politics

Leaving a religion

There turned out to be two ex-quakers (people formerly involved
in the Society of Friends, but now members of other churches) at
the band rehearsal (and subsequent beer-drinking)
last night, so I reflected yet again that ex-quakers are much
more civilized about their disagreements or dissatisfactions
than ex-catholics are.

I should mention that in some technical sense, I’m also an
ex-quaker, since my parents were members when I was born, but
I’ve never personally been involved. By the time I can remember
going to church, they were Methodists, and shortly after that,
they returned to the Roman Catholic Church. So I’m a Birthright
Quaker, a Baptized Methodist, and a Baptized Catholic.

The only
church I’ve attended regularly as an adult was Saint Peter’s
Episcopal Church, where I sang in the choir, and contributed
money. When the Rector suggested that I should be confirmed,
I told him that I thought my confirmation as a Roman Catholic was
enough confirmation.

One person at the rehearsal said she’d decided that the Friends
were too serious about their personal responsibility to save the
world. The Unitarian Church she’s currently attending seems to
feel more of a *community* responsibility to save the world,
which she’s more comfortable with. The other person said when asked that he’d left basically
because of disagreements about how to save the world. There was
probably some bitterness and disappointment in both those
attitudes, but nothing like the rage you find with
ex-catholics.

Of all the different kinds of education I’ve had, I probably
find the technical and the political (in marxist reading groups)
the most useful, but the Catholic catechism might come in fairly
close to the humanist liberal arts one. So I describe myself as
a non-practicing Catholic, rather than an ex-catholic, largely
because I don’t want to be associated with the kind of
anti-catholic rage that’s prevalent in quite a number of the
circles I frequent.

First they came…

I thought everybody knew and had reflected on the famous poem:

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out
— because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak out for me.

But I had dinner with a friend last night, and was telling her
about my
neighbor being arrested. I said that the fact that they’d
siezed his computer and all the peripherals and his cameras made
me feel I should have off-site backup.

She said, “But why? You don’t grow marijuana.” So I pointed
out all the other stories of people being arrested without having
done anything illegal: Gates,
the
father who took pictures of his kids, and the more recent story
about the grandmother who’s being prosecuted for buying
two bottles of cold medication in one week.

She said, “You’re not black,” and, “You don’t have kids,” and
“You don’t live in Indiana.” (This last one still has me
puzzled.)

About this specific problem, she’s just plain wrong — I’ve
been worrying about the hole in my backup
procedure that it doesn’t produce an off-site backup for some
time, and of course I’m worried more about it because my
next-door neighbor in the same building has been in a situation
where he should have had one. After all,
even if there’s no conceivable situation where the police would
break into my apartment and steal my computer, someone else
certainly could. And there’s the risk of fires and natural
disasters. Having an off-site backup of the things that are
important to you is just a Good Idea.

But I’m concerned that she doesn’t empathize more with all
these people getting arrested. Especially the grandmother in
Indiana. Her grandchildren all live in the same household at the
moment, but if her other son ever gets married and has kids (which
is something she wishes for), I would think it quite likely that
she could buy two bottles of something for the grandchildren in
one week.

Then they came for the people who had two children with
offspring and I did not speak out — because only one of my
children had offspring?

What I wanted to yell at the President

I watched the address to the joint session of Congress a couple
of weeks ago with a friend. In general, I really like watching
Obama speak, because it’s such a relief to have a President who
isn’t embarrassing me with every sentence out of his mouth.

But there was one point when I was talking back to the TV
screen. It was after he’d talked about how he and everybody else
in the country could design a system from scratch that would work
better than the one we have, but he believed that we could get
more done by building on the system we have.

So then he said, “We will place a limit on how much you can be
charged for out-of-pocket expenses, because in the United States
of America, no one should go broke because they get sick.” I
remarked to my friend, “So how is that incremental?” At the time,
and until I just looked at the text of the speech, I believed he
actually had used the word incremental.

The reason I’ve continued to think about this off and on for
the last two weeks is that I think that really is the reason
health care reform has been so hard to get. There really isn’t a
consensus in this country that no one should go broke because they
get sick.

This is why, although it was a well-delivered speech, the polls
all found that it didn’t convince anyone. People who believe that
they won’t go broke when they get sick because they’ve done the
right things all their lives, and that the people who will go
broke are lazy and improvident, want to hear why this new system
isn’t going to cause them to go broke because other people get
sick. And the President did say that, but not in a way that anyone
really believes.

The reason I understand this better than President Obama does
isn’t because I’m a better politician than he is. It’s because
he’s spent his life doing what the system says he should do and I
haven’t. I know people who really believe that I should go broke
when I get sick because I retired at the age of 50. They don’t
say it in such crude language, but their disapproval of someone
making that choice says it for them.

So the right way to pitch the reform shouldn’t be telling sad
stories about the people who go broke because of the present
system. It should be making the point that the present system
is in fact making you go broke because other people get sick,
and spending money differently will make you go less broke as
well as making them get less sick. I don’t say I know how to do
that, but I can see that that isn’t what the President is trying
to do.

Dog park conversation

One of the people I talked to at the dog park last night was
complaining about her neighbor, who, although he lives in a
densely populated part of one of the most densely populated
cities in the country, has decided that he should
never have to hear a dog bark.

Her dog is a very nice labrador retriever, but he does think
it’s his job to tell people when someone walks down his street.
He barks 4 or 5 times and stops; it isn’t that he thinks it’s his
job to bark until someone does something about
whoever’s walking down the street.

In any case, it sounds like the situation is under control.
The neighbor suggested they get one of those electronic collars
that does does something unpleasant to the dog when it barks,
and my friend’s husband suggested that they test it on the
neighbor first.

So the neighbor called Animal Control, who came and explained
to everyone that you can’t remove a dog because it barks
occasionally. The whole neighborhood would have to support
removal of the animal.

So then the grumpy neighbor went around to the neighbors to get
support, and apparently didn’t get any. (There’s at least one
other dog in the neighborhood who barks a lot more than this one.)

But this dog owner is feeling a little guilty for not having
been more sympathetic to the grumpy neighbor. He apparently
grew up on a farm, and the noise level in his current home is
making him very tense and upset.

What’s a recorder society?

The
other day, I glossed over the description of what I was
doing for the Boston Recorder
Society (BRS) in 2002, so I thought I’d expand on that for this
post. Since it’s been on my mind, I’ll tell you some of what I
was doing that the current organization isn’t.

Note that all of this is from the publicity, and a bit of
hearsay from people who are still going — I haven’t actually been
to a meeting for over a year.

For the 6 years I was involved in putting together the program
and the publicity (2002 through 2007), there were a couple of points I always
had to argue with the rest of the committee:

Describing the classes in terms of the music being played
rather than the level of players in them.
Having a class open to players of other instruments.

I also made it really easy to volunteer to help out with the
work of the organization, set up a concert series, and published
the names of the board members, both on the web and in the
newsletter.

Class Descriptions

This is the more important of the two points. Here’s a
description from the 2006 brochure, which I compiled:

16th Century Italian Madrigals with
Héloïse Degrugillier (9 meetings)
Play some of the most dramatic music of the
renaissance. This class will explore the
madrigals of Da Rore, Arcadelt, and others.
We will work on ensemble skills, expressive
playing, and fundamental recorder technique.

And here’s the description of the class taught by the same
coach on the current website:

Heloise Degrugillier (group C)
Players should know at least three instruments, play “alto up”, be fluent with cut time and eighth note beats, and be comfortable reading one on a part.

If you wanted to pass tests and validate yourself by moving up
to a more “advanced” group, I can see that you might prefer the
second class, but if you wanted to play music with people who were
excited about it, and you didn’t already know the people involved,
I can’t imagine why you’d even think of going to a class with the
current description.

Now you can make an argument that when I was doing the
brochure, many people were insecure about deciding from the
brochure what class they wanted to take, because I didn’t usually
say anything at all about the level of playing required for the
class. Thus some peole worried
that they wouldn’t be able to do what the class expected. Other
people worried that they’d be stuck in a class with people who
couldn’t play very well.

My contention always was that the coaches should make the
decision about whether the people who wanted to take their class
were capable of playing the music. And since we believed that a
class shouldn’t run unless at least 6 people signed up for it,
anything we said about how advanced everyone in the class was
going to be was usually a lie, because it was rare that there were
really 6 advanced players who wanted to take the same class.

And a further argument in favor of not describing the levels in
the brochure is that people weren’t really deciding what class to
take from the brochure, because the September meeting was always a
“shopping” meeting, where you could meet the coaches and see what
the classes were like. This seems like a better way to decide
than by counting how many instruments the other members of the
class could play.

Other instruments

The main reason I always pushed for a class that allowed other
instruments besides recorders is that I really wanted the BRS to
be an organization that served all the recorder players in the
Boston area. When I joined, there were a couple of advanced
recorder players who were coming and mostly playing Dulcian (an
ancestor of the bassoon), and I benefitted a lot from being able
to play with them.

A secondary reason is that there’s a lot of really good
recorder music that wouldn’t historically have been played in an
all-recorder ensemble, so having viols or dulcians does in fact
make the recorder playing experience better than it would be with
only recorders.

In fact, although the current class descriptions don’t make it
clear who’s invited, the current organization does believe they
should welcome the “right kind” of other instruments. Their
statement says:

No more loud instruments
We are sorry to announce that we will no longer be accepting loud instruments in our ensembles (including serpents, shawms, and krummhorns).

There is apparently somewhere a slightly longer list of
proscribed instruments, but it specifically does not include
cello, which is the other non-recorder instrument which someone’s
actually been bringing. As played at recorder society meetings
I’ve been to, the cello player is at least as loud as the serpent player, and a
less good sightreader of Renaissance rhythms than the krumhorn
player.

So in my opinion, that decision probably has to do with
considerations other than musical ones.

But we already knew that based on the way they describe their classes.

So what is a recorder society?

When I was on the board (including the two years I was the
administrator), I thought
it should be an organization that brought together all the
recorder players in the area of whatever level.

This is why I ran things the way I did.

The current organization has decided that it’s an organization
that lets the established coaches coach the players who want a
once-a-month playing opportunity. Note that this offers nothing
to either the less-experienced professionals or to the advanced
amateurs who want more serious ensemble-playing opportunities, and
it’s unclear how much it does for beginners who need to get their
first ensemble experience.

All the coaches they’ve hired are good musicians and good teachers, and although
you couldn’t tell that from their descriptions, if you sign up for
their classes, you will probably learn something from them.

This Sunday, September 20, is their first meeting of the year, so
if what they’re offering is what you want, you should go.

If you want anything else out of a recorder society, you should
probably look elsewhere. I don’t see any reason why a recorder
player who isn’t interested in the monthly meetings should feel
any desire to join to support their other work, because if there
is any other work, I don’t see it. If you want to do any other
work, I don’t see any suggestion of where you would go to
volunteer.

Anna Karenina reread

Anna
Karenina (free Gutenberg
text) is one of the books I reread fairly regularly.

In this
case I was inspired to reread it sooner than I would have
otherwise, because of looking
at the chapter about using a scythe. I had remembered
reading that, but not how detailed the description of how you
swing it and how often you have to whet it was. So I thought
there were probably other detailed descriptions of how 19th
century farming worked that I didn’t remember and would enjoy reading.

It turns out all the descriptions of how people did their work
were more detailed than I remembered. So I’ll point you at a few
I really enjoyed.

Serfs on private land were freed in 1861 and on public land in
1866. Anna Karenina was published serially in 1874-7 and in book
form in 1878.

So how a landowner got the farm work done with a different
relationship to the peasants that neither he nor they were used to
was a hot topic of conversation.

Here’s a conversation Levin has with a peasant who has done
well:

Over their tea Levin heard all about the old man’s farming. Ten
years before, the old man had rented three hundred acres from the
lady who owned them, and a year ago he had bought them and rented
another three hundred from a neighboring landowner. A small part
of the land–the worst part–he let out for rent, while a
hundred acres of arable land he cultivated himself with his
family and two hired laborers. The old man complained that
things were doing badly. But Levin saw that he simply did so
from a feeling of propriety, and that his farm was in a
flourishing condition. If it had been unsuccessful he would not
have bought land at thirty-five roubles the acre, he would not
have married his three sons and a nephew, he would not have
rebuilt twice after fires, and each time on a larger scale. In
spite of the old man’s complaints, it was evident that he was
proud, and justly proud, of his prosperity, proud of his sons,
his nephew, his sons’ wives, his horses and his cows, and
especially of the fact that he was keeping all this farming
going. From his conversation with the old man, Levin thought he
was not averse to new methods either. He had planted a great
many potatoes, and his potatoes, as Levin had seen driving past,
were already past flowering and beginning to die down, while
Levin’s were only just coming into flower. He earthed up his
potatoes with a modern plough borrowed from a neighboring
landowner. He sowed wheat. The trifling fact that, thinning out
his rye, the old man used the rye he thinned out for his horses,
specially struck Levin. How many times had Levin seen this
splendid fodder wasted, and tried to get it saved; but always it
had turned out to be impossible. The peasant got this done, and
he could not say enough in praise of it as food for the beasts.

“What have the wenches to do? They carry it out in bundles to
the roadside, and the cart brings it away.”

“Well, we landowners can’t manage well with our laborers,” said
Levin, handing him a glass of tea.

“Thank you,” said the old man, and he took the glass, but refused
sugar, pointing to a lump he had left. “They’re simple
destruction,” said he. “Look at Sviazhsky’s, for instance. We
know what the land’s like–first-rate, yet there’s not much of a
crop to boast of. It’s not looked after enough–that’s all it
is!”

“But you work your land with hired laborers?”

“We’re all peasants together. We go into everything ourselves.
If a man’s no use, he can go, and we can manage by ourselves.”

Animals

One of the distinctions that’s drawn subtly between Levin, who
works his farm and takes care of his animals and the urbanized
noblemen, who like horses but just pay someone else to take care of
them, is how carefully he notices whether they’ve been worked too
hard:

Here, he’s on his way to go hunting with Veslovsky, previously
described as a quite uncongenial and superfluous
person.

Vassenka was extremely delighted with the left horse, a horse of
the Don Steppes. He kept praising him enthusiastically. “How
fine it must be galloping over the steppes on a steppe horse!
Eh? isn’t it?” he said. He had imagined riding on a steppe horse
as something wild and romantic, and it turned out nothing of the
sort. But his simplicity, particularly in conjunction with his
good looks, his amiable smile, and the grace of his movements,
was very attractive. Either because his nature was sympathetic
to Levin, or because Levin was trying to atone for his sins of
the previous evening by seeing nothing but what was good in him,
anyway he liked his society.

After they had driven over two miles from home, Veslovsky all at
once felt for a cigar and his pocketbook, and did not know
whether he had lost them or left them on the table. In the
pocketbook there were thirty-seven pounds, and so the matter
could not be left in uncertainty.

“Do you know what, Levin, I’ll gallop home on that left
trace-horse. That will be splendid. Eh?” he said, preparing to
get out.

“No, why should you?” answered Levin, calculating that Vassenka
could hardly weigh less than seventeen stone. “I’ll send the
coachman.”

Later on, one indication that the affair with Anna is
destroying Vronsky’s ability to concentrate on the matters that
used to be important to him is the way he loses the horse race
that he’s been spending time and money on for weeks or months:

There
remained only the last ditch, filled with water and five feet
wide. Vronsky did not even look at it, but anxious to get in a
long way first began sawing away at the reins, lifting the mare’s
head and letting it go in time with her paces. He felt that the
mare was at her very last reserve of strength; not her neck and
shoulders merely were wet, but the sweat was standing in drops on
her mane, her head, her sharp ears, and her breath came in short,
sharp gasps. But he knew that she had strength left more than
enough for the remaining five hundred yards. It was only from
feeling himself nearer the ground and from the peculiar
smoothness of his motion that Vronsky knew how greatly the mare
had quickened her pace. She flew over the ditch as though not
noticing it. She flew over it like a bird; but at the same
instant Vronsky, to his horror, felt that he had failed to keep
up with the mare’s pace, that he had, he did not know how, made a
fearful, unpardonable mistake, in recovering his seat in the
saddle. All at once his position had shifted and he knew that
something awful had happened. He could not yet make out what had
happened, when the white legs of a chestnut horse flashed by
close to him, and Mahotin passed at a swift gallop. Vronsky was
touching the ground with one foot, and his mare was sinking on
that foot. He just had time to free his leg when she fell on one
side, gasping painfully, and, making vain efforts to rise with
her delicate, soaking neck, she fluttered on the ground at his
feet like a shot bird. The clumsy movement made by Vronsky had
broken her back. But that he only knew much later.

Birth Control

I’d never noticed before that Anna tells Dolly that she’s using
birth control after the difficult birth of her daughter:

“Well, and the most legitimate desire–he wishes that your
children should have a name.”

“What children?” Anna said, not looking at Dolly, and half
closing her eyes.

“Annie and those to come…”

“He need not trouble on that score; I shall have no more
children.”

“How can you tell that you won’t?”

“I shall not, because I don’t wish it.” And, in spite of all her
emotion, Anna smiled, as she caught the naÃ¯ve expression of
curiosity, wonder, and horror on Dolly’s face.

“The doctor told me after my illness…”

“Impossible!” said Dolly, opening her eyes wide.

For her this was one of those discoveries the consequences and
deductions from which are so immense that all that one feels for
the first instant is that it is impossible to take it all in, and
that one will have to reflect a great, great deal upon it.

This discovery, suddenly throwing light on all those families of
one or two children, which had hitherto been so incomprehensible
to her, aroused so many ideas, reflections, and contradictory
emotions, that she had nothing to say, and simply gazed with
wide-open eyes of wonder at Anna. This was the very thing she
had been dreaming of, but now learning that it was possible, she
was horrified. She felt that it was too simple a solution of too
complicated a problem.

“N’est-ce pas immoral?” was all she said, after a brief pause.

“Why so? Think, I have a choice between two alternatives: either
to be with child, that is an invalid, or to be the friend and
companion of my husband–practically my husband,” Anna said in a
tone intentionally superficial and frivolous.

“Yes, yes,” said Darya Alexandrovna, hearing the very arguments
she had used to herself, and not finding the same force in them
as before.

“For you, for other people,” said Anna, as though divining her
thoughts, “there may be reason to hesitate; but for me…. You
must consider, I am not his wife; he loves me as long as he
loves me. And how am I to keep his love? Not like this!”

She moved her white hands in a curve before her waist with
extraordinary rapidity, as happens during moments of excitement;
ideas and memories rushed into Darya Alexandrovna’s head. “I,”
she thought, “did not keep my attraction for Stiva; he left me
for others, and the first woman for whom he betrayed me did not
keep him by being always pretty and lively. He deserted her and
took another. And can Anna attract and keep Count Vronsky in
that way? If that is what he looks for, he will find dresses and
manners still more attractive and charming. And however white
and beautiful her bare arms are, however beautiful her full
figure and her eager face under her black curls, he will find
something better still, just as my disgusting, pitiful, and
charming husband does.”

Dolly made no answer, she merely sighed. Anna noticed this sigh,
indicating dissent, and she went on. In her armory she had other
arguments so strong that no answer could be made to them.

“Do you say that it’s not right? But you must consider,” she
went on; “you forget my position. How can I desire children?
I’m not speaking of the suffering, I’m not afraid of that. Think
only, what are my children to be? Ill-fated children, who will
have to bear a stranger’s name. For the very fact of their birth
they will be forced to be ashamed of their mother, their father,
their birth.”

“But that is just why a divorce is necessary.” But Anna did not
hear her. She longed to give utterance to all the arguments with
which she had so many times convinced herself.

“What is reason given me for, if I am not to use it to avoid
bringing unhappy beings into the world!” She looked at Dolly,
but without waiting for a reply she went on:

“I should always feel I had wronged these unhappy children,” she
said. “If they are not, at any rate they are not unhappy; while
if they are unhappy, I alone should be to blame for it.”

These were the very arguments Darya Alexandrovna had used in her
own reflections; but she heard them without understanding them.
“How can one wrong creatures that don’t exist?” she thought. And
all at once the idea struck her: could it possibly, under any
circumstances, have been better for her favorite Grisha if he had
never existed? And this seemed to her so wild, so strange, that
she shook her head to drive away this tangle of whirling, mad
ideas.

“No, I don’t know; it’s not right,” was all she said, with an
expression of disgust on her face.

“Yes, but you mustn’t forget that you and I…. And besides
that,” added Anna, in spite of the wealth of her arguments and
the poverty of Dolly’s objections, seeming still to admit that it
was not right, “don’t forget the chief point, that I am not now
in the same position as you. For you the question is: do you
desire not to have any more children; while for me it is: do I
desire to have them? And that’s a great difference. You must
see that I can’t desire it in my position.”

Darya Alexandrovna made no reply. She suddenly felt that she had
got far away from Anna; that there lay between them a barrier of
questions on which they could never agree, and about which it was
better not to speak.

I browsed Wikipedia on the history of birth control, and the
only suggestion relevant to what method Anna might have been using
is in the
barrier contraception article, which says:

The diaphragm and reusable condoms became common after the invention of rubber vulcanization in the early nineteenth century.

Since Vronsky clearly doesn’t know she’s using birth control,
it couldn’t have been a condom.

Election description

As an election official, I was interested that the mechanics of
the secret ballot in 19th century Russia gave even less assurance
that the voter had voted the way he wanted to than our paperless
voting machines:

The district marshals walked carrying plates, on which were
balls, from their tables to the high table, and the election
began.

“Put it in the right side,” whispered Stepan Arkadyevitch, as
with his brother Levin followed the marshal of his district to
the table. But Levin had forgotten by now the calculations that
had been explained to him, and was afraid Stepan Arkadyevitch
might be mistaken in saying “the right side.” Surely Snetkov was
the enemy. As he went up, he held the ball in his right hand,
but thinking he was wrong, just at the box he changed to the left
hand, and undoubtedly put the ball to the left. An adept in the
business, standing at the box and seeing by the mere action of
the elbow where each put his ball, scowled with annoyance. It
was no good for him to use his insight.

Conclusion (for now)

There were lots more interesting passages that I can use the
next time I feel like letting Leo Tolstoy write my blog entry for
the day.

The passsages quoted above are all ones I don’t remember
noticing much before, so even if you don’t enjoy them, it doesn’t
mean you won’t enjoy lots of other things about the book.

http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=laymusicorg-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=0451528611&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr

Where I was…

September 11, 2001 is one of those dates that everybody who was
around remembers where they were and what they were doing. In my
case, it wasn’t anything very interesting, so instead of telling
you about that day, I’ll tell you about September 10, 2002.

Dog Walking

The first interaction I had with a human being that day was
when I was walking the dog on a public sidewalk and the owner of
a pit bull snarled at me for walking my dog on his sidewalk.
(Note that pit bulls never scare me personally, but pit bull
owners frequently do.)

Recorder Society

Then I was working on my responsibilities as administrator of
the Boston
Recorder Society (I’m no longer involved, but at that
point they were paying me some money to keep things going.) I
received the news that the prominent coach who had wanted to be
named music director had decided that she needed to completely
break with the Boston group because of my completely
unreasonable request that other webmasters should link to the
up-to-date information on the official BRS website instead of
the out-of-date stuff she had on her site.

This sounds like something that should just be laughed off, but
in fact, at that time in the Boston early music world, if this
person blew up at you because you said “Good morning” (or “Please
link to the correct information”), a whole bunch of people would
tell you that you were being tactless.

Homebrew Club

Then the homebrew club blew
up, because someone decided to quit because the October picnic
organzers hadn’t taken his recommendation for what kind of
Octoberfest beer to buy a keg of.

Condo Association

Then I was going out to walk the dog for the afternoon and
there was a packet of papers from the condo association. At
this point I was serving as president, and was scheduled to
chair a meeting that evening.

One item in the packet was labeled “Action by the Association’s
Trustees without a meeting”, and contained statements about a dispute
I was having with my then next-door neighbor about how noisy the
Cantabile Band
rehearsals were. None of the other three trustees had ever
spoken to me about the issue, but all three of them had signed
this “action”. There was also a letter that one of the other
trustees had written independantly to a lawyer the association
was consulting, officially through me.

So I decided that if all
three of the other trustees didn’t want to work with me, I would
resign and go to a bar instead of to that meeting.

Bar

This was the one good part of the day. Several of my
friends from the homebrew club were there, the beer was good, we
spent part of the evening at the tables outside, and I was able to
tell them all about my terrible day.

One theory my friends proposed about why everything blew up in one day was that
people were unconsciously stressed about the one year anniversary
of 9/11. I’m not sure I believe that theory, but it’s certainly
the most blowups in one day I’ve ever had to deal with, in a long
life of organizing.

Read the other stuff I’ve written this morning

Once again, it’s almost lunchtime on Wednesday, and I’ve been
writing all morning, and I don’t feel the necessity of writing a
blog post to keep my hand in as a writer, so you can read the
other stuff I’ve written.

Not the emails

I will spare you the emails I wrote to the person I’m trying to
schedule a December concert with, and to the condo association about
the time and date of the proposed meeting, although there was a
lot of thought that went into how to word those.

Comment on another blog

Reading my RSS feeds before breakfast, I found that Phil
Greenspun has been writing a long article about health care
reform, which expresses a lot of the same frustrations I feel
about the current discussion, but missed a couple of points I’m
frustrated about, so I
wrote him a comment. Actually, the page that comes up when you
say you want to comment strongly suggests that you might rather
write an email if you aren’t sure your ideas will still be
interesting in two years, so I originally wrote him an email, but
he emailed me back suggesting I post it as a comment, so I did.
When you read the article,
mine might still be the second comment, or if you only want to
read the comment, you can go to my
comment space and see the health care comment, plus an
anti-Verizon diatribe I wrote last winter.

Posts on my own blogs

I wrote a report
on last night’s band meeting.

For the meeting, I had as usual transcribed a new piece, and we
found a bad mistake in a previous transcription, so there’s a post
on the Serpent
Publications blog about those things.

Your tax dollars at work

Phil Greenspun
has a post
about yet another example of your tax dollars at work harrassing
law-abiding citizens.

Maybe it’s always been dog-bites-man, and I’m just running into
it more often this summer. (See my posts about the
Gates arrest and the
arrest of my next door neighbor.)

There is definitely a generic problem with throwing money at
problems people think are important. When I was working in
scientific research, I got earthquake prediction money and
cancer research money for projects that were very loosely
related to earthquake prediction and cancer research. (In this
case, I’m not saying they were bad projects.)

So I think all this money people are giving the police because
they’re concerned about the public safety may need some more
thinking about. Having too many police with too little idea of
how to contribute to the public safety may well be making the
public less safe rather than more so.

A Graphic Example

[ebook on Sony reader]

A lot of non-technical people’s eyes glaze over when you start talking
about standard, non-proprietary formats. Mike
Cane has come up with a graphic example of why you don’t
want one company owning the format of the books you read.

Apparently Sony requires any book sold for their reader in
their store to be formatted by them (at a cost of $200). And then
when they do it, it looks like that.

This hideous example is from Sony, for the Sony readers, but
the principle is the same for any proprietary format — if they
won’t tell you how to do it, you’re stuck with them doing it for
you, and you may well not like what they do.

This is why I don’t put music in proprietary formats on SerpentPublications.org.