The Day the World Changed...or, at least, one of them

Yesterday's 12th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City, Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania, remind of all the rhetoric that was created about that day being "the day the world changed" and that "nothing will ever be the same", as if these turning points are rare and are always loud and immediately evident.

But today, September 12, is the anniversary of such a day, one that is rarely remembered and even more rarely commented on. The event that happened on this day was quiet and personal and flowered slowly, but it changed history and the way that Western culture looks at the world forever, and with much more far-reaching consequences.

On this date in 1933, the Hungarian-born American physicist Leo Szilard first had the idea of a nuclear chain reaction, the process that is necessary for the generation of nuclear energy and that enables nuclear bombs to explode with almost unimaginable power.

Szilard, who was in London at the time, had read that morning in The Times of London, a summary of a speech given by Ernest Rutherford, another physicist, in which Rutherford rejected nuclear energy as a practical way of generating power. This rejection annoyed Szilard, and he began thinking about the problem as he took one of his customary walks. As he later told the story, as he was crossing a street during that walk, he suddenly had a mental picture of how a nuclear chain reaction could be accomplished. It wasn't the first time anyone had thought about the possibility of such a reaction. That had, as far as we know, first been proposed in 1913. But, as a practical matter, it was Szilard's sudden idea that opened the door to making nuclear chain reactions achievable.

Achieving a chain reaction didn't occur overnight, of course, and it wasn't until 1939 that Szilard and Enrico Fermi discovered neutron multiplication in uranium, showing that a nuclear chain reaction was possible. Szilard and Fermi went on to create the first artificial, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction in late 1942. But even before that, in 1939, very soon after discovering that such a reaction was possible and fearing that the Nazis would discover the same thing and try to exploit it, Szilard wrote a letter to be signed by Albert Einstein and delivered to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, urging the US government to begin research into building an atomic bomb. That letter led, eventually, to the creation of the Manhattan Project and the creation of nuclear weapons.

Szilard seems to have had some regrets later about the letter, as the research into the atomic bomb became more controlled by the US military than by the scientists who were doing the work. He was also an advocate, once the bomb had been created, of conducting a demonstration explosion to show the power of the new device in an attempt to convince the Japanese to halt the war (the Trinity test that showed that the atomic bomb did indeed work did not come until after world War II had ended in Germany), instead of directly bombing Japan, as ultimately happened;.

After the war, Szilard abandoned nuclear physics and turned his attention to molecular biology. He also continued to insist that the use in battle of the atomic bomb had not been necessary if only the US had been willing to demonstrate it away from populated areas.

So. Change happens. Every single day, in many ways, good and bad, for individuals and for groups and, sometimes, for the whole of mankind. Often we don't notice those changes until well after the fact. I'm sure that Szilard had some idea, right away, that if his idea worked, life as we know it would change forever. The rest of the world, not so much. It took over a decade from that walk Szilard took after reading something that annoyed him for events to take their course. On the other hand, if Szilard had not read that article and had not been thinking, consciously or unconsciously, about the problem of how to get energy out of nuclear reactions, and if he had not had that sudden insight, history might have turned out very, very differently.

A Federal Judge schools Abercrombie and Fitch on its hiring practices

Those of you who follow along here might remember this post, from a few months ago, about the whole kerfluffle over Abercrombie and Fitch's "look policy", and how discriminatory their hiring and sizing policies are. You might also remember this follow-up post I wrote a few days later, where I discussed how some people were fighting back against A&F's exclusionary policies.

Well, the clothing retailer has now been ruled against by a federal court after being sued by Umme-Hani Khan, a Muslim employee in California after she was asked to remove her headscarf, which she wears out of religious conviction, and who was fired when she refused to comply.A
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US District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzales, in ruling on the case, was quoted in an article online at NBC's website that by acting as it did, jurors could reasonably determine that "by offering Khan one option – to remove her hijab despite her religious beliefs – Abercrombie acted with malice, reckless indifference..." A&F was ordered by the judge to pay damages to Khan.

At the time that Khan's case first came to the attention of the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC), the article reports, that agency was already looking at two similar cases, another from Northern California and one from Oklahoma, in which two other Muslim women had been refused jobs because they would not take off their headscarves.

Abercrombie and Fitch has said that they don't discriminate, but according to the article, they have also claimed that their employees are "living advertisements" and that they should be allowed to control what the employees wear because they are exercising their protected commercial speech. A&F has claimed that their employees represent an "aspirational lifestyle" - whatever that is - and that they are part of the "atmosphere" of the store.

The really unbelievable thing about all of this is that, in the article, a "brand consultant" (sorry for all the quotation marks here, but I don't know how else to deal with the attitudes represented by the use of some of these terms) named Rob Frankel defended A&F's policy stand by saying that in enforcing their employee dress code, the company is not violating anyone's rights, but instead is simply "creating brand consistency."

So, Frankel is saying, as far as I can see, that employees are nothing more than walking, talking, money-making (for the company) mannequins that the company should be able to do with as they wish. I mean, I know that some corporations seem to believe that once someone goes to work for them, that the company owns them and all, but this...this strikes me as only just short of serfdom. Yeah, the employee can walk if they don't like doing what they're told. But, in this economy, how does someone walk off a job with no certainty that they'll be able to find another one in a reasonable length of time?

I don't know. Maybe A&F felt that there would be no push-back on this because the employees in question were Muslim women. I'm glad that they were wrong, and that the court ruled in favor of Khan and her headscarf. Because, you know, despite appearances to the contrary sometimes, we have a tradition of religious freedom in the United States that should not be marginalized in the name of the almighty dollar.

Yeah. I know. I am, apparently, not a good capitalist. Still, what kind of company considers it's human resources - its employees - nothing more than living advertisements?

Not one I'd be interested in buying from.

Just a word to the corporate overlords at Abercrombie and Fitch: Capitalism works all kinds of ways, and one of those ways is that if you offend too many people, you aren't going to pull in business. Instead, you'll be out of business.

Happy Science Popularizer Day - and, yes, I just made that holiday up

Today, coincidentally, is the birthday of not one but two scientists who are notable for writing books about scientific subjects for the general public. The work of the popularizer is often a thankless job, but one that I think is important because I believe that the more one knows about the world, the better off one is, and the sad fact is that each person cannot be an expert in every field. Therefore, popular works that inform about fields that can be technical to the point of confusion for one who is not an expert can be quite valuable.

So, today is the birthday of Jared Diamond, who was born on this day in 1937. Diamond has written such books as The Third Chimpanzee (1991), Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997), Collapse (2005), and The World Until Yesterday (2012). His training was in physiology, and that is what he has taught at UCLA, in the medical school there. His writing, however, has seen him branch out into a number of fields, including anthropology, human evolution, and history.

Diamond has come into for his share of criticism for his work, including charges that he is too Eurocentric, that the arguments he makes in his books are weak, and that the large roles he assigns to geography and environment in the shaping of civilization are misplaced.

Like Diamond, Stephen Jay Gould, who was born on this day in 1941, has been criticized for things he wrote and said in the course of his career as a paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, science historian, and prolific author of both specialist and popular books and articles. Among those criticisms were, like Diamond, that some of his explanations and arguments were weak. It is probably important to note that, especially in Gould's case, this criticism particularly has mostly come from those who disagree with his ideas and want to discount them.

It also probably has to be said that Gould did indeed take some stands that were controversial. He was co-developer, with Niles Eldredge, of the theory of punctuated equilibrium, which claims that evolutionary change is not a slow, steady process, but occurs rapidly and in bursts, with long periods of stability in between. Gould was very vocal, as well, about his rejection of sociobiology, the idea that social behaviors are rooted in biology and evolution. Additionally, Gould did not approve of cladistics, a method of biological classification, which brought him a measure of criticism as the use of cladistics became more and more widespread.

Gould was also criticized for his politics, which some critics characterized as "Marxist," charging that he let his politics interfere with his scientific positions. This was probably exacerbated by Gould's willingness to discuss his father's Marxism and his statements that his own politics were probably to the left of center. But, he also claimed that his politics were different from those of his father. Still, today, there are those people who discount Gould's contributions by pulling out the "Marxist" label.

Gould did not hesitate to address the subject of religion, and claimed that science and religion are not, as some argue, in conflict. However, he also claimed that the two areas comprised "non-overlapping magisterial" that, while they do not conflict, also do not really have anything to say to or about each other. He spent some of his time writing about this idea in a book called Rock of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life (1999).

While Gould did not criticize religion as a category of knowledge as some scientists, notably Richard Dawkins, do, he also spent a significant amount of his time arguing against creationism and intelligent design and against their inclusion in public school science classrooms. Among his efforts on this topic, Gould testified against giving creationism equal time in the classroom in the landmark case McLean v. Arkansas in 1982. The case, which ruled that "creation science" is actually religion and not science and that its inclusion in public school science classrooms violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Unites States Constitution, has been influential in subsequent rulings relating to the teaching of creationism and intelligent design.

Gould was a prolific and eloquent writer. He wrote nearly 500 peer-reviewed papers during his career, around 100 book reviews, 22 books, and a long series of essays that included a series called "This View of Life" in Natural History magazine. He published several collections of these essays in book form. Gould was also a fixture in science documentaries on PBS and elsewhere.

Sadly, Gould died in 2002, at the age of 60, cutting short a remarkable career that, among many other accomplishments, saw him named a "Living Legend" by the US Library of Congress in April 2000.

In honor of the day, your assignment, should you decide to accept it, is to go out and find some good popular science writing to read. I don't care what subject you choose, and it doesn't have to be something by either Gould or Diamond - although as a huge fan of Gould's writing, I would certainly not be sad if you chose to read some of his work, which can be challenging but is always rewarding.

Movie Monday: The "Do You Remember These 1960s Science Fiction TV Series?" Edition

I had something a little different planned for today's Movie Monday. And then I found this while I was looking around for something else on YouTube:



This short documentary (with bonus Bill Mumy) highlights four science fiction television series from the 1960s that are widely considered to be "bad" science fiction, but which were fixtures of my television experience during those years. And, indeed, seen from today, they were mostly bad. The writing was often horrible. The production values, especially compared with what we see on-screen today, even in television, were lacking. The acting was sometimes, well, hammy, although not necessarily much better than other television acting at the time. All of them were produced by Irwin Allen.

All the same, I loved those shows as a child and early adolescent.

"Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" was the first of the shows covered in the clip above, beginning September 14, 1964 and running through 1968. This show is old enough that the first season was shot in black and white. There were four seasons and 110 episodes of the show, which grew out of the 1961 film of the same name, also produced by Allen. This was a great favorite in our house, for all that my father and I would sit there and make fun of the pinging sound that was often in the background. We called it "sea chickens". The show consisted of the continuing adventures of the nuclear submarine Seaview and its crew, which was tasked with doing undersea research and, oh, yeah, saving the world on a regular basis.

"Lost in Space" came next, running from September 15, 1965, through the end of the 1968 television season. Again, the first season was shot in black and white. This was a sort of "Swiss Family Robinson" in space, and in fact the family that made up most of the crew of the Jupiter 2, their spaceship, was named Robinson. There were the mother and father, Doctors John and Maureen Robinson; their older daughter, Judy; a younger daughter, Penny; and the youngest, their son Will. In addition, there was the pilot, a military man, Major Don West. There was also a stowaway, Dr. Zachary Smith. Dr. Smith set out to sabotage the mission, and instead because stuck on the ship. His botched attempt at sabotage was the reason the mission got lost. Intended to only remain for the first few episodes of the show, Dr. Smith became sort of the bumbling villain you loved to hate. There was also Robot who, despite being a robot, became an essential character in the show, and his most famous and repeated line, "Danger, Will Robinson", has become iconic. If you were there at the time, you probably remember this:



Yes, I was a confirmed "Lost in Space" fan, for all of its silly stories and shaky sets, even after "Star Trek" came along in 1966, with similar production values but much better stories and writing. I loved (and still love) "Star Trek" in it's original incarnation, but "Lost in Space" was still something I loved to watch. Of course, I was nine years old when it began, but still...

Next in the Irwin Allen universe came "The Time Tunnel" which, coincidentally, debuted on September 9, 1966. I knew there was a reason why I wanted to write this post today. "The Time Tunnel" only lasted one season, probably deservedly. But it was time travel, and time travel stories are probably my favorite flavor of science fiction. The premise of the show was that the government had sunk ten years and billions of dollars into a secret project to determine if time travel was possible. The time had come to either prove the project, immediately, or have their funding cut off. One of the directors of the project, Dr. Tony Newman, says he is willing to be the guinea pig and try to travel into time, but he is turned down by another of the three directors, Dr. Doug Phillips. Dr. Newman sneaks into the lab that night, powers up the time tunnel, and disappears into it and, presumably, into time somewhere. Feeling responsible, Dr. Phillips follows him. But something goes wrong and the two of them spend the rest of the series being shuttled from time to time, getting into trouble everywhere they go.

Again, the acting wasn't top-tier, some of the writing wasn't the best, and the production values, despite what is said in the clip at the beginning of the post, weren't top-notch. But it was time-travel stories, and I watched faithfully.

And then there was "Land of the Giants", which ran for two seasons, from September 22, 1968 through 1970. This was my least favorite of the four series. I think this has to do with the fact that by the time the show debuted, I was older, entering junior high, and my demands for story in TV had grown a bit, helped along by having watched "Star Trek" since it's beginning. The premise in "Land of the Giants" was that a suborbital ship making a run from Los Angeles to London ran into some sort of anomaly at the edge of space, sending the ship and its crew to a planet where everything, including the inhabitants, are much larger than on Earth. It turns out that this particular craft is not the only one to have come to the planet by the same means, but their crews had never fared very well, and none had ever returned to Earth. This does not stop this group of travelers from attempting to repair their craft and return to Earth, but during the run of the series, they never make it back to their home planet.

No point to all this, really, I suppose. Just a remembrance of the television I used to watch. With the exception of "Lost in Space" which got the big-screen treatment in 1998 in a film starring William Hurt and Gary Oldman (and which I have not seen), and the fact that "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea", the series, came out of an original film, there is no real connection between any of these four series and the movies I usually write about here on Movie Mondays. Although, to be honest, I'd like to see someone try to translate "The Time Tunnel" to the big screen with today's production values and much bigger budgets.

Oh, and the idea that television, especially science fiction television, was not always necessarily the best of TV in the past, it was often the most fun. But that might just be my inner science fiction geek talking.

Today in History: The Longest Cave, Mary Queen of Scots, and California Becomes a State

A few notable events have their anniversaries today. Some are historical in nature.

For example, Mary Stuart, the Queen of Scots, was crowned on this day in 1543 at the age of nine months. She had actually become queen at the age of six days at the death of her father, King James V of Scotland, setting her on the path that would ultimately see her executed by her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I of England, as a threat to the English throne on February 8, 1587.

In US history, in 1776 on this day the Continental Congress named the new union the United States. In 1791, the newly established federal city of the United States on the banks of the Potomac River, was named Washington after the first president of the union, giving Washington, DC its name. In 1850, California became the 31st state of the union on this date. In 1942, during World War II, a Japanese floatplane dropped two incendiary bombs on Oregon with the objective of starting a forest fire. It was the first attack by an enemy plane on the continental United States, but it was singularly unsuccessful, with little damage caused.

In slightly more frivolous events, the National Broadcasting Company - NBC - was formed on this day in 1926, while on this day in 1956 Elvis Presley made his first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.

While all of these events hold some interest, more or less, the thing that makes September 9 notable for me is the fact that it is the day in 1972 when the connection between Mammoth Cave System and the Flint Ridge Cave System on an adjoining ridge in Kentucky were shown to be connected, making it the longest cave in the world. The connection was made by a six-person expedition as the culmination of an effort to show a connection of the two cave systems that had begun in 1954. At the time of connection, there were 144.4 miles (232.4 km) of surveyed cave passages in the linked system, enough to make it the world's longest cave. Further explorations and surveys in the system have extended that length to around 400 miles (640 km) of surveyed passages. This cave system is more than twice as long as the second-longest cave system in the world, located in Mexico.

Here is a bit of a documentary that talks about the connection, with interviews with some of the cavers who were on the connection trip. Some of the caving scenes are recreations, but this clip carries the flavor of what it must have been like to be on that trip:



For all that I've only ever been in two caves in my life, Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico and Florida Caverns, near Marianna, Florida, I love caves and am fascinated by them. Because I am fascinated by them, when I discovered a book called "The Longest Cave", by Roger Brucker and Richard Watson, on the new books shelf in the library back in 1976, I picked it up immediately and thus found my favorite book in the world. The book tells the story of those years of exploration between 1954 and 1972, written by two of the men who took part in those long years of exploration. Neither one of them were along on the connection trip in 1972, but they tell the full story, including the eventful connection trip. The books make clear that all the explorers over all those years were as much family as colleagues and friends, out not just to find the connection that so many of them believed existed but just to have a good time with friends who shared the same passion for the caves as they did.

"The Longest Cave" is a really good book. If you have any interest at all in caves, in adventure, in exploration, or just in the idea that there is value in doing something because it is enjoyable and joyful and might or might not lead to bigger things, you need to read this book. In fact, I think I need to read it again, because it is just as good after all the times I've read it as it was the first time. It's kind of like going to visit old friends.

Music Sunday: The Pink Edition

Today is Pink's birthday, so what could be more appropriate than to share a few of her songs?

I'll be honest. I am so not in Pink's demographic, having graduated high school five years before she was born in 1979. Despite that generational difference, I really like her music. I only own one of her CDs ("I'm Not Dead", from 2006), but I can't think of any of her work that I haven't liked.

The first of her work that I was really aware of was "Lady Marmalade", which she recorded with Lil' Kim, Christina Aguilera, Mya, and, joining in the video, Missy Elliot, in association with the film "Moulin Rouge!". Of course, I knew the song from its 1974 version by Labelle, and quite liked this newer version from the first time I heard it:



In the same year as "Lady Marmalade" was released (2001), Pink also recorded "Get the Party Started". If you listen to the song, you get the impression that this is a woman who is serious about having a good time. Watch the video, however, and you get what might be the first hint that Pink has a huge sense of humor and does not really take the whole idea of being a party girl all that seriously:



So, Pink showed early on that she can be sexy and funny. In 2003's "Trouble", she showed that while she is those things she is also not prepared to take any shit from anybody. If you've seen the video for the song, that is made even more obvious there. Oh, also, you also get bonus Jeremy Renner, who plays the sheriff in the video:



By 2005, on the CD "I'm Not Dead Yet", Pink demonstrates another side to herself, her social and political consciousness. "Stupid Girls" is probably my favorite of her songs. Sort of a logical extension of the video for "Get the Party Started", Pink makes the case that the party/celebrity lifestyle is really a trap for women, and that they should be looking for something more:



On the same album, "Dear Mr. President" is a departure for Pink, showing her political consciousness. It is a folk song she wrote to express some of her concerns about the presidency of George W. Bush. It was and is a controversial song, but it shows in its content that it isn't something she just dashed off to be politically correct or to jump on the anti-Bush bandwagon. Instead, the lyrics make it clear that she is aware of the policies he held on specific issues and the ways in which he expressed himself while he was president, especially in the lyrics about "hard work" near the end of the song. Here is a clip of her singing the song live in New York City:

Jobs, joblessness, and living in the real world...

I just read this op-ed piece over on CNN's website, and I think that the writer, Heidi Shierholz, has the right of it.

It has always bothered me, as I've written about here before, that the unemployment rate is figured based on the number of people actively looking for work, not on the number of people who are actually out of work. It is not helpful, except for whichever administration is currently in power to cover their own butts on the issue of joblessness. They need to cut it out and own the fact that the economy is not all roses and sunshine, that there are a lot of people who want to work who are not able to get jobs, and that there are even more people out here who are working, but are in part-time jobs not commensurate with their abilities and qualifications, much less their needs.

I think it is especially important that she points out that most of the declines in the unemployment rate as reported since it peaked in late 2009 is not due to people getting jobs that they desperately need. Instead, most of those declines, which make it seem like more people are working, are due to the fact that people are getting discouraged and giving up on looking for work. Once they quit looking, they drop off the radar as far as the government is concerned and are no longer counted as being unemployed. Even though they are still unemployed.

Shierholz also argues that the excuse given by many in the corporate world for not filling jobs, that there are no qualified applicants for the jobs they have open, is not the truth. Instead, she says, lagging demand means that there is just not enough demand for products to justify hiring more people. She links this to the fact that wages - and thus buying power - have remained flat or have actually declined for most US workers since the year 2000. People who are working just don't have as much money to spend, which has meant declines in demand for the things that workers would buy if they made enough money to cover more than the necessities of food, rent, utilities, and other essentials.

This all makes sense to me as an individual who is currently unemployed. I'm not discouraged yet, even though I've been actively seeking work for over a year and a half with dismal results. Although I haven't quit looking for a job, I'm getting more and more frustrated, between employers who don't want to even consider me because I'm not young and people who seem to think that I don't want to work because I haven't found a job yet. I keep hearing people say, "Well, why don't you go out and get a job?" They don't seem to understand that you don't just walk into an office or. store or factory and demand that they put you to work. They seem to think that because it is "based on a true story", the movie "Erin Brockovich" represents how the real world works.

If you've seen that movie, you know that Erin, as portrayed by Julia Roberts, just walks into her attorney's office and starts working, refusing to leave when it is explained to her that she doesn't work there. You know what would happen if you tried that in real life? Best case scenario, you'd be escorted off the premises by armed security guards. Worst case scenario, you'd be hauled off to jail. Real life just does not work that way. If Erin Brockovich did indeed get work that way, she is probably the only person who has ever successfully used that tactic. Anyway, no one I know has ever gotten a job that way.

Anyway, if the current unemployment rate is something that concerns you - and it should, since even if you are employed now, you could find yourself out of work sometime in the future - click on the link and read Shierholz's article. She argues for some solutions that I think make real sense. I just wish official Washington would pay attention.

"I guess I was an artist" - Tressa Prisbrey

I'm very late to today's post. In fact, it's already Thursday in most of the world...and might even be Friday already just the other side of the International Date Line. I'm not completely sure of that, because the whole idea of the Date Line and what day it is on which side of it is kind of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey for me. At any rate, I've had a worse than usual headache most of the day, with the extra added attraction of an ocular migraine for a good portion of the afternoon, so I didn't know if I would get to this at all.

And, to be honest, the headache is still with me to a certain extent, and I should be doing other things to catch up with what I just didn't feel like doing earlier. But, I discovered this clip on YouTube this afternoon when I didn't feel like doing anything else, and I knew immediately that I had to share it with you all. This is Bottle Village, a collection of buildings and other artworks Tressa Prisbrey, known as Grandma Prisbrey, built over a number of years starting in the mid-1950s. Her village is considered to be very important folk art.



Back when I was growing up, however, and my own grandmother lived about a quarter of a mile down the street from Mrs. Prisbrey, she was sort of just the neighborhood eccentric, who went down to the dump every day and then built things out of what she found there. I well remember seeing her going back and forth on her excursions to the dump to gather material.

Sadly, in the Northridge Earthquake of 1984, much of the Bottle Village, which is located in Simi Valley, California, was destroyed by the quake. There are ongoing efforts, however, to rebuild the village and re-open it to the public on a regular basis. Here is another clip I found, from July of 2012, that is a good view of what has been cleaned up after the earthquake, what damage remains to be cleared, and what is left of Mrs. Prisbrey's work:



I am so glad these videos exist, not only so that people can see what Mrs. Prisbrey was able to do with found objects and a little...no, a lot...of imagination, but so that I can revisit a part of my own childhood. Little did I know back then that the collection of bottle buildings we drove by on nearly a daily basis would someday be on the National Register of Historic Places, be on the California Register of Historic Landmarks, and be a Ventura County Landmark.

I think the whole deal is pretty cool.

The Potato Salad Post...

Labor Day is over. Summer is at an end...well, we've actually got almost three more weeks of the season, by the calendar, but here in the United States, the Labor Day holiday weekend marks the unofficial end of summer. Pretty much everyone who goes to school is back in class now, the college football season has begun and the professional pre-season is underway, and it seems like every other ad on television right now is promoting one or another of the new fall programs.

And that is fine with me. I'm sick of summer, sick of the hot weather (although over the weekend, we're forecast to have high temperatures as high as 104 degrees F), and ready for the sun to start setting earlier.

But, there is one manifestation of summer - and summer picnics - that I'm not willing to give up over the cooler months, and that is the potato salad. Some people quit making potato salads after Labor Day (it's just Not Done after the holiday, sort of like wearing white shoes), but I love potato salad and make it all year round. Truthfully, I'm more likely to make potato salad during the cooler weather, since boiling the potatoes (and the eggs, if I want to put them in the salad) takes a while and heats up the kitchen, which is a good thing in the cooler months but not during the summer. I did, however, make a potato salad for the holiday yesterday. Part of it is still in the refrigerator, and I plan to eat some of it for lunch as soon as I finish writing this post.

I make a nice simple potato salad. Looking around online, I see that some people put all kinds of things in their potato salads: different herbs, different vegetables, different dressings. Which is all good, I guess. But I like my potato salads simple, and I still make my potato salad just like my grandmother taught me to, when I was about three or four years old. It's a simple recipe and suits my tastes just fine.

To make my (my grandmother's) potato salad, you boil the potatoes (white rose or Yukon gold potatoes are best, but plain old russets will do just fine) and the eggs, if you like eggs in your salad. The potatoes are done when you can slide a fork into them easily and the skins split when you stick the fork in them. I also hard-boil eggs differently than some people do: I put the pan of cold water containing the eggs on to boil; when they come to a hard boil, I set the timer for ten minutes. When the timer goes off, I take the pan containing the eggs off the burner and let them sit for a few (four or five) minutes. Then I pour off the water and fill the pan with more cold water and let the eggs sit until the water is warm from the heat of the eggs and pan. I pour off that water and repeat the cold water bath two or three more times, until the eggs are cool enough to handle easily. Then, when both potatoes and eggs are cool enough, I put them on a plate and place them in the refrigerator until they are cold.

When I'm making salad just for myself, I usually cook six medium-sized potatoes and two or three eggs. That makes enough salad for four or five generous servings, which ensures that the salad lasts two or three days, not long enough for it to go bad in the refrigerator.

The next step, when potatoes and eggs are cold, is to peel them and then dice them into a bowl that is big enough to hold them and mix the other ingredients into them without spilling any onto the counter. Once the potatoes and eggs are diced, add salt and pepper to taste. Then add mayonnaise and mix. This is going to be a moist salad, so I always add just a little less mayo than I think makes the salad moist enough. After the mayo is mixed in, I add yellow mustard, again to taste - this is another reason why I use a bit less mayo than it looks like it would take to make an acceptable salad - and mix again. If I have them, I then add some sliced or wedged black olives and mix those in but, like the eggs, the olives are not strictly necessary to make a good salad. Next, I add apple cider vinegar to taste and mix. I like vinegar, so I usually add more than some people would. But, even though I do like vinegar, I don't add enough to drown the salad. After the vinegar is mixed in, I also add a small bit of water - usually just a palm-full or two. Keeping in mind that I have pretty small hands, that really isn't much water.

I usually add the vinegar in a couple of stages, to make sure I don't get too much or too little. If you see it pooling in the bottom of the bowl right after mixing, you've added too much. The same is true for the water, so you want to be very careful when adding these two ingredients.

At this stage, the potato salad is ready to eat. However, I try to make my salad enough ahead of time so that I can put it, covered, in the refrigerator for at least an hour or two, to let the flavors of the dressing ingredients meld. The value of this is seen in the fact that this salad always tastes better the second day.

I also want to mention that you don't want to let the salad sit out on the counter for very long after mixing it or after serving. My roommate is less casual about this than I am, but I was raised that you don't let food with mayonnaise, even with vinegar in it, which acts as a preservative, sit out for more than a few minutes. So, that's my safety warning.

Do you make your potato salad a different way? Drop your favorite recipe in the comments, because as much as I love my simple potato salad, I'm open to trying new things as well.

Now, my mouth is watering just thinking about the potato salad sitting in my refrigerator, and it is time for lunch. I'm going to go now and have some of my salad, and a couple of slices of toast, maybe, or a sliced tomato on the side.

Oh, and don't worry. I won't be writing too many of these cooking posts. I'm more of a heat-and-assemble sort of person than a cooking enthusiast. But, I do love potato salad and the store-bought stuff just doesn't compare to this salad that my grandmother taught me how to make, lo, those many long years ago.

Movie Monday: The Baseball Movie Edition

Well, maybe there's no crying in baseball, but I have to confess that the movie this is from, "A League of Their Own" (1992), makes me cry every single time I watch it. Of course, I laugh a lot, too, when I watch it, because it is a funny movie. But, for me, there are scenes that just make me feel all the feels.

If you aren't familiar with "A League of Their Own", which was directed by Penny Marshall, it is a fictionalized account of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which was in operation from 1943 through 1954, giving hundreds of women the chance to play professional baseball. It was started as a way to keep professional baseball going while many of it's male stars were off fighting in World War II. The film follows the fictional sisters Dottie and Kit (portrayed by Geena Davis and Lori Petty), who are invited to tryouts when the league is starting out, along with the rest of the members of the Rockford Peaches. Things don't run smoothly at first:



Well, things don't always run smoothly later on, either, but that would be telling. Go see the movie.

"A League of Their Own" is one of my favorite baseball movies - and that's saying quite a bit, for as much as I love baseball, I'm really not fond of most baseball movies. Then again, there's "Bull Durham"(1988), which is my other favorite baseball movie. It follows a season in the life of a minor league team, the Durham Bulls (which, like the Rockford Peaches was, is a real Triple A team, an affiliate of the Tampa Bay Rays, that has it's home in Durham, North Carolina), during which veteran minor-leaguer Crash Davis (Kevin Costner) is assigned the task of grooming a young, erratic pitching phenom, Ebby Calvin LaLoosh (Tim Robbins) for the majors. It is a sometimes daunting job for Crash, seeing that Ebby seems more interested in the peripheral advantages of being a baseball player than in actually playing baseball:





And then, there's Annie Savoy, who teaches both Ebby and Crash a thing or two, about baseball and about a few other things:



It's getting near the end of the baseball season. The teams in the National League and the American League are getting serious about getting into the playoffs and then the World Series. Depending on which team you follow, this could be a tense time for you. For example, as I write this, the St. Louis Cardinals and the Pittsburgh Pirates are tied for the lead in the Central Division of the National League. Meanwhile, over in the American League's Western Division, the Texas Rangers only lead the Oakland A's by a game. On the other hand, you could be me, and be a Los Angeles Dodgers fan. The Dodgers lead National League West by 11 games over the Arizona Diamondbacks, and are ahead of the San Francisco Giants and the San Diego Padres by 20 and 21 games, respectively. But, as much as I love the Dodgers, I know that the reality is that this is a team that has traditionally proven more than to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory, and so nothing is sure regarding a playoff berth until the rest of the division has been mathematically eliminated from contention for the playoffs.

So, whether your team is way out in front, somewhere in contention, or deep in the cellar of their division, a good way to relax and quit worrying about your team's prospects for the post-season is to go see a good baseball movie. "A League of Their Own" and "Bull Durham" both qualify.

Music Sunday: The "Born on the Same Day" Edition

Today's theme could very well be "odd coincidence".

First stop: a little bit of classical music from the violin of Itzhak Perlman, because he is very good and also because his birthday was yesterday. He was born August 31, 1945. Here he discusses a short, obscure piece of music before he plays it:



While I was looking around for something of Perlman's to share I found this, where he answers questions submitted over Internet. here, he talks about practicing, something I suspect he's done a lot of. I think what he has to say goes for practicing just about anything:



And now, some of the trivia. It turns out that Van Morrison's birthday was yesterday, as well. Further, it turns out that he was not only born in the same month and the same day as Itzhak Perlman, but that they were born in the same year, making them exactly the same age.

I'm not really a huge Van Morrison fan. On the other hand, I do like a lot of his music. One of his best-known songs is this one, "Wild Night":



My own favorite of Morrison's music is probably "Moondance", which is very jazzy:



Interesting, that two musicians who became so well known in very different spheres of music would have been born on the same day. But wait, as they say, there's more. Yesterday was also Bob Welch's birthday. Welch is no longer with us, and is not nearly as well known as Van Morrison or Itzhak Perlman, but he did have a huge hit with his 1977 album, "French Kiss". Arguably, the biggest hit from that album (there were three), was "Sentimental Lady". But, what is probably not widely known (or, at least, I didn't known it) is that the song was first recorded by Fleetwood Mac, on their album "Bare Trees" (1972) Welch was part of Fleetwood Mac from 1971 through 1974, and "Bare Trees" was the second album he recorded with them. I liked the solo version when it came out, but having now listened to the original version, I think I like it better:



One more thing: Not only was Bob Welch born on August 31, just like Morrison and Perlman, he was also born in 1945, making him also exactly the same age as them. Like I said, this week's theme is coincidence. More research could prove me wrong, but I can't think of too many cases of three people, born on the same day, finding any kind of public success in the same general arena.

Well, there were the Del Rubio triplets - Eadie, Elena, and Milly. They were actually triplets, all born on August 23, 1921, who were nightclub performers in the 1950s and then later did guest appearances on a number of television series and had a resurgence of popularity as a novelty act in the 1980s.

Here they are, guesting on Pee-Wee Herman's "Pee-Wee's Christmas Special":



But they are a special case. Perlman, Morrison, on the other hand, starting in very different places - Tel Aviv, Belfast, and Los Angeles - and with very different backgrounds, all managed to find some success in the same general field. The fact that all of them ended up being noted in the same field, albeit for very different kinds of music, fascinates me.

A hot August night and a baseball game...

I love baseball.

You know that if you read here regularly.

So, I was really happy when my roommate came home in the middle of last week and said she had been given two tickets to Friday's Fresno Grizzlies game. The Grizzlies are the San Francisco Giants' Triple A farm team, I'm far from being a Giants fan - I was raised to be a Los Angeles Dodgers fan, and the Dodgers and the Giants have an intra-state rivalry that sometimes gets rather boisterous. However, Grizzlies baseball is baseball, and they're the home team here, and I'll root for them so long as they aren't playing the Albuquerque Isotopes, which is the Dodgers' Triple A team. So, when I go to a Grizzlies-Isotopes game, I cheer for the Isotopes because they're Dodgers. Oh, and because Isotopes is a fabulous name for a baseball team.

However, last night the Grizzlies were playing the Colorado Springs Sky Sox, the Triple A affiliate of the Colorado Rockies. I've got no loyalties to anything in Colorado, so it was all right to cheer for the Grizzlies.

It was a great game, and we had great seats on the field box level. Where I was sitting, I could look directly across home plate and down the first base line. They were, perhaps, the best seats I've ever had at a baseball game. The Grizzlies won 7 - 5 on a late-game rally. The game got a little slow in the middle innings, but that burst of scoring late in the game livened things up considerably. An argument between the home plate umpire and the Grizzlies third-base coach that got the coach thrown out of the game made it even more fun. I'm a big fan of baseball arguments, which tend to be really colorful. In this case, the coach was really ticked. When he walked off the field and down into the dugout and slammed his batter's helmet down onto a cabinet, we could hear it hit from where we were sitting, on the other side of the stadium.

Also, since it was Friday night, there were fireworks after the game. The Grizzlies do fireworks after every Friday night home game of the season. I love fireworks, and I didn't get to see a Fourth of July fireworks display this year. Last night made up for that. The biggest problem of the night is that it was really hot and fairly humid. We could have done with a good breeze, and that just wasn't happening.

One thing that really interested me during the game, however, was that the Grizzlies seem to be trying to get more of a female audience out to the games, and they've put a really fascinating tactic into action.

As each batter comes up to the plate, there is a display of the player's season statistics and a photo of them up on the stadium's big screen. And I noticed (boy, did I notice) that they've started putting up photos of some of the Grizzlies' players without shirts, pumping iron. They are really very nice pictures. They've never done this before, and I can only imagine that it is a bid to get more women to come out to the games.

As far as I'm concerned, whoever came up with this idea came up with a winner. I mean, I'm a big baseball fan. I love the game for the game. But it has not escaped me over the years that there are some good looking men down there on the field.

So, now that you know how my long holiday weekend began, how is your weekend shaping up?

Movie Monday (a few days late): The Ingrid Bergman Birthday Edition

Here's a bit of movie trivia for you: Ingrid Bergman died on her birthday, August 29.

And more trivia: although Bergman played both a nun (in "The Bells of Saint Mary's" (1945) and a saint, in "Joan of Arc" (1948), she was unable to get film work in the United States for a number of years because she unapologetic about an affair with Italian director Roberto Rossellini and the child she gave birth to out of wedlock as a result of that affair. Ed Sullivan refused to have her as a guest on his variety show and she was denounced on the floor of the US Senate for having a child without being married.

US culture has changed a lot since the middle of the 20th century. That is for the better, mostly. Oh, people like to get moralistic about things that celebrities do from time to time - the Miley Cyrus/Robin Thicke performance at the MTV Video Music Awards is only the latest thing that people are pretending to be shocked about - but I can't remember the last time anyone got upset because someone in the entertainment industry had a baby without being married. And this is all to the good; as I've commented here before, a celebrity's private life should be just that - private. It's hard to believe, locking back, that there was such a violent reaction to Bergman's personal choices.

Bergman was a wonderful, graceful actress. She won three Academy Awards, out of something like seven nominations throughout her career. In 1945 she was named Best Actress for her role in "Gaslight" (1944). She won again as Best Actress as "Anastasia" (1956). She won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role in "Murder on the Orient Express" (1974). Her other nominations came for her roles in "For Whom the Bell Tolls" (1943), "The Bells of Saint Mary's", "Joan of Arc", and "Autumn Sonata" (1978). Only Katherine Hepburn has won more Academy Awards, and only four others (and only one other woman, Meryl Streep, have won as many).

Here is a clip from "Casablanca" (1942), which is probably the film Bergman is best-known for in the United States. She did not receive a nomination for playing Ilsa despite the film itself winning a Best Picture Oscar:

"Show us your papers"...

If you follow along here, you probably remember my post the other day about how the Birthers are at it again, as I wrote about how some people are questioning Texas Senator Ted Cruz's eligibility to run for president, and about how even though I wouldn't personally vote for Senator Cruz for anything I think the Birthers are going somewhere they really shouldn't.

Just as when some of the same people have asked to see President Obama's birth certificate, Cruz felt it necessary to produce his birth certificate to prove his citizenship status. And, I had not thought of it this way, but after Chris Matthews mentioned it in these terms today on his MSNBC show "Hardball", by making these claims, the Birthers are asking to see President Obama's and Senator Cruz's papers.

Is it a coincidence that one of them is African-American and the other is Hispanic?

Did I hear you answer that, yes, it is a coincidence? Wrong answer. There is no way that this is a coincidence. Despite a little bit of conversation when he was running for president because he was born in Panama, I don't recall anyone ever standing up and demanding to see John McCain's papers. If they did, it certainly didn't pick up any traction. I'm pretty sure that, back in the day when George Romney (yes, Mitt's dad) was running for president, while there was comment about the fact that he was born in Mexico of parents who were US citizens, no one made any serious claims that he should have to show his papers. On the other hand, President Obama is into his second term in the White House, and there are people still demanding to see his papers.

The difference? McCain and Romney: both white. Obama? Black. Cruz? Brown.

Especially on this day, the 50th anniversary of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech during the March on Washington, the Birthers should be ashamed of themselves. And the Republican leadership, which is where most of the Birthers come from, politically speaking, should be ashamed of themselves for not being willing to call out the Birthers on their racism. But, apparently, the leaders of the Republican Party are afraid of offending their base.

Which seems kind of weird to me, since most of the Republicans I know out here in the real world are absolutely not racist. Which would indicate to me that the Republican leadership needs to be catering to a different base. You'd have thought that was their take-away from the results of the 2012 presidential election.

Instead, they seem to be sticking to the infamous and deplorable Southern Strategy and tactics like voter suppression to attempt to regain power.

I read a book, and it was frightening...

I've been saying for years that Helter Skelter (1974), by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry, about Charles Manson and his cult and the murders that were committed in Manson's name, is the most frightening book I've ever read.

Well, I may well have found a more frightening book, Prophet's Prey (2011, Bloomsbury; 323 pages), by Sam Brower.

Brower's book is about the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, widely known as the FLDS, and the search for its leader, Warren Steed Jeffs, after he was charged with a number of crimes that he claimed were simply him following the dictates of his God. Among other things, Jeffs was "married" to perhaps as many as one hundred women, some of whom were as young as twelve years old at the time of their marriage. Along the way, Brower provides details about the beliefs of the FLDS, a bit of their history, and some of the things that Jeffs's followers have done and say they are willing to do should their prophet (Jeffs) ask them.

Brower makes comparisons along the way between the FLDS and cults such as the Peoples' Temple and the Branch Davidians, both of which came to bad ends. But as I read Brower's book, I was reminded more of Manson and his group, especially in the willingness of the members to commit what they know are crimes in the name of their leader.

It's difficult to say how many members of the FLDS there are, and even more difficult to know how many of those members remain faithful to Jeffs even after his incarceration on his conviction for sexual assault of a child and sentencing to life in prison. The FLDS is a closed group that does not solicit conversions and whose faithful members will not readily speak to outsiders. It is also important to note that not all FLDS are followers of Jeffs but who continue to practice polygamy.

The FLDS grew out of the decision by the mainstream Latter-Day Saints, headquartered in Salt Lake City, to abandon the practice of (but not the belief in) polygamy in 1890 as a prerequisite for the Utah Territory to become a state. The polygamous group came into its own in the 1930s, when the mainstream LDS church started excommunicating members who continued to practice polygamy around that time.

Some of the things that are scary about the account of the FLDS in Brower's book include how very young girls are assigned as wives to much older men, and that when a man is excommunicated from the FLDS, their wives and children are "reassigned" to other men; that younger men, called "Lost Boys", are kicked out of the church on flimsy grounds such as talking to girls or listening to rock music, so that they will not be around to compete with the older men for wives; the decrees from Warren Jeffs that there be no television, no radio, no books or magazines for members, and that the children are not to have toys; the elimination of all holidays; and, the decree that there be no pets followed by sending out men to kill all the cats and dogs that remained after the order that members get rid of all their pets.

Brower also points out that Short Creek, the original name of the towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona, which straddles the Arizona/Utah border north of the Grand Canyon, is home to over half the known cases of a genetic disease called Fumarase Deficiency. This disease interrupts the Krebs cycle, which generates energy to keep cells in the human body running. Those children with the disease that do not die within months of birth do not grow at a normal rate and usually develop developmental disabilities that leave them subject to crippling seizures and unable to care for themselves. Because the gene pool is so small there, marriages in Short Creek occur frequently between individuals who have the recessive gene for this disease. FLDS members in Short Creek refuse to be tested for presence of the recessive gene that causes Fumarase Deficiency, which would help avoid perpetuation of the disease.

Prophet's Prey is a disturbing book. As depressing and disturbing as the information in the book is, however, I think this is a valuable book that points out some very good reasons for not privileging religious practice the way it is in the United States. This is illustrated graphically in Brower's description of the aftermath of a raid made in 2006 on the FLDS community built in Texas. That raid resulted in the removal from the community of nearly 450 children due to allegations of abuse. The Texas CPS workers who participated in the raid described the deplorable conditions the children were living in. However, most of those workers were either fired, forced to retire, or were reassigned to other cases after their superiors decided not to pursue the cases, at least partly due to pressure brought to bear from conspiracy theorists and other fundamentalist religious adherents who accused the state of violating the First Amendment rights of the FLDS to practice their religion as they saw fit. In consequence, the children, including one twelve-year-old who had been married off to Warren Jeffs, were returned to the group. At least twenty percent of those children were given back to adults who were not their parents, and in the case of over a dozen children, Texas CPS handed the children back to adults without ascertaining who those adults were. The official reason that the cases were dropped was that it was going to cost too much money to find out, through DNA testing, which children belonged to which parents and then to adjudicate whether or not those children had actually been abused.

As much as I am a believer in the First Amendment religion clauses in the US Bill of Rights, I believe there is a difference between religious belief and practice. Anyone can believe anything they want, but I cannot believe that the free exercise clause was intended to allow parents and other adults to abuse children, or to hand girls over to men twenty, thirty, forty or more years older, to become wives to them in every sense of the word. I cannot believe that the free exercise clause allows a religion to kick teenage boys out of the group and literally abandon them on the side of the road in the middle of the desert when they become a threat to the older men's ability to take young brides. It also was not intended, I'm sure, to allow the assignment and reassignment of adult women to men as wives without their consent. To act as if these practices are legitimized by saying that the people who do them believe it's okay as part of their religion is a perversion of the First Amendment. You can't take away some people's rights in order to let other people practice their religion.

I'm happy for consenting adults to make whatever arrangements they wish: polygynous marriages (one man, multiple women), polyandrous marriages (one woman, multiple men), group marriages, same-sex marriages, one man/one woman marriages - as long as all parties to the arrangement are consenting adults. Parties to the plural marriages in the FLDS, at least the female parties, are often neither consenting nor adults. The fact that doing this is a tenet of their religion does not make these non-consensual and underage marriages any more acceptable.

And, yes, I am aware that I've gone from reviewing Prophet's Prey to pontificating about the material in it. And I'm fine with that. What I read in Brower's book spurred very strong reactions in me. This is especially true regarding the vehemence with which certain groups defended the FLDS and their practices that would not be tolerated in any other context, and the cavalier and callous way in which the state of Texas was so quick to wash its official hands of what had been obvious abuse of children. Yes, the state did raise its age of legal marriage with parental consent from fourteen to seventeen. And, yes, the state did convict Warren Jeffs and sentence him to life in prison. Good for them. Jeffs belongs in prison; he's a pedophile, a narcissist, and a sociopath. But they abandoned all those children to a religions system that is still controlled by Jeffs from his prison cell - which by the way, was encouraged by the state of Texas when they placed Jeffs, when he was first taken to Texas to face charges, in a "for-profit" prison. As Brower explains it, per the rules of that prison, any inmate who can afford it is allowed to have a private phone line in his cell, and is allowed unlimited use of that phone. Because of this, Jeffs was able to reassert his control over the FLDS and order the continuation of his policies, including his vision of what is called "blood atonement." Blood atonement is the principle that sometimes people have sinned so badly (and Jeffs has some peculiar ideas of what such sin consists of, including disobedience of his proclamations) that the only way they can be saved is to have their blood shed in their death. In Jeffs's vision of blood atonement, this includes ritual killing in the temple and the drinking of the blood of the victim.

And how, exactly, do we know all this? Well, as with the mainstream Mormons, the FLDS are obsessive about record-keeping. As part of this, Jeffs kept what he called the "Priesthood Record of the Prophet Warren Steed Jeffs", in which he kept a detailed record of his life, including of activities that were illegal. This was found in the basement of the temple the FLDS built in Texas. Also discovered during the investigation into Jeffs and the LDS was - and this might be the most disgusting thing of all - an audio tape that recorded his rape of a new twelve-year-old bride (Jeffs was fifty years old at the time) two weeks after their "sealing" (marriage) ceremony.

It is also disturbing to know that for years, ever since a law-enforcement raid on Short Creek in 1953, which had much of the press and public siding with the polygamists due to First Amendment considerations, much like happened after the later raid in Texas, officials in Utah and Arizona pretty much turned a blind eye to what was going on in Short Creek. Even when women who did not consent to their forced marriages escaped and then were taken back by the men and "disappeared" for months or years at a time (and sometimes forever), no one could interest law enforcement in looking for them or even checking that they were still alive.

The FLDS, besides being compared to the Branch Davidians or the People's Temple, have also sometimes been called the "American Taliban". I think that is a fair comparison. FLDS women, like women where the Taliban rules, have no freedoms to speak of. Anything that might bring in outside information - newspapers, magazines, radio, television - have been banned by the leadership. I think the story of the FLDS is the real answer to those who say that "it could never happen here" of the loss of freedoms on a wholesale scale.

It not only can happen here, it has happened here. And it is still happening today, despite the jailing of the leader of the FLDS.

Music Sunday: The Elvis Costello Edition

I have to confess, first off, that I don't know Elvis Costello's music very well, although I've liked what I've heard of it. And, through a couple of interviews I've seen, he seems like an interesting artist. And so, since it's his birthday today, I thought I'd share some of his music.

First, of all, the song of Costello's that I'm most familiar with, "Everyday I Write the Book" (1983). Costello has claimed that he wrote this song in about ten minutes. Maybe so, but it's a good song nonetheless, and makes me wish I could be so productive and with such a good outcome in such a short time.



Looking around on YouTube, I found this cover of the Rolling Stones' "Wild Horses", a live version by Costello and Lucinda Williams. This is a song I like a lot, although I've never been wild about the Stones' version. My favorite cover of this is by Gram Parsons, while he was with The Flying Burrito Brothers. I think this cover (I'm not sure when or where it was recorded) is going to become my co-favorite. It's very, very good:



Here's a live performance of "Watching the Detectives" (1977) from a performance in Germany in 1978. This song is from early in his career. It has been used at the theme song for the PBS series "History Detectives" (which is a good and interesting show that you should watch if you have the chance):



Costello's cover of Nick Lowe's "What's So Funny 'Bout Peace, Love and Understanding" is very good. Here is a live performance of that song from 2003 on The David Letterman Show, which Costello was co-hosting that night, with bonus Costello being silly while introducing himself:



Costello has an Academy Award Nomination for writing, along with T-Bone Burnett, "The Scarlet Tide" from the film "Cold Mountain" (2003). Here is a performance of the song, which was sung on the film's soundtrack by Alison Krauss by Costello and Emmylou Harris:

I read this article...and I think you should, too

Lindy West wrote this and posted on jezebel.com the other day. It's about body-shaming and how doing that is not acceptable no matter the size or the shape of the body that is being shamed for not being perfect. I'm passing it along to you. You need to read it, whether your are fat or thin, male or female. It is important.

I'll probably have more to say about it someday soon. But, today is my birthday, and I'm taking the day off. Sort of.

Oh, and hat-tip to Michelle Hermark for bringing Ms. West's article to my attention.

In which my inner film geek escapes for an afternoon...

I get laughed at from time to time for my affection for "making of" documentaries and the extras on DVD editions of films like commentaries. But, you know what? You can learn stuff from them. Especially, as a writer, it is instructive to see how films are put together as a method of storytelling. Because storytelling is storytelling, no matter what the method, and putting together a story or a novel, or even a non-fiction piece of writing, has things in common with putting together a film.

And then, sometimes, it's just interesting to see how different people approach filmmaking, and how they do their work in general. Cruising YouTube today, I found an example of that. As I'm sure I've mentioned here before, I am a huge Steve McQueen fan, and "Bullitt" (1968) is one of my favorites of his films. I came across this short "making of" documentary that covers, among other things, the shooting of the famous chase scene, which took three weeks to shoot, in that film:



A point is made during the clip, which was produced by Warner Brothers, of the care that was taken to make sure that civilians were out of the way as the high-speed chase made its way through San Francisco. This is in huge contrast to the clip I also found today discussing how the car-chases-train scene in "The French Connection" (1971) was shot. Just watch and listen:



The first thing that becomes clear is that the chase scene in "The French Connection" didn't exist in the original shooting script for the film and was created specifically to outdo the chase in "Bullitt". The second thing you notice is that the director of "The French Connection", William Friedkin, specifically did not do anything to protect bystanders from getting hurt, and as Friedkin says in the clip, "nobody planned anything" and "it was all improvisation". Nobody knew a car was going to come down the street, pedal to the metal, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. You'll also notice that quite a bit of the conversation in the clip is devoted to rationalizing the decision to just shoot the sequence, no matter the consequences.

There are a lot of people who will argue that the chase sequence in "The French Connection" is "better" or "greater" than the chase sequence in "Bullitt". I disagree. So, here is what I consider to be the greatest chase scene ever. Still:



What many people don't recall, however, is that there is another chase scene in "Bullitt", this one near the end of the film, that is also pretty neat. It is mentioned in the "making of" clip above, and takes place out on the runways at San Francisco International Airport. I couldn't find a clip of the whole thing, but here is part of it:



You might be right if you suspect that all of this is just a huge excuse to spend some time entertaining my inner film geek.

You're still wrong, Wayne LaPierre...and here's more proof

First, a little review:

Shortly after the shootings last December at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, where 20 young students and 6 others were killed by a young man with weapons and a lot of ammunition, National Rifle Association Wayne LaPierre famously said while proposing that all US schools be protected by armed officers that "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." He said that on December 21, 2012.

On January 10, 2013, Wayne LaPierre was proved wrong.

On that day, less than a month after his pronouncement, a student had entered Taft Union High School in Taft, California, with a weapon and shot and wounded another student who he said had been bullying him. The armed guard who was customarily on campus was absent that day because he was snowed in and couldn't make it to work. In his absence, an unarmed science teacher, Ryan Heber, talked the student into putting down his weapon and surrendering after distracting the shooter long enough for the rest of the students in class to escape. Yes, the one student was injured, but nobody died.

I wrote about this here shortly after the events in Taft.

Now, fast forward to yesterday, Tuesday, August 20, 2013, to Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy in Decatur, Georgia. A 20-year-old young man entered the school with an AK-47-style weapon and close to 500 rounds of ammunition, took a couple of school employees hostage, shot a hole in the floor of the school's office, and exchanged gunfire with police. But there were no injuries as the 870 students at the school, pre-kindergarteners through fifth graders, escaped.

They were able to escape not because the police shot at him, but largely because one of his hostages, the school's bookkeeper, an unarmed woman named Antoinette Tuff, engaged the young man in conversation, then talked him into putting down his weapon and ammunition and surrendering.

Again, an unarmed school employee managed to do what armed officers could not do - end a dangerous incident with as little violence as possible.

So, you know, Wayne. Once again we see that you were wrong in December and you're still wrong now.

And, once again, everybody lived. That can't be a bad thing.

And...the Birthers are at it again

It looks like the birthers are not going to go away anytime soon.

Only this time their target is not Barack Obama. They aren't even railing against a Democrat or a liberal this time.

Instead, there are those insisting that Texas Senator Ted Cruz, part of the rightest right of the Republican Party and a darling of the Tea Party, is not eligible to run for president, as he is showing every indication of wanting to do. These people are contending that he is not a "natural born citizen", as the US Constitution requires to be eligible to hold the highest office in the land.

Here's the deal: Cruz was born in Canada to a Cuban father and a mother who was a US citizen. He holds both Canadian and US citizenship. This, some people say, means that he is not eligible to be President of the United States, based on criteria outlined in the US Constitution.

Now, I have to admit that it's tempting to sit back and watch the Tea Party be hoist on its own petard. There is something satisfying in the idea of having them have to see how it feels to have one of their own accused of not being qualified. on this technicality, to lead the country.

I also have to confess that there are many reasons why I do not want to see Ted Cruz in the White House, not the least of which is the fact that he seems to think the comparisons that have been made between him and late Senator Joseph McCarthy, who led the way in causing so much misery in the 1950s as he saw a Red under every bed, are complimentary. He's been quoted as saying that the comparisons mean that he must be "doing something right." He won't go so far as to say publicly that he admires McCarthy's attitudes and tactics, but it seems clear that the assumption that he does admire Red-baiter McCarthy is not far from the mark. Also, the Libertarians like him, and I'm not a big fan of that particular political and social outlook on life.

But, as much as I'd hate to see Cruz elected to, well, almost anything, claiming on this technicality that he is not eligible to run is not a smart way to keep him from running. Unless there is a clear ruling from a court saying that to be considered a "natural born citizen", a person has to have been born on US soil, having a parent who is a citizen should be the standard for citizenship. Period.

Just as trying to make sure that only people you think will vote for your candidates can participate in the electoral process (voter suppression) is not a legitimate tactic, neither does trying to prove that candidates whose positions you don't like aren't eligible to run at all constitute an acceptable way to stack the electoral deck in your favor.

Not in the America I grew up in. In the America I grew up in, we were taught to play fair.

Taking a birther position in a case like this is not anywhere near playing fair.

Movie Monday: The "I'm Really Looking Forward to this Movie" Edition

I have just one thing to say today, and that is that I want to see this movie:



This is "Rush", directed by Ron Howard and starring Chris Hemsworth as James Hunt and Daniel Bruhl as Niki Lauda, rivals in Forumla I racing in the 1970s. In 1976, Lauda was nearly killed in a crash at the German Grand Prix. Just a month and a half later, Lauda returned to racing, coming fourth in the Italian Grand Prix.

That's all. I'm really looking forward to seeing this movie when it comes out in late September. I can't remember the last time I was so looking forward to a new movie.

Music Sunday: The "Woodstock" Edition

Let me try this again. My computer just up and burped and sent what I had written of this week's Music Sunday post off into cyberspace somewhere. I hope it's having fun floating out there somewhere.

But, as I was saying...

Today is the 44th anniversary of the end of the Woodstock Festival. I was not old enough at the time to go to Woodstock, but I was old enough to spend that entire weekend wishing I was there - crowds, heat, rain, mud, and all. It was a singular event in the history of music, and it became a cultural and historical icon. Sometimes, though, I think the actual music that was played gets lost in the event's legendary status. Because of this, I decided that this is a good time to share some of the music from that weekend that could never be repeated, although god knows people have tried.

One of the songs Crosby, Stills, and Nash performed at Woodstock was their version of The Beatles' "Blackbird". Many years later, I saw CSN in concert and they started the performance with this song, only that time they sang it a capella:



The Jefferson Airplane were at Woodstock, singing "White Rabbit":



And The Band performed, singing, among other songs, "The Weight":



Protest music was there. This is Country Joe & the Fish and the "I'm Fixin' to Die Rag". Just a warning, though, if you have little ones in earshot: this clip includes the infamous "Fish cheer", which is what got the first Woodstock compilation album banned from my house when it came out. It's the only thing my parents, specifically my mother, ever forbade me to read, watch, or listen to. Ah, well:



The Who were there, singing "My Generation", with bonus Pete Townshend throwing a guitar to the audience:



And Jimi Hendrix performed "Purple Haze":



There were a lot more acts and a lot more music at Woodstock than I've shared today, of course. Janis Joplin, The Grateful Dead, Santana, Joe Cocker, Joan Baez, Arlo Guthrie, and many, many more. But there is only so much time and so much room on a Music Sunday. At least that means that there will be plenty to share this time next year. Or, maybe, even before that.

Reince redux...

As promised by chairman Reince Prieebus, the Republican National Committee has voted unanimously to not allow CNN and NBC to host presidential primary debates among hopefuls for the Republican nomination during the 2016 presidential primary season.

In an AP story, Priebus is quoted as saying, "Our party should not be involved in setting up a system that encourages the slicing and dicing of candidates over a long period of time with moderators that are not in the business of being at all concerned about the future of our party."

Ummm, Reince?

It is not the job of debate moderators to be "concerned about the future of" the Republican party, or the Democratic party, or any other political party. Instead, their job is to make sure that the voting public has an opportunity to learn where all the candidates from all the parties stand on the issues. The whole point of the debates, at least from this voter's point of view, is to show where the candidates stand on the issues so that the voters can make an informed choice when they enter the voting booth to cast their ballots.

What Reince and the RNC are really concerned about here is making sure that whoever ends up getting the nomination, and therefore all of the candidates running in the Republican party's primaries, are not asked any tough questions and are not embarrassed in front of a national audience. As far as I'm concerned, this is the responsibility of the individual candidates, who need to not say and do embarrassing things and instead make sure they are educated on the issues and are able to talk about their positions on those issues. This goes for the candidates of all parties, not just the Republican candidates.

The problem we have here is that Reince doesn't actually want Republican candidates to answer any questions about their positions on the substantive issues. All he cares about is putting a Republican in the White House. Which, I suppose, is his job. But...and this is a huge but...it is not his job to game the system in order to achieve this. And that is exactly what Reince and the RNC are doing - attempting to game the system.

The vote today by the RNC is a big step in that effort, in that keeping CNN and NBC out of the debates is part of the effort to choose debate moderators who won't ask any hard questions of Republican candidates. But it isn't their only move in this process. This is also why debate audiences (and, in truth, it isn't just the Republicans who use this particular tactic) are packed with individuals who will only cheer anything any of their candidates say and, if audience questions are taken by the candidates, the questioners and their questions are vetted ahead of time to make sure that they serve the party rather than the voters. This is also why the Republican party has been introducing legislation in many states that attempts to do things like require voters to present photo ID in order to be able to vote, to limit or eliminate early voting, and similar measures that limit access to voting for groups - the poor, the elderly, students, and minorities - that traditionally do not vote Republican.

It's clear to me that the Republican leadership doesn't want to win elections fairly. Instead, they want to win by any means necessary, even if those means are unfair, dishonest, and against everything I was taught that the United States stands for.

The thing that makes me really angry and sad is that the RNC doesn't even seem to be interested in hiding the fact that they are attempting to game the system.

Instead they, and especially Reince Priebus, seem to be proud of what they're doing.

Busy, Busy...

I've been kind of busy the past couple of days, doing scheduling for our monthly Practice Interview Day for the newbies at CVP, and so I haven't had much time to think about blog posts.

However...it has come to my attention that today is the anniversary of the US release of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show", which opened on August 14, 1975. So, I'm just going to leave this here for you (with bonus Italian subtitles):



Also, it's David Crosby's birthday today. I'm a big fan from way back. And so, I'll leave this here, too:



--------------------------

Practice Interview Day is tomorrow, and is pretty much an all-day thing. After that, I should have a little more time to think about other things, including writing blog posts.

Movie Monday: The "Skyfall" Edition

I've been watching James Bond movies for decades now, since long before people were getting their panties all in a twist about the scantily-clad women and violence in those films that might be inappropriate for, say, an 8-year-old to see.

We had a family tradition of going to the drive-in every Friday night (and that meant every Friday night, since where I grew up in Southern California, the drive-ins were open all year long), and that included whenever a Bond movie came out. Well, in practice, we didn't get to go every Friday night, because my father had to work late some nights, but we made it there as often as we could.

Accordingly, I saw my first Bond film - it was either "Goldfinger" (1964) or "Thunderball" (1965) - when I was eight or nine years old. I can't recall for sure which one it was. At any rate, my parent's didn't seem too concerned that seeing what sex and violence were in those films would warp me for life. So, when they started showing the Bond films on network television accompanied by frequent warnings that some of their content might be inappropriate for children, it gave me a good laugh. I had seen them before there was any such thing as the MPAA ratings system, which went into effect on November 1, 1968, when I was 12 years old.

All of this made it interesting for me when I finally got to watch the latest Bond film, "Skyfall" (2012), that I noticed that the film was rated PG-13, which warns "Parents Strongly Cautioned - Some Material May be Inappropriate for Children Under 13", and that the reasons listed for this rating for this film were "for intense violent sequences throughout, some sexuality, language, and smoking."

Smoking? Yeah. Okay, we all know that smoking isn't the healthiest thing a person can do. But, "Parents Strongly Cautioned" because people smoke in a movie? It isn't as if kids don't see smoking in the wild, probably every day of their lives. Somebody is clutching pearls because some people are smoking in a movie? This, apparently, has been part of the ratings rubric since 2007 or so. Somehow, it seems like society at large, at least in the United States, might finally have lost all sense of proportion. Do they really think that showing smoking is as bad as showing people mowed down by automatic weapons that fire who knows how many bullets a minute with just one pull of the trigger?

Never mind. The ratings system has always been slightly strange. If you don't believe me, go watch a documentary called "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" (2006), that explores the US film rating system. But that's not what I'm here to write about today. Still, see this documentary if you're at all interested in how the ratings system really works.

But, first, see "Skyfall". It's really a good movie.

Besides all the action (read: shooting and subway derailments and fights on top of trains and chases and explosions and so forth) that are part of all James Bond films, "Skyfall" explores some interesting themes. One is accountability in the spy game, and what happens when, as M says at one point, when your "enemies are not nations, but individuals." Another is, what happens when a spy starts to get older and might not really be up to his or her A-game any more? These are fair questions, to be honest. To discuss this much further, or really, to talk about the plot much at all, would be to give away the game, and I don't want to do that even though I know I've come to the game with this quite late and that most of you have seen the film if you're going to.

I will say that Bond finds himself it a bit of trouble. Besides being shot, falling off a train on a bridge, falling to the water below and going over a waterfall (this is in the first few minutes of the film, so I don't think I'm giving away too much by saying this, especially considering that much the same thing happens at the beginning of every Bond film), James has been drinking too much and relying to heavily on pills to control his pain after all this. He isn't necessarily the crack shot he used to be.

I have to say, as the 23rd official Bond movie in a franchise that has been with us for half a century now, "Skyfall" isn't having the same problems that Bond seems to be having in the film. The film is at the top of the 007 game. Daniel Craig is superb as the seemingly aging Bond (although at 45, the actor is certainly not what you'd call old). He brings us a suitably cheeky Bond. Javier Bardem, as Raoul Silva, does a great turn as the latest Bond villain, bringing just the right tone to the role. Now, he isn't my favorite Bond villain - that honor goes to Klaus Maria Brandauer in "Never Say Never Again" (1983), where his portrayal of Maximillian Largo is sinister yet not as physically repugnant as many of the Bond villains; he's the only Bond villain where one gets the feeling that the women around him haven't had to be coerced to be there - but Bardem's Silva comes close. Although I really wish that Bardem would find some roles where he doesn't have such unfortunate hairstyles. This seems to have become a theme in his career that really isn't necessary. Dame Judi Dench is wonderful as M, as is Ralph Feinnes as Gareth Mallory, the head of the government committee that is investigating MI6. Q is back, this time in the person of the wonderful Ben Whishaw, who plays the role with just the delightfully perfect amount of geekiness, and an almost unrecognizable Albert Finney is perfect as Kincade, a figure from Bond's past.

There's so much more I want to write about "Skyfall", but there might be some of you who haven't seen it yet, and I really don't want to spoil it for you. I went in knowing very little about what was going to happen, and I think that's the best way to approach the movie.

Just take my word for it. If you like action flicks, and if you like James Bond films, this is the one you want to see.

Music Sunday: Another Birthday Edition, with bonus historical trivia

Before continuing with our regular Music Sunday post, I've got a couple of questions for you: Are you using Wi-Fi to read this? Have you talked on your cell phone today?

Well then, you might be interested to know that the patent for the Frequency-hopping spread spectrum communications system that is the basis for today's wireless telephones and Wi-Fi was granted on this day in 1942. The thing is, if you're picturing a group of geeky scientists laboring long hours in a lab somewhere working out this system - a system that I couldn't even begin to describe the workings of, by the way - you'd be wrong. The people the patent was granted to were George Antheil, an avant-garde composer, and glamorous actress Hedy Lamarr.

And, it turns out, avant-garde is exactly the word for one of Anthiel's best known works, a collaboration with filmmaker Fernand Leger. I found this while looking around to discover exactly what kind of musical work Antheil did. I have to admit, this is really not to my taste at all, musically speaking, although the film work is interesting if odd. Don't feel obligated to stick around through the whole 16 minutes of the clip if it isn't your cup of tea, but I think it is interesting to see and hear the kind of thing that the co-inventor of Wi-Fi technology was doing when he wasn't enabling our (future) communications addictions.



Here's another long, but as far as I'm concerned much more pleasing, piece of music. I'm fairly sure I've shared this here before, but it is a favorite. It's Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida", all 17 minutes and 3 seconds of it. I figured it would be appropriate to share, being that today would have been Erik Brann's birthday, had he not died of a heart ailment in 2003. Born in 1950, Brann was only 17 years old when he played guitar on this classic, and epic, song:




Today is also Bob Mothersbaugh's birthday. Bob, born in 1952, is the lead guitarist for Devo, and lead singer Mark Mothersbaugh's younger brother. And so, here is "Whip It", one of the oddest hit songs I have ever heard (although not nearly as odd as the Anthiel composition):



Yesterday's most notable musical birthday is that if Ian Anderson, lead singer and flautist for Jethro Tull, who was born on August 10, 1947. Anyone who can turn the flute into a rock and roll instrument is okay as far as I'm concerned. His birthday gives me the excuse to share a couple of my favorite Tull songs. First is "Locomotive Breath", from the album "Aqualung", which was released in 1971. This particular clip is from a live performance in 1982:



And then, of course, there is the album's title song, "Aqualung". It always seems strange to like so much a song that includes the word "snot" and describes a bum "sitting on a park bench/eyeing little girls with bad intent", but the lyrics of this song are some of the most evocative I've ever heard. They paint such a concrete picture of a particular set of scenes. This clip is a live performance of the song on the BBC from 1977:

It's Do What You Want To Do Saturday

Ever have one of those days when you deliberately ignore everything that you're "supposed" to do and just do what you damn well please?

Well, that's what I did today. I slept in reasonably late. I read for awhile...I'm reading an interesting book right now. I watched a couple of movies. I worked on my writing project. Working on that project does not count as "supposed-to-do" because I'm doing it on spec and don't have a hard-and-fast deadline on it. Plus, I'm happiest when I'm doing that. I had hot dogs for dinner. I played with the cat.

I did all those things instead of writing a proper blog post today.

I'll be back with Music Sunday tomorrow. Meanwhile, I hope you had a nice Saturday, wherever you are and whatever you did.

Movie extra: The "Artists and Models" Edition

I've never liked Jerry Lewis, nor much of anything he's been in. I don't think he's particularly funny, and his recent insistence that women shouldn't do comedy because it "diminishes" their "qualities to the lowest common denominator" both puzzle and offend me, and not just on behalf of the all the really funny women in the world. I'm not sure it says much about him that he thinks it's okay for men to diminish themselves in that way, or that they are already so debased that it doesn't matter what they do.

Yeah, I know, he's an old man now, and I probably shouldn't say bad things about him.

If that's true, then this is my mea culpa. This evening, I happened to watch "Artists and Models", a 1955 film he made with Dean Martin, Shirley MacLaine, and Dorothy Malone. Ordinarily I wouldn't have watched it, but my roommate turned it on so that her 5-year-old granddaughter could watch it. But, we were eating dinner and it was either watch the movie or go eat by myself. I've been eating alone all summer while my roommate has been on vacation, so that wasn't an option that I really liked. And so I watched the movie.

It was hilarious.

No, really. It's that laugh-out-loud kind of funny that is difficult to come by, in my experience.

It still had too much of Lewis's mugging. That isn't my taste in comedy, and it doesn't look any better these days on Jim Carrey than it did when Lewis was doing it on a regular basis. And I find his "Hey, Lady!" voice, which he uses in this film, to be particularly grating. But, even with all this, I laughed out loud repeatedly during the film and recommend it just on that basis alone.

Also, any movie that can find comedy in the Cold War and the popular culture of the 1950s is my friend, and this film manages to do that. They send up the furor over what comic books were supposedly doing to the sensitive minds of children with style and bite, and they poke fun equally at the Soviets and at US overzealousness in rooting out all the Reds under all the beds. And there's a quick, blink-and-you'll-miss-it, tip of the hat to "Rear Window", one of the top grossing films of the year before "Artists and Models" was made, that is just hilarious. There is also a scene that begs the question of whether whoever invented the game "Twister" was watching it when they first thought of the idea for the game. They also manage to send up the then-fledgling space race as they laugh at both the spying of the Soviets and at the sometimes comic overzealousness of the US in guarding against that spying.

Here's the trailer for the film, courtesy of YouTube:



It really is a funny film, and you should see it. It doesn't make me like Jerry Lewis any better, to be honest, but it proves that him just being in a movie is not necessarily a reason for me to avoid it completely.