Don't Worry I'll Think Of A Title

First, a disclaimer. These are not shameful confessions made over the phone. These are shameful confessions about telephones. Also, these confessions are not so shameful as to be R-rated.

For those of you still here,  I woke up early the other day to go into the office. I saw my portable land-line phone was not in its holder. I looked in most of the usual places I leave it, and it wasn't there. I tried calling it on my cell-phone so I could find it by it's ring. The problem is I have a couple of extensions so that didn't help. So I left the house thinking it wasn't worth looking for and I would just buy a new one.

I went by Target after I left the office and looked at some phones. I looked at the various features they had, checking for things like memory dialing (which my current phone doesn't have) and a readable display. Most of them had a handset locator.

Handset locator. Hey, I have one of those on my phone! I don't have to call it with my cell to find it.

So I went home and did what I had done a million times before in my younger and more lucid days. I pressed the handset locator and found it that way. It was in a spare bedroom. I don't remember how it got in there. I'm sure I would have in my younger and more lucid days.

Later on, I couldn't find  my cell phone. I knew for a fact that it does not have a handset locator, so I called it with my land-line. I found it pretty easily after it rang. My new ringtone is Ready For This, a spirited tune. It is in fact so spirited I couldn't resist dancing a little. I'll not mince words here. I got down funky.

It was so much fun I called it again from my land-line so I could dance some more. I boogied with great vigor, and even developed a little routine that involved tossing my land-line back and forth between my hands. Alas, a ringtone doesn't last long enough to develop a really good routine, but it was fun while it lasted.

I resisted the urge to call a third time. Also, I put the cellphone in my pocket so I wouldn't lose it again.

Reading Ayn Rand in public is dangerous.

People see you  reading her and assume you subscribe to her entire philosophy. Pure objectivists think you are more in agreement with them than  you are and later discover what a heretic you are, and people who aren't objectivists think you are just a dreadful person. I've encountered both.

Last night I got into a long debate with a fellow wearing a beret who had been reading Hesse. (Do I REALLY need to tell you which camp he fell into?). He had seen me reading Ayn Rand's Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal and later engaged me in conversation about it. (To his enormous credit, he didn't do this while I was reading it.)  I told him that while I only agreed with about 75% of Ayn Rand's ideas, I thought she was spot on with her insistence that individuals are real and society is merely a useful abstraction.

His response was "I don't believe in the individual."

Yikes.

He went on to explain that since my identity was formed by an agglomeration of outside influences beyond my control (genes,environment,etc.) that I had no ownership of myself.

I will grant that I don't have perfect autonomy and independence. I don't think it follows that I am not a unique individual. That's too simplistic.
Not only am I a unique individual, but so are the billions of other people in the world. That means they have individual  rights I have to respect. So in a way, being an individualist makes me more considerate of other people.

Once you say that since we are all part of a big collective and no one has any claim on himself, you open the door for all kinds of tyranny.
Everyone is obligated to do what is best for society. Somebody (some individual mind you) has to determine what is best for society. Some historic examples of such individuals  include Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung, and Pol Pot.

I told my new acquaintance (who from this point on will be called Beret Guy)  that I thought it was perfectly fine to help people, and that at times it was even a moral imperative. He smiled and said "Oh, you're really a communitarian. " No, I'm not. I believe in helping actual people, not some abstraction called a community.

I think the one thing Beret Guy would agree with Ayn Rand about is that I'm not an objectivist. I usually put it that I am not a pure objectivist.
I came up with another term after a long discussion with someone who was a pure objectivist. I thought to myself after our conversation that the other guy was an orthodox objectivist, and I am reform. I do have a lot of beliefs and practices that are the objectivist equivalent of eating pork and listening to my IPod on the sabbath.

It rocked the house. It kicked ass. And plus, it was just plain good.

It worked as a satire, as slapstick, and as an action movie. I seriously think it deserves  attention at Oscar time. At the very least, Rick Baker should get  an award for makeup.

Tom Cruise, of all people, really shined in this movie.  One interesting thing is that although he is very short, you never notice it in his movies.
In this movie you do, because he's allowed to stand close to people who are taller than he is. His performance was what critics usually call "courageous", although they probably won't in this case.

It was the quintessential guy movie. There wasn't any kissy stuff. But there was farting, helicopters, and explosions. I got a testosterone rush just writing that last sentence. iatethecookie told me the explosions were real, not CGI. Even better. I'm not sure if the farting was real,though.

This movie is Anchorman meets Apocalypse Now.

This movie does not, repeat NOT, make fun of mentally challenged people. It makes fun of actors who think they can take a short cut to an Academy Award nomination by playing mentally challenged people. That's not only OK, it's damn near a moral imperative. I suspect most of the people raising a fuss have not seen the movie, or even read the script.

The movie is flawless. There is not one wasted moment or one false step. The last movie I said that about was Goodfellas.


ALL HAIL TROPIC THUNDER!!

I had four haiku last night. I had also brought along a couple of poems by other people I wanted to read, but decided that if I read them I would use up too much mic time. They had a very loose theme...both were written by people who weren't known for writing poetry. When I get to them at a later poetry reading, I'll have more to say about them.


Here are the haiku:



In case it's not clear from context, John McLaughlin's nickname was "Boog".

I'll do three:


1. The power went out. Grandmother died.
2. She read the pilfered email, weeping.
3. He learned he was no Hemingway.

I recently read The Deniers by Lawrence Solomon. The "deniers" in the title of Solomon's book are scientists who question anthropogenic (or human-caused) global warming. The term is usually used in a pejorative sense by AGW believers, with the implication of a similarity to holocaust deniers. The most famous use was in Scott Pelley's explanation of why he didn't interview global warming skeptics: "If I do an interview with Elie Wiesel, am I required as a journalist to find a Holocaust Denier?".

Solomon's deniers include Edward Wegman, a statistician who debunked the hockey stick, Christopher Landsea, a meteorologist who questions the links between hurricanes and global warming, Syun-ichi Akasofu, a geophysicist who demonstrated a poor correlation between CO2 levels and arctic temperatures, several Danish scientists who have explored the possible influence of solar activity on climate, and many others.

Solomon does an admirable job of walking the tightrope between scientific rigor and accessibility. One thing that helps with this is that he spends some time talking about broader principles in scientific debate. Early in the book, he addresses the issue of appeal to authority. Many global warming skeptics use the textbook response that appeal to authority is a well-known fallacy, but Solomon is more nuanced than that. He correctly points out that since we can't always learn everything, sometimes appeal to authority is necessary.

But he doesn't stop there. He points out that sometimes authorities disagree, and a decision must be made as to which authority should be given more weight. The chapter on the hockey stick is a good illustration of this. The hockey stick is the graph of the temperatures over time that indicates that they have risen very dramatically in recent times (thus creating a graph that looks like a hockey stick.) He points out that Micheal Mann (no not that one), the creator of the hockey stick had a background in meteorology but not in statistics. Because past information is necessarily incomplete, statistical methods must be used to fill in the gap. Mann had no background statistics, but Edward Wegman did, and found severe flaws in Mann's ideology.

Solomon addresses the much talked about issue of "consensus". He points out that many of the deniers are "affirmers in general, deniers in particular." Wegman, for instance, "did not dispute that man-made global warming was ocurring" but "merely stated that in the one narrow area in which his expertise was applied...the use of statistics to support claims of global warming-- the claims were unsupportable".
Of Christopher Landsea, he says that he "has issued no sweeping denials of catastrophic global warming...He merely says that in the one area he knows something about--hurricane activity--there is absolutely no reason to think that global warming is of any significance at all".

He addresses the issue of what effect scientific research should have on policy. He includes an excerpt from an article by Freeman Dyson which urges caution to anyone interpreting science as a policy guide in which he points out that since "in science, you are not supposed to believe the numbers until you have examined the evidence carefully" and that politics "have to vote yes or no, and they generally do not have the luxury of suspending judgement" we should remember that "Belief for a politician is not the same thing as belief for a scientist".

He cautions about the limits of modeling. He quotes at length from the work of Hendrik Tennekes , who wrote an article called "No Forecast Is Complete Without A Forecast Of Forecast Skill." Tennekes is concerned that modeling can sometimes violate Karl Popper's contention that scientific theories should be falsifiable. This happens when predictions fail and scientists "blame the poor accuracy of the observations, the lack of computer power, and the inadequate parameterization in the numerical models, rather than their own lack of skill in computing the accuracy that can be obtained with present resources." In other words, poor data gathering often gets blame that properly belongs to the model. Thus the premises behind the model are never falsified.

Solomon doesn't dismiss all attempts at modeling. He cites an instance where one of the deniers he mentions , David Bromwich, developed a model that allowed a man in need of medical care to be rescued from Antarctica. Bromwich's model helped predict the best times for planes to go in and rescue the man. This model is different from many GW models because it was very narrow in scope. It was tailored to the Antarctic region, and made predictions over a few days instead of many years, as is the case with global warming models..

There are stories of the travails of scientists challenging the anthropogenic CO2 driven global warming theory. The Scandinavian advocates of a solar theory came in for particular grief. When Eigil Friis-Christensen approached the IPCC (the UN body that investigates climate change) about his work, they "refused to consider the Sun's influence on Earth's climate as a topic worthy of investigation." When Jasper Kirkby remarked to journalists that cosmic ray flux might "account for somewhere between a half and the whole of the increase in the Earth's temperature that we have seen in the last century", he lost funding from CERN.

The most damning story was about Fred Singer, who co-authored an article that cautioning against radical policy changes based on current climate change research. Al Gore called Ted Koppel and asked him to investigate Singer's sources of funding. Koppel's response was as follows "There is some irony in the fact that Vice President Gore--one of the most scientifically literate men to sit in the White House in this century--[is] resorting to political means to achieve what should ultimately be resolved on a purely scientific basis".

Koppel nails the biggest stumbling block to global warming. Political rather than scientific means are used to arrive at conclusions on the subject. Solomon cautions against those on either side of the debate doing this. Although his primary intent is to defend the skeptics, he doesn't always give them a pass. For instance, he complains that the film The Great Global Warming Swindle overinterprets the findings of the Scandinavian scientists who studied solar effects on global warming.

The overall tone of the book is a charitable one. He has "respect for scientists on both sides of the IPCC [global warming] divide". His reasoning is that the matter is so complex that it's difficult to say that anyone has the last word. One gets the feeling from reading the book that he would be content for you to read the book carefully and consider his arguments even if you ultimately reject them. The books friendly, accessible tone, along with the wealth of facts and figures (many of which I did not include in this review) make it a book worth reading and, for me at least, worth owning.

I was talking about books with a friend at the coffee shop the other day and the subject of Catcher In The Rye came up. As we were talking about its opening sentence, I felt like the guy in the old V8 commercials who slaps himself on the forehead and says "I could have had a V8!". I couldn't believe I didn't think about it when I made my "awesome openers" post a few weeks ago.

It takes a certain audacity to start a book with the words "If you really want to hear about it". The author is effectively saying to the reader "Here's my story...take it or leave it." Given the continuing success of the book, the gamble clearly paid off.

While I'm on the subject, there are a couple of "honorable mention" openers I should include. I love the opening line of Forrest Gump:

"Let me say this: being a idiot is no box of chocolates"

I read the book before the movie came out and just fell in love with that sentence. It became my favorite metaphor for anything unpleasant. Then the movie came out and ruined it. I am usually not one to jump up and down and scream that the book was better than the movie. But I make an exception here.

You'll notice that the famous line from the movie starts with "my mama says." I'm pretty sure that's because the scriptwriter realized Forrest was too dumb to come up with a clever metaphor like that. The original line was simpler and something he could have come up with himself.

And the movie version of the line is nowhere near as profound as people think it is. It sounds like a lovely sentiment at first, but it's really just a sweet, pretty way of saying that life is random. It's sugar coated rat poison. It's the ugliest pig in the pen wearing the most expensive lipstick.

I hadn't thought about it before, but the line in the movie is almost the exact opposite of the line in the book. The line in the book says that being stupid doesn't work so well. The line in the movie says that you can't know what's going to happen, so you might as well be "a idiot" like Forrest Gump.

Not me. I know that's no box of chocolates.

Finally, the opening line of Jude Wanniski's The Way The World Works deserves mentioning:

" It is probably safe to say that most voters believe they are smarter than the average voter."

It's very thought provoking. And this is a book on economics. Books on economics are not known for their snappy prose. And they're certainly not known for awesome openers. The Way The World Works is a noteworthy exception.

Damn this is the saddest celebrity death in a long time, and I follow them pretty closely. I now know how Stan and Kyle and even Eric Cartman felt  when Chef went away. I don't want to believe he is dead...part of me is clinging to the hope that he just went off to join the Super Adventure Club.

His is the only memorial haiku I've written so far  for Thursday night. The muse demanded it only for him. As you can see, I even uploaded a new userpic in his memory. Such is the depth of my admiration.

Isaac Hayes has been an enduring cultural icon for more than one generation. You go up to anybody and say "They say Shaft is a bad mother..." most people will know to say "Shut yo mouth!". The few who don't remember the Shaft theme will know Hayes as the voice of Chef.

Hayes's musical output was a lot broader than just the theme from Shaft and the novelty songs from Southpark (although that would be enough.) The first time I heard of him I was about 11 and watching some music show where they introduced this new guy  who mixed soul music with the sounds and extended jams of psychedelic music. His name was Isaac Hayes, and he had just released an album called Hot Buttered Soul.

It was an innovative album, including a couple of extended, musically dense renditions of some current easy listening hits. One of these, Burt Bacharach's  Walk On By , was the first Isaac Hayes song I ever heard. I'm embedding a video of Hayes and his band performing it live. Enjoy.

I know that sounds hyperbolic, but damn this is good.  The song is an unusually good live version of John Cale's Paris 1919. The cinematography and lighting are not only splendid but are almost  perfectly tailored to the song. The video complements the music instead of competing with it.

Behold and enjoy.

What's really bloggy about this post is that it's going to describe inconsequential events in my own life. Also, it has already violated E.B. White's admonition to "not affect a breezy manner." If a cutesy neologism like "bloggiest" is not indicative of a breezy manner, I don't know what is.

Anyway, I went to Target yesterday to buy a gift card for my sister-in-law, and decided to make some self-indulgent purchases for myself. After finding the gift card, I went to the part of the store that has DVD's (which is close to the books).

They had discount DVD's by the registers. I picked up a 2-movie DVD of Shanghai Noon and Shanghai Nights for 9 dollars. I've always wanted to see Shanghai Noon.

I didn't buy any books, but I browsed.. Target has a better book selection than you might expect, but it's not that great. They did have The Secret. They had it in print and on CD. I didn't look around much to see if they had it on DVD, but they probably did.

For a long time now, I've been seeing The Secret every damn time I walk into a place that sells books. I also occasionally see the movie available on cable On Demand channels. All of which makes me wonder how much of a secret it can possibly be.

In the DVD section I picked up the HBO miniseries about John Adams, which I've been meaning to get. The price was lower than the Best Buy price. If I had more time and energy I would have been tempted to go to Best Buy and make them honor their lowest price guarantee. But I'm getting too old to stick it to the man like that. Especially since, at my age, some people would say I am the man. Better to leave him unstuck.

Speaking of old, I saw a copy of The Bucket List. I don't remember the price because I had no intention of buying it.The very idea that Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman would make the old-man equivalent of a Lifetime movie breaks my heart.  I've even heard nasty rumors that the Jack Nicholson character  opens up emotionally and learns to love...ICK. Just thinking about it is painful enough. I'm sure sitting through it would make me jump off a cliff.

They had a marked down copy of The Last King Of Scotland, a movie about a smartypants sanctimonious liberal who gets a very painful
reality check. Forrest Whittaker is brilliant as Idi Amin, the guy who delivers the reality check. I have wanted to own this on DVD for a while. Alas, it was full-screen. And they didn't have it in widescreen anywhere. Not even at  a higher price. That happens a lot at Target. I don't know why they can't give me what I want and take more of my money. What could be more win/win than that?

They also had a marked down ($9) copy of Hellboy, with lots of extras. I haven't seen HB, but what I've heard about it has intrigued me and at $9 I can use the "even if I don't like it I could use some extra coasters" argument.

So the price of two DVDs, one box set, and a gift card were my contribution to our nation's economy. Not a bad day's work.

I was surfing around on Amazon the other day  and I noticed a "so you'd like to guide" called "be like Rory Gilmore". Hmmm. I naturally wondered who this Rory Gilmore fella was, and why I should want to be like him.

I clicked on the list, and saw some interesting books. Over on the side, I noticed some more "so you'd like to" guides and listmania lists that would help people to be like Rory Gilmore. So I dismissed my initial suspicion that Rory Gilmore was some raging narcissist who thinks everyone wants to learn how to be like him. Apparently there is somebody out there named Rory Gilmore who is really famous that  lots of people want to emulate.

After some googling, I discovered that Rory Gilmore is not only not a him, but is not even a real person. SHE is a character on The Gilmore Girls. A character who apparently reads a lot.

Oh.

Discovering this hole in my knowledge made me more aware than ever that I am

1. old, and
   
2. unlike Rory Gilmore, a guy

I didn't think I could be more aware of these things, but there it is.  I plead not guilty to sexism though. Most people named Rory are dudes. Until now, all the Rory's I've ever known or heard of were.

I went surfing around for a list of the books she has read and I've found what looks like a pretty complete one (like I would know) here.

Ms. Gilmore appears to be a very well-read young lady with fine literary tastes. It is a damn shame she is not a real person.

Real or not, at least she inspires people to read more. Kudos to you, o fictitious damsel.

I recently finished reading The Money Men by H.W. Brands. I purchased it a while back with a hope of gaining a better understanding of monetary policy.

I'm only slightly more knowledgeable about the subject now, but it was still an interesting read. The titular money men are Alexander Hamilton, Nicholas Biddle, Jay Cooke, Jay Gould, and J.P. Morgan, all of whom had some effect on shaping America's monetary policy. The book takes us from the founding of the country to the founding of the Federal Reserve, which is what determines monetary policy today. It is framed in terms of the tension between capitalism (the interests of those with capital) and democracy (the interests of everybody in general...I myself would have used the word "populism" but who am I to argue with H.W. Brands?).

Alexander Hamilton is probably the most famous of the five. He was our first Treasury Secretary and also helped establish the First National Bank of the United States. I have not been one of his biggest fans (he is a bit too centralist for my tastes), but after reading this book I've decided he deserves his place on the 10 dollar bill. He did a lot to get the United States back on its feet financially after the war, and helped establish a sound currency (which was desperately needed after all the fiat money that was issued to finance the Revolutionary War.)

Nicholas Biddle locked horns with Andrew Jackson over the re-establishment of the National Bank. Jay Cooke sold bonds to help finance the War Between The States, and pioneered the idea of selling treasuries to individuals instead of just financial institution. Jay Gould tried to corner the gold market. He was finally thwarted when Ulysses Grant dumped a huge quantity of government gold onto the market (after much dilly-dallying and unintentional assistance to Gould...Grant probably doesn't deserve to have his face on money.) JP Morgan helped bail out the banks after the Panic Of 1907. Shortly after this, in 1913, the Federal Reserve was formed to deal with such instability in banks.
Really, the purpose was to have something permanent to do the same thing JP Morgan did, but the author doesn't put it quite like that.

Overall, this book didn't enlighten me about monetary policy as much as I'd hoped it would. On the other hand, it was  more fun to read  than I expected. Of course, any historical book where Aaron Burr (in the section on Alexander Hamilton) and Andrew Jackson (in the section on Nicholas Biddle) show up is bound to be a lively read.

I did learn a few things. For one, advocates of small government and capitalists have not always been on the same side. For instance, most of the opposition to Hamilton's bank was based on a belief in a decentralized government, and the principle that the government is forbidden from doing what is not explicitly allowed by the Constitution (a principle held by many conservatives today.)

I also learned quite a bit about the Free Silver movement (this was included in the chapter on Jay Gould.) It included much of the text of William Jennings Bryan's "Cross Of Gold" speech, or at least more of it than I have ever read. I was familiar with Bryan's famous quote "you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold" and had been mystified as to how something as boring as currency policy could inspire such florid rhetoric. This book did a lot to help me understand the stakes in the fight between a pure gold standard and bimetallism.

As I mentioned, the book winds down with the establishment of The Federal Reserve, which avoided a lot of the problems that were described throughout the book. He credits the Fed with bringing about a ceasefire between the capitalists and democrats, at least over monetary issues. He closes the book with a description of what monetary policy has been like since the creation of the fed: "money policy was far more successful...but it was also far less entertaining."

It's good that he used the past tense. The fed hasn't had a very good track record during the 21st century. Given some of the calamities described in this book, it's fair to say that money policy has been more successful than it has in the past, but time will tell if it remains so.

It was Bubblegum Music Is The Naked Truth, a compilation of big hits from the Buddha label, including songs from such stalwarts as The Ohio Express and The 1910 Fruitgum Company. I was about 11 years old at the time. The title describes the music pretty well, although as an old fart I'd have to say it's better than such modern bubblegum artists as Avril Lavigne. (I know, big deal).

I haven't listened to it in a long time. I don't know where it is and don't have a working turntable.

I have mentioned before 2 ETF's I have in my portfolio that track commodities futures. These are USO, which tracks oil  and UGA, which tracks gasoline.

I have gotten stopped out of both of them in the last two days. USO was a trailing stop so I made money. UGA was a plain old stop order so I lost money on that. 

Both of these events occurred after Bush lifted the presidential order against offshore drilling on July 14. On that day, USO closed at 117.45. Yesterday it closed at 109.45. UGA closed at 66.32 on the 14th and 60.90 yesterday.

 I can't help but believe that the lifting of the offshore drilling order had something to do with the drop in futures. Some have opined that hard economic times will cause a cutback in oil consumption and that's what affected the futures market. I don't doubt that's one of the reasons, but I honestly don't see that times are that much harder today than they were three days ago. Certainly political motion, insufficient as it is, to get more oil will have an effect on futures.

It will be interesting to see if the drop in futures prices continues and what effect they will have on gas prices. I'm not quite brave enough to make a prediction though.

Someone has been tearing down the Ira Yarmolenko murder fliers posted in Mount Holly. In the story I linked it's strongly suggested that it is the killer. However, I heard from a fairly reliable source that it was an over-zealous city official. I'm not sure that accounts for all of them.

But there's another incident in the story that is far worse and a lot less amenable to an innocent explanation. Somebody desecrated her grave.
I can barely type those words without wanting to put my fist through the monitor. It's the most infuriating thing I've heard of since the murder itself. Her mother had planted flowers there and some evil depraved rat bastard dug them up and took them away. It's hard to think of anything worse than doing something like that to a bereaved family. Especially when the family includes parents who are grieving a child. I don't know if it was the killer who did this, but if it wasn't it was someone who is  just as bad.

This has been the most unpleasant entry for me to make since I started this blog. Even when I blogged about Ira's death, the process was sweetened by memories of Ira. This one though, is just about ugliness and sickness.

But I feel like I have to make this entry. I used to think I was overdoing it with the entries, and that maybe I should listen to those stupid cliches "move on" and "get over it". But I've decided those cliches are truly stupid, and that until Ira's killer is caught, it is not time to move on. And even though my blog is not widely read,entries about her will give the case a teeny tiny bit more exposure that might be helpful.

 I recently finished reading Memoirs Of A Superfluous Man, the autobiography of Albert Jay Nock. Reading a huge tome by Jacque Barzun a couple of months back left me with an appetite for the words of cranky,iconoclastic old men and nobody fits the bill for that better than Mr.Nock (in answer to the obvious jokes, no, reading my own blog doesn't cut it.)

Nock was a scholar, journalist and social critic who lived in the first half of the 20th century. His memoirs were written in 1943, 2 years before he died. The title is to a certain extent self-explanatory, but reading the book provides a deeper explanation. In a chapter on his education, he says that a man who is educable (as opposed to trainable in some job skill...a distinction he gives much weight) is "a superfluous man" and that "the more thoroughly his ability to see things as they are is cultivated, the more his superfluity is enhanced."

He was a very private man and initially reluctant to write his memoirs. In his preface he says "my autobiography would be like the famous chapter on owls in Bishop's history of Iceland. The good bishop wrote simply that there are no owls in Iceland, and that one sentence was the whole of his chapter."

He changed his mind when it was "proposed that I should write a purely literary and philosophical autobiography with only enough collateral odds and ends thrown in to hold the narrative together."

The result is a very intellectually nourishing collection of cultural and philosophical ideas.  Above all, he believed in the importance of following Plato's admonition to "see things as they are." He praises Chief Justice Jay for echoing this sentiment when he wrote "I do not expect that mankind will, before the millennium, be what they ought to be...every political theory which does not regard them as being what they are, will prove abortive."

This fundamental principal led him to reject many political movements which were fashionable in his time. While he shared the disdain many felt for the robber barons of the gilded age, he wanted no part of such reforms as inheritance tax and the income tax. He complained that "the reformers did not see that the state, as an arbiter of economic advantage, must necessarily be a potential instrument of economic exploitation." He saw socialists and the moguls who got rich through tariffs as two sides of the same coin.

 He tells a revealing anecdote in which  a "Socialist was breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the rich." Nock continues "I had asked him just what it was that he proposed to do when he had got them all properly killed off. 'We have been oppressed' he said 'and now we shall oppress.' I thought he put the matter very well, for I could see no other prospect."

Because he always regarded people as "being what they are", Nock was skeptical of any political attempts for the mass improvement of society. He believed that  Voltaire had the right idea when he said "I will cultivate my garden". That is, we should look at improving ourselves instead of society. In the same paragraph, he says "the only way society can be improved is by the individualist method which Jesus apparently regarded as the only one whereby the Kingdom of Heaven can be established as a going concern; that is, the method of each one doing his very best to improve one." I was impressed that he was able to get Voltaire AND Jesus Christ on his side of the argument.

Nock's writing reflects the mind of a well-read man with an excellent classical education. He quotes Voltaire and Rabelais frequently, and also quotes many ancient Latin and Greek classics, often in the original language. This would come across as showing off from a lot of writers, but it doesn't with him. It's easy to believe he found this the simplest and most natural way to express himself. It's what you would expect from someone who started teaching himself Latin and Greek at the age of 8.

Even when I don't understand the references, the way he uses them not only makes his point but convinces me that he is making it in the best way possible. For instance, he says of  a German immigrant woman he once befriended "the epitaph that Callimachus wrote for the sweet-spirited Samian girl who died so young...always puts me in mind of her." He put the original Greek quote where I have an ellipsis. I don't know what the hell it means. But he made me believe that this was a very lovely woman, and that she was lovely in the same way as that poor Samian girl. That's not showing off, that's good writing.

This was recently edited to include the anecdote at the end of the post
Last night at the Jackson's Java poetry reading I stuck to my usual routine of reading haiku about recently deceased famous people. These included George Carlin, Jesse Helms, and Larry Harmon. I also read the one about Bo Diddley that I had written for last months reading but decided at the last minute not to read.

Here's the Bo Diddley haiku:

You'll not fade away
I know that's Buddy Holly
But really, it's yours


Here are the new ones:

( Click here for haiku )

If you don't get the references to Adams and Jefferson in the Helms haiku, read the biographical info I've linked to and you'll probably figure it out.

After the reading, I overheard the barrista talking to one of the customers about haiku. He recited this one:

Haiku are such fun
But sometimes they don't make sense
Refrigerator

That's what I like about Jackson's Java. It's a place where you can overhear haiku.

My recurring dreams are pretty boring and standard, but I do have a vivid dream I am fond of recalling.

I was in the parking deck at Charlotte's Douglas Airport. There were no cars there. I thought it was completely deserted, but I heard some music. I looked around and in the corner was Nat King Cole singing "Mona Lisa".

Then I saw Elle. I looked at her and asked her to dance with me. She demurred at first, but I  asked again and she consented. Elle and I slow danced in a deserted parking lot to the live music of Nat King Cole.

It was a lovely dream.

I sawiatethecookie the other day as he was in the homestretch of reading Ulysses and mentioned to him that I once wrote a country and western song about James Joyce. I sang him the chorus, and then I figured that was enough acapella singing in Jackson's Java and stopped.

So here are the entire lyrics

CHORUS
James Joyce was a ramblin' man
And I oughta know 'cause I'm one of his fans
He wrote real good and he wrote real free
With ineluctable modality

He woke up in the morning
And he wrote Finnegan's Wake
He had to write a second draft
'Cause the first one didn't take

(repeat chorus)

He went on down to Paris
Where he met Ezra Pound
Now Ezra was a smart ol' boy
But he sure could bring you down

(repeat chorus)

He stayed a while in Paris
Where he met Sylvia Beach
She milked his books for what she could
'Cause she was such a leech

(repeat chorus)

Yes, I know the timeline isn't right.

Maybe  I'm not as patriotic as I thought I was. I didn't make a 4th of July entry. Although since I made an Independence Day related entry on July 2 and I am making one now on July 6, I guess on average I did.

Anyway,here's a couple of videos that capture the spirit of Independence Day and American patriotism. The first is the scene from the HBO miniseries John Adams of George Washington's inauguration. Watching it gives me chills and makes me feel damn good about being an American. It's also David Morse's finest moment as an actor.




The second one isn't specifically patriotic. You could even call it a little goofy. But I think it's good evidence of what a uniquely wonderful  country America is. You will either know what I mean or you won't.

I have found a couple of news clips about the murder of Ira Yarmolenko. Here is one of Ira's brother Pavel making a public statement to the killer


In this one, the Mount Holly police chief talks about evidence gleaned from Ira's car.


Incidentally, in a recent correspondence with Pavel he told me that people can help by rating or recommending news articles they see on line.
This keeps the case in the public eye. So if you've been following this case and have been having those "but what can I do" thoughts (I know I have), that's something to keep in mind.

232 years ago today, the 2nd Continental Congress passed the Resolution of Independence (also called the Lee Resolution after it's sponsor Richard Henry Lee), declaring the 13 colonies to be independent of the British Empire. Two days later the announcement of this resolution ,also known as the Declaration of Independence,was approved, signed by John Hancock , then President of the Continental Congress (the other signatures would come later) and sent to the printer.

This is worth knowing, if only for the sake of giving Richard Henry Lee his due. Also, if you just can't wait two days to shoot off fireworks and cook out on the grill, now you have an excuse.

Here are three opening lines  I still remember from books I last read many years ago:

1. "Years later, as he stood before the firing squad, Colonel Aureliono Buendias remembered the distant day when his grandfather took him to discover ice" -From Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years Of Solitude
2. "Once upon a time, there was a martian named Michael Valentine Smith"-From Robert Heinlein's Stranger In A Strange Land
3. "They threw me off the hay truck around noon" - From James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice

It's pretty easy to figure out that they work. I still remember them years after I read the book. Why they're effective is a tougher nut to crack. But I'll give it a shot.

1. Who is this Buendias guy? Why is he in front of a firing squad? Took him to discover ice? What's up with that? This is a sentence with a lot of backstory, and you read on in hopes of getting it.
2.  Stories that start off with "once upon a time" generally involve elves or witches but hardly ever Martians. You know you've started reading a fable of some sort, but it's a fable with a twist. Your curiosity is piqued.
3. This fella is clearly up to no good. You read on to find out exactly what kind of no good he is up to. Hopefully salacious details will be provided.

I found something interesting in The Fountainhead that didn't really fit into my review so I'll share it in this post.

The protagonist Howard Roark is asked to design homes for a summer resort called Monadnock Valley. Unbeknown to Roark, the proprietors sold 200% of the shares to investors. They expected to get away with it because they thought it  would be a complete flop. They hired Howard Roark because they thought he was a crackpot who would help ensure failure.

The project turned out to be a huge success, the proprietors were busted, and pandemonium (though not hilarity...this is after all, an Ayn Rand novel) ensued.

I didn't even have to stop and think about why this story sounded familiar. Substitute Broadway play for summer resort, and you've got the plot for The Producers! I would love to know if Mel Brooks has read The Fountainhead.

I've embedded an amusing music video I found a while back that's based on the film version of The Fountainhead. It doesn't have anything to do with Mel Brooks. I just thought I'd include it as long as I'm dealing with Fountainhead miscellany.

I just finished reading Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. It was an enjoyable book and presented a lot of the same ideas as Atlas Shrugged.
It is a shorter book. At 729 pages, it is practically a novella compared to Atlas Shrugged. It has fewer characters, which allowed Rand to develop a very identifiable hero (architect Howard Roark) and villain (socially responsible architecture critic Ellsworth Toohey, who probably has the most Dickensian name of any character in 20th century fiction).

I liked Howard Roark's character. He has a clear vision of what architecture should be and does not care at all whether other people agree with it. Work comes to him slowly because of this, but it does come because of the integrity of his vision and craft. Early in the book, a client says to him

"And, incidentally, thank you for all the thought you seem to have taken about my comfort. There are so many things I notice that had never occurred to me before, but you've planned them as if you knew all my needs. For instance, my study is the room I'll need most and you've given it the dominant spot--and, incidentally, I see where you've made it the dominant mass from the outside, too. And then the way it connects with the library, and the living room well out of my way, and the guest rooms where I won't hear too much of them--and all that. You were very considerate of me."

And Roark responds "You know, I haven't thought of you at all. I thought of the house." He added: "Perhaps that's why I knew how to be considerate of you."

This is a consistent theme throughout the book.It reminds me of these lines from a poem by Richard Lovelace:

"I could not love thee, dear, so much
Loved I not honour more."

Or as Howard Roark puts it "Before you can do things for people, you must be the kind of man who can get things done. But to get things done, you must love the doing, not the secondary consequences. The work, not the people."


There is a passage in the book when Roark's nemesis, Ellsworth Toohey offers Roark a chance to say exactly what he thinks of him. Roark's response is "But I don't think of you."

His lack of concern for what others think of him frees him from a desire to control other people. In a soliloquy near the end of the book, he decries the false choice between being a tyrant or a slave. "The choice" he says "is not self-sacrifice or domination. The choice is independence or dependence." He is "the one man who wished neither to serve nor to rule."

That's not a bad way to be. It's a shame most people don't even see it as a possibility.