True indeed

I've always found a lot to enjoy in the music of the Modern Jazz Quartet. Could say, Milt Jackson especially, but they all count as superstars. They obviously have a lot of comfort with each other as well. 

Maybe I could take fashion tips from them as well. Talk about timeless style.

An eerie sight

Take a look at the photograph illustrating this article about the human rights campaign. See anything that all participants have in common? It might be subtle, but you'll find it.

Joe Biden needs some people to still be religiously masking up in the Summer of '23 in much the same way that George W. Bush needed some to believe that Saddam Hussein gave the order for 9/11. In both cases they have just as much plausible deniability as they need, which isn't much.

Anyway, the activist class is chock full of this kind of person. Which is why a declaration of emergency can be had so cheaply. If enough people in the right conference rooms and Zoom meetings want it, they'll find a reason why they need it.

Needled

The ongoing kerfuffle regarding Robert Kennedy Jr., Joe Rogan, and Peter Hotez MD is bizarre and ridiculous, but telling. In brief, Hotez castigated Rogan for interviewing Kennedy about COVID vaccines, and vaccines in general. The expectation, I  guess, is that Rogan either not talk to a major party Presidential candidate or avoid his signature issue. Rogan made hay by inviting Hotez onto his show to debate RFK Jr. The doc firmly rejected this option. 

The media has overwhelmingly taken Hotez's side on this, on the basis that scientists are serious people and shouldn't have to debate randos. This is not confidence. Almost everyone tacitly seems to know that Hotez is an empty lab coat. But the weak link in a chain is still part of the chain. If that link breaks, the chain is broken. So stopping this debate is a way to fend off future debates.

Van Dine plans, Christie laughs

The time between the two world wars (uh, so far) is remembered as the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. While there had been some popular practitioners such as Doyle and Chesterton before, now countless authors rushed into the field. Not surprisingly some successful exemplars had opinions on the best way to go about it.

Ronald Knox's 10 Commandments of Detective Fiction comprise a famous example. They've mostly stood the test of time, and are only deliberately broken by authors trying to deconstruct the genre. Interesting that he forbids supernatural explanations when he was a Catholic priest, but not too surprising when you think about it. Murderers are neither God nor the Devil. Modern readers may look askance on the "no Chinaman" rule, but that has to be taken in context. The interbellum era was also the Golden Age of the yellow peril villain, Fu Manchu being the best remembered. So Knox wasn't being racist or―in the Kendian buzzword―anti-racist. He was just warning against lazy writing.

Then there are SS Van Dine's Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories. Van Dine's list overlaps with Knox's at some points, a fact of which I'm sure they were both aware. Some of his additions are good, such as forbidding the "butler did it" twist and accident/suicide as a solution, which has generally been frown on over the years. Other items, such as love stories and detective teams, were already in popular use and he was just saying he didn't like them, Old Man Yells At Cloud-style. Notably his last item is just a list of transgressions, most of them appearing in Sherlock Holmes stories. Think Doyle cared?

14

Am now reading A Little Book of Form by Robert Hass. Hass used to be Poet Laureate of the United States, a prestigious office albeit one whose term only lasts for a year. Based on class lectures he gave, it's idiosyncratic but illuminating, highlighting things that poets used to be expected to know but have grown out of fashion in the past few decades.

Sonnets, for one. There was a time not too long ago when anyone starting on a career as a poet could be expected to struggle with and master the sonnet form, even if they never pursued it again in their life. Now sonneteering is like making wooden barrels by hand. That may be a loss on our part. 

Anyway, here's one collected in the book, written by Charlotte Smith. She was an influence on many Romantic poets, coming even a little before William Blake.

"Written Near a Port on a Darkening Evening" (1797)

Huge vapors brood above the clifted shire, 

Night on the Ocean settles, dark and mute,

Save where is heard the repercussive roar

Of drowsy billows, on the rugged foot

Of rocks remote; or still more distant tone

Of seamen in the anchored bark that tell

The watch relieved; or one deep voice alone 

Singing the hour and bidding "Strike the bell."

All is black shadow, but the lucid line

Marked by the light surf on the level sand, 

Or where afar the ship-lights faintly shine

Like wandering fairy fires, that oft on land

Mislead the Pilgrim―such the dubious ray

That wavering reason lends, in life's long darkling way

why just why

You have to wonder what the ACLU was thinking in this case. Who did they think they were talking to?

Opposing the death penalty for everyone in all cases is an honorable position. It's one that the ACLU has advocated basically forever. The biggest advantage is that you don't have to get bogged down in questions of "Why that guy?"

So yes, if you say that Duane Owens shouldn't have been put to death in spite of his truly repugnant crimes, that there's no earthly authority prepared to make that call, you'll get some disagreement. But it's an argument your representatives can take up without embarrassment.

Insisting that the state should have made him look pretty* in his final days , well, that's something else again.

*Right, like that was going to happen.

✪

 

It's a memorable song. A tourist walking down Hollywood Boulevard, eulogizing these beloved stars with a smile on his face and a tear in his eye.

Which makes it a little weird when you remember that in the early 70s when the song was written, half these people were still alive. I mean, unless Ray and Dave can motivate themselves to get out there again, I think it's safe to say that Mickey Rooney outlived the Kinks.

So I think Ray Davies is writing in character here. What sort of character is open to question, but there's at least another level here.

Grab a little bite

Here's something I found through Dark Roasted Blend, which I'm not sure is an active site anymore but at least hasn't been taken down. It's miniature food, like for example four tacos that can fit on a quarter. Someone named Jessica Hlavac is responsible for this. I know pretty much nothing about her. Another site says that the foods aren't edible, but I have to credit Hlavac with getting the textures of foods down pat. 

Coming to a dollhouse near you? Maybe.

Profiles in courage

At this point what is left to say about the Elizabeth Gilbert thing? Maybe she'll "reconsider" and publish her Siberia book after all, and the whole affair will turn out to be savvy but cynical marketing on the basis of "no such thing as bad publicity." Maybe there never was any book and pulling it is just cheap clout-chasing. But the signs overwhelmingly point to garden variety cravenness. 

Gilbert is getting a dose of well-deserved criticism, but it's worth unpacking the campaign against the book: the hostile comments on Goodreads and the emails she says she got from pro-Ukrainian readers. "Being reminded that Russians exist is hurtful to me" is crybullying on a borderline genocidal level, and it fits a pattern. This and previous cancellation efforts at the very least complicate the narrative of Ukraine being the side of heroes, although even most of Gilbert's critics on the free speech side won't acknowledge it.

And if the problems with that sentiment aren't self-evident in the West that's partly because blanket condemnations of certain groups and individuals has become (again) more common, along with unquestioned valorization of others. Even among supposedly intelligent adults. We live in an age that deeply wants to moralize, but no longer subscribes to any ethic with which we can moralize. Not on any consistent basis.

Another one on the pile

Apple's big new product is, I guess, Apple Vision Pro. Which I guess is some kind of AR/VR device with which you can interface with and control...the usual. Granted, looking like a pair of ski goggles makes it sleeker than the VR headset I saw when I was in college, quite some time ago. And I'm sure a few gamers will be interested. But, well, meh.

But this is the thing. Apple is going hard on advertising on YouTube. They seem to put an ad for it on every other video. And the ad in over nine minutes! Whoever watches the whole thing without skipping is already sold, I assure you.

Tough guys in a tough world

Just saw the movie Rogue Cop, made in 1954 by Roy Rowland. While the title may promise a vigilante-style cop going off the books to bring down the bad guys, that's not initially what it's about. The title character Sgt. Chris Kelvaney is in the pocket of a powerful mobster. His younger brother Eddie is an honest cop and brings in a lowlife killer in said mobster's organization. The mobster and his partner lean on Kelvaney to lean on his brother to tank the case, but then they lose patience and the brother loses his life. That's when Kelvaney gets around to going off the books etc. 

This movie doesn't sugarcoat anything. The fights genuinely look like people are getting hurt and many situations seem like they could boil over into murder. Some do.

In the lead, Robert Taylor brings a dark charisma to a rather dislikable character. Janet Leigh does okay as the dumb honest brother's fiancée, although she gets saddled with a number of "we don't trust the audience" speeches. The real revelation is Anne Francis, playing the young girlfriend of gangster George Raft. The character is quite similar to Gloria Grahame's from The Big Heat, but Francis brings her own twist to it. And man, can she put it away!

There are some fun secondary characters too. Character actor Peter Brocco is amusingly smug as the felon who starts the whole mess. There's a little old lady who runs a newsstand and is also an underworld information broker, played by Olive Carey. And Alan Hale, Jr. plays a mob strongarm years before sailing away to Gilligan's Island.

Overall it held my attention pretty well.

But y'all aren't ready for that conversation

An interview just appeared with Richard Dawkins on the question of whether the New Atheism was a mistake. For his part Dawkins demonstrates a good deal of intellectual integrity, but it seems like he can't afford to examine the question too clearly. Because the answer is that of course it was. As should be obvious by now. 

By "the New Atheism" I don't mean the belief that the preponderance of evidence points to the nonexistence of God. That's just atheism. New Atheism takes it several steps further and treats the nonexistence of God, the afterlife, and the like as settled questions. The merest hint of theism has to be banished. And somewhere between the end of last century and the first few years of this one, they won. In institutionalized science and the bulk of the humanities, you have to reduce your philosophy to pure materialism to be taken seriously.

This has had two dire effects. First of all it's infected rationalists with the arrogance of the crusader. Start out with the idea that for the good of humanity religious belief must be stamped out and both your actions and perceptions will be warped. 

It also gives the scientifically-minded, or those who just think they are, license to dismiss certain ideas out of hand. The ultimate result has been much of the scientific community starting from preferred conclusions and working backward, or not working at all. The last three years have seen a lot of this. 

So yes, it was a mistake. And it will be reckoned with, perhaps corrected, elsewhere.

Another side of...

 

First saw this the other night. It's an amethyst-throated sunangel, which is a South American species of hummingbird. Now hummingbirds, being what they are, are difficult to imagine sleeping. Or at least they were. Now I know that they look and sound pretty much exactly like <i>Sesame Street</i> Muppets when they sleep.

Uneasy lies the head

Watching the first season of The Wire, there are a number of characters to sympathize with on both sides of the law. But with Cedric Daniels, the lieutenant in charge of the Narcotics unit and the Barksdale detail, you just kind of have to shake your head, maybe give the occasional rueful chuckle. It's a  demanding assignment to begin with, and likely to fail. It would be nice if McNulty, who's overly impulsive but at least a good detective on balance, were his biggest problem in-house. But he's also got a trio of lunkheads who go down to the projects in the wee hours just to swing their dicks. As a result, one kid they assaulted winds up losing an eye. Not something you want to happen on your watch.

At least he has a nice house. I have a feeling his wife was in a good profession before she went into politics.

Street hassle

One of the things that make the hullabaloo over "disinformation" hard to take is the cloying irony of it. To take this constant drumbeat seriously you have to believe that the government and media want us to be well-informed. Well, if they do, they have a funny way of showing it. 

The alleged Citibike Karen incident should have been a small example, but it turned into a big one because that's the way these things go. Bad enough that anytime someone in New York farts the rest of us have to smell it but do the talking heads (lowercase) have to get it wrong every time? In any case there was never any evidence for the wild accusations that she was the villain of the story, yet that's how she was depicted right away. Days after her lawyer produced the receipt some were still at it. 

Media sources that Reilly notes here like The Grio and The Root are, uh, what they are. But there are others at play here too. If you pay attention to leftward media you may have noticed that *sigh* cishet white men and women in these spaces are always competing for who will get the most Uplift the Marginalized points, like some woke version of The Lockhorns. So something like this will bring all the good white men out, and they might not be very concerned if what they're saying is, to use a quaint word, true.