Current reading: High Fidelity by Nick Hornsby

Recent listening: Dead Prez, Funkadelic, Parliament, Dyke & the Blazers, Prince, Bill Withers, A Tribe Called Quest, Rufus Thomas, Sly & the Family Stone, Tower of Power, The Getaway People, Charles Wright, The Commodores, The Meters, Gil Scott-Heron, Transformer by Lou Reed

Recent viewing: Real Time with Bill Maher, Grimm, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Touch, The Office, The Middle, Modern Family

Recent playing: Bloons 5

Recently accomplished: CDs for Jan, paper work for Thomas, taxes, got van running, new glasses

Imperative To Do: Troop 820 accounting, update allowances, groceries, uncategorized transactions, spring break chores for the kids

Current reading: High Fidelity by Nick Hornsby

Recent listening: Hot Rats, Ten Years After, Back To Mine (Krafty Kuts), James Brown, New Roman Times, The Pizza Tapes, Kitaro

Recent viewing: 30 for 30, House of Cards, 7 Up, Killing Bono, Real Time with Bill Maher, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, The Middle, Modern Family, Touch, Raising Hope, Larry King Now, The Office, Fringe

Recent playing: Letterpress, Bloons 5

Recently accomplished: Can & bottle recycling, birthday interview, bought iPad Mini

Imperative To Do: Appointments, Troop 820 accounting, sell OG iPad

I love how you poured yourself out for everyone to see and I use it as inspiration in my own (meager and infrequent) attempts to be an artist.

I bow to you and thank you, sir.

PS: How do I get invited to one of your legendary parties?

Here’s the original thread which was brought to my attention by an r/bestof posting. I submitted my comment twice but Reddit didn’t accept it. I suspect that Bill has temporarily disabled comments. 

Current reading: High Fidelity by Nick Hornsby

Recent listening: David Grisman’s Acoustic Christmas, Christmas Spirit by Los Lonely Boys, Everything You Want for Christmas by Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Best of 2012

Recent viewing: QI, Dexter, Homeland, Sons of Anarchy, Burn Notice, The Walking Dead, Portlandia, American Harmony

Recent playing: Letterpress, Bloons

Recently accomplished: Purged old items from Toodledo, finished negotiating Thomas’ property damages claim, Repair Bucks (iPhone & Xbox), Christmas

Imperative To Do: Doctor appointments, Troop 820 accounting, tree recycling, can & bottle recycling

Current reading: n/a

Recent listening: I’m With You, The Limeliters, Peaches, Philip Glass, The Social Network, Hoyt Axton, Burl Ives, Joan Baez, Peter Paul & Mary, Ricky Skaggs, The Great Adventures of Slick Rick

Recent viewing: Treme, Revolution, Lillyhammer, Burn Notice, Fringe, Grimm, The Walking Dead, Key & Peele, Sons of Anarchy, QI, Homeland

Recent playing: Letterpress, Words with Friends, Monsters Ate My Condo

Recently accomplished: finished refinancing mortgage

Imperative To Do: Doctor appointments, Troop 820 accounting

Of course, the analogy is deliberately flawed to achieve the comic effect of calling Obama a “clown”. A more apt analogy would compare the president with McDonald’s CEO, Don Thompson. Does Mr. Thompson cook your burger when you visit McDonald’s? Of course not, but he is an important member of the team that produces all those burgers. The real question is whether Mr. Thompson deserves any credit (or blame) for your crappy McDonald’s burger?

Ever since President Obama announced that bin Laden had been killed, various parties on the extreme right have tried to claim that Obama is taking too much credit when it is Seal Team Six that really deserves the credit. This narrative started within minutes of the announcement but a textual analysis does not support this conclusion at all.

I used Wordle to evaluate the text of Obama’s speech announcing the raid on bin Laden’s compound. You can view the “word cloud” I created by clicking on the thumbnail on the right. In addition to the visual representation, I used a word frequency counter to obtain the raw numbers. If we ignore articles, prepositions and conjunctions, the top words are “our” and “we” with respective frequencies of 47 and 37. The most common “selfish” word is “I” which occurs only 10 times in the speech. The word “my” appears three times and the word “me” appears twice. There are a total of 1374 words. Here is the excerpt where he takes credit for his role:

“And so shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our war against al Qaeda, even as we continued our broader efforts to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat his network.
Then, last August, after years of painstaking work by our intelligence community, I was briefed on a possible lead to bin Laden. It was far from certain, and it took many months to run this thread to ground. I met repeatedly with my national security team as we developed more information about the possibility that we had located bin Laden hiding within a compound deep inside of Pakistan. And finally, last week, I determined that we had enough intelligence to take action, and authorized an operation to get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice.
Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.”

I have taken the liberty of bolding the “selfish” words. By my reading, Obama does not go out of his way to claim credit and is simply describing his role as commander-in-chief. Contrast this with the closing paragraphs of the speech:

“Tonight, we give thanks to the countless intelligence and counterterrorism professionals who’ve worked tirelessly to achieve this outcome. The American people do not see their work, nor know their names. But tonight, they feel the satisfaction of their work and the result of their pursuit of justice.
We give thanks for the men who carried out this operation, for they exemplify the professionalism, patriotism, and unparalleled courage of those who serve our country. And they are part of a generation that has borne the heaviest share of the burden since that September day.”

This is not unusual for Obama – he thanks the military constantly – but that does not fit the straw man that conservatives wish to construct.

Of course, people in the military have their own opinions about Obama but we don’t often hear them. When a member of Seal Team Six appeared on 60 Minutes a few months ago, he discussed the team’s interaction with the president after the raid:

Scott Pelley: Did the president ask you guys which ones of you had shot Osama bin Laden?
Mark Owen: Yeah. He asked who was the one. And we told him we wouldn’t tell.
Scott Pelley: You wouldn’t tell him? Why not?
Mark Owen: Pulling a trigger’s easy. You know, a couple pounds of pressure on your trigger finger, and I’ve done it millions of times, and it’s not that hard. You know, so it’s not about who that one person was. It’s about the team, or the helicopter pilots, or the intel folks that teed this whole thing up. Who cares who the one person is? Doesn’t matter.

Later, he added:

Mark Owen: Our team played a small little piece. Some people would argue bigger. But, you know, to us, it’s very– we were just doing our jobs. Not a big deal. We were just lucky to be at the right place at the right time.

For the military it will always be about the team. Like him or not, Obama leads that team. He gets the blame for failures and he should get credit for the successes, along with the rest of the team.

Current reading: n/a

Recent listening: The Kingston Trio, Arlo Guthrie, They Might Be Giants, The Beach Boys, Rick Nelson, Frankie Vallie & the Four Seasons, Back To Mono, Live at the Apollo, Bach on Wood, Sublime

Recent viewing: Falling Skies, Homeland, Breaking Bad, Warehouse 13, 2012 Olympics

Recent playing: Plants vs. Zombies, Words with Friends, Monsters Ate My Condo

Recently accomplished: Mortgage refinancing, hair cut, Crater Lake/Roseburg loop, Roundup weeds, mowed lawn

Imperative To Do: Vacuum, make doctor appointments, mail packages, turn compost, trim butterfly bushes, Troop 820 can recycling, refinish deck

Despite my friend’s protestations to the contrary, this image apparently makes the argument that an armed population is a safe population. More specifically, if considered within the context of the recent shootings in Colorado, it seemingly argues that the Aurora shooter would have fired fewer shots if that theater had more armed citizens at the movies that night.

I suppose that some might think that this image simply says that “guns prevent crime” or that “guns stop crime” but it goes beyond those assertions (with which, by the way, I would never argue). The inclusion of the word “crazy” is significant and tells us that the author is not speaking just of criminals but of people that are insane. Furthermore, the author also says that she is speaking of insane people who are armed – i.e. the kind that can “get off shots”. These two specific word choices strike a very specific chord in our psyche: vengeance.

You see, the incident in Aurora and others like it both make us sad for the victims but also angry. Anger is an emotion that demands to be resolved. Part of that resolution is placing the blame. Obviously, we all blame the shooter but, depending on your political bent, we also are tempted to blame “the system” or “the media”. Some blame video games or music. Others blame guns and gun control laws that they feel are inadequate. We can all unite, though, in blaming the shooter (who I will not name due to my own personal “blame game”).

Still, identifying and capturing the shooter is not enough to bring the victims back. We still long to be able to make a difference and change history. I personally imagine myself as an observer in that theater and wonder what it was like to be a survivor. This image tempts our imagination to wonder “What would have happened if I were there and I had a gun?” Dive behind a seat and start firing, right?

And here’s where I part ways with my friend on this matter, I think. I’m not nearly as gun competent as he is and I would not argue if someone were to say that I’m gun incompetent. So I’m fairly certain that I would have made no difference with a gun. Worse yet, it’s likely that I would have shot the wrong person in that darkened theater. That theater with flashing images on the screen that translate nearly to a strobe effect on the visibility in the theater. Meanwhile, you’re choking and rubbing your eyes from the tear gas while the perp is free to breath by virtue of the gas mask he’s wearing. Furthermore, he’s wearing body armor and wielding multiple weapons. And he’s got the element of surprise but to the nth degree due to the fact that many interpret his presence and actions as part of the show. No, there is no way that I’m gonna get a shot at this guy. And, if I survive, it’s by chance because he did not shoot in my direction first.

But how would a confident, competent gun-wielding patron of the second amendment fare? It is my belief that these people – these people who “Like” this photo and add comments like “Hell yes” – these people think that they would have taken this guy down. They would have seen through the clouds of tear gas, taken cover and immediately starting firing directly at the suspect. Of course, they don’t even have to hit him. He’d retreat as soon as he heard the second or third shot, right?

Unlikely. That was and is my response to this image. A simple statement of odds. Shooting targets, playing COD and having a CCW doesn’t make you into a hero. In fact, in many eyes, it makes you a menace. Think Bernard Goetz and George Zimmerman and Jack Ruby. Did these make the world a better place by taking the law into their own hands?

But I digress. The Fort Hood shooter got off at least 150 rounds before being fired on by an MP. He was surrounded by people with guns and he still killed or injured 43 people. Do you really still believe that you have even a 50% chance of stopping one of these monsters? No way.

My first reaction was to add this comment:

I’d rather see nobody drug-tested. Doesn’t that make more sense?

Then, since I remembered reading about Rick Scott’s program in Florida some time ago, I googled “florida drug testing welfare“. I skimmed two articles and added this comment:

BTW, Florida spent more money testing than they saved cutting benefits for those who tested positive. They also found that only 2.6% of those tested were drug users. Compared to Florida’s rate of 8.13% among the general population, it showed that welfare recipients actually use drugs less than everyone else.

What I didn’t mention is that Florida’s Republican Governor, Rick Scott, has a conflict of interest in passing this law. You see, Scott started a medical services company called Solantic which offers “drug screen” as one of it’s services for employers. Shortly before he took office, Governor Scott gave all of his shares in Solantic to a trust owned by his wife. That trust now owns a controlling interest in the corporation so the Governor can claim that there is no conflict of interest.

Also notable is that Scott’s new law (which is currently under judicial review) is also applicable to Florida’s government workforce. Do we really care if someone from the DMV is getting high after work?

References:

• “Gov. Rick Scott, Solantic and conflict of interest: What’s the deal?”, Kris Hundley, Tampa Bay Times
• “Just as We Suspected: Florida Saved Nothing by Drug Testing Welfare Applicants”, Rachel Bloom, ACLU
• Wikipedia article on Rick Scott
• Solantic website

Updates:

• 5 hours after the first sighting: +1
• Eponymouse wrote a really good refutation at Daily Kos

Current reading: The Big Book of Basketball by Bill Simmons

Recent listening: Frank Zappa, Pink Floyd, Jane Siberry, Sam Cooke, Donovan, Nanci Griffith, John Frusciante, Deadmau5, Florence & the Machine, Earth, Wind & Fire

Recent viewing: Dexter, Twin Peaks, Anvil: The Story of Anvil, Winnebago Man, NFL Playoffs

Recent playing: DropZap, Words with Friends, Temple Run

Recently accomplished: Mowed lawn to remove most leaves, taxi service, Christmas tree recyling

Imperative To Do: Finish Neil Young “liner notes”, finish 2011 FY for Troop 820, clean office, pay bills, call DirecTV, Troop 820 can recycling

Current reading: undecided

Recent listening: Ray Charles, Harry Belafonte, Bonnie Raitt, Glenn Gould’s Goldberg Variations, Allman Brothers Band, Country Joe and the Fish, Pictures from Life’s Other Side by Johnny Dowd, Forever Changes by Love

Recent viewing: Raising Hope, Community, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, 60 Minutes, Stargate SG-1, Sons of Anarchy, South Park, The Office, The Walking Dead

Recent playing: DropZap, Words with Friends, Bloons

Recently accomplished: Cleaned roof and gutters, outdoor winterization, iPhone LCD replacement, Christmas vacation planning, booked December work trip

Imperative To Do: Finish Neil Young “liner notes”, put away hoses, organize recent garage additions, finish Xbox repair, reassemble Graham’s computer, Christmas CD burning

Current reading: Fahrenheit 451

Recent listening: Sufjan Stevens/Come on Feel The Illinoise!; Blood, Sweat and Tears; Frank Zappa; Ray Charles; Dinah Washington; Uncle Dave Macon; The Beatles/Anthology

Recent viewing: Breaking Bad, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Columbo, 200 Motels, True Confessions, Modern Family, Glee, Community, How I Met Your Mother, Sons of Anarchy, Wilfred

Recent playing: DropZap, Words with Friends

Recently accomplished: Replaced Scion stereo, lawn care, invites for 40th birthday party

Imperative To Do: Finish Neil Young “liner notes”, pickup new glasses, Troop 820 treasurer duties, 40th birthday party

Dear Lorell,

When I was a kid there were few things I liked more than going to my uncles’ farms. Being a “city slicker” (as my classmates often called me), the farm was a completely different world to me. When I visited my Uncle Merlin’s farm it was mostly about hanging out with my cousins who were close in age to me, but when I visited your farm, it was always about you and I spending time together. That is a gift that I will always treasure.

One time when I was there “helping” you, we tried to take a dent out of the local rat population. I’ll never forget when you lifted up a piece of plywood (or maybe it was corrugated tin) that was laying behind the big machine shed. The plywood was laying on a small pile of corn and when you lifted it, it revealed several rat “tunnels” and the rats inside them. I was surprised but you were not because you had a gun and started shooting the rats as they scurried away. Guns, rats, tunnels – everything about being on the farm was so cool.

You’ve always been there. You were at Grandma Christensen’s for all those Christmases with the toys in the bedrooms and the money in the envelopes. And you were at Grandma Ring’s for the oyster stew. I remember sitting in that little living room watching Vitas Gerulaitis play tennis and you laughing when I joked that his name sounded like a disease. Harold was there. And my dad. And Gene.

So many memories I have of you and so little time to tell you about them. You kept your golf cart in Grandma Ring’s garage. You drove that giant green Cadillac. You visited me at my first house in Portland. Remember? You got lost and I told you “find the first bridge you see and cross it.” I was so sad to spend what I thought would be our last birthday together three years ago but now I’m so glad that you have had three more years in this world. I’ve never had a birthday where I didn’t think of you. And I never will.

As I sit here with all these thoughts and memories swirling through my head, I’m desperately trying to figure out how to end this note to you in a meaningful way. I suppose that life mostly doesn’t come to an end in a dramatic or meaningful way so perhaps I should just end this by saying that I thank you for your many kindnesses towards me over the last (almost) 45 years and that I think you’ve been a good uncle and a fine man. I also thank you for my double cousins without whom my life would be lesser. I hope that you reach the end of your days peacefully and without regret. And I love you.

Mick

Current reading: Fahrenheit 451

Recent listening: Harry Nilsson, Billy Holiday, Green Day, The Zombies, The Clash, Matisyahu, Concrete Blonde

Recent viewing: Warehouse 13, Real Time with Bill Maher, The Colbert Report, The Daily Show, Louie, Falling Skies, Leverage, Stargate SG-1, Columbo, The Benson Interruption, H.R. Punfnstuf, The God Who Wasn’t There

Recent playing: DropZap, Words with Friends, Mondo Solitaire

Recently accomplished: Bug fixing for new job, bug fixing for old job, lawn care

Imperative To Do: Clean garage, clean gutters, new shelves for stereo, bark dust, doctor appointments

Current reading: Little Heathens by Mildred Armstrong Kalish

Recent listening: Infected Mushroom, Foreigner, Primus, Greg Kihn, Massive Attack, Thievery Corp., Weird Al (new album!), Radiohead, Motown, Portishead, Canned Heat, Red Hot Chili Peppers

Recent viewing: Leverage (season 3 & 4), Frontline, The Planets, Pulp Fiction, Stan Lee’s Superhumans, The Story of the Blues, Super 8

Recent playing: DropZap, Words with Friends, Mondo Solitaire

Recently accomplished: Both children advanced to next grade level, camping/biking in Idaho, acquired fireworks of questionable legality, paid bills, Roundup for weedy areas, weed and feed for lawn, mowing

Imperative To Do: Light fireworks, back to work, clean garage, clean gutters, new shelves for stereo, bark dust, doctor appointments

During the work day I spend most of my time in my office, the kitchen or the bathroom (in that order). On the left side of my desk my MacBook Pro (MBP) runs iTunes all the time. The MBP is connected to my awesome PMIX-100 personal audio mixer (seen on the right of the photo). The mixer is connected to my Cambridge Soundworks desktop speakers which are located 18 inches in front of my head in the classic stereo position. This is where I do almost all of my listening these days.

In the kitchen we have a Cambridge Soundworks Model 88 “tabletop” radio. In addition to the tuner, it’s also got AUX and CD inputs. You can see the old Phillips portable CD player that is attached in the photo. Out of sight is the Apple Airport Express that is attached to the AUX jack. Through the wonders of AirPlay, we can stream music to the Airport Express and hear it on the Model 88 using any AirPlay-capable software/device combination. Thus, I have the MBP in my office set to play music both on the speakers on my desk and the Model 88 in the kitchen. I love this because when I venture from my office I can still hear the same music playing in the kitchen and the nearby rooms.

The unintended consequence is that everybody else near to the kitchen will hear the same music to which I listen. This is not a problem during the school year because most of my work hours are during the school day. Once summer vacation comes, though, everything changes and the kids are within listening range of my office and the kitchen constantly. Thus, out of consideration for the rest of the family, I came up with the idea of the Summer Playlist.

The Summer Playlist democratizes the music selection process in that any member of the family can put music into the playlist albeit only on my laptop. From there it filters through a series of Smart Playlists to remove songs rated less than three stars before it’s gathered into a final Smart Playlist that removes recently”skipped” songs and selects the 500 Least Recently Played from the lot. I point iTunes DJ at the final playlist and it selects from it randomly.

Of course, the first thing I dumped in it was my entire Jimmy Buffett collection followed by all of the Beach Boys. And then every song with the words “ocean”, “summer”, “sea” and “beach”. We’ll add more as the summer progresses. What music says “summer” to you?

Sure enough I had the version by Freddie as well as another by Jeff Beck. I immediately queued them to play next: Freddie followed by Beck. In the meantime, I pulled up the Wikipedia article to find out more about this rollicking electric guitar solo. There’s not much there but the article does have a list of artists that have covered it. My eyes immediately found Gary Moore who was more or less a disciple of Peter Green, Mayall’s guitar player on his version of “The Stumble”. Having just downloaded a chunk of Moore’s work the night before, I anxiously scanned the files for his version of “The Stumble”. I dropped it into iTunes just as Beck’s version faded out.

As Moore’s version blasted my ears, I went to YouTube for further insight. I wasn’t able to find the Freddie King version but I did find Green, Beck and Moore as well as a couple of interesting versions.