Etta James

One of the hardest things to do as a musician (and maybe this is true of life in general, now that I think of it,) is to maintain a story at a slow tempo. In this live version of At Last, Etta James succeeds  in a way that keeps you on the edge of your chair.

A decade earlier she was captured live at Montreux with Damn Your Eyes

I hope I have such passion when I'm past 70.

RIP Etta James.

American Exceptionalism?

In a provocative article, Charles Murray, writing in the New Criterion, makes the argument that the increasingly divided society of today's America threatens the definition of American exceptionalism.  
What is American exceptionalism? 

Historically, Americans have been seen as different, even peculiar, to people around the world.1 I am thinking of qualities such as American industriousness—not just hard work, but the way that Americans have treated their work and their efforts to get ahead in life as a central expression of who they are. There is American neighborliness. Many cultures have traditions of generous hospitality to guests, but widespread voluntary mutual assistance among unrelated people who happen to live alongside each other has been rare. In the United States, it has been ubiquitous. I am thinking also of qualities such as American optimism, present even when there doesn’t seem to be any good reason for it; our striking lack of class envy; the assumption by most Americans that they are in control of their own destinies; and our famous naïveté in assuming the best of a random person that we come across. Finally, there is the most lovable of exceptional American qualities: our tradition of insisting that we are part of the middle class, even if we aren’t, and of interacting with our fellow citizens as if we were all middle class.

This last sentence is particularly important, and one that had been remarked upon from the earliest days of the Republic. Murray explains: 

Tocqueville, when explaining why the American system ensured that a despot could never successfully divide Americans against each other, wrote that “local freedom . . . perpetually brings men together, and forces them to help one another, in spite of the propensities which sever them. In the United States, the more opulent citizens take great care not to stand aloof from the people. On the contrary, they constantly keep on easy terms with the lower classes: they listen to them, they speak to them every day.”

The problem, however, is that over the past half century, people have grown increasingly isolated from each other - and no longer understand each other. The end result - a class-based society that is not so different from other "complex" societies.

When people are making decisions that affect the lives of many other people, the cultural isolation that has grown up around America’s new upper class can be disastrous. It is not a problem if truck drivers cannot empathize with the priorities of Yale law professors. It is a problem if Yale law professors, or producers of the nightly news, or CEOs of great corporations, or the President’s advisors, cannot empathize with the priorities of truck drivers.

The whole article is a must read.

Demystifying the Koran

Really interesting take from the Economist:

http://www.economist.com/node/21542162?fsrc=scn/tw/te/ar/inthebeginning

Publishing

An excellent article on self-publishing in the WSJ. Comments are also valuable.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204770404577082303350815824.html#articleTabs%3Darticle

This reminds me a bit of the classical music/art world c. 1900. The French Academy dismissed those who turned the rules of composition upside down, preferring instead to reward those who believed in small, incremental change. It is not the names of Louis Leroy or Jules Massenet that we remember today, but those of Claude Monet and Claude Debussy.

Electronic media is turning the insular paper world on its head. Bravo to those who are leading the way.

McDonald's

Anyone else remember when the golden arches declared proudly "Over 10 Million Served?" - and how fast that slogan changed?
Today, the number of countries that don't have the ubiquitous fast-food restaurant can be counted in less than 15 seconds.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/palx/4761347793/lightbox/

Making money in the Capital

One of the big conversations at the Christmas dinner table this year was the discussion of the big pull of the 20something crowd to DC. Why? When we were in college, my sister-in-law (D) and I (I) both agreed, those who went into politics did so with altruistic motives: somewhere there was a desire to change things - to help those in poverty, to alleviate world suffering, to reduce the arms trade. Cynicism came after - when the sordid world of power and deal making exposed itself only to those who played the game.
Now, some 25 years later, all pretext has been dropped, and the name of the game is money. http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/growing-wealth-widens-distance-between-lawmakers-and-constituents/2011/12/05/gIQAR7D6IP_story.html?hpid=z2

If the electorate could understand that government does not create jobs, and is, in fact, a hinderance to those who do, there might be a chance that career politicians might cease to exist. Until then, I fear that we are doomed to a re-creation of the court at Versailles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_nobility

The Dictator is Dead

Gadhaffi is dead, and the Libyan people are dancing in the streets. Initial commentary is that the world is much better off - and I hope this to be true. No people deserve to live in the horrible conditions that the Libyans were forced to live under for the last 40 years. (Lockerbie and the AIDS trials of the Bulgarian nurses were but small glimpses of the horror that the population had to live with.) But why am I so strongly reminded of Ceausecu and Romania? Is it because Western nations played with the dictator until his acts became so intolerable that he was dropped? Is it just because both dictators were executed in cold blood?
So many stories will remain unknown. I hope the Libyans come out the other side in better shape than the Roumanians did.