Just thought I’d share this clip I got from Stan Dubinsky. It’s Steve Martin’s take on “the atheist hymnal,” which he undertook to write — a single song, on one sheet of paper. He performed it with the Steep Canyon Rangers perform at Merlefest 2010.
Way more compelling than that Stephen Hawking piece.
The way I can tell is that the election-related interview requests have started coming in at a brisk clip.
Last week there were three. I meant to tell you about them because one of them was New Watch on WIS, which aired Sunday morning. So unless you’re some kind of heathen who sits around watching TV on Sunday morning (and I say that without meaning any aspersions upon the heathen community), you missed it, because I forgot to tell you about it.
Ex-Mayor Bob Coble saw it, and sent me a note to say “Good job on Newswatch,” which I appreciate. Not to say Mayor Bob is a heathen. He’s just way into politics; he can’t help it.
I taped that Thursday afternoon. Then I also taped a segment over at ETV on Friday, also about the election. That won’t air until sometime in October. (It was broader, big-picture stuff, not as pegged to the news of the day.) I’ll get the date and try to remember to let you know.
Back on Thursday, I got an e-mail from Chris Haire with Charleston City Paper, to the following effect:
Just wanted to see if you have time to talk. I’m working on a story on the ongoing Nikki Haley rumors. Here’s the angle: With no proof out there, the only way to truly address this is as a smear. And, what’s particularly odd here, is that it’s such an ongoing smear — and truth be told, arguably the most ineffective smear in history. The question here is why it’s still happening.
I found that cryptic. I assumed it was a reference to this. But it wasn’t. It was a reference to something else, something I hadn’t heard about (and wish I still hadn’t), specifically this. (Which led later to this.)
I talked with him, and tried to say something coherent, but what are you supposed to say? Frankly, I’m just like most folks in South Carolina — uncomfortable as hell talking about this stuff. Which is why I sort of doubt it will emerge as visibly as it did back during the primary. At least, I hope it doesn’t.
Anyway, I asked Chris to let me know when that is published. If and when I see it, I’ll give y’all a link. If I forget to look, and y’all see if first, remind me. I want to keep y’all in the loop. I just forget sometimes.
OK, so I stole that line from Dave Barry, who said it once to make fun of people who had Betamax video recorders (“Beta?! The AZTECS had Beta!” — or something very much like that; I can’t seem to find a link to it), which is made extra ironic because the triumphant VHS technology is now SO last century…
But you get the point. Landlines are rapidly going the way of buggy whips and, well, TV sets — at least in consumer’s minds.
TV sets? you say. Yes, TV sets. This from the Pew Center for Media Research:
Landlines And Television Sets Losing ImportanceAccording to a new nationwide survey from the Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends project, reported by Paul Taylor and Wendy Wang with Lee Rainie and Aaron Smith, only 42% of Americans say they consider the television set to be a necessity. Last year, this figure was 52%, and in 2006, it was 64%.
After occupying center stage in the American household for much of the 20th century, says the report, two of the grand old luminaries of consumer technology, the television set and the landline telephone, are suffering from a sharp decline in public perception that they are necessities of life.
The drop-off has been less severe for the landline telephone. 62% of Americans say it’s a necessity of life, down from 68% last year, but 47% of the public now say that the cell phone is a necessity of life…
Note, first, that Pew, or at least the respondents, are using “need” and “necessity” in ways that would have puzzled our hardy pioneer ancestors. Note also that while fewer people see TVs as a necessity, they’re still buying them like crazy:
Even as fewer Americans say they consider the TV set to be a necessity of life, more Americans than ever are stocking up on them. In 2009, the average American home had more television sets than people, 2.86, according to a Nielsen report. In 2000, this figure was 2.43; in 1990, it was 2.0; and in 1975, it was 1.57.
The disconnect between attitudes and behaviors, opines the report, may be that the TV set hasn’t had to deal with competition from new technology that can fully replace all of its functions. If a person wants real-time access to the wide spectrum of entertainment, sports and news programming available on television, there’s still nothing (at least not yet) that can compete with the television set itself…
So don’t write the obit yet. But as for landlines — exactly why DO I still have one? So I won’t miss the telemarketing calls?
I see also that only 10 percent regard flat-screen HDTV as a necessity. It’s probably going to be in the high 90s before I get one. Mainly because, much as I want one, my sense of need is still pretty old-fashioned…
Imagine the irony! I was listening, via Pandora, to an excellent live version of Levon Helm singing his masterpiece, “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” It opened with a little horn riff on “Dixie” itself. The song is simply magnificent, capturing everything that was noble and tragic and horrible and epic and personal in our ancestors’ fall into defeat.
So imagine how it was ruined for me by, even as I was listening to it and appreciating it, reading this low farce from Karen Floyd:
Dear Subscriber
An unprecedented event recently occurred, where the president of the United States issued a report to the U.N. Human Rights Council that bashed a state law. In a desperate attempt to gain the awe and admiration of global elitists, President Obama sounded off about the many “sins” in America’s history, including Arizona’s new illegal immigration bill.Obama writes, “A recent Arizona law, S.B. 1070, has generated significant attention and debate at home and around the world. The issue is being addressed in a court action that argues that the federal government has the authority to set and enforce immigration law. That action is ongoing; parts of the law are currently enjoined.” He also went on about how he is seeking to offer free health care to illegal immigrants.
The context of this U.N. forum is to discuss human rights in the United States. Apparently, Obama thinks that Arizona’s law is in violation of human rights, which is why he is not only suing the state, but also reporting it to the U.N. council.
Lesson learned everyone: a liberal will always seek the praise and respect of foreign powers over the rights of the American people or the Constitution.
As a direct result of Obama’s ridiculous report to the U.N., the Arizona law will come under formal review on November 5 by the three member countries of the UN Human Rights Commission: France, Japan, and Cameroon. The U.N. Commission will then issue directives on what they recommend the United States do in response to the Arizona law.
This is simply outrageous! How can an American president sell out his own countrymen to a foreign entity over a state law that simply enforces existing federal laws? Our president should be bowing to the people’s demands, and NOT the whims of an international organization.
Folks, it is time to fight back. We desperately need trusted conservatives like Mike Mulvaney, Nikki Haley and Jim DeMint to fight for our liberties and state sovereignty. The elitists in Washington are trying to allow a foreign power to dictate your life and safety. Will you allow this to happen?
Click here to help fund conservative change and individual rights! Let’s help elect individuals who will enforce the Constitution and stand up for our rights and sovereignty.
Sincerely,
Karen Floyd
SCGOP Chairman
P.S. Let’s take the battle to them and send Obama a message! Please click here to donate now.
Just as elites conned the poor white population into being their cannon fodder in a lost and bankrupt cause in 1860, this new strain of Radical Republicanism keeps playing on the same resentments and sensitivities and inferiority complexes to manipulate the great mass of white voters in the South today.
They just keep on driving Dixie down.
Last night, by way of explaining to my daughter more fully why Roger Sterling was so abominably rude to the guys from Honda in last week’s “Mad Men” I popped in the first episode of “The Pacific.” (As I’ve mentioned, since I’m currently reading the books that series was based on — I’m on Eugene Sledge’s With the Old Breed now — that theater is much on my mind.)
For most of us, buying Hondas and Toyotas, and even, most improbably, Mitsubishis (as in, the Zero) comes fairly naturally. There is probably less conflict in the national psyche over those than over, say, Volkswagen. But for those who fought in the less-understood Pacific war, the stress of fighting a suicidally aggressive enemy with seemingly superhuman commitment to his cause, would be something that would mark you forever.
But if we had a rematch with the Japanese, it might go differently.
Did you see the NYT story on the front page of The State today, about how Army training has been “walked back” a bit to make it less stressful on recruits who grew up playing video games instead of baseball? An excerpt:
FORT JACKSON, S.C. — Dawn breaks at this, the Army’s largest training post, with the reliable sound of fresh recruits marching to their morning exercise. But these days, something looks different.
That familiar standby, the situp, is gone, or almost gone. Exercises that look like pilates or yoga routines are in. And the traditional bane of the new private, the long run, has been downgraded.
This is the Army’s new physical-training program, which has been rolled out this year at its five basic training posts that handle 145,000 recruits a year. Nearly a decade in the making, its official goal is to reduce injuries and better prepare soldiers for the rigors of combat in rough terrain like Afghanistan.
But as much as anything, the program was created to help address one of the most pressing issues facing the military today: overweight and unfit recruits…
Now, I’m not about to call today’s war fighters wimps. Especially not the tip-of-the-spear types like the Marines, or the Airborne divisions, or the Rangers or other elites. They are, if anything, tougher than ever, and certainly more lethal.
But that story gives us a hint of what it would be like if the Army ceased being so selective because it was handling a mass mobilization such as that of 1941-45. Imagine soldiers who had never done a pushup in basic trying to make their way through a fetid jungle in 100-degree-plus temps.
But fear not, because in today’s WSJ, we have evidence that they would not be met with shrieking madmen eager to die for their emperor. Get a load of this:
Since the marriage rate among Japan’s shrinking population is falling and with many of the country’s remaining lovebirds heading for Hawaii or Australia’s Gold Coast, Atami had to do something. It is trying to attract single men—and their handheld devices.
In the first month of the city’s promotional campaign launched July 10, more than 1,500 male fans of the Japanese dating-simulation game LovePlus+ have flocked to Atami for a romantic date with their videogame character girlfriends.
The men are real. The girls are cartoon characters on a screen…
Love Plus+ re-creates the experience of an adolescent romance. The goal isn’t just to get the girl but to maintain a relationship with her.
After choosing one of three female characters—goodie-goodie Manaka, sassy Rinko or big-sister type Nene—to be a steady girlfriend, the player taps a stylus on the DS touch-screen in order to walk hand-in-hand to school, exchange flirtatious text messages and even meet in the school courtyard for a little afternoon kiss. Using the device’s built-in microphone, the player can carry on sweet, albeit mundane, conversations.
Wow. Get those guys charged up on saki, and they’re not going to be screaming “banzai,” but drooling over decidedly unwomanly avatars, hoping for a pretend peck on the cheek.
So maybe a nation of fatties could take them. But probably only in a virtual war, fought on a virtual playing field. At least our video games are tougher than theirs, if this is an example.
Maybe Harry Turtledove will take on this topic.
Don’t know if you saw this in The Telegraph last week, but they resurrected a 1966 interview Malcolm Muggeridge did with David Cornwell (workname John le Carré), in which he called 007 a “neo-fascist gangster” and elaborated:
“I dislike Bond. I’m not sure that Bond is a spy. I think that it’s a great mistake if one’s talking about espionage literature to include Bond in this category at all,” Le Carré said.
“It seems to me he’s more some kind of international gangster with, as it is said, a licence to kill… he’s a man entirely out of the political context. It’s of no interest to Bond who, for instance, is president of the United States or of the Union of Soviet Republics.”
Asked now about the interview for a programme to appear on BBC Four next week, he eased up a bit, but still had to say:
“But at the root of Bond there was something neo-fascistic and totally materialist. You felt he would have gone through the same antics for any country really, if the girls had been so pretty and the Martinis so dry.”
Oh, lighten up, Francis! We get it! We know Bond is a silly Hugh Hefneresque fantasy, and we know you are the gold standard for real spy fiction (although Len Deighton has occasionally given you a run for your money, such as in The Ipcress File). And we get that it was probably pretty galling in ‘66 that everybody was talking about Bond when you were putting out such gritty stuff as your masterpiece, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold.
Anyone ever notice how, if you watch an early Bond movie after seeing Austin Powers, you realize Mike Myers was hardly exaggerating at all? It was all really that goofy.
But here’s the thing that concerned me the most about the Telegraph piece:
Bond has become a Hollywood hero, but Smiley may have the last laugh. While financial woes at film studio MGM have put the 23rd Bond movie on indefinite hold, a new film adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is planned for 2012 with Gary Oldman and Benedict Cumberbatch in starring roles.
Remake “Tinker, Tailor”?!?!? Possibly the best thing ever made for the telly (closest competition being “Band of Brothers”)? Sacrilege! I mean, it’s like Anna Chapman trying to cash in on her celebrity after being blown. In either case, Smiley would be appalled. Gary Oldman is awesome and all (I sort of see him as Karla, though, who does not appear in Tinker). But let’s have a little respect. Maybe instead you could do The Honourable Schoolboy, which got skipped in the original BBC productions.
Well, in Canada, they just might become terrorists. At least, that’s what the Mounties say.
Above, you see the very sad performance by Pakistani immigrant Khuram Sher on “Canadian Idol” in 2008. Two years later, here’s what the authorities say about him:
OTTAWA—Canadian authorities said they found and foiled a terrorist bomb-making plot by three men here—one allegedly with links to the conflict in Afghanistan and another, a pathologist who auditioned for the TV show “Canadian Idol.”
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested the trio of Canadian citizens after raids on their houses turned up schematics, videos, drawings, books and manuals for making explosives, said Serge Therriault, Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer in charge of criminal investigations.
The suspects—identified as Hiva Alizadeh, 30 years old; X-ray technician Misbahuddin Ahmed, 26, both of Ottawa; and hospital worker Khurram Syed Sher, 28, of London, Ontario—were charged Thursday with “knowingly facilitating a terrorist activity.”
“A vast quantity of terrorist literature and instructional material was seized, showing that the suspects had the intent to construct an explosive device for terrorist purposes,” said Mr. Therriault. The arrests Wednesday and Thursday “prevented the assembly of any bombs or terrorist attacks from being carried out,” he added.
The trio were working with an “ideologically inspired terrorist group” with links in Iran, Afghanistan, Dubai and Pakistan, the RCMP said. While officials would not say whether the trio had links to al Qaeda, they were driven by “violent Islamist ideology,” according to Raymond Boisvert, assistant director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the country’s spy agency.
NOW will y’all listen to me? Reality TV is a threat to all we hold dear, I keep tellin’ ya!
The stories I’ve seen haven’t been terribly specific as to WHAT these guys were plotting, but the most diabolical thing I could imagine would be if their plan all along was to get busted, and cause this video to go viral, thereby sapping Western morale. (And look — they’ve even tricked me into furthering their plan!)
A couple or three additional points:
Here’s a conundrum…
Pandora, the “internet radio” site that attempts to use your feedback to shape “stations” that play stuff you like, has a pretty simple system for your input: After you enter a song or artist (or multiple songs or artists) that you’d like to hear, it guesses what else you might like based on that, and you click on either a thumbs-down button meaning “I don’t like this song,” or a thumbs-up meaning “I like this song.”
That’s it. No gradations of feedback. It’s way binary; ones and zeros. I try to click on one or the other on most songs. I don’t sit there poised with the mouse, but every few songs I ALT-TAB back to Pandora to catch up with my decisions (except when I’ve gotten lost in my work and lost track of what I was “hearing,” and even then if I’m familiar with the song, I render a judgment).
But I find this frustrating everyone once in a while. Most of my “likes” mean, “I don’t mind if you keep this in my mix.” But every once in a while, they play me something I really, REALLY dig.
Examples… I have a lot of stations for different kinds of music, but recently I’ve spent a lot of time defining one called “Brad’s All-Purpose Station.” In the “I don’t mind if you keep this in my mix” on that station, I’d include “After Midnight,” “Angie,” “Another One Bites the Dust,” “It’s Money That Matters,” “Long May You Run,” “Oh! Darling,” “Smoke on the Water,” and so forth.
But there are other songs that I want to make sure Pandora knows I really like a LOT more than those songs. It may be an all-time favorite, or a really good song I seldom here and don’t own a copy of, or something I’ve occasionally heard and loved but didn’t know the name of… all sorts of reasons. Into that category I’d put: “Sexy and 17,” Another Girl,” “Baby, It’s You,” “Badge,” “Adagio for Strings,” “Bring it on home to Me,” “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” “Gymnopedies (3),” “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart (the Al Green version!),” “I’ll Cry Instead,” “In Germany Before the War,” “I’ve Got A Woman,” “Naked Man,” “New Amsterdam,” “Simple Man,” “Werewolves of London,” and others. Oh, and on that last one: I’d much rather hear “Lawyers, Guns and Money,” or “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner,” but neither has yet been offered.
When I hear one of those, I want to say, Whoa, I’m sorry I clicked “like” on those last 10, because this is what I REALLY like! Don’t just lump this in with those… But all I can do is click again on the “like” button.
OK, so I’m frustrated that I can’t give more nuanced feedback, but here’s the perplexing thing: In spite of that, Pandora does an increasingly excellent job of guessing what I’ll like. As time goes by, I hit that “don’t like” button quite seldom.
Contrast that to Netflix, which gives me five levels of feedback, from one to five stars — and yet remains pretty much clueless as to what I’d like.
Not that I haven’t put the time in… I’m sort of embarrassed to admit this, but I’ve rated 2,144 movies on that site. I keep thinking, Give ‘em more data, and they’ll figure me out. But they don’t. You give “Casablanca” five stars, and Netflix assumes, “He likes any movie that’s more than 50 years old.” Yeah, it’s probably a little more sophisticated than that — but not much.
Frustrating. But kudos to Pandora.
Again with the negative waves!
Once again, the media are filled with negative vibes about our economy, utterly heedless of the fact that the central tenet of the Warthen School of Economics is that “the economy” is an utterly abstract and theoretical thing built from collective emotions, and that the greatest single cause of “bad economic conditions” is negative thoughts regarding the economy.
This time, my beef is with this headline in the Columbia Regional Business Report:
Final accounting for S.C. fiscal ’10 paints grim financial picture
Thing is, the story (by my old friend Jim Hammond) is actually about what already happened with the state budget, which is fine. What gets me is that the headline implies bad economic times ahead. At least that’s the way I erroneously read it. And headlines are enough to make things bad.
To end with the words with which Oddball ends the above serious of clips, Why don’t you say something righteous and hopeful for a change?
And yeah, I’m kind of being facetious here. I just wanted an excuse to run the Oddball clips from “Kelly’s Heroes.” This, by the way, was what I was looking for earlier when I ran across the Kerouac clip.
@bradwarthen