Like many kids, I had to memorize the Ten Commandments. When you're a kid, you just kind of just accept them as written. God said them, and adults say that God said them, so that means they are definitely right.
I think this childhood indoctrination is why most of us still assume they're a set of pretty reasonable rules. Conservatives take it farther, saying they're the foundation of our government. Which is of course a load of crap: Only a few of the Ten Commandments are even laws anywhere in the United States, much less foundational ones. None are in the Constitution, for example, and some Commandments are directly contradicted by constitutional amendments. (I'm thinking of freedom of religion specifically -- that is not an idea God tends to be big on.) I guarantee I can find one essay by John Locke that has more constitutional principles than are in the whole Old Testament.
But anyway, the Ten Commandments are not only irrelevant to the U.S. Constitution -- some of them are pretty darn ridiculous. Now that we're all grown-ups, with internal senses of morality and abilities to engage in critical thinking and stuff like that, we can take a closer look at the Ten Commandments. Let's go through them one by one.
1. I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.
I'm not crazy about the fact that this one starts us off. But I'm not surprised, because this is pretty much the whole thrust of the Old Testament. As Bill Maher has noted, God usually comes across as a very insecure abusive boyfriend. Usually all he says is some variation on "Love me or else." "Love me or you'll all be flooded." "Love me or your city will be burned by the Babylonians." God's main way to gain power and influence is by making mortal threats. He's basically a Bond villain.
Sometimes you get a different spin on it. Sometimes it's more like "Prove that you love me by killing your only son." That's some pretty damn twisted stuff. That's beyond Bond villains -- that's more in the realm of a Hannibal Lecter.
At least this Commandment softens the message, putting in the terms of a neurotic mother laying a guilt trip on you. "You know, I did rescue you from slavery. So maybe you should find some time in your busy schedule to sacrifice a calf for me now and again?"
2. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
Yeah, God, we heard you the first time. Worship only you -- got it loud and clear. I realize that you're hopelessly insecure -- or in your terms, "jealous" -- but all you're doing here is giving more detail about how we should not have any other gods before you, which you covered in the first one. It's like if I said "Rule number 1: Don't eat my food. Rule number 2: Don't pick up my food, bite it, chew it, swallow it, pass it through your esophagus, digest it, and eventually poop it out. If you do, holy cow I will beat you up and every innocent person who is related to you."
And moreover, God, you've only got ten commandments here, and you just blew the second one with what is essentially a footnote to the first. You realize there are lots of terrible things people can do, right? Like rape? And slavery? You will find room for rape and slavery, right? OK, sorry, I shouldn't judge too early. Let's keep going.
3. You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.
Huh. Okay -- again, you only have ten of these. Now you're devoting a whole Commandment to making people say "goshdarnit" instead of "goddammit." I hate to be an armchair quarterback here, but is this really such a huge problem? In my experience, people who neglect to use their turn signals cause more death and destruction than people saying "God!"
Wait, is this just a footnote to the footnote of the first one? Is this still just telling us to love you? Are you going "Number 1: Only me! Number 2: Seriously, only me! No whittling driftwood into statues of Zeus or I'll totally kick your ass! Number 3: Seriously! Don't even say my name with a crappy attitude!" (I think I stole that one from Bill Maher too, by the way.)
4. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy
Well, hell, this is actually a pretty good one. Here you're enacting a pretty decent labor law: Once a week, everyone gets a day off. I'm with you 100%. Good work.
However, I must say, if I were editing the Bible, I'd replace the long and boring list of applicable people with just the word "everybody." But I realize that's just splitting hairs. Or who knows, maybe people 4000 years ago needed a list like this. Maybe they were like "OK, yeah, I get to rest, but what about my livestock -- can they go plow the fields by themselves on Sundays? If I trap a sojourner within my gates, can he do my dishes?"
5. Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.
OK, that's pretty damn vague. I don't know if it's the translation's fault or what, but I have no idea what it's supposed to mean to "honor" your parents. Does it mean to throw them a banquet? Should I give them each a Golden Globe? Or will last-minute, half-assed birthday presents and monthly awkward phone conversations suffice?
As a kid, of course, we were told that it means to do whatever your parents say. But adults tended to turn everything into that message. And when you become a grown-up yourself, you're kind of supposed to break free from your parents and live according to your own conscience. Imagine if you did everything your dad told you to throughout your whole life. You would do nothing all day but buy insurance and do preventative car maintenance.
6. You shall not murder.
Whoa. I take everything back. Color me impressed, God -- that is one hell of a Commandment. Now you're talking! Obviously, God, you took my previous notes to heart. Here you use one of your commandments to disallow one of the worst things human beings can do. You said in clear language, with no ambiguity. It was even concise -- I don't see a long list of people and animals and sojourners that you shouldn't kill. Bravo. Let's have more like these.
7. You shall not commit adultery.
Pow! Another direct hit. I must say, God, you have improved by leaps and bounds at this commandment-writing thing. I'm giving you a Gold Star. If you get twenty Gold Stars by the end of the term, you'll get a bar of soap in the shape of Zoroaster - kidding! Ha ha ha, you have a sense of humor, right, God? Right, God? God?
8. You shall not steal.
Another good one. Stealing is definitely bad. Although, I must say, I'm watching the clock, and we only have two left now, and stealing is ... well, it depends on the amount, I suppose, but most kinds of stealing are more in the misdemeanor category. And I feel like you should really devote your limited space to felonies ... rape comes to mind, and we still have a few crimes against humanity uncovered, like slavery, for example. Just saying. I'm not saying you're on the wrong track -- just hoping to shift your trajectory a bit. Sorry. Go on, you're still on a roll.
9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
Yeah, see, this is what I was just talking about. Lying is bad, absolutely. No argument here. But I'm getting the feeling that you're running out of bad things you can think up. Like, you're thinking "OK, covered murder, adultery, stealing ... what else is bad? Well, my neighbor did lie to me about what his dog did in my lawn, and that was really irritating. Let's roll with that."
Also, while I've been applauding your recent turn toward conciseness, God, in this case you could actually use a lot more detail. You could give examples of the really bad forms of lying -- perjury, mail fraud, etc. -- and then say something like "But if you get a last-minute, half-assed gift from your kid, you don't have to be honest: Just say you like it. There are shades of gray here, people."
10. You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's.
Jesus Christ, God. Now you're really scraping the bottom of the barrel. We're not even supposed to secretly want things now? Was this one thrown in just to make for an even ten?
But that can't be it, because there are so many other things you could have gone for with this one! I don't feel like I could have mentioned rape and slavery more often, but now the list is over, and they weren't in there even in passing!
Sigh ... OK, well, all told, it could be worse list of commandments. I've seen worse. You got at least three and maybe four great ones in there. The rest are pretty dumb, but at least they don't explicitly legalize terrible things (for instance, there's nothing saying "Slavery is awesome! Rape you all want!") There was the long tangent of "love me or else" which bled into three commandments, and you missed some major, major sins. All in all, I give it a C-minus.
Try to apply yourself more next time, and for Christ's sake, no more of the "love me or else" crap. You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Ask your son -- he knows what I'm talking about. (Man, don't you wish Jesus had written the Ten Commandments? Moreover, don't you wish someone had misplaced the Old Testament in a cave somewhere? I guess for Jesus's whole messiah thing to work you had to have the backstory of this God character who is his father and foreshadowed his arrival and all that. Still, I think of the Old Testament like I think of the Star Wars prequels: There are a few good scenes here and there, but it's mostly terrible and just destroys the series as a whole. Anyway, now I'm off on a tangent! God, you're rubbing off on me in the worst way! Oh, that God!)
Friday, May 31, 2013
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Mourning the Loss of Java Train
When my family and I moved to this area more than two years ago, we were especially excited to be in a neighborhood in which you could walk to all sorts of great places. Chief among them was Java Train.
Java Train is the kind of place that should be in every residential, family-oriented neighborhood, but I've never seen in any before or since. It has an indoor play area in the shape of a train, complete with an electric train around the top that (occasionally) runs. It has an outdoor play area with a sandbox and a sort of spaceship structure. It has a long row of gumball machines offering everything from candy to rubber balls. It has a row of around a dozen great ice cream flavors, ready to be scooped out for kids. It had a terrific kids' menu of Italian dunkers, chicken fingers, etc.
And it can cater to the parents' every wish too. It has great coffee confections of many varieties -- everything from turtle mochas to chai. It has a solid menu, including genuinely top-notch pizza. It has some idyllic outdoor seating and a lovely, understated interior. And it even has beer and wine!
I've lived a lot of places and been in thousands of restaurants, and I've never seen any other place that has everything a young family could possibly want, the way that Java Train has. Or rather, "had."
This one-of-a-kind, perfect neighborhood spot will be gone soon. In its place, apparently, will be a generic bar and grill, a Champps knock-off (because where else could you possibly find one of those)? The indoor train has already been replaced by a TV locked to a sports channel (original!), with more devastation to come.
I admit, I don't know the whole story. Maybe there's a greater profit margin in cranking out generic food and beer than there is in being a fantasyland for toddlers. Maybe they've done some extensive research that supports this decision.
From where I stand, though, it doesn't even make business sense. My neighborhood is rapidly changing, into one filled with young families. Two of my neighbors are expecting. Even if Java Train isn't making money hand over fist now, it certainly could be soon.
But I can't really know that for sure. All I know is that this decision destroys the place that my two-year-old daughter and I love to walk to to at least twice a week. It shoots down the future I envisioned in this neighborhood, one in which my daughter and possibly future children would grow to adulthood running over to Java Train for muffins, ice cream, and a lot of fun.
I don't mean to be melodramatic. The neighborhood is hardly ruined. We still can walk to both Como Zoo and the fairgrounds, and Coffee Grounds up the street has buckets of toys, having apparently decided that young families are not undesirable.
But I can't help but feel like something has been robbed from me and my family. And I can't help but hope that Boilerplate Bar and Grill, or whatever it will be called, will fail miserably. Maybe then, someone else will take over and bring back the greatest neighborhood restaurant I've ever seen.
Java Train is the kind of place that should be in every residential, family-oriented neighborhood, but I've never seen in any before or since. It has an indoor play area in the shape of a train, complete with an electric train around the top that (occasionally) runs. It has an outdoor play area with a sandbox and a sort of spaceship structure. It has a long row of gumball machines offering everything from candy to rubber balls. It has a row of around a dozen great ice cream flavors, ready to be scooped out for kids. It had a terrific kids' menu of Italian dunkers, chicken fingers, etc.
And it can cater to the parents' every wish too. It has great coffee confections of many varieties -- everything from turtle mochas to chai. It has a solid menu, including genuinely top-notch pizza. It has some idyllic outdoor seating and a lovely, understated interior. And it even has beer and wine!
I've lived a lot of places and been in thousands of restaurants, and I've never seen any other place that has everything a young family could possibly want, the way that Java Train has. Or rather, "had."
This one-of-a-kind, perfect neighborhood spot will be gone soon. In its place, apparently, will be a generic bar and grill, a Champps knock-off (because where else could you possibly find one of those)? The indoor train has already been replaced by a TV locked to a sports channel (original!), with more devastation to come.
I admit, I don't know the whole story. Maybe there's a greater profit margin in cranking out generic food and beer than there is in being a fantasyland for toddlers. Maybe they've done some extensive research that supports this decision.
From where I stand, though, it doesn't even make business sense. My neighborhood is rapidly changing, into one filled with young families. Two of my neighbors are expecting. Even if Java Train isn't making money hand over fist now, it certainly could be soon.
But I can't really know that for sure. All I know is that this decision destroys the place that my two-year-old daughter and I love to walk to to at least twice a week. It shoots down the future I envisioned in this neighborhood, one in which my daughter and possibly future children would grow to adulthood running over to Java Train for muffins, ice cream, and a lot of fun.
I don't mean to be melodramatic. The neighborhood is hardly ruined. We still can walk to both Como Zoo and the fairgrounds, and Coffee Grounds up the street has buckets of toys, having apparently decided that young families are not undesirable.
But I can't help but feel like something has been robbed from me and my family. And I can't help but hope that Boilerplate Bar and Grill, or whatever it will be called, will fail miserably. Maybe then, someone else will take over and bring back the greatest neighborhood restaurant I've ever seen.
Monday, May 6, 2013
Things to Like About America
It's well-known that we Americans don't like to acknowledge that other countries exist, unless, of course, we decide to bomb them. The thing is, looking at other countries can be depressing (especially the bombed ones). Some are much worse off than us, starving and dying and such, and that makes us feel bad, for a minute or so. One mention of Darfur on the radio and you almost feel guilty for speeding your SUV down to the Consume-o-mart to buy your hundredth pair of shoes made by Chinese child laborers. Almost.
And fellow developed countries don't help. They may not be as rich or powerful as us, but somehow, without even letting us know, they sneakily end up solving a lot of the problems that still plague us. No one in England is worrying too much about the abortion issue. There's no health-care crisis in France. And Finland is so wealthy, successful and crime-free that the Finnish have nothing to be sad about at all, which apparently makes them very depressed. Poor guys.
But there are a few things that should make any American's chest swell and heart pump blood colored red, white and blue. There are a few things that make even liberal America-hating baby-eaters like myself shed a joyful tear in the shape of an eagle. Yes, Virginia, there are a few things that the good ol' U.S. of A. does better than all the Finlands and Belgiums and Central African Republics combined. And they are:
1. BATHROOM AMENITIES: OK, apparently Japan does these well. But every other foreign country I've been to had shit for bathrooms. Literally -- every single one had toilets, sinks, and showers made entirely out of shit. When you had to do your business, you'd do it and then carefully mold it so that it fit into the other furnishings. Word to the wise foreign traveler: Always bring lots of plastic gloves. And a kiln wouldn't hurt.
Actually, what you typically get in foreign countries is no hot water. And showers aren't showers so much as they're detachable spigots connected to a tub by a hose about two feet long. So if you like your showers lying down, in cold water, you my friend, are in for a treat.
Toilets aren't much better. Overseas you get a lot of the "eternal flush" thing where the toilet slowly fills up with water for days. How does it keep filling up, but never get full, you wonder? (And then your mind EXPLODES.) There's something quietly sinister and otherworldly about the eternal flush. It's like an axe murderer who's coming at you so slowly that even if you're staring at him you can't see him move. Or maybe not.
2) TELEVISION: If you're lucky enough to get cable in a European country, you know how many channels you get? Twelve! Wow! That's enough to fill, five, maybe ten minutes per day! Meanwhile, in America, even homeless people have digital cable boxes with 5,000 channels each. I'm no math whiz, but I'm pretty sure than 5,000 is about a million times larger than 12.
Now I hear you literati already. "More TV is a good thing?!?" you scoff, nearly spilling your cabernet all over your Harold Pinter fan club T-shirt. "Hasn't television already destroyed American discourse?" To that I say, "No, and you know why? Because you are a poophead. Heh, heh, heh. Heh, heh, heh. Poop."
Seriously, though, have you checked out TV recently? It's not wall-to-wall "Three's Company" reruns like in the old days. My cable has two, count 'em two, PBSes. I also have the Discovery Channel, Discovery Health, Discovery Times, Discovery Science, Discovery Philology, Discovery Kazakh Poetry, and a whole channel devoted to nothing but video footage of Bunsen burners. There is a wonderful network called History International, which is just like the History Channel except its shows actually involve history.
Sure, 80% of TV is crap. But 80% of everything is crap. Ever been to a bookstore? Yeah, you can still find Dostoyevsky, but you have to go past several acres of books about how to lose weight by eating only olives, paella, geflite fish and liquid smoke.
And you know what else? You can't blame television for dumbing down America, because America was always as stupid as it is now. You might not remember clearly, because your memories are sugar-coated, but there was no time in history when discourse was actually elevated. Life in the '50s was not all Edward R. Murrow slowly and gray-ly discussing foreign policy with Adlai Stevenson. Most people switched away from that and watched boxers beat the crap out of each other for fun.
But then, as now, there were pockets of smarties smart-ing it up, and God bless 'em. They're always there to work and strive and harangue and every so often, their messages break through to the dummies watching boxing or Ultimate Fighting or what have you. Then the world changes, usually for the better. TV is simply the messenger letting the sheltered smarties know how the rest of America lives. Don't shoot it.
Man, I've gone far afield of my point. My point was that America does TV great and big and bold, and we should be proud of that. And, uh, we got the bathroom thing going for us too. We don't do endings of blog posts well though. At least, I don't.
And fellow developed countries don't help. They may not be as rich or powerful as us, but somehow, without even letting us know, they sneakily end up solving a lot of the problems that still plague us. No one in England is worrying too much about the abortion issue. There's no health-care crisis in France. And Finland is so wealthy, successful and crime-free that the Finnish have nothing to be sad about at all, which apparently makes them very depressed. Poor guys.
But there are a few things that should make any American's chest swell and heart pump blood colored red, white and blue. There are a few things that make even liberal America-hating baby-eaters like myself shed a joyful tear in the shape of an eagle. Yes, Virginia, there are a few things that the good ol' U.S. of A. does better than all the Finlands and Belgiums and Central African Republics combined. And they are:
1. BATHROOM AMENITIES: OK, apparently Japan does these well. But every other foreign country I've been to had shit for bathrooms. Literally -- every single one had toilets, sinks, and showers made entirely out of shit. When you had to do your business, you'd do it and then carefully mold it so that it fit into the other furnishings. Word to the wise foreign traveler: Always bring lots of plastic gloves. And a kiln wouldn't hurt.
Actually, what you typically get in foreign countries is no hot water. And showers aren't showers so much as they're detachable spigots connected to a tub by a hose about two feet long. So if you like your showers lying down, in cold water, you my friend, are in for a treat.
Toilets aren't much better. Overseas you get a lot of the "eternal flush" thing where the toilet slowly fills up with water for days. How does it keep filling up, but never get full, you wonder? (And then your mind EXPLODES.) There's something quietly sinister and otherworldly about the eternal flush. It's like an axe murderer who's coming at you so slowly that even if you're staring at him you can't see him move. Or maybe not.
2) TELEVISION: If you're lucky enough to get cable in a European country, you know how many channels you get? Twelve! Wow! That's enough to fill, five, maybe ten minutes per day! Meanwhile, in America, even homeless people have digital cable boxes with 5,000 channels each. I'm no math whiz, but I'm pretty sure than 5,000 is about a million times larger than 12.
Now I hear you literati already. "More TV is a good thing?!?" you scoff, nearly spilling your cabernet all over your Harold Pinter fan club T-shirt. "Hasn't television already destroyed American discourse?" To that I say, "No, and you know why? Because you are a poophead. Heh, heh, heh. Heh, heh, heh. Poop."
Seriously, though, have you checked out TV recently? It's not wall-to-wall "Three's Company" reruns like in the old days. My cable has two, count 'em two, PBSes. I also have the Discovery Channel, Discovery Health, Discovery Times, Discovery Science, Discovery Philology, Discovery Kazakh Poetry, and a whole channel devoted to nothing but video footage of Bunsen burners. There is a wonderful network called History International, which is just like the History Channel except its shows actually involve history.
Sure, 80% of TV is crap. But 80% of everything is crap. Ever been to a bookstore? Yeah, you can still find Dostoyevsky, but you have to go past several acres of books about how to lose weight by eating only olives, paella, geflite fish and liquid smoke.
And you know what else? You can't blame television for dumbing down America, because America was always as stupid as it is now. You might not remember clearly, because your memories are sugar-coated, but there was no time in history when discourse was actually elevated. Life in the '50s was not all Edward R. Murrow slowly and gray-ly discussing foreign policy with Adlai Stevenson. Most people switched away from that and watched boxers beat the crap out of each other for fun.
But then, as now, there were pockets of smarties smart-ing it up, and God bless 'em. They're always there to work and strive and harangue and every so often, their messages break through to the dummies watching boxing or Ultimate Fighting or what have you. Then the world changes, usually for the better. TV is simply the messenger letting the sheltered smarties know how the rest of America lives. Don't shoot it.
Man, I've gone far afield of my point. My point was that America does TV great and big and bold, and we should be proud of that. And, uh, we got the bathroom thing going for us too. We don't do endings of blog posts well though. At least, I don't.
Friday, May 3, 2013
When It Comes to Orchestras, I'm Kinda Republican
I've been reading and hearing a lot about the labor struggles that orchestras are having lately. I have to admit that I'm a bit unsympathetic.
In most issues, I'm irritatingly liberal. But when it comes to the arts, I can get to sounding downright Republican. In the specific case of orchestras, I feel like the key fact is that attendance has been decreasing for decades. So the market has spoken. That means that salaries will have to go down and some orchestras will have to shut down. Welcome to the world.
Musicians are of course blaming management for not getting asses in seats (they say it differently), but I think that's like blaming the grocery store for a pork shortage. Management might have some influence in getting the pork in the seats (I think my metaphor is getting confused), but in the end they can't get what just isn't out there.
I don't think it's the fault of classical music or musicians that there are fewer fans these days. In fact, I'm sure it's better than ever. But music has changed so much in the last 100 years in particular that there are hundreds of genres and sub-genres. That means that people have so many choices that they will be able to find exactly what speaks to them best.
When the choice was either Brahms or John Phillip Sousa, of course Brahms will get lots of takers. But when the music-listening public is presented with Brahms, Sousa, Springsteen, Ice-T, Wynton Marsalis, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Shitty Shitty Band Band, etc., etc., then there will be a smaller piece of the pie for Brahms.
As I've stated in this space before, music is a matter of personal taste. Some artists are better than others, sure, but I don't ascribe to the notion that some genres are objectively better than others. But that is often the stance, implied or otherwise, of people arguing in favor of these orchestras. The say that it's such wonderful music and needs to be preserved.
Well, to me it's not. I'm not saying it's bad -- it's just not to my taste. Does that make me a philistine? If so, why? Why is classical given this elite status? Because it's old? Sea chanteys are old too, but no one gets upset when sea chantey bands (if those exist) have to shut down.
Of course, it's really because elites have always liked classical. They'll say it expresses sublime, ineffable feelings -- and maybe it does for them. But not for me, and not for increasing numbers of people. I get similar feelings listening to Beck and Iron and Wine and even some hip-hop. Yet if any of those get fewer fans and have to give up, no one cries foul.
I know that classical music has some historical value. Fair enough -- so do sea chanteys -- but fine, maybe that means that classical should get a little extra support. But for the most part, I don't feel a lot of obligation to prop up an art form that speaks to only a few people (a disproportionate percentage of whom are wealthy, by the way).
And I'm sympathetic to the fact that music programs are being cut in schools, which maybe results in fewer classical fans. But I've always felt music programs should teach all kinds of music anyway. There's no reason classical should get a priority in school programs. I think music programs should teach more guitar. They should teach sampling and record-scratching. People can be moved by all kinds of music, and imposing your personal musical tastes on children seems very wrong.
I could extend this argument to all of the fine arts, but I'll leave that for another time. Anyone got a counterargument that isn't based in the idea that classical is somehow objectively superior?
In most issues, I'm irritatingly liberal. But when it comes to the arts, I can get to sounding downright Republican. In the specific case of orchestras, I feel like the key fact is that attendance has been decreasing for decades. So the market has spoken. That means that salaries will have to go down and some orchestras will have to shut down. Welcome to the world.
Musicians are of course blaming management for not getting asses in seats (they say it differently), but I think that's like blaming the grocery store for a pork shortage. Management might have some influence in getting the pork in the seats (I think my metaphor is getting confused), but in the end they can't get what just isn't out there.
I don't think it's the fault of classical music or musicians that there are fewer fans these days. In fact, I'm sure it's better than ever. But music has changed so much in the last 100 years in particular that there are hundreds of genres and sub-genres. That means that people have so many choices that they will be able to find exactly what speaks to them best.
When the choice was either Brahms or John Phillip Sousa, of course Brahms will get lots of takers. But when the music-listening public is presented with Brahms, Sousa, Springsteen, Ice-T, Wynton Marsalis, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Shitty Shitty Band Band, etc., etc., then there will be a smaller piece of the pie for Brahms.
As I've stated in this space before, music is a matter of personal taste. Some artists are better than others, sure, but I don't ascribe to the notion that some genres are objectively better than others. But that is often the stance, implied or otherwise, of people arguing in favor of these orchestras. The say that it's such wonderful music and needs to be preserved.
Well, to me it's not. I'm not saying it's bad -- it's just not to my taste. Does that make me a philistine? If so, why? Why is classical given this elite status? Because it's old? Sea chanteys are old too, but no one gets upset when sea chantey bands (if those exist) have to shut down.
Of course, it's really because elites have always liked classical. They'll say it expresses sublime, ineffable feelings -- and maybe it does for them. But not for me, and not for increasing numbers of people. I get similar feelings listening to Beck and Iron and Wine and even some hip-hop. Yet if any of those get fewer fans and have to give up, no one cries foul.
I know that classical music has some historical value. Fair enough -- so do sea chanteys -- but fine, maybe that means that classical should get a little extra support. But for the most part, I don't feel a lot of obligation to prop up an art form that speaks to only a few people (a disproportionate percentage of whom are wealthy, by the way).
And I'm sympathetic to the fact that music programs are being cut in schools, which maybe results in fewer classical fans. But I've always felt music programs should teach all kinds of music anyway. There's no reason classical should get a priority in school programs. I think music programs should teach more guitar. They should teach sampling and record-scratching. People can be moved by all kinds of music, and imposing your personal musical tastes on children seems very wrong.
I could extend this argument to all of the fine arts, but I'll leave that for another time. Anyone got a counterargument that isn't based in the idea that classical is somehow objectively superior?
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
What I Do When I Get Kids' Songs Stuck in My Head
My daughter Ellie is getting to the age where she falls in love with kids' TV shows and the songs therein. She often wants me to sing them with her. I'm happy to oblige.
The downside is that these songs often get stuck in my head. When this happens, I find it helps to mix it up by singing them to myself in weird voices.
For example, here's the basic version of the Dora the Explorer song that Ellie and I sing together. (If these audio clips don't work, this whole post is worthless. It is surprisingly difficult to get an audio clip in a blog post. I blame the government. I'll work out why later.)
For example, here's the basic version of the Dora the Explorer song that Ellie and I sing together. (If these audio clips don't work, this whole post is worthless. It is surprisingly difficult to get an audio clip in a blog post. I blame the government. I'll work out why later.)
When this version starts to drive me nuts, it helps to shift into the Tom Waits version. It's a new voice I'm just starting to work on, so it probably needs refinement. Any constructive criticism is welcome.
Then there's the Morrissey version. This is a voice I've been doing for years, so I don't think it's getting better any time soon. Most people hate it, saying it sounds like Kermit the Frog doing Morrissey. It makes me happy to sing along to the Smiths in my Morrissey voice, though, so I'll keep doing it.
I've gotten much better feedback for my Louis Armstrong voice, which I'm now realizing is kind of a combination of Tom Waits and Morrissey. Maybe since Louis Armstrong was my first voice, Tom Waits equals Louis Armstrong minus Morrissey. Either way, the three of them are all clearly blood relations in real life.
My only other impressions are of Hannibal Lecter, former baseball announcer Skip Caray, and Congressman Charlie Rangel, so none of those are terribly germaine here. But, if pressed by an adoring public (and if the audio files work), I can give them all a shot at the Dora theme.
Regulations Are Traffic Laws for Businesses
I've tried not to get too political in the blog, but to hell with that. One thing that really keeps this country back, I think, is the way we think about regulations.
This came up recently when I read a blog post by Bill Maher, who noted that the horrible fertilizer explosion in West, Texas, is a direct result of a flagrant disregard for regulations. To quote Maher's blog:
"And now it turns out that the plant was storing 1,350 times the ammonium nitrate that would normally trigger government oversight. When a plant stores 400 pounds of the stuff, they need to let the DHS know. This place was storing 270 tons." http://www.real-time-with-bill-maher-blog.com/real-time-with-bill-maher-blog/2013/4/29/culture-matters-1.html
Maher is right about this, but somehow he later concludes that "We don't need more regulations in the wake of Waco. I'm not even sure we need more enforcement. We need a culture that respects our laws – even the ones written by Democrats."
Set aside the starry-eyed notion that we can just somehow magically "change the culture" to make people obey rules, without actually enforcing them. Such blanket statements about regulations, as if they're all a single monolith, is a terrible and harmful way to look at them. It's so oversimplified as to be meaningless. In some areas, we might need more regulations. In others, we might need less. Saying we don't need more regulations is like saying we don't need more laws.
Realize that the category of "regulations" includes everything from how much ammonium nitrate you can store in one place to food safety to housing codes to banking regulations to environmental protection. They're all very different. To discover whether a single regulation is necessary, you have to evaluate in a careful cost-benefit analysis, researching both the good and the bad that results from it.
That sounds very boring and time-consuming, of course, but there are no shortcuts here. Slashing those big bad "regulations" as if they're all just one big thing invariably means taken a hatchet to a lot of important rules. You can't really know whether we need more or fewer regulations until you find out exactly what positives and negatives result from each one.
Obama has launched a program to do exactly this. He took feedback from ordinary folk and found hundreds of regulations that were outdated and wrong. His favorite example was that milk was being regulated as if it were a toxic substance. This is the right approach: Don't go in assuming we need more or fewer regulations, because you don't really know. Instead, find individual ones that don't make sense and get rid of them -- meanwhile, enact ones in banking and health care that will help people and prevent future disasters. It's a constant process of pruning and building, always with an eye towards making things better, just like all lawmaking is.
Granted, regulations are a unique kind of law. They're not like criminal laws, which come into play after you do something wrong. Instead they prevent you from accidentally doing something wrong. They're a lot more like traffic laws.
Regulations are basically just traffic laws for businesses. Each regulation is like a stop sign. You might find an individual stop sign that doesn't help anything and campaign to get it removed. Or you might find an intersection that needs a stop sign. But saying that we should just slash the number of stop signs, without looking at the validity of each one, is going to result in the loss of a lot of lives.
Take an axe indiscriminately to either traffic laws or regulations and we might move around faster, sure. But we'd also have a lot more accidents. That will likely make the faster speed not worth the cost.
The Great Recession is a great example. Lots of rules for the financial industry have been cut since the Reagan years. It resulted in a few temporary gains here and there, almost entirely for the very rich. Eventually we ended up with a massive, lawless "shadow banking system" of unregulated investments like credit default swaps and collatoralized debt obligations. When this system collapsed because of the drop in house prices, it took the world's finances with it. The benefits of all those cut regulations (not to mention the many that weren't passed because we weren't keeping up) turned out to not be worth the cost. This oversimplified anti-regulation attitude thus caused terrible suffering.
Regulations as a whole get a bad name because we don't realize what they're preventing. We forget about the problems that existed before the regulations came into play and we only see the down side, of having to fill out more paperwork or wait for government approval or whatever else. It's just too easy to forget the terrible tragedies of the past and then take for granted that such tragedies can't happen.
Another example is in order. Before food safety regulations, people died by the tens of thousands every year from tainted food. There was a recent local story about a dairy farmer selling unpasteurized milk. He was spouting the typical "Get the government out of my business" crap about why he should be allowed to do this. Then a lot of his customers got violently ill.
This is why we have regulations. If they solve problems, then many years later, people forget the problems existed. Then they think we don't need the rules. Sometimes they might be right. More often, they're wrong. To find out which is which, it takes a lot of careful work, and some amount of experimentation. It does not take simple-minded presumptions about needing more or fewer regulations.
This came up recently when I read a blog post by Bill Maher, who noted that the horrible fertilizer explosion in West, Texas, is a direct result of a flagrant disregard for regulations. To quote Maher's blog:
"And now it turns out that the plant was storing 1,350 times the ammonium nitrate that would normally trigger government oversight. When a plant stores 400 pounds of the stuff, they need to let the DHS know. This place was storing 270 tons." http://www.real-time-with-bill-maher-blog.com/real-time-with-bill-maher-blog/2013/4/29/culture-matters-1.html
Maher is right about this, but somehow he later concludes that "We don't need more regulations in the wake of Waco. I'm not even sure we need more enforcement. We need a culture that respects our laws – even the ones written by Democrats."
Set aside the starry-eyed notion that we can just somehow magically "change the culture" to make people obey rules, without actually enforcing them. Such blanket statements about regulations, as if they're all a single monolith, is a terrible and harmful way to look at them. It's so oversimplified as to be meaningless. In some areas, we might need more regulations. In others, we might need less. Saying we don't need more regulations is like saying we don't need more laws.
Realize that the category of "regulations" includes everything from how much ammonium nitrate you can store in one place to food safety to housing codes to banking regulations to environmental protection. They're all very different. To discover whether a single regulation is necessary, you have to evaluate in a careful cost-benefit analysis, researching both the good and the bad that results from it.
That sounds very boring and time-consuming, of course, but there are no shortcuts here. Slashing those big bad "regulations" as if they're all just one big thing invariably means taken a hatchet to a lot of important rules. You can't really know whether we need more or fewer regulations until you find out exactly what positives and negatives result from each one.
Obama has launched a program to do exactly this. He took feedback from ordinary folk and found hundreds of regulations that were outdated and wrong. His favorite example was that milk was being regulated as if it were a toxic substance. This is the right approach: Don't go in assuming we need more or fewer regulations, because you don't really know. Instead, find individual ones that don't make sense and get rid of them -- meanwhile, enact ones in banking and health care that will help people and prevent future disasters. It's a constant process of pruning and building, always with an eye towards making things better, just like all lawmaking is.
Granted, regulations are a unique kind of law. They're not like criminal laws, which come into play after you do something wrong. Instead they prevent you from accidentally doing something wrong. They're a lot more like traffic laws.
Regulations are basically just traffic laws for businesses. Each regulation is like a stop sign. You might find an individual stop sign that doesn't help anything and campaign to get it removed. Or you might find an intersection that needs a stop sign. But saying that we should just slash the number of stop signs, without looking at the validity of each one, is going to result in the loss of a lot of lives.
Take an axe indiscriminately to either traffic laws or regulations and we might move around faster, sure. But we'd also have a lot more accidents. That will likely make the faster speed not worth the cost.
The Great Recession is a great example. Lots of rules for the financial industry have been cut since the Reagan years. It resulted in a few temporary gains here and there, almost entirely for the very rich. Eventually we ended up with a massive, lawless "shadow banking system" of unregulated investments like credit default swaps and collatoralized debt obligations. When this system collapsed because of the drop in house prices, it took the world's finances with it. The benefits of all those cut regulations (not to mention the many that weren't passed because we weren't keeping up) turned out to not be worth the cost. This oversimplified anti-regulation attitude thus caused terrible suffering.
Regulations as a whole get a bad name because we don't realize what they're preventing. We forget about the problems that existed before the regulations came into play and we only see the down side, of having to fill out more paperwork or wait for government approval or whatever else. It's just too easy to forget the terrible tragedies of the past and then take for granted that such tragedies can't happen.
Another example is in order. Before food safety regulations, people died by the tens of thousands every year from tainted food. There was a recent local story about a dairy farmer selling unpasteurized milk. He was spouting the typical "Get the government out of my business" crap about why he should be allowed to do this. Then a lot of his customers got violently ill.
This is why we have regulations. If they solve problems, then many years later, people forget the problems existed. Then they think we don't need the rules. Sometimes they might be right. More often, they're wrong. To find out which is which, it takes a lot of careful work, and some amount of experimentation. It does not take simple-minded presumptions about needing more or fewer regulations.
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