Taking it Outside

So, publius and Lindsay were on journolist. Not really a surprise. Hilzoy linked regularly to Ezra Klein, say every 2 or 3 posts. Perhaps she was more of a lurker.

And in 2008 not so good of a judge of whether McCain was a liar (and also Dishonorable - over and over).

=== Clip ===

I wanted to note a couple of things. First, McCain often distorted Obama's views. He said Obama would raise taxes, when (just to repeat myself) Obama will raise taxes only on people making over $250,000 a year. Still, in that case, you can imagine a way in which you might make what he said out to be true, if you squint a bit: Obama will raise some taxes. But there's no way to make this out to be anything but a lie:: [/i]

"His plan will force small busineses to cut jobs, reduce wages, and force families into a government-run health care system where a bureaucrat stands between you and your doctor."

Here's a link to Obama's health plan. If anyone can find the part about forcing anyone into a government-run health care system, I'll eat my hat. (Remember the controversy from the primaries about mandates, and how Obama didn't have them?)

=== /Clip ===

So here is how it is two years later:

 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/health/policy/18health.html

Business cut jobs:Check. Reduce wages: Semi-Check (no raises). The govt-run health care is a Tax , is a Mandate, appears to be Medicaid rather than some other Public Option, but perhaps those are the same thing: Partial-Semi-Check. McCain's statement looks like it is much more truth than a lie, if you ask me.

Blogs aren't always fonts of wisdom. The opinions may not turn out to be true.  Don't believe everything you read or hear, and don't trust me on this.

Looky here now:

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-07-21/news/ct-x-n-poison-ivy-0721-20100721_1_poison-ivy-plant-species-elevated-co2

Elevated CO2 levels in the atmosphere, although destructive to many plant species, are proving a boon for adaptive weeds such as poison ivy, said Lewis Ziska, a federal plant physiologist.

Really? That sounds kind of like Phil Ponce explaining on a PBS special how global warming will make Lake Michigan flood the Chicago shoreline, even though the lake has been at historic lows and ingonring the fact that Chicago is over 600 feet above sea level and in the middle of the continent.

But look a FEDERAL SCIENTIST is making the poison ivy claims! I on the other hand have only lived in the area for 25 years, and have always seen poison ivy, perhaps because I can identify it and do not need a newspaper article to tell me that it exists. I suspect that the article is meant to scare the cityfolk. The big unanswered question in my mind is whether corn and soybeans can tolerate CO2. We should all move to Antarctica, which, by journalistic standards, is the greenest place on earth.

I like this Jacob Davies guy. Lets get on the horn with Ezra and throw him a few links. I still don't get Eric.

As specified in section 172, sub section 34 paragraphs 5-7, this is the thread to discuss the recent happenings at the mother ship. 

I dont like people in grocery stores that get their filthy hands all over the produce that I am about to buy. You know, the ones who stand in front of the green beans and apparently have the time to examine every single bean that they put in their bean bag. Come on now people, let's get with it, I dont have the time and patience for that kind of stuff. And another thing, Dont Eat The Store's Food Until You Pay For It.

It has only gotten worse what with all these furriner types clogging the aisles. A few months ago there was this big lady in a fur coat that blocked the entire aisle while she picked up and put back 40 to 50 beets. BEETS! For chrissake lady, beets are basically purple colored balls of dirt with dirt covering the outside of them! Be a fucking AMERICAN for crying out loud, and get your beets from a can like God intended for us to do, and then move on and get out of everybody's way.

And for the people who are buying eggs, here is the protocol: Open the carton. Eggs not cracked? Then put them in your cart.

Dont open three cartons of eggs and swap the eggs around until you think that you have one carton of the most wonderful, perfect eggs ever created. Here, let me lick that for you. Unsatisfactory? OK I'll put it back on the shelf.

This is your open thread.

A post from The Corner about heroism.

Medals of Honor?   David French

This weekend’s New York Times Sunday Magazine contains a fascinating article that hits quite close to home for me. Centered around the story of a 25-year-old Marine who — despite horrific wounds — had the presence of mind and courage to scoop a live grenade under his body to save the lives of his comrades, the article asks a simple question: Why is the military awarding so few medals of honor? Are we less courageous now? Or is the military stifling valor awards in a labyrinthine bureaucracy dominated by rear echelon second-guessers? The numbers are stunning:

Despite its symbolic importance and educational role in military culture, the Medal of Honor has been awarded only six times for service in Iraq or Afghanistan. By contrast, 464 Medals of Honor were awarded for service during World War II, 133 during the Korean War and 246 during the Vietnam War. “From World War I through Vietnam,” The Army Times claimed in April 2009, “the rate of Medal of Honor recipients per 100,000 service members stayed between 2.3 (Korea) and 2.9 (World War II). But since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, only five Medals of Honor have been awarded, a rate of 0.1 per 100,000 — one in a million.”

To be clear, this article hits home for me not because I did anything meriting a valor award in Iraq (I did not), but because I know and served with men who did deserve valor awards but either (i) did not receive them; or (ii) saw the award requests downgraded or denied several steps up the bureaucratic chain. In some cases, we knew conduct would never be considered for more than a Silver Star, so we didn’t make the request.

The men I served with were courageous at a level that civilians simply cannot comprehend. Let me give just one example. In January 2008, a small team of American soldiers was ambushed after an al-Qaeda terrorist faked a surrender (this was common practice). The team leader and another officer were mortally wounded the instant the terrorists opened fire. The senior noncommissioned officer was pinned down and unable to take effective control of the formation; other officers were worked desperately to retrieve their fallen comrades. A Sergeant First Class took immediate control of the situation, personally returning fire and killing the majority of the attackers, directing the team’s defense, and coordinating the recovery under fire of his stricken team members. He shepherded the formation out of the kill zone and coordinated the medical evacuation.

All in a day’s work, you say? How about this additional fact: He did all of this after being shot in the neck in the opening moments of the ambush. He killed the enemy, protected his comrades, and led them to safety while bleeding profusely — collapsing only after help arrived. I’m not sure about you, but I can’t even imagine what I’d do in a similar circumstance. 

This courageous soldier received a Silver Star — our third-highest award for valor. It’s a medal he’ll wear proudly for the rest of his life, and he never asked for more. But did he deserve more? 

To be clear, our guys aren’t out there begging for medals, but these awards are a critical aspect of the ongoing story of our military and the valor of our soldiers. How can the public recognize the heroes in our midst if they will never know who they are? If their courage goes unrecognized or is unfairly minimized?

My comment

The incident described appears to be the day Andew was killed.  Andrew made the ultimate sacrifice when he took on a very dangerous mission to persuade members of AQ in Iraq to surrender or leave. I believe that the surge succeeded, at the cost of some of our most courageous and honorable soldiers.

The Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery is a lovely place, and a worthwhile visit for President Obama. It is a new cemetery and with the passing of generations is the resting place for many WWII vets.

A bit late to this, but there was a call for a thread about getting old. Well, here you go, old timers.

As a jumping off point, here is what hairshirtdontist said

My joke is that I have the mind of a 20 year old but the back and knees of a 60 year old, which I started using when I turned 40 (the joke, not the back and knees). I'm 49 now, but I still use the same numbers, which testifies either to mathematical illiteracy or (more likely) a willingness to laugh at jokes that no longer make sense in order to keep the foreigner smiling.

But I do believe I have it rougher than my parents in terms of maturity. (I write about myself, but I suspect it can be extended to others) One of the reasons I feel like a kid is that the world of my parents has given way to a much less hierarchical place. Staying in the same job or with the same company for an entire career was unremarkable. Couples didn't wait until they were in their late 30's or even early 40's to have kids. Knowing someone's age doesn't really give you a lot of information about them, other than what cultural touchstones they may have.

This may be exacerbated by the fact that I am living in a foreign culture, where the precise rules of hierarchical relations are opaque. A colleague was shocked to find out I was 49 because he assumed that having a 10 year old and a 5 year old meant I was mid 30's.

It is probably inflamed by the fact that I do lots of things that people my age probably don't do. I'm or doing aikido 2 or 3 times a week, teaching iaido twice a week. I'm with college age students all the time and I've got a few other hobbies that put me with lots of young people.

Of course, it might be because I can't accept that my parents could ever be as immature as I am, as unorganized as I am, as clueless as I seem to find myself being. However, I think back to when I started judo as a kid, and adding it up and I realize that my dad, who did judo as a kid, was out on the mat with me in his 40's. So he was taking breakfalls on the mat at the same time I was. Maybe he thought the same things I'm thinking. But I also have a memory of being in the back seat after a long drive to see my cousins, and being half asleep, and my father would pick me up and carry me to bed, even though I was probably awake enough to get up and walk, and feeling like he was picking me up with no effort, maybe when I was 8 or 9 or even 10. Yet when I do the same for my 5 year old, I struggle and barely make it up the stairs. Unfortunately, my dad isn't talkative, especially on the subject of his feelings. So this, from a book titled Dueling with O-Sensei, by Ellis Amdur, strikes a chord.

When I was 19 years old, my father became very ill with pancreatic cancer, a horribly painful, wasting disease. I hadn't seen him in some months and when he met me at the airport, the shock of his emaciated face and body made my knees buckle. He was mostly bedridden, but man that he was, he insisted on meeting me on his own two feet. Perhaps a week later, he fell out of bed, and his body, limp and helpless, was so heavy that I couldn't lift him. My mother and I finally managed to help him back into the bed, but the bitter shame that I could not return to my father what he offered me as a child burned through me. That this lovely man, who had carried me through nights of croup as I gasped for air was now nearly helpless, and I, a young man,could not carry him to his rest, scalded me deeply. One of the primary reasons for my drive to master what I could in martial arts was to ensure that I would never again have to experience such shame in the face of the needs of those I love. 

Have at it.

There are a swirling constellation of thoughts, concerning The Tea-Party stuff. I can’t articulate all of them yet, but I have some notes that seem to give them some context.

I found this post, by Pat Buchanan, to be very interesting. He observes the Tea-Party phenomena as a manifestation of an “ethno-nationalist” identity.

For after a year of battering as “un-American,” “evil-doers” and racists, and praise from talk-show hosts and Sarah Palin as “the real Americans,” Tea Party America seems to be taking on a new and separate identity.

Ethnonationalism — the recognition of an embryonic people that they are different from their neighbors, and the concomitant drive to live apart — is, as Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote 20 years ago, a more powerful force than any ideology, be it communism, fascism or democracy.

Ethnonationalism is the pre-eminent force of the age we have entered, the creator and destroyer of empires and nations. Even as Schlesinger was writing his “Disuniting of America,” Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union were disintegrating into 22 new nations, along the lines of ethnicity. In Dagestan, Ingushetia, Chechnya, Ossetia and Abkhazia, the process proceeds apace.

It has happened before — and here.

Read More...

Or maybe longer

http://qpradio.org/post/75687764/14-second

PS, somehow, the blog is stripping out links. This could be the evolution from the original notion of a blog being 'links+commentary' to it being 'things that look like links+commentary'

JanieM （好久不見 or, if your browser prefers pinyin, hao jiu bu jian le）apparently just got back from the Middle Kingdom, so this is a shameless attempt to drag her over here.

Well, kinda, actually just a music thread.

I'm embarassed to say that I did 3 years as a music major, thinking that I could be some sort of professional horn player, or something. Creative, you know. And I have this love hate relationship with music. I mean, had I spent the time I was learning scales or figuring out fingerings and transpositions and chord voicings on a couple of languages, well, who knows? On the other hand, there is a nagging feeling that if I had been a bit more efficient (and a lot more driven) about learning all that music stuff, well, again, who knows.

I've had two musical epiphanies in my life. I think this is why sports is a lot more popular than music, you play sports and you can get small epiphanies all the time, a fade away jumper that is nothing but net, a backhand passing shot that stuns your opponent, a sweet wedge that puts your ball a foot away from the cup. Maybe just as many people in the world get musical epiphanies as the number of people who get moments of grace in sport, but the thing is that in sports, one naturally finds their own level. I don't think that the backhand passing shot would fool people a grade above me, nor would that fade away jumper for anyone who has a modicum of height and ability. And the wedge shot, well, 1 good shot every 18 holes is not going to have you burning up the links. But you can get the epiphanies when you play people at your own level, but for music, at least for me, I really can only identify two times that the muses descended on me.

The first was when I was a freshman horn major and had gotten into the university orchestra. It was the student solo concert, where music majors competed for the opportunity to play a piece with the orchestra. I was able to play second horn for Griffes Concerto for Flute and Orchestra (you can see the part when the piece goes into Public Domain here, which illustrates another hard pill to swallow, what if all this music, all these resources, had been available for the asking when I was a horn major?) At any rate, I butchered the part in the one rehearsal before the concert, and was having serious doubts. But at the performance, I nailed it. And, the bizarre thing is, I had this vague feeling that I had played well, but I didn't remember any of it, but my horn teacher, who was very hard to please, came up with effusive praise and said that if I could play like that, I could be an orchestral horn player. But another 2 years of trying, I never really played like that, in the sense of playing outside myself, ever again. I still play horn, with a pattern of putting the horn up for a couple of years, and then getting invited to play and frantically getting my lip into shape and doing ok on the part, and then putting my horn up. In fact, I now play with the university orchestra, which is probably the perfect gig for me, because they have one concert a year, a lot of the players come to university with a vague idea that they want to play a musical instrument, choose one, practice like crazy, maybe play the opening their second year, the incidental piece the third year, and the main concert piece their senior year.

To give you an idea how this plays out in Japan, one of our graduates and a former member of the student orchestra, got a job in the university office. She had played second violin in the first concert that I played in, where we played Holst The Planets, and I asked her why she didn't play in the orchestra, and she confessed that she had never learned to read music. She had played the entire second violin part in the Planets, learning it by rote. I realize that it is not like being able to recite the entire Iliad, or reciting pi to the 100,000th digit (but you get a glimpse of cultural influence, don't ya?)  On the other hand, I, having spent lots of time being sort of ok, could come in the last month of practice, get my lip in shape (just barely) in time for the concert.

But back to epiphanies, had I known that what I experienced 20+ years ago was going to be a one off experience, well, maybe I would have made some different choices.

But I did say two musical epiphanies, so here is the second. I also 'played' (I think the technical term would be 'covered') the jazz piano in the 1st university lab band. While I entertained ideas of being a horn player, I knew that I was only a jazz pianist in the way a length of duct tape wrapped around a radiator pipe was a repair. Still, despite a surfeit of incredible horn players, bassists, and drummers, there were no real jazz pianists, so I spent 3 years playing the the 1st lab band. And I could comp well enough to handle everything, but when it came to solos, I was pretty much a 16 bars and I'm out. So it is all the more surprising that at the beginning of the third year, we were reading a chart and I had a solo and somehow, I started playing this solo that somehow fit perfectly. And while I am tempted to attribute it to the monkeys typing Shakespeare thesis, I knew that I was doing it.

Yo-yo Ma gave an interview where he said that somehow, the cello just suited him. I often wonder if I had chosen a different instrument, would it have been different? I've often thought that for my 50th birthday, I would start a new instrument, and somehow, all those skills, like being able to adjust the pitch by stuffing my hand in the bell and figuring out transpositions on the fly would have me playing like the pro I should have been. Or maybe even get plugged into a transcranial magnetic stimulator and play like the love child of Denis Brain and Charlie Parker.

But then, I wake up and realize that my path was decided when I first started playing trumpet because my mom had all of the Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass albums, and my cousin had a trumpet that he wasn't using, and in elementary school band, I got put on 3rd trumpet because I both didn't have the chops to hit the high notes and I was the only one who could hear the harmony, which then got me switched in junior high to the only left handed instrument in the orchestra, the horn. And 35 years later, I'm printing out Strauss' Till Eulenspiegel horn parts to play along with the orchestra recording. Il faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux.

Sorry for the absence, but there hasn't been a lot happening, either at the mothership or in real life. I've also been dealing with infestations of the spammy kind, both on a mediawiki installation I run for the local community and here, again, the skin template gets spam urls injected about once a week. Really depressing. So what's up with you guys?