Five (Easy) Pieces part 3

John Cage: Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano

These pieces for "prepared piano" contrast starkly with his one work for "unprepared piano," in which the piano's just sitting there peacefully in a room until the performer lunges in from behind and dropkicks it. People who have only a casual acquaintance with John Cage couldn't really be blamed for believing that last sentence. Prepared piano refers augmenting, dampening, or otherwise messing with the strings inside to produce different timbres and attacks. I think the best un-theoretical way to describe it is that Cage builds his own alternate piano universe, possessing a rare and strange cosmos of sounds, melody, harmony, and rhythm. Not at all to be listened to on the regular, but not to be missed...one of those records that is sometimes the only thing. I usually put it on when I need to hear something but I can't stand the thought of all the emotional and theoretical baggage that comes with, say, TV on the Radio or Orchestra Baobab. I like (but don't own) this version. I do own this version, also very satisfying. Okay, "satisfying" might not be the word. What's that thing where after you experience something you feel kind of hollow and young and slightly hopeless? It's like that. People forget that music (and art) don't always have to make you feel good, or better, or sad, or guilty. That's like always drinking water, milk, or soda. There's more stuff out there to experience, some of it pretty complex.

ribot = badass

New York's remarkable experimental music venue, Tonic, closed its doors on Friday. Just the most recent in a long, sad list of music venues that don't book Fall Out Boy or charge $50/ticket to close due to skyrocketing rent. Everyone's not going to go to Avery Fisher to hear exciting new performers, and every exciting new performer isn't going to play there. So when the Tonics and CBGBs of the world get squeezed out by condo towers, and when the music itself is improvised/collaborated on/composed specifically for events at the venue, that music quite literally disappears.

Marc Ribot kept playing till the cops shut the place down, and got arrested because he is, in addition to being a truly gifted and bizarre guitarist, a straight badass motherfucker.

Hmm? What's that? What did I do for the world of music today?

Oh. While I was riding the BART to work, I composed a song called "Get Me A Donut," which, as should be patently obvious, has no verses.

Five (Easy) Pieces part 2

(Sorry for the retroactive title edit -- took me a while to land on the correct title)

Osvaldo Golijov -- Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind: There's like an unwritten rule for composers that states: If you're going to write a clarinet quintet, you have to write it such that any prospective reviewer cannot avoid using the word "lyrical." So this piece, for clarinet and string quartet, fits the mold pretty well. It's actually for B-flat, A, C, and Bass Clarinet with string quartet, so there's all kinds of weeping, keening, shrieking, and squawking from the different sizes of black wooden tube. It makes a great fit for the subject matter, a meditation on the writings and the mystical posture of Isaac the Blind, a 12th-century French Kabbalist rabbi who was, among other things, blind and batshit insane. The piece draws on Jewish prayer melodies, klezmer tunes, and cantorial vocal style. It completely mesmerizes, even on recording. Kronos Quartet recorded it with my idol David Krakauer, and the St. Lawrence String Quartet also recorded it with Todd Palmer -- also a fantastic recording.

Five (Easy) Pieces

aka "Five Pieces of New Music You Might Actually Like and Listen To Voluntarily."

Modern music doesn't suck. Contemporary composers are actually trying very hard to connect with an audience that has in large part abandoned the "classical" arena for popular forms. In some cases, all that's required is the same flexibility and open ears you need to appreciate TV on the Radio or Mogwai or whoever. You get my point, maybe. In that spirit, here goes:

Frederick Rzewski--Coming Together/Attica: These two pieces function together as Rzewski's commentary on Attica prison riots and their aftermath. I first heard Coming Together in high school, and it knocked me out of my chair. Rzewski sets an excerpt from a letter by Attica prisoner Sam Melville, who died during the riots. The poetic force comes mainly from Rzewski's "squaring" process, which gradually aggregates the text sentence by sentence, starting from the beginning, culminating with the full text, then "washing away" the words sentence by sentence from the start. The internal, circular connections between the different sentiments, and the ways that different ideas and emotions ground various sections of the piece, make it anything but repetitive. Attica, meanwhile, offers the other side of the coin, with a single sentence from released inmate Richard X Clark. When asked how it felt to put Attica behind him, he simply said "Attica is in front of me." Surprisingly, Rzewski's sets this fairly bleak pronouncement against a surging, cautiously hopeful melodic sequence that sort of devastates with its beauty and ultimate lack of hope. That's not a very lucid description. Here's an excellent early recording of both pieces, with some other stuff as well. Here's the Eighth Blackbird take on Coming Together.

Popularity Contest (vol. 2)

Just to keep us all up to date, the Association for Dressings and Sauces announced their Dressing of the Year for 2006.

One of the biggest differences between me now and me two years ago is my healthy, growing obsession with cooking and food. This choice, like their last few (not that I'm following...), makes no sense to anyone who's not in the dressing industry. "Asiago Peppercorn...for that delicious, nostalgic taste that brings you back to your college dorm salad bar." No thanks.

Here are my recommendations, based on comparative sampling:

Mendocino Mustard: Camille hates mustard. It's like:
Me: Camille, quick word association, okay? "Karl Rove."
Camille: [no hesitation] Mustard.

But she eats this brand. She actually requests it, all embarassed-like. Mendocino Mustard is the shit. Suggested on a Rudy's hamburger bun with olive oil mayo, green lettuce, a Quorn fake chicken patty, and Morningstar Farms fakon. It gives a powerfully convincing feel of Jack in the Box except with really tasty hot & sweet mustard. My favorite customer quote from their site: "A refrigerator without Mendocino Mustard is not a refrigerator." That's some pretty powerful negation. Like, this mustard challenges refrigerator identity politics. Close second favorite: "I've never wanted to get up in the middle of the night and stick my finger in a mustard jar until now."

Pain is Good Hot Sauce: Despite the name, this hot sauce is actually easier to eat than normal hot sauce due to the richness of flavor. It's hot, but not punishingly hot, and there's this other flavor of sweet and tangy that totally toasts my nibbles.* Also the packaging is recyclable and the design is so killer that it wards off some of the "packaged food pangs" I sometimes get when filling up my cart. They've got a Keebler-esque production team made up of Bubba, Mo, GeeGee, Blondie, Juanita, and Buckwheat (seriously). Original Juan, which produces the Pain is Good line, also makes a line called Old Fart Baked Beans. For a host reasons, both legitimate and not, Camille will never, ever, EVER buy or allow me to buy a product with the word "fart" in its name.

Daddy Sam's BBQ: This website is ridiculous. I apologize for linking to it. The sauce is great though -- it's thoroughly replaced Sweet Baby Ray's as my go-to sauce for tater tots, poached egg sandwiches, and chili.

What about salad dressing, you ask? Fuck store-bought salad dressing. If I need corn syrup, sodium benzoate and dehydrated onions I know where to find them. I dress myself; I dress my salad. Okay, getting kind of sassy. Obviously I didn't get much sleep last night.


*This is slang is so new I only just now noticed the stripes. Trying it out.

that settles...something

It's hard to make heads or tails out of the recent decision by the California Nurses Association to affiliate with the AFL-CIO. It doesn't help that this news isn't getting a whole lot of attention, even though it could have fairly profound consequences for both healthcare organizing and healthcare policy going forward. Not having a cohesive opinion on this, I'll just throw out some stuff to consider.

- The CNA has historically prided itself on its independence, touting its ability to rise above labor politics, bureaucracy, etc. to advocate aggressively on behalf of nurses and patients. The independence also allowed the union to maintain a sometimes-criticized purity in terms of its membership -- only nurses. Ask a PCA or an animal care tech. how nurses view other folks "lower" down the hospital chain and you'll get an idea what I'm talking about. I'm not saying that purity's necessarily good or bad, nor is it unique to the CNA among AFL affiliates, but nurses will have to know that most of their per capita dues are going outside the profession and outside the hospital.

- Will this limit their remarkable political effectiveness? Being subsumed by the bureaucracy (and sluggishness) of AFL-CIO politics could weaken and slow down anyone. If done smartly, the added AFL-CIO resources could make the CNA an even bigger player in both statewide and national politics. We'll see.

- Is this going to help or hurt their national organizing ambitions? I think their independence and RN focus generally helped them organize in other states, but I don't know much about their campaigns. I don't totally see why someone would want to join the AFL-CIO right now, since -- apart from the newly-joined CNA -- very few of the affiliated unions are actually growing or attempting to do so in a strategic manner. In my admittedly biased view, the most dynamic and promising national organizing campaigns are being conducted by Change to Win affiliates: Justice for Janitors, Hotel Workers Rising, the Teamsters Port Campaign, Walmart, etc. And many of the natural allies for those campaigns are represented by (or in bargaining relationships with) SEIU in the healthcare industry. CNA and SIEU may still have some animus left over despite their partnership, but joint organizing within the same federation would certainly solve a lot more raiding problems than getting on opposite sides.

- Is the AFL-CIO's position on healthcare reform enough of a reason to affiliate? I actually think this makes some good sense. The AFL will strengthen its position by adding thousands of union nurses and experienced healthcare advocates, and the CNA will probably get more influence in what happens nationally than they previously had.

Is this getting boring for anyone else? It's boring me. I'm out.

a legitimate improvement to national security

I'm speaking here, of course, about Congress's decision to grant organizing rights to 45,000 airport screeners. Can we all agree that, of the hundreds of millions of working Americans, these people should be on the list of Top Ten Professions Who We Really Need Be Happy On The Job? I'm going to skip over the obvious reasons for this, and I'll refrain from ranting about Mitch McConnell's remarks, because what did we expect?, and same goes for Richard Burr's comically inept and insulting attempt at a soundbite, but I will say this:

Why is it so damn hard for our elected officials to just say "Collective bargaining is good. It improves operations, increases retention, and protects workers." Meanwhile, all the reassurances about what the union won't be able to do (strike, bargain for pay, etc.) don't do anything to make me feel safer. A weak union doesn't protect anyone.

I know this is well-trod ground. I think it's worth a reminder that, as with many jobs, DHS employees make sacrifices and enter into obligations as part of their work. No union has the authority or the power to curtail the TSA from doing what it needs to do in an emergency, and plenty of collective bargaining agreements contain whole sections devoted to those exceptional circumstances. Similarly, all the TSA needs to do to avoid an emergency labor problem is employ enough people and treat them well enough to ensure proper staffing, training, etc.

To my mind, this debate exposes the equally well-trod ground of how inadequate the labor standards are for DHS employees, and the shameful hypocrisy of Congress and the Bush Administration in trying to get national security on the cheap, at the expense of our safety as well as the lives of the people charged with protecting us.

Okay, enough of that.

Tonight's Special: Tolerance, Smothered in Weak Sauce

In the middle of last month, the Anglican Communion primates met in Africa and issued an ultimatum to the Episcopal Church (its U.S. "branch"), asserting that if the Episcopal Church does not discontinue ordaining gay priests and performing gay marriages by September 30th, 2007, it will essentially be barred from "full participation" in the church. This has been brewing for the last four years or so, since the Episcopals began ordaining gay priests and allowing congregations flexibility to perform gay marriages.

Yesterday, in an act of stupendous cowardice, Kathline Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop, told 2 million Episcopalians that they should comply with this ultimatum. Now I recognize that we all regularly find ourselves in situations where we must tolerate the opinions and actions of others with whom we share common ground. In our personal lives, we may be compelled to tolerate or resign ourselves to the political beliefs of our parents, spouse, boss, etc. In my case, I often find that, to preserve solidarity and coalitions, I have to make peace with incremental reformers and latte liberals in order to remain an active participant in Democratic politics. I imagine that many SEIU members, and perhaps UNITE HERE members as well, have resigned themselves to accepting a somewhat watered-down immigration stance in exchange for a real seat at the table on immigration policy.

So I can understand why a progressive Episcopalian would not resign their membership in the Anglican Church, just as I can understand why a pro-choice woman would decide to take communion (not to mention any number of other examples). What I cannot understand, or for that matter stomach, is arguing that we should change our beliefs to retain our membership. One way or another, the Anglican Communion is trying to expunge the institutions and people that hold progressive views from its ranks. They want to kick you out for your beliefs, and your response is not to assert your right to membership and your beliefs, but rather, to buckle under, degrading both in the process.

With apologies to any Episcopalians out there, that frankly disgusts me. To position a "hunger for clarity" and an "intensity" of feeling as detrimental, as dangerous, in a religious context, simply seems disengenuous. After all, the Anglican primates aren't having any trouble with clarity -- they've made their views, and the intensity of their feeling about them, quite clear. I think it demeans Episcopalians to request from them more patience and less passion in the pursuit of Jesus's teachings. And to say that "We are being asked to pause in the journey, not to go back," is so flagrant a lie that I can't imagine how she kept a straight face. Tell that to the gay and lesbian Episcopalians currently in seminary. Tell that to the ones that have already been ordained, and to their congregations. It'd be like if, in 1967, Congress had come back to black Americans and said: "Look, I know you have voting rights now, but what with all the rioting and racial violence, we want to suspend them for a bit until we figure out a solution. It's not a step back for justice, it's just a pause until we can figure out how to live in harmony."

I admit that I feel rather uncomfortable judging the actions of one of the most progressive church leaders in the United States, and a critical ally in the fight for marriage equality and gay rights. And I don't presume to argue that those LGBT concerns should supercede the integrity and existence of the church. But how long can the church continue if it sacrifices its integrity and betrays its members? History would tell us, "A whole hell of a long time," but I prefer to ignore that. Here's hoping the Episcopal Executive Council and the House of Bishops will do the right thing.

Otherwise, they'll have to change their motto to: "The Episcopal Church [Conditionally] Welcomes You...Now with 50% Weaker Sauce!"

Statistics

I'm taking an night class on Statistics at the UC Berkeley Extension, as part of my general "Preparation For A Degree That, For Some Reason, I Believe I Need To Get Before I'll Be Offered The Exact Job I Already Have" program. Below, for your amusement, an excerpt from last week's class. All you need to know in advance is that, when you're dealing with probability, you refer figuratively to whatever population you're picking from as the "box."

Prof. Jurkat: So, the first step is to draw the box with the different results. Then, second, we need to determine the proportion of those results in the box...like so. Does anybody know the third step?

Alek: [raising hand] Step Three...um, make her open the box?

The Middlebury Affair

Lots of press flurries around the decision by the Middlebury College history department to ban Wikipedia citations in history papers. The most sensible response appears to come from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, who simply says: "For God's sake, you're in college. Don't cite the encyclopedia."

Wikivangelists see this as the beginnings of censorship, which just proves that they need to spend more time on Wikipedia learning about what censorship actually is. That said, the Middlebury history department's response to Wikipedia use strikes me as both reactionary and narrow-minded. Don't get me wrong. The preponderance of inaccuracies (which the professors ascribe to Wikipedia, not to the students) is in fact a big deal, and requires an aggressive response. As with, say, large military conflicts, lots of people getting bad information from unreliable sources is a serious problem. But, in banning Wikipedia citations, Middlebury profs missed addressing that problem altogether.

Here are, I think, the putative reasons for the ban: 1) due to convenience, students are relying on a source of information that may expose them to historical inaccuracies, which they in turn embrace because (I guess) they're too dumb or lazy to know better; 2) relying on Wikipedia prevents students from distinguishing the difference between credible and non-credible sources, from developing a critical approach to historical information, etc. -- i.e. they fail to learn proper research methodology.

So what's the solution? Hold students accountable for incorrect information, as you would with any other statement, sourced or not? Actually teach research methodology, so students can independently evaluate sources and the information they provide?

Nope. They just banned Wikipedia citations. They don't, as far as I know, have a public ban on citing The Onion or attributing words spoken by Dana Carvey on SNL to George Bush Sr. But they single out Wikipedia almost, I think, out of spite for the damage they believe it causes to traditional scholarship. Now, despite the histrionics of campus free speech advocates, this citation ban does not constitute censorship in any substantive sense. But how does it help, exactly?

What Middlebury professors (and all professors) should be doing is teaching students how to evaluate information and build a supported argument, then holding those students accountable for what they write. I think they've chosen citation ban either to avoid doing those things, which is sad, or to send a figurative shot over the open-source bow, which is petty. I read the ban, in part, as a sign of how threatened the academic elite feel by Wikipedia and the like. In my view, the limitless benefits of community-created information repositories far outweigh the potential for inaccuracy, especially since rigorous editorial and peer review don't root out inaccuracies or bias by any stretch. But Wikipedia damn sure scares people who control knowledge production, and the anti-Wiki backlash (of which this citation ban is, I think, a part) reveals just how much.

One last thing. In some parts of the academy, Wikipedia is actually offering teachers a way to teach students about research methods (as noted in the linked NYT article). Assigning students to edit or create a Wikipedia pages seems like such a better solution to both of the problems discussed above. Lame.

Sneak Preview! Next month's issue...

...of Least Ambiguous Song Lyrics Ever, featuring Arcade Fire's "Intervention":

"Working for the church while your life falls apart
Singing Hallelujah with the fear in your heart"

...which, is actually still less ambiguous than the earlier chorus, "Working for the church while your family dies."

Also, badass point to Win Butler for saying "Jesus Fucking Christ, we're in a church" during their performance at St. John's last month.

Deborah Lipstadt, my badass hero

For the last week, I've been puzzling over an article by Frank Furedi in Spiked. Furedi argues that in the 21st century, the concept of "denial" -- in the critical sense, as in a "Holocaust denier," an "AIDS denier," or a "climate change denier" -- has become a secular replacement for heresy. The essay alternates between bold, compelling, insightful discussion of the relevant issues and a vague, thin, accusatory rhetoric that reveals a little too much about the author's agenda.

Here are the main points. I'm paraphrasing, and (in some cases) I think I'm presenting the point in a more effective manner, but anyway:

• "Those who question prevailing cultural orthodoxies are treated as immoral, evil people, and their arguments depicted as a form of secular heresy."
• Targeting denial isn't about the highly-charged emotional context of the issues (i.e. genocide, the environment, etc.), but about an intolerance towards free thinking.
• Traditional heresy involves denying an article of religious truth, but those have been supplanted by articles of historical and scientific truth.
• "Heresy-hunters" strive to follow the model of the ultimate 20th-century taboo, Holocaust denial, by constructing new taboos.
• In this way, denial becomes a "generic evil," a "free-floating blasphemy" that can apply to anything.
• Difference of opinion disappears in the context of debate, replaced by accusations of denial.
• The perceived danger of taboo opinions makes it "responsible behavior" to repress those opinions. Hence the wave of existing and proposed anti-denial laws (anti-genocide in the EU, criminalizing AIDS misinformation, etc.)
• These "denial" accusations deliberately conflate the psychological and critical definitions of "denial" in order to discredit a viewpoint, as well as the holder of that viewpoint. Being a denier is like being "in denial." So, as in the psychological case, denial is a disability that results in suppressed information and does damage to society -- which allows the people who subscribe to those articles of historical and scientific truth to justify censoring deniers.
• Moreover, it's not really about the desire to affirm those truths, but about about "moral policing."
• Finally, the secular heresy of "denial" constitutes a serious threat to freedom of speech and thought, one which outweighs the ultimately negligible positive effects of censoring taboo ideas.

On the whole, I find the arguments decent, especially the implied distinction between dismissal and debate, and the effort to point towards the resultant problems regarding free speech/censorship. I also have to reluctantly concede that I admire Furedi for wading into somewhat dangerous waters and sticking to his point, given the fact that he's essentially attacking people who try to speak for genocide victims, AIDS patients, and the health of every organism on the planet.

However, in claiming that accusations of "denial" arise from an intolerance of free thinking, Furedi shortchanges the social, political, and emotional context. People's motives as scholars and scientists are (of course) affected by what they care about and what they believe should take happen in the world. Though censorship might arise from a given situation, not wanting people to get inaccurate information about AIDS doesn't exactly describe an intolerance of free thought.

Which leads me to the article's major flaw: the lack of a critical qualitative distinction between good and bad scholarship or science. One's skill at scientific or historical research should not have any bearing on one's democratic right to free expression, nor should one's personal agenda. But these characteristics may start to explain the vehemence with which people attack revisionist Holocaust historians or industry-backed climate change skeptics. After all, bad science is bad science, and people invested in getting accurate information to the public concerning, say, epidemic disease, might be pretty invested in minimizing the influence of poorly researched, unsupportable conclusions. Again, no effect on the free speech issues, but the argument for the intrinsic value of free thinking loses some integrity when it tries to compare David Irving to Copernicus.

I prefer Deborah Lipstadt's take on this question (also from Spiked...hmm). She has no compunction about calling someone a denier, but she doesn't believe in criminalizing or persecuting genocide denial. She describes the proposed EU genocide denial laws as a "body blow to academic debate." And, though I don't want to revert to using someone's C.V. to support the validity of their claims, she does have a great deal of experience in this matter, and she pursues Holocaust deniers aggressively. But she doesn't want them in jail. because of freedom of speech, because of the need to avoid making deniers into martyrs, and because making a law against genocide-denying speech implies that we don't have the evidence to prove the truth.

I like the third reason best. She's basically saying that she doesn't want to censor deniers, she wants to beat them. Debunk their scholarship, destroy their credibility, prove that they're wrong, and let them "fade into obscurity." I can get behind that, because a) it's the right thing to do; b) it not only preserves freedom of speech, it encourages it; c) it keeps us focused on deepening our knowledge of things like genocide and pollution, thus keeping them in our minds and on our agenda; and d) it places the weight of the argument where it should be -- in the evidence.

I already noted how badass Deborah Lipstadt was, but it's worth mentioning again.

Apple week

Holy cow. This is like in the Olympics when the acknowledged speedskating favorite, who's been just hanging in the pack, opens up like crazy and leaves everyone else behind. I don't really do too much Apple-polishing, but in the last week this company demonstrated why it consistently beats its industry competition like an old rug. Steve "Boom" Jobs may be a complete parody of himself, but like Ang Lee, his incoherence and goofiness are hiding something.

In the past week Apple settled its enormous dispute with Apple Corps., which has two consequences, one that might be sort of important for Beatle fans, and one that's likely going to help them secure a future monopoly on digital music delivery. Yeah, we'll be able to get Beatles songs etc. on iTunes, but the big deal here is the ability of Apple (Computer) to begin selling music via "physical media," which, despite all the online music hullaballoo, still represents something like 90% of music sales.

Meanwhile, after vigorously defending their Fairplay system (a Digital Rights Management program that "secures" content downloaded from iTunes), Steve Jobs has essentially reversed their position. He's now calling on the Big Four to acknowledge the DRM doesn't work (no duh) and abolish it. I found the essay lucid and fairly balanced, with the only flaw being a somewhat facetious argument regarding the degree to which Apple's software and hardware lock users into a consumer relationship with the company. This reversal comes after a wave of challenges to the iTunes DRM system throughout Europe, and increasing competition from other online music vendors (especially eMusic) which don't use DRM.

Anyway, Apple made huge, smart strides this week to stay ahead of the curve. The iPhone (even with its 150 kabillion contacts) pales in comparison.

i tried/i gave up

After about two and a half straight years of concerted resistance, I gave in to my demons. See, I love Wikipedia. I feel about Wikipedia kind of the way I do about unions -- with all their flaws, limitations, legitimate detractors, they're still the best revolution we've got.

Anyway, I knew from the moment I first got on the site, back in college, that it could be poison. I'd just recovered from an addiction to the okayplayer messageboards, and now Jimmy Wales was offering impassioned know-it-alls like me an opportunity to weigh in on everything, fight out minor points on discussion boards, root out systemic bias -- it really seemed like a wikitopia. So, even though I use the site all the time, and I followed the recent wave of criticism and praise, and got into a number of intense discussions about the merits of collectivism in encyclopaedic context...I never actually made any edits. Because I knew that as soon as I changed something, it would be a slippery slope.

This weekend I let go like it was Raging Waters. I'd been reading so much about it, and debating it, and I just decided that I couldn't hold my position in these arguments if I wasn't a wiki author myself. So now I am. Oh well.

(title ref. help)

TAP Letter/Change to Win

Harold Meyerson published an excellent column in the online edition of The American Prospect on Andy Stern, titled "Organization Man." TAP published my letter in response today, on their website. I didn't really imagine that they would, so I can't say that I cleared it with our communications staff. I think it's pretty innocuous, though.

Doing Something

Harold Meyerson’s recent column on SEIU president Andy Stern ("Organization Man," 2/1/07) makes a compelling argument regarding Stern’s political effectiveness and his similarities to former UAW president Walter Reuther. But, to strengthen the comparison, Mr. Meyerson likens Reuther’s failed Alliance for Labor Action to the recently-formed Change to Win Federation, which -- according to Meyerson -- "can’t really be said to have done anything, either."

Quite the contrary. Since the formation of Change to Win, SEIU organized 5,300 janitors in the union-hostile environment of Houston, TX, the UFCW mounted an effective nationwide opposition to Wal-Mart, and UNITE HERE, in an unprecedented victory, won organizing agreements with two national hotel chains. In fact, a year ago Mr. Meyerson published a Washington Post column on the revolutionary nature of the UNITE HERE campaign, which he praised for "opening a whole new front" ("Taking on the Hotels," Washington Post, 1/18/06). These milestones, along with the record participation of labor unions in the 2006 election cycle, clearly demonstrate the commitment of Change to Win members to the new federation’s founding principle of strategic, industry-based organizing. Change to Win may have faults to match its successes, but it is, without a doubt, doing something.

Alek Felstiner, Organizer
UNITE HERE Local 2

Matthew LaClair = Badass!

This is the 16-year old New Jersey high school student who recorded his history teacher telling the class, among other things, that they belong in Hell if they don't accept Jesus Christ as their savior. So, we knew he was badass from the earlier coverage, and just by definition, but I didn't realize until I looked into it further this morning the degree to which he's exposed himself by taking on this fight. And I hadn't listened to the recordings, so I didn't realize how fearlessly he confronted his teacher on the hypocrisy of a loving, merciful God that cannot tolerate dissent. "Why would a loving God give up on someone after just one lifetime?...As a parent, if your child did something wrong, would you throw them in an oven and leave them there forever?" BADASS. He should join Carlton Pearson's church.

To me, the fact that LaClair's classmates and community don't support him strengthens his claim that without the recordings he would never have persuaded the school, district, and community that Paszkiewicz was doing something wrong. I mean, the man is teaching an 11th-grade history course about the US Constitution, and he says the following:

[God] did everything in his power to make sure that you could go to heaven, so much so that he took your sins on his own body, suffered your pains for you, and he's saying, 'Please, accept me, believe.' If you reject that, you belong in hell....If you reject his gift of salvation, then you're going where you belong.''

Yeah. People are defending that. Now, to be fair, Paszkiewiscz makes one (1) feeble attempt (on the NYT recordings at least) to say that this is his belief, and he makes a couple of references to interpretation of scripture being "your prerogative," which is good. But he still presents salvation, the sacrifice of Jesus, and the condemnation of the unsaved to hell as incontrovertible facts. Not so good.

Other highlights include the penetrating distinction that "Scriptures aren't religion," by way of arguing that all Christian religions believe in one book, "The Bible -- you should be able to bring that into the classroom and read it."

Another hilarious moment: Paszkiewicz asks the class, sarcastically, if "anyone ever observed" the evolution of simple life forms to complex life forms, like it's a ridiculous notion. Then he goes on to say, sarcastically again, "You can collect some data...like the fossil record." ....hmm. Yeah, that pesky fossil record, with its overwhelming mountain of observed data supporting evolution. Oh, also comparative anatomy, molecular genetics, geographical distribution...there's some observation going on. But, damn, scientists can't prove that life spontaneously generates, and they can't repeat it in experimental conditions, so it can't be a scientific fact! Wait, whoops, that's completely wrong because they can and have. It's one thing to present the scientific argument for evolution in an unbiased manner, then express your belief in another explanation of life, but lying about what's out there is just a shameful, criminal action from any teacher, especially a public school teacher.

Also good: Paskiewicz distinguishes faith from blind belief, saying that his faith is "rooted and grounded in Scripture" because of "Prophecy," which came true. What's his example? Moses says in Genesis (right) that Israel would endure 400 years of slavery, and, lo and behold, it happened!...When? In the next book of the Bible. Not really a prophecy so much as a clunky piece of foreshadowing.

I was disappointed to see that the most aggressive response from the school district was to ban unauthorized recording in class...which, okay, that's fine, but isn't there a larger problem here? If students have to surreptitiously record their teachers in order to fix drastic Constitutional problems with the curriculum, maybe the district can do better than a memo and some teacher education. Here's some evidence that they're on the wrong track. Paszkiewicz recently compared global warming scientists to Hitler repeating a lie often enough that people believe it. The school board's lawyer reported that the board didn't investigate the report (???) because the comment wasn't religious and didn't break any kind of law.

Um. I don't know where to start with that. He didn't break a law (assuming New Jersey doesn't have a statute requiring public school teachers to represent scientific and historical truth to the best of their ability). But come on, you've got recordings of this guy endangering your school district by violating the Constitution in a class about the Constitution, and you didn't feel the need to investigate an incident wherein that same teacher discredits science some more?

Leaving aside the wildly inappropriate nature of the Hitler analogy, global warming isn't a lie -- calling it one is. Also, much as we might like to believe it, Hitler's use of the "big lie" theory is widely misinterpreted. In Mein Kampf, Hitler attributed the "big lie" strategy to a conspiracy of Jews in media, bent on convincing the German people that they lost World War I (they did). Goebbels later appropriated it for his attacks on Churchill's "Lie Factory." So, Nazi leaders obviously believed in the effectiveness of the "Big Lie," and it may seem like the "Big Lie" concept played an obvious role in Hitler's propoganda strategy, but that latter point hasn't been substantiated. So, giving Paszkiewiscz the benefit of the doubt, we'll assume that he's not implicitly associating global warming scientists with an evil conspiracy of "Big Lie"-telling Jews. Instead, we'll just assume that he's adopting the common "Big Lie" myth that surrounds Hitler, and he's ignorant of WWII/Holocaust history.

That's cool, though, it's not like he's a history teacher or anything.

velveeta = still gross

Kraft is finally going to split off from Altria (aka Phillip Morris USA). According to the NYT, Altria and Wall Street expect this to offer yet another boon to the morally bankrupt individuals and ethically compromised mutual funds that invest in Big Tobacco. The NYT and tobacco PR execs took the opportunity to explain why tobacco, as an investment vehicle, is basically impervious to government regulation, litigation, public opinion, and health concerns. David Adelman of Morgan Stanley noted that "people like to smoke...it's enjoyable and there's not an alternative product."

Well...that's just because you can't (yet) sell stock in living an extra 10 years. But, with all due respect to Adelman's market savvy, I don't agree that there's not an alternative product, and frozen dinners provide a poor analogy. For one thing, frozen dinners aren't just about food cost, they're about storage convenience, shelf-life, and preparation time. If frozen dinners become too expensive, people will certainly switch to another product, but only if it also possesses those other key characteristics.

It's the same with cigarettes. There's more too them than nicoteine delivery, obviously. There's a ritual/habitual aspect, and a social cache as well. I don't smoke, so that's just what I observe, but there may be (there likely is) even more there. Saying that there isn't an alternative product seems simplistic to me. To me, the market elasticity of cigarettes (that people will buy them regardless of price hikes) does less to demonstrate their addictive quality than it does to dramatize these intangible aspects. So, two conclusions:

1) I believe the addictive nature of cigarettes, as well as their other characteristics, could well be replicated in an alternative product.

2) The elasticity of cigarettes may be due in part to a hidden cost that hasn't made its way into public consciousness. Forget about the eleven minutes you lose each time you smoke -- getting treatment for heart disease or lung cancer is expensive.

Also a fun fact from the NYT article: I'd never heard of this Vice Fund before, but if you check out their website, it's pretty entertaining. Like they specifically set out to see how much morally reprehensible ideology they could cram into one website. Blech.

Music Misc.

1) Obviously I dropped out of band way too early. Doesn't it keep you up at night, the fact that you've never heard "Crosseyed and Painless" played by a marching band? No longer (check youtube for clips).

2) A sensible, jargon-free, clear, concise, non-polemic from Sean O'Hagan about the effect of digitization on our relationship with music. I take issue with the idea that digitization removes music from context -- the contexts just change, and digital contexts are anything but information-poor. But I agree wholeheartedly that the change in context produced by digitization, one of space, time, interface, etc., may well squeeze out elements of emotional investment that shape our long-term relationship with music. By the way, I get the hypocrisy in praising an essay for its lack of jargon and then cramming a ton of jargon into my response. Also, Sean O'Hagan may be Irish.

3) Generally when people research music and the brain, they try to fit music into our structural understanding of neurocognition and behavioral science. They want to know what music can tell us about those fields, and thus about how our brains work. For a refreshing change, Daniel Levitin concerns himself with the opposite (in my view). He's interested in what our brains and behavior can tell us about the remarkable cultural phenomenon that is organized sound. The NYT gave him his due at the end of last month, and the article's been stewing in my head for a while. See Levitin Lab and Levitin's website for more.

4) It was a weekend of chock-full of culture. We saw Babel, a film so depressing that it's "upbeat" plot involves a deaf-mute recovering from her mother's suicide...which, yeah, you bet, she witnessed. We also saw Ladysmith Black Mambazo in concert. They are apparently back from Outer Space.

Revolver (1966)

An excellent interview with Giles Martin on All Songs Considered prompted me to finally get back to these. Let me say that it has been a real struggle to fairly consider this Cirque du Soleil project. I mean, however much you dress it up, Cirque du Soleil is ultimately about transvestite clowns. The Magical Mystery Tour movie failed for a reason, after all. But I have to admit that Giles Martin is a very smart guy, and obviously possesses a talent commensurate to his father's. Based on the clips I've heard, the music is actually terrific. The staging appears to be a ridiculous skateboarding, breakdancing fiasco. Should have just been an album.

Anyway, Revolver.

Most Overrated: "Good Day Sunshine." This song has some wonderful rhythmic and harmonic divergences in the chorus, and an awesome fade, but basically it's lame enough that it seems like Paul wrote specifically for Kermit the Frog. It's cheesy enough to make "Yellow Submarine" seem mature and subversive. On an album with "I'm Only Sleeping" and "She Said She Said," it sticks out more than necessary. Overrated.

Most Underrated: "She Said She Said." Very easy choice. The correct genre title for this song (and its author, actually) would be "existential badass." It just destroys, but in this finicky way that's impossible not to love. I had a lot more to say about the structure of this song, and the meter-changes in the bridge, and the the brilliance of the verse melody, and the high dog-whistle organ mixed way in the back, and Ringo getting a fill in every verse to go apeshit -- but you can just listen to it.

Also, the song contains an excellent transcription of my internal monologue during English class at Yale:

"Even though you know what you know
I know that I'm ready to leave
And you're making me feel like I've never been born."

Dramedy

The RIAA, once again demonstrating an unexplored capacity for willful ignorance, is now attempting a crackdown on mixtapes. Someone needs to explain to them that, from time to time, social, technological, or cultural developments by their very existence simply nullify certain applications of the law. Traditional copyright is not going to work for digital content, and people who deal with these issues as a matter of course discovered that a long time ago. But the music industry, despite its ostensible involvement in creating and defining the cultural vanguard, spends most of its time studying how to cash in on existing trends, instead of studying (or attempting to shape) the culture of subsequent consumer generations. So instead of reading the signs and designing a delivery system that would protect its assets, the music industry followed a "wait and sue" policy (I came up with that independently -- kind of disappointing to find out it's a widely-used phrase).

That was dumb.

For example, a careful (or even superficial) study of mixtape consumers would immediately reveal what the Times article points out: "part of the fun involves hearing rappers remake one another's songs and respond to one another's taunts; a great mixtape captures the controlled chaos that hiphop thrives on." Mixtapes have the potential to be incredibly lucrative, as any of those guys selling $5 CDs on the street can tell you. But, obsessed with shoring up a doomed section of copyright law, the RIAA decided to arrest DJ Drama. It's not going to work, it's not a deterrent.

Imagine how much the Big Four/Five would have made directly on online sales if they didn't have to enter expensive contracts with mediators like Apple et al. This will turn out just the same. The record companies have already missed the boat on mixtapes, and if/when they do figure out a way to enter the real mixtape market (DJ Clue doesn't count), they will likely do so in compromised, water-down fashion that won't make them much money.

By that time listeners will have moved on to someone or something else -- which the RIAA will immediately try to sue, or arrest.