's darker than I am and certainly added more diversity that I would have, and I <i>guarantee</i> his ACT scores and academic record were not better than mine. Third of all, he is a hypocrite, having left his wife of two decades for a floozy. He represents the trifecta of the wingnut right: <b>unintentional humor, blindness to the social advantages he has benefited from, and, of course, hypocrisy. </b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Georgia, sans-serif; line-height: 25px;">Here is his latest entry into the canon of jumbled conservative ideology, from </span><a href="http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/10-crazy-things-heard-cpac-giant-right-wing-confab?page=0%2C2" style="font-family: Arial, Georgia, sans-serif; line-height: 25px;">Alternet's "10 craziest things heard at CPAC"</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Georgia, sans-serif; line-height: 25px;">:</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444;"><strong>8. Dinesh D'Souza, outsted Christian college president, filmmaker and author: One problem with liberalism is the notion that slavery involved the theft of labor from African Americans. </strong>Again with the slavery. Sigh.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444;">Riding high on right-wing acceptance of his theory that Barack Obama's worldview is shaped by Kenyan anticolonial sentiment against Great Britain, D'Souza is expanding his theory to include all of liberal America, which, according to him, imported the anticolonial worldview in the 1960s, and thus came to ostensibly regard all wealth as a form of theft. (This is apparently not to be confused with the<em>good</em> anticolonial worldview of the founding fathers, who decried, in the Declaration of Independence, how King George "plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.")</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444;">Given the success on the right-wing conference circuit of his book about Obama's purported Kenyan resentment, and his movie on the same subject, <em>2016: Obama's America</em>, D'Souza showed a film clip from a forthcoming picture in which he promises to make "a moral case" for what he calls "the free enterprise system," one that is designed to counter all this theft nonsense. (Apparently, slavery was just an entrepreneurial exercise on the part of the slave-traders.) From D'Souza's remarks, delivered on the main stage at CPAC on Saturday:</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444;"><i>It isn’t just some Kenyan thing, isn’t just some foreign thing. Anti-colonialism has come to American in the ‘60s. It’s part of American liberalism. And if you listen to the liberal story of America, it is a story of what? Theft. How did we get America? We stole it from the Indians. <strong>Slavery is, in a sense, seen as stealing the free labor of African-Americans. And so the whole story of America is a story of oppression. This is the liberal argument in its broad scale, and it needs to be answered</strong>. And in our film, we intend to answer it.</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444;"><i>Now this is not just, I should say, about the makers and the takers....so the core idea is that free enterprise is a form of theft. We have to make the moral case for free enterprise and for America. A conservatism that did that would be a conservatism that is viable and powerful again.</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444;">Watch the <a href="http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/311531-14" style="text-decoration: none;">C-SPAN video</a>, and you'll also be treated to the metaphor of Barack Obama as a lion-tamer. In that vein, were D'Souza more enchanting, we might view him as a snake-charmer.</span></div>
Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03056377038486402824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6731750.post-32782579857516716212013-03-11T02:49:00.000-04:002013-03-11T07:45:20.513-04:00Wealth Tax. D'uh.<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">A while back I saw this video about the wealth inequality in the United States. It reminded me of the old economic adage that if aliens had come to earth and collected all the wealth and evenly distributed it among humans and left for 50 years, when they came back the wealth would be concentrated into a few individuals. That's just a natural trait among humans: some are better at accumulating assets than others.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">But there really is more to the story of wealth distribution. The way wealth is distributed varies depending on what is valued within the society at the current time. I doubt Bill Gates would have been as successful writing software had he been born in Mongolia under Genghis Khan 800 years ago. Charles Manson, on the other hand, might have parlayed his psychopathic conscious-less killing into a lieutenant-ship. Who knows?</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Christopher at Christopher's Apologies had an odd take, a head scratcher. He presented the above video and basically shrugged off the epic wealth inequality, <a href="http://www.christophersmith-op.com/2013/03/08/wealth-inequality-in-america/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FMgtlG+%28Christopher%27s+Apologies%29">saying</a>: </span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><i>"<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;">Just so we’re clear: there are no rules, laws, or regulations governing who can have money in this country or how much they can have. So then what is it that prevents people from moving from one economic stratum to the next? Why is it so many people believe government needs to enter into the fray in order to level the playing field and redistribute wealth on behalf of the lowest income earners?"</span></i></span></blockquote>
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;">Huh? Government redistributes wealth <i>"on behalf of the lowest income earners"</i>? I have no idea what universe Christopher is observing. Did he even watch the video? Wealth is not being re-distributed to the lowest earners <b>at all</b>. That's the point. Nearly every single penny of efficiency squeezed out by the huge gains in worker productivity has been transferred directly into the bank accounts of the wealthiest 5%. I guess the Wal-Mart heirs <i>deserve</i> it all, Christopher is just sorry we cannot give them more.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;">We have socialized risks made by banks and oil companies and really every corporation, yet they keep their profits private. When they make money, great, they get to keep it, less of course some nominal income tax which is lower than mine....but when they lose money, oops, they need a bailout. Nobody goes to jail, nobody even loses a bonus check. The laws are ALL in their favor.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;">Christopher adds, </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><i><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;">"My second problem with the video (and it’s premise) is that it stokes the fires of greed in people. I won’t say that it </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;">creates</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"> greed in people since everyone has that flaw as part of their sinful nature, but media with this type of content pours gasoline on the greedy fire that burns in all of us."</span></i></span></blockquote>
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">While I'm not 100% sure his point here, I think he is concerned with "stoking" the greed of the less wealthy who are apparently pining for a free giveaway from the wealthy. The video is really just giving a blow-by-blow account of the statistics of the wealth distribution, and I think we can determine who has the greed and who doesn't. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">From the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/19/opinion/to-reduce-inequality-tax-wealth-not-income.html?pagewanted=1">NYT</a>:</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><i>A common statistical measure of inequality is the Gini coefficient, a number between 0 and 100 that rises with greater disparities. From the late 1970s through the early 1990s, the Census Bureau recorded Gini coefficients for income in the low 40s. Yet by 1992, the Gini coefficient for wealth had risen into the mid-70s, according to data from the Federal Reserve.</i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><i>Since then, it has risen steadily, to about 80 as of 2010. In 1992, the top tenth of the population controlled 20 times the wealth controlled by the bottom half. By 2010, it was 65 times. Our graduated income-tax system redistributes a small amount of money every year but does little to slow the polarization of wealth.</i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><i>These are stunning changes. <b>The global financial crisis did make a dent in the assets of the wealthiest American families, but its effects for the bottom half were utterly destructive;</b> the number of owner-occupied homes has fallen by more than a million since 2007. People in different socioeconomic strata are living ever more different lives, with dangerous results for society: erosion of empathy, widening of rifts and undermining of meritocracy.</i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="line-height: 18px;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">History tells us that at some point the fabric of society deteriorates when a few have all the wealth-- think Czarist Russia or France circa 1790. Maybe we're not close to that point but that's the question. How soon until the the aliens come back to see how we've reallocated the wealth? I'm not clear at all on how greedy tendencies of the poor are a problem.</span></span></div>
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;">Robert Reich echos the <i>New York Times</i> on this topic, calling for a wealth tax just like property taxes that we all pay. Why not?</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Instead we tax income and not wealth. We give a negative incentive to work and produce, but Paris Hilton gets a pass. I can hear all the Rand-bots predicting that the wealthy will "Go Galt" and move their wealth off-shore and property values will sink and the apocalypse will commence. Really? Where else are the wealthy going to put their assets to be safe and their families protected? Mali? </span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">I comment not because I see anybody addressing the wealth inequality which is growing in logarithmic fashion-- we know who makes the rules. I just find it interesting that given all the insanity that has occurred with trillions in bailouts and transfers from our Treasury to the connected corporate elite, S&P profits at record levels, stock prices reaching new all-time highs, the wealthy getting wealthier and the poor getting poorer, yet we cannot collect enough to balance our budget...and we can <b>STILL</b> find apologists like Christopher who see nothing wrong here...move along. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">And, oh yeah, the <i>poor</i> are greedy.</span>Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03056377038486402824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6731750.post-58603694308660100402013-03-10T06:58:00.001-04:002013-03-10T06:59:00.997-04:00Was the Soviet Union atheistic?<br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 24px;">Karen Jacoby, author of the recent biography of Robert Ingersoll, <i>The Great Agnostic</i>, was <a href="http://fivebooks.com/interviews/susan-jacoby-on-atheism">interviewed in Five Books</a>. The entire interview is worthwhile but especially her comments about the trope that the misdeeds of the Soviet Union and other secular regimes somehow discredit atheism, materialism and rationalism. [Emphasis is mine]:</span></span></div>
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<strong>Question: </strong>What do you think about the critique of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, not necessarily the book by him you’ve chosen, but <a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780446579803?aff=fivebooks" style="border: 0px; color: #48736b; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">God is Not Great</em></a>, for example – that they put too much blame on religion? I’m in China right now, you’ve got a lot of friends in Russia, what about this argument that countries that have really embraced atheism have seen some of the worst excesses of human nature? Even if you don’t believe in God, don’t the teachings of, say, Christianity – for example loving your neighbour as yourself – help make the world a better place?</div>
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<b>Ms Jacoby:</b> Yeah, right. That’s why everybody was so tolerant in 16<sup style="font-size: 12px;">th</sup> and 17<sup style="font-size: 12px;">th</sup> century England, because they were Christians. I’m really glad you asked that question. The idea that some of the worst things happened under countries that were officially atheist, well firstly, lots of people never embraced atheism. The salient point about the Soviet Union, like Hitler’s Germany (which was not officially atheist), is that when secular ideology is treated as something that cannot be challenged and that need not be proven, then it becomes a religion. <b><i>Stalinist Communism was every bit as much a religion as Roman Catholicism at the height of the Inquisition. Why? It was a religion because its tenets could not be challenged. </i></b>And if they contradicted the laws of nature, they couldn’t be challenged either. An entire generation of Soviet biologists and agronomists were destroyed because Stalin had a favourite biologist named Lysenko, and Lysenko’s basic belief was – and this went right along with Communist ideology – that you could change species by changing their behaviour, in other words a new Soviet man, or a new Soviet cow, could be made genetically different by the teachings you gave them. Scientists who said no – and everything we know and have proved about science including Mendelian genetics says that it is not true – went to the gulags and were killed. Soviet science was two generations behind the West when it emerged from this era in the mid-1960s. <b><i>So what I say is that in fact what is often used as proof that religion is good is proof that religion is bad, because religion doesn’t have to call itself Christianity, or have Yahweh or Jesus as its idol, it can have secular idols. </i></b>The characteristic of a religion is that no evidence-based challenge is allowed. Soviet Communism fit that model perfectly, and as soon as evidence-based challenge was allowed, it took just 30 years to collapse, which may seem long, but as historical time goes is not long at all. </div>
Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03056377038486402824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6731750.post-6520054774504834802013-02-25T14:18:00.000-05:002013-02-25T17:52:18.983-05:00Book Review: Straw Dogs, by John Gray<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_kzukQRTY4_XKMc4gFRg1es0e0UnYGYjUVDE6v34jGjvH92UoeeEvI1IqwfslAhohZ4EJR_zb7t-jAgClqhIj-VagZVoTlqRnZHdBx_DlY0buaXm4jtpMxmOmtT6k-tqckIan/s1600/strawdogs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br /></a><b id="internal-source-marker_0.818429944338277" style="font-weight: normal;"></b>
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<b id="internal-source-marker_0.818429944338277" style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_kzukQRTY4_XKMc4gFRg1es0e0UnYGYjUVDE6v34jGjvH92UoeeEvI1IqwfslAhohZ4EJR_zb7t-jAgClqhIj-VagZVoTlqRnZHdBx_DlY0buaXm4jtpMxmOmtT6k-tqckIan/s1600/strawdogs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br /></a><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">--Verse 5, </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tao Te Ching</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, by Lao Tzu</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[As Derek Lin translates, straw dogs are ceremonial figurines used by ancient Chinese and then cast away after the ritual. At once precious only to be discarded later. As Lin states, </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“this is a vivid imagery that compares life itself to the ancient ritual. The progression of life is like the ritual being conducted in proscribed sequence. While this is happening we are like straw dogs at the center of it all, experiencing this interesting ritual called life. Eventually, life comes to an end just as the ritual must come to an end. Our bodies can no longer contain life and are discarded</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.”]</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b id="internal-source-marker_0.818429944338277" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-weight: normal; white-space: normal;"><b id="internal-source-marker_0.818429944338277" style="font-weight: normal;"></b></b></span></b><br />
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</b></b>This is my review of John Gray’s </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Straw Dogs,</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> a book that had been recommended to me a while </span></b><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">back and I just now read for the first time. Gray (not to be confused with the Mars/Venus guy) is known as a Thatcher conservative in Britain who has aimed his intellect away from politics and economics and towards philosophy in recent decades. </span></b><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_kzukQRTY4_XKMc4gFRg1es0e0UnYGYjUVDE6v34jGjvH92UoeeEvI1IqwfslAhohZ4EJR_zb7t-jAgClqhIj-VagZVoTlqRnZHdBx_DlY0buaXm4jtpMxmOmtT6k-tqckIan/s1600/strawdogs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_kzukQRTY4_XKMc4gFRg1es0e0UnYGYjUVDE6v34jGjvH92UoeeEvI1IqwfslAhohZ4EJR_zb7t-jAgClqhIj-VagZVoTlqRnZHdBx_DlY0buaXm4jtpMxmOmtT6k-tqckIan/s400/strawdogs.jpg" width="261" /></a><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For some reason I had assumed this was a novel, but rather it is a short non-fiction work that gives a very cursory overview and critique of philosophy dating from the ancient Greeks to Christianity to the Enlightenment and the modern nihilists and everything in between. Gray, often called the skeptic’s skeptic, sometimes has a scolding tone directed at believers and non-believers alike, even calling atheism a belief system and an off-shoot of Christianity (referring to it as “post-Christian”).</span></b><br />
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<b id="internal-source-marker_0.31400968437083066" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gray does not view humans as anything special, sees god merely as a human invention, has no place for salvation, and calls morality a disease-- so far so good-- but then he declares that evolution does not progress (who ever said it did?) and has a chapter entitled "Non-progress" which is a dissatisfying finale that fails to define "progress" and seems to miss the entire point of evolutionary science, namely, that it has no direction or purpose.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One potential value of the book is Gray's whirlwind summary of famous thinkers such as Heidegger, Kant, Plato, Descartes, Aquinas, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, among others. I’ll concede that my knowledge of these gentlemen (no women are mentioned) is limited but he seems to be fairly well-versed and the review is interesting, like a Cliff notes version of philosophical history-- and it’s not surprising that Gray presents these views only to disregard them as incomplete and useless because they put humanity at the center of philosophy. The nihilist’s nihilist...which makes me wonder why he bothered to write the book in the first place except to display his intellectual muscle (something a true nihilist wouldn’t bother doing.)</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One issue I have regards Gray’s treatment of science and evolution and E. O. Wilson specifically. At one point he remarks on E. O. Wilson’s quote about humans having acquired the ability to consciously alter evolution in the modern age: using reproductive technologies, choosing numbers of offspring and genders and, in the future, myriad other genetic traits. Wilson states that evolution has become ‘volitional.’ Gray has a problem with this concept and implies that Wilson has made some grand proclamation about humans </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">controlling</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> evolution. My understanding of Wilson’s work is that nobody is more humble about humans’ ability to control nature than he is and he eschews the anthropocentric view of creation.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gray has a point about much of science being co-opted to benefit humanity at the expense of the rest of nature. We have torn up the planet for fossil fuels, plowed over habitat for farmland, polluted great bodies of water, melted the polar ice-caps (arguably) by liberating CO2 into the atmosphere. We have put all living things at risk of nuclear holocaust. As the number of humans grows past 9 billion the petri dish known as earth becomes more strained with the greatest species extinction since the </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 13px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Ironically, this dire Neo-Malthusian scenario was proffered by E. O. Wilson himself in </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Consilience</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> long before Gray’s treatise, but while Gray’s point about Wilson’s use of the word “control” is valid it is taken out of context of Wilson's body of work and thought.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gray sometimes seems to confuse science with </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the uses of</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> science. Pure science has no dog in the fight between nature and humanity. Real scientists are merely observing nature and describing its characteristics: fossils, DNA, antibodies, antigens, nuclear reactions, disease, electromagnetism, etc... Yes, much of science has been co-opted for the immediate perceived benefit of humanity, but that is not so much a testament on science as on the technologies that have resulted from scientific discovery and the human consumers who buy such technologies. Pfizer may call chemists who formulate drugs to lower our cholesterol “scientists” but they are really derivative technicians using the scientific observations made by purists.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I can point to scientist after scientist who slave away at discovering the chemical reactions that began life or how sea creatures become luminescent or studying the flora of a desolate island with no intention of marketing a product to humans or improving our stake at survival. Pure science has no humanist goal, although certainly a (relatively small) percentage of the vast number of scientific advances have been co-opted for human use and proponents of scientific funding often misuse human benefit as an excuse for social funding.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gray also says that science has not benefited humanity with anything significant, stating that pre-scientific hunter-gatherers had a better quality of life, even if their lives were not as long. I suppose it depends on how one would define “benefit” or “improve” and if someone can argue that sewers, clean water, antibiotics, vaccines and modern anesthesia have not benefited humanity, then I have nothing more to say. Gray’s argument is that science has not conquered mortality-- we still die eventually-- and so all the advances of modern science have left us with nothing substantive. Fair enough, but that is not to say there have been no benefits or improvements at all as we generally define “benefit” and “improve.”</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are other problems, too: Gray contends that Darwinism and Einsteinian relativity are not falsifiable and therefore not “science” according to Karl Popper’s definition. Huh? Methinks Gray does not really understand science. These theories have withstood the test of falsification via untold numbers of trials and observations. If any single observations has ever been inconsistent with, say, speciation by natural selection then all of Darwin's opus would be tossed in the trash heap. Nothing of the sort has ever happened. Test after test, observation after observation, in fields as disparate as chemistry, ecology, ethology and genetics have proven over and over that Darwin was spot on.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In general, Gray’s demeanor is condescending, chiding straw-man scientists for not being scientific, scolding humanists for ignoring the consequences of their actions as if he has calculated all the permutations of outcomes and discerned that humanism is misguided. Gray sounds like an asshole, and while I can appreciate his pessimism, Gray comes across as a pedantic holier-than-thou dick. (Maybe I do too, but this isn't about me.)</span></b></div>
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here’s my take</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: Years ago I read a book by Derrick Jensen called </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A Language Older than Words </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">which I remember as an emotional paean to nature and a lamentation regarding humanity’s destruction of the planet. Jensen compared humanity’s treatment of earth with the sexual abuse he suffered as a child at the hands of his father. We are conveniently blind to or quickly forget the anguish we cause for various reasons related to preservation of self or species. If we were to feel the requisite sorrow we cause other humans or animals or the planet in general the pain would be too much to bear. I cannot do justice to Jensen’s heartfelt book-length disgorgement in this paragraph, but suffice to say that he does a better job than Gray does at portraying humans as cosmically inconsequential and on-balance harmful to the rest of planetary life. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">John Gray’s </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Straw Dogs</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is a hyper-intellectual castigation of the human species. He is judgemental. Derrick Jensen, likewise, is judgemental towards humanity. I guess I don’t get why these writers are so hard on </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Homo sapiens</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, after all we are just playing out our evolutionary-determined hand, preserving our species in the immediate future, prolonging our lives, adding offspring to the subsequent generation. That’s what our DNA is programmed to do. Sure, maybe we are making the planet uninhabitable for our and other species in the distant (40 years? 1000 years?) future, but who really knows? Evolution has not programmed us to worry about what will happen beyond the next generation, has it? </span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">E. O. Wilson famously backtracked on the pessimism in </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Consilience </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to consider that humans may eventually use their powerful collective intellect to figure out how to save the planet from destruction and prolong the </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Homo sapiens</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> existence. Cynics and fellow scientists disregarded this later work as a bone thrown to the readers, a sell-out to optimists in order to move more books and remain popular. So be it, the world needs booksellers too.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Regardless how thoughtful and responsible we are, </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Homo sapiens</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> will be gone someday and we may take most of the currently known species with us. But the earth will be populated with other species evolved to the changed humanless habitat, that is what evolution dictates. Even the worst human-caused potential scenarios-- global climate change run amok or nuclear holocaust-- would most likely bring about changes in the habitat that would benefit some other species: maybe an organism that thrives in a low level radioactive environment. Or maybe the earth will be just a hulking lifeless rock. Oh well, the universe needs hulking lifeless rocks too. With 7 billion other galaxies I’m reasonably sure the legacy of life will continue somewhere.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Acolytes of Al Gore can call for some dramatic change in human understanding about the use of fossil fuels, but don’t expect anyone anywhere to voluntarily reduce their standard of living for a perceived threat to the planet in the distant (40 years? 1000 years?) future. The Atlantic Ocean could be lapping at the 10 th floor of the Empire State building but Iowans will still want to drive tractors, eat hamburgers and make more babies that do the same.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gray, with all his nihilistic intellectualization, is a show-off. And being a show-off is a form of what Buddhists call attachment, which leads to suffering, yada yada yada. (Hey, I’m not above it; all beings suffer, as writing-- and certainly reading-- this review is sure to prove.) A good friend (House) serendipitously recommended reading the </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tao Te Ching</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> with interpretation by Derek Lin about the time I was finishing Gray’s </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Straw Dogs</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and it dovetails quite nicely with the thesis. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I may write a longer review of Lin’s outstanding work later, but pertinence to the current discussion has to do with what the Tao means. Usually translated as “The Way”, Lin points out that, more accurately, it means “The Way Things Are”, i.e., the essence. My interpretation is that when Lao Tzu wrote the </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tao Te Ching</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> it was a premonition of Walter Cronkite’s catchphrase: "And that's the way it is", just a humble attempt to present reality in an understandable form. No judgment, no remorse.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">While the Buddha later incorporated the grim recognition about suffering, Lao Tzu’s treatise is really a more uplifting statement about what little control (free will) humans have and we are best served by relaxing into the palm of the universe.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We can intellectualize all we want, we can try to predict and ruminate about what it all means and find blame and cast aspersions, but at the end of the day we have no idea what it all means. I’m re-reading Jensen’s </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Language Older Than Words</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and I’m also halfway through Lin’s </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tao Te Ching</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. My gut tells me that they will be more satisfying than John Gray’s book, and I intend to give some updates.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ll finish with a further quote from Lin’s interpretation of Verse 5 regarding straw dogs:</span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“The Tao does not play favorites. The rain waters the weeds and orchids equally; the sun shines on everyone with the same brightness and warmth despite variations in individual merits. The sage, emulating the Tao, also regards everyone in the same egalitarian light-- none higher and none lower.”</span></b>Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03056377038486402824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6731750.post-75906786059194406572013-02-14T10:42:00.003-05:002013-02-14T11:27:01.135-05:00It's not the water, Mr. Rubio<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3_4GA534PcZ4r7qVUlZhWfwzoTak7G84CQmdnYy_uL2RrodzWsrWkxq2ai86RngTu3_Cc0Is4EBVo3xVEANPBwuLn1QFUOHMMSeSAYNeV-5mUvEiT-A8qQ7CPXw5T5Dq-lP18/s1600/Marco+Rubio+water+grab.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="color: #444444;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3_4GA534PcZ4r7qVUlZhWfwzoTak7G84CQmdnYy_uL2RrodzWsrWkxq2ai86RngTu3_Cc0Is4EBVo3xVEANPBwuLn1QFUOHMMSeSAYNeV-5mUvEiT-A8qQ7CPXw5T5Dq-lP18/s320/Marco+Rubio+water+grab.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #444444;">Ducking from reality?</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">As entertaining as it was seeing the "saviour" of the Republican party ducking for hydration under the hot lights and scrutiny of the national stage, it wasn't the water grab that made Rubio's response to the SOTU so abysmal, it was the substance of his talk.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Rubio's remarks on the housing meltdown shows that he really has no understanding of what brought on the seminal economic event of his generation, the Great Recession:</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>This idea – that our problems were caused by a government that was too small – it’s just not true. In fact, a major cause of our recent downturn was a housing crisis created by reckless government policies.</i></span></span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/13/marco-rubio-has-learned-nothing/">Paul Krugman</a> points out that this is one of the most thoroughly researched issues of the last 4 years and the evidence is overwhelming that The GSE's (Fannie and Freddie) and the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) had no negative effect on lending . In fact, not only was every single bad loan, no-doc loan, robo-signed loan initiated in the private sector, the same private sector had lobbied hard to mitigate the regulatory effects of the CRA.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://rortybomb.wordpress.com/2011/11/01/bloombergs-awful-comment-what-can-we-say-for-certain-regarding-the-gses/">Michael Konczal</a> gives a more exhaustive and referenced summary (his copious references are worthwhile). Here are the Cliff's Notes:</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 21px;">1. </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;">The first thing to point out is that the both the subprime mortgage boom and the subsequent crash are very much concentrated in the private market, especially the private label securitization channel (PLS) market. The GSEs were not behind them....</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;">2.</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;">The CRA wasn’t big enough to remotely cause these problems.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;">3. </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;">Did Fannie and Freddie buy high-risk mortgage-backed securities? Yes. But they did not buy enough of them to be blamed for the mortgage crisis.</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;"> </span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;">4. </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;">For fun, we should mention that the conservative think tanks spent the 2000s saying </span><em style="background-color: white; border: 0px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">the exact opposite of what they are saying now</em><span style="background-color: white; border: 0px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">...[T]</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;">hey argued that the CRA and the GSEs were getting in the way of getting risky subprime mortgages to risky subprime borrowers.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;">5. </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;"> P</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;"><b>rivate label securitization is responsible for 42% of all delinquencies despite accounting for only 13% of all outstanding loans as compared to the GSEs being responsible for 22% of all delinquencies despite accounting for 57% of all outstanding loans.</b></span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;">6. </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;"> The three Republicans on the </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;">Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC)</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;"> panel rejected the “Blame the GSEs/Congress” approach in their minority report. Indeed, they, and most conservatives who know this is a dead-end...</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;">7. </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;"> The GSEs had a serious corruption problem and were flawed in design...</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px;"><b>but they were not the culprits of the bubble</b>.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 24px;">OK, so Rubio Jindalled himself as "saviours" are wont to do, but forget the water gaffe. The real reason Rubio is unqualified to take a leadership role in government is because he lacks the requisite critical thinking and fails to grasp the lessons of the financial crisis.</span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 24px;">One word of advice to the Republican party: stop looking for a "saviour" and start familiarizing yourselves with empiric evidence of reality around you. GOP candidates seem to have a frail grasp on everything from abortion being reduced by contraception and sex ed, gun deaths being directly proportional to gun ownership, immigration and voting demographics, entitlement programs' cost versus defense spending, etc. </span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 24px;">Facts matter.</span></span></span></span><br />
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Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03056377038486402824noreply@blogger.com0