Op-Ed Columnist – Missing Richard Nixon – NYTimes.com

K-man, here are some reasons why I’m not as angry at Obama as you seem to think I should be. Krugman:

There was a lot of talk last year about how Barack Obama would be a “transformational” president — but true transformation, it turns out, requires a lot more than electing one telegenic leader. Actually turning this country around is going to take years of siege warfare against deeply entrenched interests, defending a deeply dysfunctional political system.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/31/opinion/31krugman.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

The Political Compass

I did the Progressive Quiz a while back, but here’s my result from a more inclusive test:

Economic Left/Right: -5.00
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.51

That’s how I would describe myself, mostly liberal with a chance of libertarianism. Good to know my picture of myself matches up with reality.

The South SHALL rise (cause it can’t fall much lower)

Every time I complain about living down here, H assures me that there are the same sort of people who drive me crazy everywhere. I offer proof that, yes there are assholes and morons everywhere, but there are undeniably more of them near us:

Hat tip to Krugman

Spoken as a true NY Asshole

Posted by me in a reply to a comment bemoaning the stacked odds against Pittsburgh and other small markets about this baseball article, reposted here for posterity:

Looking at Nate’s numbers (http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=6182), you’d have to combine the populations of the bottom 5-7 teams (including your Pirates) to add up to the Yankees population share. The Yanks have 6 times the TV market of the Pirates. Couldn’t you make a utilitarian argument that Yankees fans “deserve” to win the title at least 6 times as often as the Bucs? 26 to 5 to date–wait a minute, you owe us 4 ;) Somewhat seriously, it reminds me of the electoral college, or the house vs. the senate–why should the people of Pittsburgh have disparate importance just because they’re a small market. In other words, speaking as an ex-pat New Yorker, why *shouldn’t* New York control America and the MLB?

Newish Photos

A bit bored at work this week, decided to catch up on retouching and posting some old pics:

Random Assortment

Disappointment, thy name is Mike

Tom Tomorrow:

if Democrats do manage to blow this opportunity, at this particular moment in time, then there’s no longer any room for debate: apart from providing a half-assed bulwark against the ever-increasing lunacy of the right, they’re entirely useless.

I’m damned close to this point of view myself.

In Defense of Type I Jamming

This seemed a lot more profound when I was driving to work last week and thought of it. But this draft isn’t going to get any better, so I’m posting it.

I think some of us don’t give great type I jamming enough credit. Type I jamming is referential–when listening to a jamband, the fan is constantly comparing each note being played to every prior version they can remember. To the uninitiated, there’s no difference between type I and type II jamming, because they don’t know the songs well enough to do this comparison and think “oh, they’re doing something different with this section” or “whoa, this is something entirely new.” See 2009-06-14 AC/DC Bag for an example of great Type I full band improvisation.

I know when I was really into Pgroove, I kept asking for them to start exploring type II jams. In retrospect, the spacier they got the less I enjoyed the shows. I really miss the tight, focused sound of their Last Call days. Sometimes the middle ground between Bela Fleck and the Flecktones’ “every note of this song will be the same tomorrow” and Phish at their spaciest is sweet. Pgroove used to inhabit the happy middle, so did AOD, so does DMB, in my opinion. Don’t get me wrong, I love it when Phish spontaneously plucks a bit of joy out of the ether, but you’ve got to endure a lot of bad with the good to get there. I’m not always down for that.

Another Quotable Quote

“… death is the only god who comes when you call.” Roger Zelazny, “24 views of Mt Fuji, by Hokusai”

Backwards Down the Number Line is the new Down with Disease

Phish 6/19/2009 -Backwards Down the Number Line- opener

Discuss.

Tilt Shift Movies

Very cool (hat tip to Bob Harris): http://vimeo.com/channels/keithloutitssydney