Fingers Crossed

So just what kind of a paragraph is THIS?!?

“And there must be something about San Francisco and he,” she continued, drawing laughter and cheers from the crowd. “Because it’s like I heard on Fox News today, it’s like a truth serum, where when he’s there he seems to be more candid. Remember it was there that he talking about, there you go, the bitter clingers. The cling-ons, all of us, I guess, hanging on to religion and guns.”

That's Sarah Palin, quoted on www.nytimes.com.

I would just like to say that in addition to any number of other things I'm voting for or against, I am most certainly voting against terrible grammar, usage, and composition in statements like this. In part because it is insidious, and affects my own writing, as this post demonstrates!

Saturday Afternoon Procrastination Roundup

So, does anyone else out there wonder why Hillary Clinton is "Hillary," but Sarah Palin is "Palin"? It's starting to sound like Goldilocks' dilemma: one is too "intimidating" (read: competent, per Judith Warner's "The Mirrored Ceiling" in the NYT the other day) and the other one needs not to sound quite as hockey mom-ish....

But back to food....

I just ate a simple but wonderful concoction that I'm a little embarrassed to post about, because it's such a no-brainer. But it was good. Quinoa, a handful of arugula chopped, some basil leaves chopped, half a tomato, and a glug of Newman's Italian dressing (yeah, I'm lazy. But it's humid and I'm technically hard at work under a couple of looming deadlines).

And last night, I made a frittata. It was good, but what made it noteworthy was that except for the eggs, the main ingredients all came from leftovers I brought home from the department party the other night. Spot the grad student!

My Cousin-In-Law, the Politician

...and someone started a Facebook group in her honor--something like, "Holler for Waller: Jettie Marie for Lynchburg City Council." With a cult following of about a zillion former students, how can she lose? I'm glad to see she's interested in the environment--all the development down there is scary--but alas, I don't suppose she can do anything about Jerry Falwell's big ugly LU brand on the mountainside....

Marie Waller plans to seek City Council seat
By Alicia Petska
Monday, February 11, 2008

Long-time educator Marie Waller announced Monday she plans to seek the Ward IV seat on Lynchburg City Council.

“I have taught the theory of the governmental process for 45 years,” Waller said from the front steps of E.C. Glass High School, where she made her announcement flanked by a group of supporters. “Today, I am ready to be involved in how our government operates day to day and to have a voice in how it is accomplished.”

Waller, 68, said she’d run as an Independent. She’s the only candidate to emerge so far in the Ward IV race. Current Councilman Joe Seiffert announced last week he plans to retire.

If elected in May, Waller would be the fourth woman to sit on City Council. She said she would support the continued revitalization of Lynchburg’s downtown and take a hard look at how development is impacting the city’s environment.

Among her supporters Monday was former mayor Pete Warren, who called her an “outstanding person.” Warren does not live in Ward IV, but said he still would work for and support Waller’s campaign.

“For 45 years she has been a stellar teacher in the city schools and taught many, many students about the importance of being involved in civics and the community,” he said. “Now that’s she retired, she has the opportunity to put those theories into practice.”

Waller, a former government teacher and one-time head of the social studies department at E.C. Glass, retired last year.

Throughout her career, she often said she might have gone into politics instead of education had women had such opportunities when she was young.

“I miss teaching,” she said. “But I’m excited about this opportunity to do something and stay involved with the city.”

Of Lynchburg’s seven City Council seats, four will be up for election this May.

Only one race is contested so far. In Ward III, Babcock & Wilcox Company employee Nathanial “Nat” Marshall is challenging incumbent Jeff Helgeson.

In Ward I and Ward II only incumbents Mike Gillette and Ceasor Johnson, respectively, have announced plans to run.

The deadline to enter the Lynchburg City Council race is March 4.

Hillary and the Haters

Last night, I got into a bit of a rant on Rob's blog about the way the press have been portraying Hillary Clinton. Turns out I'm in the good company of Stanley Fish:

February 3, 2008, 8:02 pm
All You Need Is Hate

Stanley Fish

I have been thinking about writing this column for some time, but I have hesitated because of a fear that it would advance the agenda that is its target. That is the agenda of Hillary Clinton-hating.

Its existence is hardly news — it is routinely referred to by commentators on the present campaign and it has been documented in essays and books — but the details of it can still startle when you encounter them up close. In the January issue of GQ, Jason Horowitz described the world of Hillary haters, many of whom he has interviewed. Horowitz finds that the hostile characterizations of Clinton do not add up to a coherent account of her hatefulness. She is vilified for being a feminist and for not being one, for being an extreme leftist and for being a “warmongering hawk,” for being godless and for being “frighteningly fundamentalist,” for being the victim of her husband’s peccadilloes and for enabling them. “She is,” Horowitz concludes, “an empty vessel into which [her detractors] can pour everything they detest.” (In this she is the counterpart of George W. Bush, who serves much the same function for many liberals.)

This is not to say that there are no rational, well-considered reasons for opposing Clinton’s candidacy. You may dislike her policies (which she has not been reluctant to explain in great detail). You may not be able to get past her vote to authorize the Iraq war. You may think her personality unsuited to the tasks of inspiring and uniting the American people. You may believe that if this is truly a change election, she is not the one to bring about real change.

But the people and groups Horowitz surveys have brought criticism of Clinton to what sportswriters call “the next level,” in this case to the level of personal vituperation unconnected to, and often unconcerned with, the facts. These people are obsessed with things like her hair styles, the “strangeness” of her eyes — “Analysis of Clinton’s eyes is a favorite motif among her most rabid adversaries” — and they retail and recycle items from what Horowitz calls “The Crazy Files”: she’s Osama bin Laden’s candidate; she kills cats; she’s a witch (this is not meant metaphorically).

But this list, however loony-tunes it may be, does not begin to touch the craziness of the hardcore members of this cult. Back in November, I wrote a column on Clinton’s response to a question about giving driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. My reward was to pick up an e-mail pal who has to date sent me 24 lengthy documents culled from what he calls his “Hillary File.” If you take that file on faith, Hillary Clinton is a murderer, a burglar, a destroyer of property, a blackmailer, a psychological rapist, a white-collar criminal, an adulteress, a blasphemer, a liar, the proprietor of a secret police, a predatory lender, a misogynist, a witness tamperer, a street criminal, a criminal intimidator, a harasser and a sociopath. These accusations are “supported” by innuendo, tortured logic, strained conclusions and photographs that are declared to tell their own story, but don’t.

Compared to this, the Swift Boat campaign against John Kerry was a model of objectivity. When the heading of a section of the “Hillary File” reads “Have the Clintons ever murdered anyone?” — and it turns out to be a rhetorical question like “Is the Pope Catholic?” — you know that you’ve entered cuckooland.

Horowitz warns that as the campaign heats up, this “type of discourse will likely not stay on the fringes for long,” and he predicts that some of it will be made use of by Republican operatives. But he is behind the curve, for the spirit informing it has already made its way into mainstream media. Respected political commentators devote precious network time to deep analyses of her laugh. Everyone blames her for what her husband does or for what he doesn’t do. (This is what the compound “Billary” is all about.) If she answers questions aggressively, she is shrill. If she moderates her tone, she’s just play-acting. If she cries, she’s faking. If she doesn’t, she’s too masculine. If she dresses conservatively, she’s dowdy. If she doesn’t, she’s inappropriately provocative.

None of those who say and write these things is an official Hillary Clinton-hater (some profess to like and admire her), but they are surely doing the group’s work.

One almost prefers an up-front hater (although he tells Horowitz that he doesn’t like the word) like Dick Morris, who writes in a recent New York Post op-ed of the Clintons’ “reprehensible politics of personal destruction” (does he think he’s throwing bouquets?), and accuses them of invading the privacy of opponents, of blackmailing and threatening women, and of “whatever slimy tactics they felt they needed.” Morris calls Harold Ickes, a Clinton aide, a “hit man” for the president, and he calls the president “Hillary’s hit man.”

This is exactly the language of the most vicious anti-Hillary Web sites, and here it is baptized by its appearance in a major newspaper.

Horowitz observes that there is an “inexhaustible fertile market of Clinton hostility,” but that “the search for a unifying theory of what drives Hillary’s most fanatical opponents is a futile one.” The reason is that nothing drives it; it is that most sought-after thing, a self-replenishing, perpetual-energy machine.

The closest analogy is to anti-Semitism. But before you hit the comment button, I don’t mean that the two are alike either in their significance or in the damage they do. It’s just that they both feed on air and flourish independently of anything external to their obsessions. Anti-Semitism doesn’t need Jews and anti-Hillaryism doesn’t need Hillary, except as a figment of its collective imagination. However this campaign turns out, Hillary-hating, like rock ‘n’ roll, is here to stay.

Unlikely Bedfellows

Did y'all see this?

Secessionists meeting in Tennessee

By BILL POOVEY, Associated Press WriterWed Oct 3, 3:15 AM ET

In an unlikely marriage of desire to secede from the United States, two advocacy groups from opposite political traditions — New England and the South — are sitting down to talk.

Tired of foreign wars and what they consider right-wing courts, the Middlebury Institute wants liberal states like Vermont to be able to secede peacefully.

That sounds just fine to the League of the South, a conservative group that refuses to give up on Southern independence.

"We believe that an independent South, or Hawaii, Alaska, or Vermont would be better able to serve the interest of everybody, regardless of race or ethnicity," said Michael Hill of Killen, Ala., president of the League of the South.

Separated by hundreds of miles and divergent political philosophies, the Middlebury Institute and the League of the South are hosting a two-day Secessionist Convention starting Wednesday in Chattanooga.

They expect to attract supporters from California, Alaska and Hawaii, inviting anyone who wants to dissolve the Union so states can save themselves from an overbearing federal government.

If allowed to go their own way, New Englanders "probably would allow abortion and have gun control," Hill said, while Southerners "would probably crack down on illegal immigration harder than it is being now."

The U.S. Constitution does not explicitly prohibit secession, but few people think it is politically viable.

Vermont, one of the nation's most liberal states, has become a hotbed for liberal secessionists, a fringe movement that gained new traction because of the Iraq war, rising oil prices and the formation of several pro-secession groups.

Thomas Naylor, the founder of one of those groups, the Second Vermont Republic, said the friendly relationship with the League of the South doesn't mean everyone shares all the same beliefs.

But Naylor, a retired Duke University professor, said the League of the South shares his group's opposition to the federal government and the need to pursue secession.

"It doesn't matter if our next president is Condoleeza (Rice) or Hillary (Clinton), it is going to be grim," said Naylor, adding that there are secessionist movements in more than 25 states, including Hawaii, Alaska, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Texas.

The Middlebury Institute, based in Cold Spring, N.Y., was started in 2005. Its followers, disillusioned by the Iraq war and federal imperialism, share the idea of states becoming independent republics. They contend their movement is growing.

The first North American Separatist Convention was held last fall in Vermont, which, unlike most Southern states, supports civil unions. Voters there elected a socialist to the U.S. Senate.

Middlebury director Kirpatrick Sale said Hill offered to sponsor the second secessionist convention, but the co-sponsor arrangement was intended to show that "the folks up north regard you as legitimate colleagues."

"It bothers me that people have wrongly declared them to be racists," Sale said.

The League of the South says it is not racist, but proudly displays a Confederate Battle Flag on its banner.

Mark Potok, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project, which monitors hate groups, said the League of the South "has been on our list close to a decade."

"What is remarkable and really astounding about this situation is we see people and institutions who are supposedly on the progressive left rubbing shoulders with bona fide white supremacists," Potok said.

Sale said the League of the South "has not done or said anything racist in its 14 years of existence," and that the Southern Poverty Law Center is not credible.

"They call everybody racists," Sale said. "There are, no doubt, racists in the League of the South, and there are, no doubt, racists everywhere."

Harry Watson, director of the Center For the Study of the American South and a history professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said it was a surprise to see The Middlebury Institute conferring with the League of the South, "an organization that's associated with a cause that many of us associate with the preservation of slavery."

He said the unlikely partnering "represents the far left and far right of American politics coming together."

Folksingers and Breakfast Cereals

Here's an editorial from this morning's New York Times. As "Anonymous" (I know who you are!) writes in the comments to yesterday's post, it's a little strange that the press are making such a big deal of this, since inviting Joan Baez to sing at Walter Reed is a bit like inviting Jane Fonda to speak there. I'm sure Susan Sarandon isn't welcome, either, although I would guess that Bob Dylan might be, since he always denied any overt political message in those songs that have come to be foremost among anti-war songs. Would Pete Seeger be welcome?

But the question underneath all this, or perhaps the implicit commentary, is that if the Army feels threatened by Joan Baez, then the Army feels threatened, period. Would Baez have been allowed to sing back in 2003 before those pesky Weapons of Mass Destruction failed to turn up for the party?

I had to chortle at the writer's Fariña-farina joke. So obvious yet so non sequitur, so not funny that it's a total hoot.

Unwanted Folk

Published: May 3, 2007

Joan Baez sang at Woodstock. If you recognize either name, you probably already knew that. If you don’t, go to Google, then come back and help us puzzle something out.

Why would the Army be afraid of her?

Last Friday, John Mellencamp gave a concert for injured soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Ms. Baez, a friend who’d been invited by Mr. Mellencamp, did not. She was barred by Army brass, supposedly because of the lateness of the invitation, although Mr. Mellencamp’s camp suggested it was because she was considered objectionable.

Objectionable for what? To whom?

Mr. Mellencamp and Ms. Baez are both politically outspoken. Both have denounced the Iraq war. Yet Mr. Mellencamp’s activism is the kind the Army could more easily overlook. He wears a T-shirt and jeans and sings songs so down-home, so red, white and blue, that you could use them to sell Chevy trucks, which Mr. Mellencamp has actually done. “Let’s forget about any problems we might have and let’s just have a good time,” Mr. Mellencamp told his audience in what The Washington Post reported was a rousing and apolitical show.

Although Ms. Baez is as much of an activist as ever — she camped in a tree last year to stop the bulldozing of an urban farm — she would probably have shown similar tact. In a letter in The Post yesterday, she said she regretted not having given soldiers a better welcome home from Vietnam, and would have loved to sing at Walter Reed.

What is astounding is that somebody apparently could not get past the image of willowy Joan singing “Blowin’ in the Wind” nearly 40 years ago and thought troops so young they wouldn’t know Mimi Fariña from Cream of Wheat couldn’t or wouldn’t abide her presence.

They say generals are always fighting the last war. But Vietnam was two wars ago, three if you count the war on terror.

Joan Baez's Letter to the Washington Post

On the "Letters" page (A14) of the Washington Post, May 2, 2007:

Why I Wanted to Sing at Walter Reed

Regarding the April 28 Style article "At Walter Reed, Mellencamp Shuts
His Mouth and Sings":
Recently, John Mellencamp invited me to be his guest at a concert for
recovering soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. I said yes
immediately. Only later did I realize how the passage of time had informed
my decision to join him.

I have always been an advocate for nonviolence, and I have stood as
firmly against the Iraq war as I did the Vietnam War 40 years ago. During
that war, I could not, in good conscience, have "sung for the troops."
Doing so would have meant condoning a war that was tearing soldiers,
civilians, this country, Vietnam and, in some senses, the world, apart. I
do not regret that decision.

What I do regret is having ignored the needs of the men and women who
returned from Vietnam. For some who were relatively unscathed, it seemed
possible to get on with life, with or without all of their limbs
intact.
But it's clear that, for many, returning was hell.

I realize now that I might have contributed to a better welcome home
for those soldiers fresh from Vietnam. Maybe that's why I didn't hesitate
to accept the invitation to sing for those returning from Iraq and
Afghanistan.

In the end, four days before the concert, I was not "approved" by the
Army to take part. Strange irony.
JOAN BAEZ

Menlo Park, Calif.

No Joan at Walter Reed

News of this just came through the WTJU email list. Here's the Washington Post article:

Joan Baez Unwelcome At Concert For Troops
Singer Was to Perform With Mellencamp at Walter Reed

By Teresa Wiltz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 2, 2007; Page C01

When rocker John Mellencamp performed for the recovering soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center on Friday night, a couple of things were missing. He squelched his typically blistering rhetoric against the war in Iraq. Also MIA, as it turned out, was folkie and antiwar activist Joan Baez, who says she was disinvited from the event by Army officials.

In a letter that appears today in The Washington Post, Baez says Mellencamp had wanted her to perform with him and that she had accepted his invitation.

"I have always been an advocate for nonviolence," she writes, "and I have stood as firmly against the Iraq war as I did the Vietnam War 40 years ago. . . . I realize now that I might have contributed to a better welcome home for those soldiers fresh from Vietnam. Maybe that's why I didn't hesitate to accept the invitation to sing for those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

"In the end, four days before the concert, I was not 'approved' by the Army to take part. Strange irony."

Reached by telephone yesterday at her home in Menlo Park, Calif., Baez, 66, said she wasn't told why she was given the boot, but speculated, "There might have been one, there might have been 50 [soldiers] that thought I was a traitor."

Baez, who said Mellencamp had asked her to sing two songs with him, has been an avowed anti-violence activist ever since she refused to participate in an air raid drill at her Southern California high school. In the '60s, her name became synonymous with the antiwar movement, though many of the protest songs she was famous for performing, such as "Blowin' in the Wind," were covers of Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger songs. In 1964 she protested the Vietnam War by refusing to pay 60 percent of her income taxes. In 1968, she married activist David Harris -- the two met in jail following a protest -- and moved with him into his draft resistance commune.

Walter Reed officials did not respond to several requests for comment yesterday. But in an e-mailed statement published Monday on RollingStone.com, spokesman Steve Sanderson said the medical center received the requests for participation by Baez and broadcaster Dan Rather just two days before the concert. (Rather now works for HDNet, which broadcast the Mellencamp concert.)

"These additional requirements were not in the agreement/contract and would have required a modification," Sanderson told the magazine's Web site.

Not so, says Baez's manager, Mark Spector; Mellencamp's management invited Baez to perform in March with the understanding that things could take a while "because of the red tape of Army bureaucracy." Mellencamp's management handled all the arrangements, according to Spector. And up until April 23, when Baez was turned down, everything was "still inching forward," he said: "They'd booked her flight; they'd booked her hotel."

Mellencamp's manager, Randy Hoffman, did not return calls requesting comment, and Mellencamp was ill and unavailable yesterday, according to his publicist. But Mellencamp told RollingStone.com: "They didn't give me a reason why she couldn't come. We asked why and they said, 'She can't fit here, period.' "

"One of my more cynical friends said, 'They let the rats in, why not you?' " Baez said, laughing, referring to a recent exposé of living conditions at Walter Reed.

It wasn't the first time that a performer has been blocked from Walter Reed. In 2004, Oscar-winning actress Patty Duke was refused permission to tour the wards. She'd been scheduled to visit troops as part of an Arts Advocacy Day in Washington. USO officials later said they didn't have enough time to let the patients know that a celebrity would be visiting -- although Michael Jackson was spotted in the ward the same night that Duke would have popped in for a visit.

An HDNet spokeswoman said Rather had planned to interview Mellencamp at the hospital, but "schedule-wise we couldn't make it happen."

After the concert, Baez said, Mellencamp left her a message to say, "I hope you're not mad at me." Her response: " 'Of course not. It's an honor to be turned down by the Army.' . . . But I would have been happier getting in . . . I thought times had changed enough."

So what exactly happened?

The answer -- since Walter Reed's officials aren't talking -- is blowin' in the wind. (Sorry, we couldn't resist.)

I'm not too surprised. After all, Baez's anti-war activities are well-known and decades in duration. On the other hand, how many of today's soldiers would have any clue who she is, since she's not nearly as high-profile as she was during the Vietnam War? In any case, this article makes me want to go crank "Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around"....

Or this:

Political Outrage: The Gift That Keeps on Giving

Workplace safety has long been one of the issues I get really riled up about, perhaps from seeing Silkwood (1983) at an impressionable age--an era when the Three Mile Island (1979) disaster was a recent memory (especially for one whose mother worked for the company that built the reactor!)--not to mention Chernobyl (1986) and the poisonous gas leak in Bhopal, India (1984), that ultimately killed an estimated 20,000 people. And then, of course, are all the songs about coal mining disasters....

The main sticking point this article discusses is much smaller-scale, though no less cataclysmic for the people involved: fatal lung disease caused by exposure to diacetyl, a chemical used to flavor microwave popcorn and other products. I first heard about the problem in the Milwaukee newspaper while at the American Folklore Society conference last October--the article featured several workers who were trying to collect damages and who were calling for regulatory measures.

Here are a few quotations from the article in this morning's Times, "OSHA Leaves Worker Safety in Hands of Industry." Not surprisingly, Bush and his administration are doing yet more to line the pockets of the rich while fucking over the working classes even more.

Since George W. Bush became president, OSHA has issued the fewest significant standards in its history, public health experts say. It has imposed only one major safety rule. The only significant health standard it issued was ordered by a federal court.

The agency has killed dozens of existing and proposed regulations and delayed adopting others. For example, OSHA has repeatedly identified silica dust, which can cause lung cancer, and construction site noise as health hazards that warrant new safeguards for nearly three million workers, but it has yet to require them.

“The people at OSHA have no interest in running a regulatory agency,” said Dr. David Michaels, an occupational health expert at George Washington University who has written extensively about workplace safety. “If they ever knew how to issue regulations, they’ve forgotten. The concern about protecting workers has gone out the window.”

(snip)

Labor leaders and health experts say those numbers significantly undercount the problem, in part because the Bush administration has reduced the categories of recognized injuries and because many dangerous jobs are now performed by undocumented workers who do not report problems.

Various & Sundry

(Or--From the Ridiculous in One Way to the Ridiculous in Another)

First, I received a spam message this morning entitled "Big drops of rain fell among them making individual sounds when they struck." Hands down, this one wins the prize for Most Likely To Become a Haiku. Or something. Whatever they're advertising (I didn't check), it's a refreshing change from "Affordable Mortgage!" or "Meet HOT Christian Singles Here!" and all the creatively-spelled entreaties to enhance one's sexual performance with One Little Pill.

Come to think of it, "Big drops of rain fell among them making individual sounds when they struck" has the same sort of ring to it as "Her Golden Hair Hung Down In Ringlets." Maybe there's a tune in there someplace.

Next in this morning's Inanity Report, from this article in today's NYT:

A spokesman for the rifle association declined to comment Friday on the legislation, but Mr. Dingell said the measure could prevent future tragedies.

“It resolves some serious problems in terms of preventing the wrong people from getting firearms,” he said.

The article discusses how state and federal law about gun sales don't match up in letter, although they do in intent, and so some would-be ineligible gun buyers (like Cho) slip through the system and are allowed to purchase firearms. Because of course all guns in the country are registered and change hands legally. I don't even need to rehearse all the arguments here, but the point is--they've found a culprit to expend legislative energy on, and now can ignore the real problems:

1. The anti-gun control stance is outdated and dangerous, and attempts to keep gun out of unfit hands (which hands are fit?) are largely ineffective.

2. By pathologizing Cho as mentally imbalanced, we ignore the complaints he (and others) make about society. I'm not saying he was justified--far from it. For a more extended treatment of this than I can give at the moment, read this article (same one I pointed to yesterday via Rob's blog).

Now--time to go read before I head up to the CUNY grad student music conference (GSIM) and the Irish studies conference (ACIS). Too much stuff to do....

WTF???

This, from this morning's New York Times...I don't take issue with the article, but with the pro-gun argument that if everyone had a gun, the shooting victims at VT could have fought back--that the problem is not with Virginia law's extremely lenient approach to gun sales, but with Tech's rule against firearms on campus. What?!?!?!?

New Element

I've been meaning to post this for a few days--a funny from Qwags:

NEW ELEMENT "W"

A major research institution has just announced the discovery of the densest element yet known to science.

The new element has been named "Bushcronium. " Bushcronium has one neutron, 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons, and 224 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 311.

These particles are held together by dark forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons. The symbol for Bushcronium is "W". Bushcronium' s mass actually increases over time, as morons randomly interact with various elements in the atmosphere and become assistant deputy neutrons in a Bushcronium molecule, forming isodopes.

This characteristic of moron-promotion leads some scientists to believe that Bushcronium is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as "Critical Morass".

When catalyzed with money, Bushcronium activates Foxnewsium, an element that radiates orders of magnitude more energy, albeit as incoherent noise, since it has 1/2 as many peons but twice as many morons.

Statistically....

My friend Rebecca in Scotland just sent me this:

INTERESTING STATISTIC...

Regardless of where you stand on the issue of the U.S. involvement in Iraq, here's a sobering statistic:

There has been a monthly average of 160,000 troops in the Iraq theatre of operations during the last 22 months, and a total of 2,112 deaths. That gives a firearm death rate of 60 per 100,000 soldiers.

The firearm death rate in Washington D.C. is 80.6 per 100,000 persons for the same period.

That means that you are about 25% more likely to be shot and killed in the U.S. capitol than you are in Iraq.

Conclusion: The U.S. should pull out of Washington

Lake Woebegone Dumbass

Apologies to those of you who check Rob' blog, too, but for those of you who haven't already seen Garrison Keillor's bullshit in Salon and Dan Savage's rightfully irate reply, check 'em out. As Rob would say, Keillor is dead to me--except that he was never alive to me in the first place. I almost always found Prairie Home Companion tedious, dull, and too self-absorbed.

What I wonder is--what does he think about lesbian parents? Certainly the flamboyant dresser stereotype doesn't exist...but I'm sure he'd have something to say about kids and softball injuries, or something. Geez. What a dumbass.

GK made an apology, and I just read it. How totally lame. The comments are pretty depressing, too--if I didn't know better, I'd run off to write a column on the cluelessness of straight people. But I do know better, and so should have Garrison Keillor. If he was trying for satire, it sure didn't work, and (as someone in one of the comments wrote) dredging up old stereotypes does more harm than good.

Ok--enough soapbox. Now back to transcribing the conversation Jenny & I had last night about getting Maddie stoned on catnip for my linguistic anthropology assignment....

Music & Torture Installation in Madrid

Check it out.

More Torture in the Nation

More background info here....

Torture in The Nation

SEM sure is getting a lot of press over this, even as more of its members wish they'd been asked for an opinion (out of formality, I think--most people seem to agree with the statement, just not the Board's right to make it without some sort of poll). Check out what The Nation said here.

I do wish they hadn't written "Don't laugh," though.

On the SEM listserve, Anthony McCann pointed out this page of Psyop links. I haven't had a chance to explore much, but the "Psyop Creed" is certainly disturbing....

Statement on music as torture

This week's Society for Ethnomusicology statement about the use of music for torture has reached the larger blogosphere. This posting on www.boingboing.net covers the main points:

----------------------

Ethnomusicologists against music as torture

In 1989, US Psy Ops troops blared songs like "Voodoo Child" and "I Fought The Law" at Manuel Noriega's compound as an effort to induce surrender. The same kind of "acoustic bombardment" occurred at Waco and is reportedly used during POW interrogations too. According to this BBC News article, tunes from Sesame Street, Barney, and Metallica were popular Psy Ops picks in Iraq. Here's a paper on the subject by New York University music professor Suzanne Cusick that was published last year in Revista Transcultural de Música. Last week, the Society for Ethnomusicology published a position statement "against the use of music as torture." From their document:

The U.S. government and its military and diplomatic agencies has used music as an instrument of abuse since 2001, particularly through the implementation of programs of torture in both covert and overt detention centers as part of the war on terror.

The Society for Ethnomusicology
* calls for full disclosure of U.S. government-sanctioned and funded programs that design the means of delivering music as torture;
* condemns the use of music as an instrument of torture; and
* demands that the United States government and its agencies cease using music as an instrument of physical and psychological torture.

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Suzanne is one of my advisors. She also rocks my world. I highly recommend her article on music and torture; in fact, the whole Trans journal is well worth a look, though much of it is in Spanish. My primary advisor Ana was this issue's guest editor--and she too rocks my world. Lots of that going around lately! This issue actually came out a few weeks ago, not last year (although Suzanne presented a version of that paper at the AMS conference in LA last November).