I first wrote here about my contempt for most Harley Davidson riders in August of `06 in a piece I called “No, I don’t ride a Harley.” I don’t like them any more now than I did then, and one of the things I hate is their over-the-top patriotic displays.
Here’s an excerpt from a piece by Garrison Keillor:
May 28, 2008 “Three-hundred thousand bikers spent Memorial Day weekend roaring around Washington in tribute to our war dead, and I stood on Constitution Avenue Sunday afternoon watching a river of them go by, waiting for a gap in the procession so I could cross over to the Mall and look at pictures. The street had been closed off for them and they motored on by, some flying the Stars and Stripes and the black MIA-POW flag, honking, revving their engines, an endless celebration of internal combustion.
“A patriotic bike rally is sort of like a patriotic toilet-papering or patriotic graffiti; the patriotism somehow gets lost in the sheer irritation of the thing. Somehow a person associates Memorial Day with long moments of silence when you summon up mental images of men huddled together on LSTs and pilots revving up B-24s and infantrymen crouched behind piles of rubble steeling themselves for the next push.
“You don't quite see the connection between that and these fat men with ponytails on Harleys. After hearing a few thousand bikes go by, you think maybe we could airlift these gentlemen to Baghdad to show their support of the troops in a more tangible way. It took 20 minutes until a gap appeared and then a mob of us pedestrians flooded across the street and the parade of bikes had to stop for us, and on we went to show our patriotism by looking at exhibits at the Smithsonian or, in my case, hiking around the National Gallery, which, after you've watched a few thousand Harleys pass, seems like an outpost of civilization. . . .
“No wonder the Current Occupant welcomed them with open arms at the White House, put on a black leather vest, and gave a manly speech about how he'd just "choppered in" and saw the horde "cranking up their machines" and he thanked them for being so patriotic. They are his kind of guys, full of bluster, giving off noxious fumes, and when they leave town, nobody misses them.”
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Dissertation abstracts
Almost anyone who has ever written a dissertation knows what happens after those years of work are finally over. It gets filed in the library stacks of the granting institution and no one will ever read it again. I finished mine sixteen years ago.
So I was astonished and not a little flattered today to receive this email. I've checked it out, and Professor Kuykendall is legit.
I feel rather like I've been complimented on a sweater and my response is "Oh, this old thing?" But still, you have to love it.
***
Dear Ross: I am reading your dissertation for something I am writing about votes of no confidence. I think your dissertation is very well written and provides a rich set of case studies. It's a great resource on a number of levels.
I would love to chat with you about the research issues you thought about in writing the piece. Perhaps you have put all that behind you, but if you have some interest in good research and in advancing consideration of the topic you wrote about, perhaps you could take some time for a chat.
I hope we can talk at some point.
Sincerely,
Mae Kuykendall
Professor of Law
Michigan State University College of Law
463 Law College BuildingEast Lansing, MI 48824-1300
***
Well, of course the answer is yes. We have a phone date for next Friday. I found my dissertation in the basement, and now I get to read it again after all these years.
So I was astonished and not a little flattered today to receive this email. I've checked it out, and Professor Kuykendall is legit.
I feel rather like I've been complimented on a sweater and my response is "Oh, this old thing?" But still, you have to love it.
***
Dear Ross: I am reading your dissertation for something I am writing about votes of no confidence. I think your dissertation is very well written and provides a rich set of case studies. It's a great resource on a number of levels.
I would love to chat with you about the research issues you thought about in writing the piece. Perhaps you have put all that behind you, but if you have some interest in good research and in advancing consideration of the topic you wrote about, perhaps you could take some time for a chat.
I hope we can talk at some point.
Sincerely,
Mae Kuykendall
Professor of Law
Michigan State University College of Law
463 Law College BuildingEast Lansing, MI 48824-1300
***
Well, of course the answer is yes. We have a phone date for next Friday. I found my dissertation in the basement, and now I get to read it again after all these years.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
More overstimulated
For me, Pandora continues to be the best way to get my music, and it keeps getting better. Pandora is an internet music service located at www.pandora.com. It’s been around a few years. It's free.
You go there, set up an account and log in, then type in the name of a group or a song. It asks you a question or two, then sets up a station. Right now I’m listening to my station based on Todd Hildreth, who’s a piano player and teacher I met in an internet group. I added Michael Brecker and John Scofield to expand the range a little and Pandora starts streaming songs by these artists and other similar ones. If I like a song I can click a thumbs up and it plays more songs like that. If I don’t like a song, I click thumbs down and it doesn’t play that song any more.
In other words, the station learns. Over time, it gets closer and closer to music I’m going to like. There’s a danger that it could over-stimulate the pleasure centers of my brain.
I’ve added several other stations representing different styles of music I like. I can also listen to shared stations other people have set up. You can listen to my stations, but at any given time, we’re actually listening to different songs.
Wow.
The range of available music is astonishing. My Luciana Souza station has introduced me to dozens of musicians from a variety of Latin American coutries and styles.
Even more astonishing is that every song is individually listened to by Pandora people and “hand coded,” so to speak, in dozens of criteria. I have no idea how they accomplish this. Pandora is produced by The Music Genome Project. Again, I have no idea.
Pandora has added new features lately that make it even better. Click here, it says, to go to a biography of this artist. Click there to go to album information, including side men and a song list. Click in that place if you want to buy the CD from Amazon or download from iTunes.
They’ve also added classical music, though I haven’t tried that so can’t say anything about its quality.
Downside? I miss a good announcer, but then there are very few good announcers. If you find a good late-night jazz DJ, it’s like you’re the two hippest guys on the planet and this is your time together. Pandora is like listening to a computer. It’s a very hip computer, but still.
I’ve also stopped listening to my public radio station except for the news sometimes. I really should send them a check anyway.
You go there, set up an account and log in, then type in the name of a group or a song. It asks you a question or two, then sets up a station. Right now I’m listening to my station based on Todd Hildreth, who’s a piano player and teacher I met in an internet group. I added Michael Brecker and John Scofield to expand the range a little and Pandora starts streaming songs by these artists and other similar ones. If I like a song I can click a thumbs up and it plays more songs like that. If I don’t like a song, I click thumbs down and it doesn’t play that song any more.
In other words, the station learns. Over time, it gets closer and closer to music I’m going to like. There’s a danger that it could over-stimulate the pleasure centers of my brain.
I’ve added several other stations representing different styles of music I like. I can also listen to shared stations other people have set up. You can listen to my stations, but at any given time, we’re actually listening to different songs.
Wow.
The range of available music is astonishing. My Luciana Souza station has introduced me to dozens of musicians from a variety of Latin American coutries and styles.
Even more astonishing is that every song is individually listened to by Pandora people and “hand coded,” so to speak, in dozens of criteria. I have no idea how they accomplish this. Pandora is produced by The Music Genome Project. Again, I have no idea.
Pandora has added new features lately that make it even better. Click here, it says, to go to a biography of this artist. Click there to go to album information, including side men and a song list. Click in that place if you want to buy the CD from Amazon or download from iTunes.
They’ve also added classical music, though I haven’t tried that so can’t say anything about its quality.
Downside? I miss a good announcer, but then there are very few good announcers. If you find a good late-night jazz DJ, it’s like you’re the two hippest guys on the planet and this is your time together. Pandora is like listening to a computer. It’s a very hip computer, but still.
I’ve also stopped listening to my public radio station except for the news sometimes. I really should send them a check anyway.
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Over stimulated
Any day now, Mary and I should be getting our economic stimulus check from the federal government. We’re expecting $1,200, and the patriotic thing to do with this money is go out and buy something to stimulate the economy. For $1,200, we could buy a good laptop, for example, and even one made in America.
But after only a little discussion, we’ve decided to use our money to buy food. Actually, half of it already went to buy a new freezer. When the check gets here, we’ll use the other half to buy food to put in the freezer.
Mmmmm, ice cream.
Buying and storing food now seems to be the best investment by far for families of moderate income. My bank is currently offering 2.44 percent on a CD. It’s hard to get a handle on actual price increases for food, but take one example: rice. The Oregonian reported that the one-year increase in the cost of rice is 300 percent. “What started with a shortage in Thailand and a typhoon in Bangladesh is now putting tremendous pressure on domestically produced rice,” according to one expert. Stores around the West are limiting purchases; Costco, for example, will only sell you one twenty-pound bag, and Costco is still running out. Asian restaurants in Portland report having to go to several suppliers every day to buy enough rice to keep their doors open.
There are food riots in many parts of Africa, and all of this before the typhoon took out the rice crop of Myanmar/Burma last week. But that’s over there.
Back at home, it isn’t just rice that is going up dramatically every month. I figure if we can buy one year ahead on food and other supplies, we’ll be saving, what, twenty percent, thirty percent? Even more?
Around here, lots of farm families and Mormons have always believed in a full pantry and a one-year supply of food. I used to think that was very old-fashioned. Now I think it’s a good investment. It might be more than that.
We did buy an American freezer, though: GE.
But after only a little discussion, we’ve decided to use our money to buy food. Actually, half of it already went to buy a new freezer. When the check gets here, we’ll use the other half to buy food to put in the freezer.
Mmmmm, ice cream.
Buying and storing food now seems to be the best investment by far for families of moderate income. My bank is currently offering 2.44 percent on a CD. It’s hard to get a handle on actual price increases for food, but take one example: rice. The Oregonian reported that the one-year increase in the cost of rice is 300 percent. “What started with a shortage in Thailand and a typhoon in Bangladesh is now putting tremendous pressure on domestically produced rice,” according to one expert. Stores around the West are limiting purchases; Costco, for example, will only sell you one twenty-pound bag, and Costco is still running out. Asian restaurants in Portland report having to go to several suppliers every day to buy enough rice to keep their doors open.
There are food riots in many parts of Africa, and all of this before the typhoon took out the rice crop of Myanmar/Burma last week. But that’s over there.
Back at home, it isn’t just rice that is going up dramatically every month. I figure if we can buy one year ahead on food and other supplies, we’ll be saving, what, twenty percent, thirty percent? Even more?
Around here, lots of farm families and Mormons have always believed in a full pantry and a one-year supply of food. I used to think that was very old-fashioned. Now I think it’s a good investment. It might be more than that.
We did buy an American freezer, though: GE.
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