Accidental Blogger

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  • Rock and Roll May Be Dying, But It Ain’t Going Broke (Andrew)

    I wanted to flag an LAT piece from earlier this month pointing out that the average price for rock concerts has more than doubled since 1996.

    "The average concert ticket price climbed to $61.58 last year from
    $25.81 in 1996. Tickets are generally priced based on the acts — and
    the demographics of their fans. The Cheetah Girls, for example, sold
    their tickets for an average of $35; Fallout Boy, $27. Seeing Barbra
    Streisand cost an average of $298."
    http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-prince3jul03,1,6478844.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

    100% inflation in a decade!  As the article suggested, part of this is the emergence of aging superbands like the Stones, Police, and Barbara Streisand (I’d pay $298 just to sit in the parking lot and know that I’m within a square mile of her, dahling!), whose fans are in their 40s and 50s and have a lot of money to burn.  And then there’s the continuing marketing creativity of artists like Prince playing an intimate room at the Lindsay Lohan playground Roosevelt Hotel for $3,121 a couple, with $300 getting you standing room.  Even at the upcoming Monterey Jazz Festival, the three-day "arena pass" that lets you see the best artists such as Ornette and Sonny Rollins, will set you back $210 plus parking, housing, food, etc.  And I’ll bet some of this is due to lost revenue from album sales, of course. 

    But part of this makes me want to rebel against the bottomless greed of the music industry.  And of course that is the only small way to exert pressure on these incredible prices — if people are willing to pay $60 to see Pearl Jam, Pearl Jam is going to charge $60.

    Still, I appreciate the occasional willingness of the stars to see the fans as people, not as sheep. In the Tao of Willie, Willie Nelson talks about touring minor league baseball parks of America to avoid big corporate promoters, which kept prices lower and allowed families to attend the shows together.  Mind you, when Anna and I went to see Nelson here in L.A. a couple of years back, it was $50 a pop at the Wiltern, but I appreciate that he at times has a sense of himself as a kind of a "community resource" who wants to make his performing available to those with a lot of money as well as those with not so much. 

    The cool thing about some festivals (such as the Summer at the Hollywood Bowl concerts here in L.A., with tickets ranging from $6 nosebleeds to multiple hundreds of dollars for a box) is that they’re accessible to a lot broader swath of our society, a way for the people to come out and celebrate major artists.  An event like Prince at the Roosevelt must have been exciting, yet part of that excitement comes from a commodified elitism that’s pretty anti-democratic.  Which of course is the point — hedge funders, CEOs, rock stars, movie stars, and athletes are different than you and me — and they want us to know it.

  • Blogging Commandments

    Ian of Letters Home to You has postulated a list of guiding principles of blogging, twenty commandments if you will.  They are not written in stone as you will find out (see commandment # 19, if it has not already changed).

    Although I have been blogging for more than two years (including my guest blogging stint at Dissemination) and developed a rhythm of sorts, I found Ian’s insights and advice quite sobering. Given also that blogging is now in the midst of summer doldrums, I consider the following five commandments especially worthy.

    • Yea as you walk in the Shadow of the Valley of Ideas which come not, post ye not for its own Sake, for it is better to have a Week with no Posts than an array of seven Posts about Naught.
    • Be ye not afraid should it come to pass the Feeling thy Blog has no Direction, for thereby miss ye the Point: for to express freely in good Spirit and gain Amusement thereby.
    • Therein will ye uncover this simple Truth should ye search for it: it matters not the Size of thy Flock, nor how often they attend thy Sermons; it is in the Care ye show for them, and they for you, that is foremost.
    • Therefore I verily say unto thee, focus ye not on the Number of those reading your Blog, but on the Content to be written therein.
    • Be that as it may, verify ye not your Blog Stats upon the rising Sun, for the plunging Contours of this Chart can be an especially discouraging Way to start your Day.

  • John Edwards Interviewed By Science Blogger

    Science blogger Bora Zivkovic (aka Coturnix) interviewed Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards about various issues pertaining to science, society and education.  See the interview at A Blog Around The Clock. Good job, Bora! 

  • Think Out Of The Watery Box

    Extra-terrestrial life may be quite different from what we are capable of envisioning. The search for alien life in the solar system (and beyond?) therefore should not be restricted to the parameters currently believed to be life sustaining. A very interesting article in the National Geographic. 

    070706weirdaliens_big Think life on Earth is weird? It might be even weirder on distant planets and moons, according to a new report.

    Instead of thriving on water, extraterrestrial organisms might live in a sea of liquid methane. Or instead of getting energy from the sun, they might thrive on hydrochloric acid.

    These possibilities could revolutionize future space missions in search of life elsewhere in the solar system, says the report, issued today by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).

    The report concludes that scientists need to consider an expanded list of characteristics that define life, including so-called "weird" life-forms that may thrive where Earth organisms couldn’t.

    Instead of dispatching spacecraft to dig into the subsurface of Mars, considered a prime candidate for primitive life because of its watery past, the report says the probes may have better luck on Saturn’s moon Titan, which has seas of liquid methane and ethane. In fact, the report concluded that Titan is the most likely candidate in the solar system for weird life.

    "It’s a carbon world, so there’s plenty of different kinds of carbon compounds there, and the possibility is that there may be the carbon compounds that make up life," said John Baross, an oceanographer at Seattle’s University of Washington, who lead the report team.

    The report probes the question: How might life on distant worlds be different than life on Earth?

    "We don’t want to not recognize a life form because it doesn’t exactly resemble Earth life," Baross said.

    All life on Earth studied to date has certain characteristics and needs: water, carbon-based metabolism, a chemical- or light-based energy source, and the ability to evolve. Since these characteristics make life on Earth possible, scientists have long assumed they are required for life elsewhere in the universe.

    But advances in biology and biochemistry in the last decade show that the basic requirements for life may not be so concrete, according to Baross.

    A related article in the NYT by Carl Zimmer.  (link via The Loom)

  • Is there something in the water in Massachusetts? (Joe)

    First there was Dianna Abdala.  Now there’s Stephen Dunne, in a story which might deserve a spot on the Daily Show, rather than just in the Boston Globe.

    Stephen Dunne, 30, of Boston, is seeking $9.75 million in the suit
    against the Massachusetts Board of Bar Examiners and the Massachusetts
    Supreme Judicial Court. He was denied a license to practice law in May
    after scoring 268.866 on the exam, just shy of the 270 passing grade.

    Dunne,
    who is representing himself in the case, refused to answer an exam
    question addressing the rights of two married lesbians, their children
    and their property, and claims in the suit that it cost him a passing
    score.

    In the suit, Dunne called the question "morally repugnant
    and patently offensive," and said he refused to answer it because he
    believed it legitimized same-sex marriage and same-sex parenting, which
    is contrary to his moral beliefs.

    Dunne claims the Massachusetts state government is "purposely-advancing Secular Humanism’s homosexual agenda."

    Wow.  I know that Justice Scalia likes to rant about his imagined gay kulturkampf, but this is even more idiotic, more insane.

    He wants $10 million in damages?  Because he failed the Massachusetts bar exam, allegedly because he refused to answer a question about the legal rights of same-sex couples?  Maybe the Massachusetts Supreme Court was wrong in holding that the MA Constitution requires same-sex marriage.  (Although it wasn’t.)  Maybe same-sex marriage is bad.  (Although again, it isn’t.) 

    But come on Mr. Dunne, you fantastic idiot, stop being such a… well, fantastic idiot!  Maybe if you’d failed because your question was marked incorrect because you’d expressed normative disapproval of same-sex marriage you’d have some sort of claim (though for closer to $50,000 than $10 million)… but various aspects of the law are always going to be objectionable to someone — you don’t get to be exempted from answering legitimate legal questions on your bar exam just because you’ve bought into some bastardized, horrific interpretation of Christianity!

  • Identity: Donning Our Many Hats

    Identity In The Name Of Identity (Violence And The Need To Belong), a slim but ambitious book by author Amin Maalouf, may create a bit of a dilemma for a librarian attempting to categorize it.  Bits of history, anthropology, religion, philosophy and politics are interwoven in Maalouf’s long essay about "identity."  His informed and open minded treatise is not hard to understand, appreciate and to agree with. What may be much more difficult is to expect to see his vision translated into reality in a world currently racked and riven by clashing "identities."

    "A life spent writing has taught me to be wary of words. Those that seem clearest are often the most treacherous. "Identity" is one of those false friends. … It has been the fundamental question of philosophy from Socrates’ "know thyself!" through countless masters down to Freud," begins Maalouf. Although he modestly claims to lack the ability to redefine "identity," that is precisely what he does in this book. And he does it rather splendidly. He points out that among our many selves are those that are products of our birth and early upbringing – race, gender, ethnicity, language and religion. Other identities we acquire of our own choosing – our philosophy, politics and choice of job and home. Our identity is not just the label with which we get tagged by others but also what we ourselves want to assert or "identify" with.  Moreover, identity is fluid, often determined by the time and place we are in and what our life experiences have been. Our allegiances may be the result of ambition, pride, expediency, anger, humiliation and even the desperation for survival. As I pointed out in my post on "home,"   identity too is not fixed at birth but made and remade through a journey lasting a lifetime.

    Maalouf, a French-Lebanese author born in Lebanon and living in France, begins with his own case. Maalouf is an Arab Christian and as such shares his ethnic / linguistic identity with several million Arabs, most of whom don’t share his religious faith. His religious identity is shared by a couple of billion Christians, the majority of whom do not speak his language. In either of the two above cases, he is a member of a large global community. But as an Arab and a Christian, he belongs to a tiny minority group anywhere in the world. Which of these groups must he pledge allegiance to?  Also, where is his real home? Lebanon, where he was born or France, where he chooses to live?  Do any or all of these "identities" define Maalouf fully as a human being?  What about his politics, his gender, his sexual preference? Or whether he is a doctor, writer, florist or a soldier? Or even by what his tastes in food and music are or which soccer team he roots for? By the time we cover the entire intricate woven tapestry of a person’s identity, he or she may have more in common with a total stranger than can be first imagined by taking into account only the most visible or obvious facets of identity. "Six Degrees of Separation" in the current global milieu is more than a parlor game or catchy cliché.

    The author believes that redefining identity to include all our roles in the world, is likely to reduce cultural and political strife among groups. He sees globalization as a beneficial engine towards that goal due to the inevitable give and take that occurs in opening ourselves up to newer cultures. Yet, he also worries that the same force that may some day eradicate suspicions and violence among disparate communities, could also become responsible for wholesale obliteration of "weaker" cultures.  He worries mostly about the linguistic hegemony of more advanced societies whose grip on the language of science and technology could one day wipe out other less technologically developed languages. There are many sides to this debate – I am not wholly in agreement with the author on this one. Red flags about cultural preservation are raised all the time. Progress and civilization have their own momentum. Some aspects of human history get lost before the juggernaut of another more powerful force while others survive despite thousands of years of oppression, coercion and bullying.

    The main focus of Maalouf’s ruminations on identity is the violence human beings have unleashed upon each other through history based on narrow and self serving allegiances. The author focuses generally on religious conflicts through the ages and the current Islamic politics of violence in particular. He is very cautious to distinguish between Islam as a faith and Islam as a political ideology although as far as I am concerned, when faith is used as a blunt instrument of violent political identity, it is a useless distinction. According to Maalouf, the single biggest contributor to identity based violence is "humiliation." When a group feels threatened, marginalized or humiliated, the identity that was nominal before, becomes the dominant defining characteristic. Humiliation, he argues is the most reliable indicator of the rise of fanaticism.  He says the following about Islamic fanaticism and violence in Europe, particularly in France:

    "You could read a dozen large tomes on the history of Islam from its very beginnings and you still wouldn’t understand what is going on in Algeria. But read 30 pages on colonialism and decolonisation and then you’ll understand quite a lot."

    Interesting thought and correct to a large degree in this particular case. But it is only partially correct because history is replete with more instances of human atrocities directly fueled by greed and arrogance based on identity than on humiliation. 

    Maalouf deftly asks sharp and thought provoking questions and certainly doesn’t claim to have the answers. Instead he offers his own ideas and suggestions on how to reduce conflict based on our (often spurious) sense of identity. Between Maalouf’s "enlightened" hope of commonality of human identities and Samuel Huntington and Bernard Lewis’ "clash of civilizations," it is too early to say which of the two views will shape the future. Meanwhile, the blood curdling "us vs them" rhetoric of the terrorists and the neo-cons alike, continue unabated on the world scene. The Name Of Identity was written in the late 1990s when the memory of the violence and devastation in the author’s native Lebanon was still fresh in his mind. The book also addresses the various bloody conflicts that had flared up in different parts of the world around that time – Israel-Palestine, Yugoslavia and Rwanda to name just a few. 9/11/2001 was still in the future. But the book could have served as an alarm bell for that event. Now, in the context of 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir, Gaza, the West Bank, London, Mumbai, Madrid and Bali, (and who knows where else in the future?) Maalouf’s questions are even more urgent and the answers, sadly still elusive.

    Note: This book was recommended to me by my co-blogger, Anna Levine.  (Cross posted at Shunya’s Notes)

  • Trading Greenbacks for Green (Sujatha)

    The current buzzword in marketing is ‘going green’ or ‘eco-friendly’.

    Today’s New York TKs76774imes has an apropos look (subscription required)at the phenomenon ( which I had ranted about earlier in my Madness of Magazines post on my personal blog), thus confirming my suspicions that while going green might be desirable, there will always exist a vast contingent of eager pilers-on who see marketing manna in attaching a ‘green’ label to just about anything.

    For instance, Home Depot’s ubiquitous green labelling which already came in for derision in this NY Times op-ed titled "How Green is that Chain saw?".

    "Plastic-handled paint brushes were touted as nature-friendly because
    they were not made of wood. Wood-handled paint brushes were promoted as
    better for the planet because they were not made of plastic.

    An
    electric chainsaw? Green, because it was not gas-powered. A bug zapper?
    Ditto, because it was not a poisonous spray. Manufacturers of paint
    thinners, electrical screwdrivers and interior overhead lights claimed
    similarImg_1526 bragging rights simply because their plastic or cardboard
    packaging was recyclable."

    Never mind that not buying into the newest ‘green’ craze and reusing your ancient battered but perfectly serviceable stuff would in fact be the more environmentally friendly approach.

    (more…)

  • Lucy Cat: Out Of The Fertile Crescent

    Kitty20smelling20flower Like Lucy, the mother of man who came out of Africa, the mother(s) of all domestic cats might have been a resident of the middle east. Don’t worry, this is not the start of Friday Cat Blogging – I refer to a paper to be published in the June 29 issue of Science  which traces the history of the domestication of the house cat. The research conducted on behalf of the National Cancer Institute’s Laboratory of Genomic Diversity by Carlos Driscoll of Oxford University concludes among other things:

    • Cat domestication probably began some 12,000 years ago and became complete around 8,000 years later.
    • DNA analysis shows that house cats all over the world, from Shanghai to San Paolo, can trace their ancestry to five distinct wildcat lineages in the near east – around Iraq, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE. 
    • Cats voluntarily adapted to humans and domesticated themselves upon finding safe living conditions around early agricultural settlements. Man probably played little or no role in the taming of the cat except to tolerate its presence around the home and the barn.
    • Cats migrated with their human companions from their original habitat to different parts of the world.
    • Although the cat earned its keep by killing rodents around the grain bins, the reason the cat became a beloved household animal (and even a divine deity, as in Egypt), probably had as much to do with its winning personality as its utility in the early agrarian society as a pest controller.

    (more…)

  • In Defense of Mediocrity

    The sparsely populated state of Nebraska is best known for its cold climate, corn, beef and football. But Nebraska has also contributed an impressive array of national luminaries in the fields of literature (novelist Willa Cather, poet John G. Neihardt), philosophy (Saul Kripke), the financial world (Warren Buffett) and show business (Henry Fonda, Fred Astaire, Marlon Brando, Johnny Carson, Nick Nolte, Alexander Payne). Some Nebraska politicians too have made their mark on the national stage – the indefatigable William Jennings Bryan (born Illinois, politics Nebraska), the dashing Bob Kerrey and the outspoken Chuck Hagel. There was another long serving senator from Nebraska, Roman Hruska (of whom I had heard but didn’t know much about), who too garnered some fame in his day, but not quite in the conventional manner. Just recently I learnt of Hruska’s dubious fame – he left an indelible mark on the history of senatorial rhetoric.

    In 1970 Richard Nixon nominated G. Harrold Carswell to the Supreme Court of the United States.  The nomination was rejected by the Senate on the grounds that Carswells’ judicial record was mediocre. Senator Hruska was in favor of Carswell’s nomination and presented a novel, spirited and now memorable defense of mediocrity.

    Hruska is best remembered in American political history for a 1970 speech he made to the Senate urging them to confirm the nomination of Harrold Carswell to the Supreme Court. Responding to criticism that Carswell had been a mediocre judge, Hruska claimed that:

    "So what if he is mediocre? There are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they? We can’t have all Brandeises, Cardozos, and Frankfurters and stuff like that there."

    This speech was criticized by many, and Carswell was eventually defeated.

    Hruska must have felt vindicated when Clarence Thomas became Justice of the Supreme Court. Also, had he lived to see the outcome of the 2000 and the 2004 presidential elections, he would have been greatly pleased that a Champion of Mediocrity  was installed in the highest office of the nation. Or perhaps he would have learnt late in life that mediocrity in a position of exceptional responsibility often spells disaster.