Author: Seth Anderson

Just another Gen-Xer still posting on a blog

Pump driven espresso

Seth Anderson2 Comments

I’m on the hunt for the smallest pump-driven (or semi-pump driven) espresso machine. I don’t really have an obsession with crema, but am nearly ready to splurge on a proper coffee making device.

Breakfast Beverage
[This is a fine machine, capable of making a good, strong coffee, but it ain’t espresso. The coffee Geek writes:

There is a fifth type of machine often (mistakenly) called an espresso machine; these are the steam driven machines marketed by companies like Krups and Braun, usually found for under $100. Rather than producing authentic espresso, these machines produce a strong coffee, more akin to what a moka pot or Bialetti stovetop device brews. There’s nothing wrong with these types of machines; it’s just that, for the scope of this guide, we’re going to be pretty much ignoring them.]

Anyway, back to the hunt. Alex Abramovich of Slate was on a similar hunt a few years ago:

I should upgrade to a pump-driven espresso maker, which heats water in a sealed reservoir, then forces it through pre-ground espresso beans at a requisite 15 atmospheres of pressure. (Click here for a more detailed description of how these high-tech machines work.) These espresso makers are bigger, heavier, and more difficult to use than their steam-driven cousins. They’re also messier and a lot more expensive. But they’ll produce a dark, rich, foamy espresso, with the flavorful oils of a good coffee all on the surface. Once you’ve made a few shots, it’s hard to go back to anything else

[From Which espresso machine is best? – By Alex Abramovich – Slate Magazine]


“Bodum Chambord 12-Ounce Coffee Press” (Bodum)

I’m still on the look-out for my next machine. I don’t really want to spend over $300 dollars, and I have a fairly limited counter space to keep the thing, so I may settle for an also-ran machine that fulfills these parameters. Does seem to be more available than last time I researched the subject. Hmmm.

Any suggestions?


"Gaggia 14101 Classic Espresso Machine, Brushed Stainless Steel" (Gaggia)

The McCain We Still Don’t Know

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Frank Rich marvels at the wholly, demonstrably false portrait of John McCain that so many moderately informed people still have.

What is widely known is the skin-deep, out-of-date McCain image. As this fairy tale has it, the hero who survived the Hanoi Hilton has stood up as rebelliously in Washington as he did to his Vietnamese captors. He strenuously opposed the execution of the Iraq war; he slammed the president’s response to Katrina; he fought the “agents of intolerance” of the religious right; he crusaded against the G.O.P. House leader Tom DeLay, the criminal lobbyist Jack Abramoff and their coterie of influence-peddlers.

With the exception of McCain’s imprisonment in Vietnam, every aspect of this profile in courage is inaccurate or defunct.

McCain never called for Donald Rumsfeld to be fired and didn’t start criticizing the war plan until late August 2003, nearly four months after “Mission Accomplished.” By then the growing insurgency was undeniable. On the day Hurricane Katrina hit, McCain laughed it up with the oblivious president at a birthday photo-op in Arizona. McCain didn’t get to New Orleans for another six months and didn’t sharply express public criticism of the Bush response to the calamity until this April, when he traveled to the Gulf Coast in desperate search of election-year pageantry surrounding him with black extras.

McCain long ago embraced the right’s agents of intolerance, even spending months courting the Rev. John Hagee, whose fringe views about Roman Catholics and the Holocaust were known to anyone who can use the Internet. (Once the McCain campaign discovered YouTube, it ditched Hagee.) On Monday McCain is scheduled to appear at an Atlanta fund-raiser being promoted by Ralph Reed, who is not only the former aide de camp to one of the agents of intolerance McCain once vilified (Pat Robertson) but is also the former Abramoff acolyte showcased in McCain’s own Senate investigation of Indian casino lobbying.

Though the McCain campaign announced a new no-lobbyists policy three months after The Washington Post’s February report that lobbyists were “essentially running” the whole operation, the fact remains that McCain’s top officials and fund-raisers have past financial ties to nearly every domestic and foreign flashpoint, from Fannie Mae to Blackwater to Ahmad Chalabi to the government of Georgia. No sooner does McCain flip-flop on oil drilling than a bevy of Hess Oil family members and executives, not to mention a lowly Hess office manager and his wife, each give a maximum $28,500 to the Republican Party.

[From Frank Rich – The Candidate We Still Don’t Know – Op-Ed – NYTimes.com]

and there is this:

Most Americans still don’t know, as Marshall writes, that on the campaign trail “McCain frequently forgets key elements of policies, gets countries’ names wrong, forgets things he’s said only hours or days before and is frequently just confused.” Most Americans still don’t know it is precisely for this reason that the McCain campaign has now shut down the press’s previously unfettered access to the candidate on the Straight Talk Express.

To appreciate the discrepancy in what we know about McCain and Obama, merely look at the coverage of the potential first ladies. We have heard too much indeed about Michelle Obama’s Princeton thesis, her pay raises at the University of Chicago hospital, her statement about being “proud” of her country and the false rumor of a video of her ranting about “whitey.” But we still haven’t been inside Cindy McCain’s tax returns, all her multiple homes or private plane. The Los Angeles Times reported in June that Hensley & Company, the enormous beer distributorship she controls, “lobbies regulatory agencies on alcohol issues that involve public health and safety,” in opposition to groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving. The McCain campaign told The Times that Mrs. McCain’s future role in her beer empire won’t be revealed before the election.

One of the most telling metrics is that there are Republicans who know McCain well, and they are campaigning for Obama:

Some of those who know McCain best — Republicans — are tougher on him than the press is. Rita Hauser, who was a Bush financial chairwoman in New York in 2000 and served on the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board in the administration’s first term, joined other players in the G.O.P. establishment in forming Republicans for Obama last week. Why? The leadership qualities she admires in Obama — temperament, sustained judgment, the ability to play well with others — are missing in McCain. “He doesn’t listen carefully to people and make reasoned judgments,” Hauser told me. “If John says ‘I’m going with so and so,’ you can’t count on that the next morning,” she complained, adding, “That’s not the man we want for president.”

Russia Is Not Jamaica

Seth Anderson1 Comment

MoDo’s best line in a while:

If only W. had taken the rest of his presidency as seriously as he’s taken his sports outings.

[From Maureen Dowd – Russia Is Not Jamaica -NYTimes.com]

Bush doesn’t care that he’s a light-weight, more interested in vacations and sight-seeing than governing.

After eight years, the president’s gut remains gullible. He’ll go out as he came in — ignoring reality; failing to foresee, prevent or even prepare for disasters; misinterpreting intelligence reports; misreading people; and handling crises in ways that makes them exponentially worse.

He has spent 469 days of his presidency kicking back at his ranch, and 450 days cavorting at Camp David. And there’s still time to mountain-bike through another historic disaster.

This count, outrageous as it is, doesn’t include all the time spent attending sporting events, exercising, and traveling the world.

Red Stripe
[and not drinking Red Stripe]

Bill Casey and Abortion

Seth Anderson1 Comment

I didn’t realize this myself. I had read so many times that Bill Casey was refused a speaking platform at the 1992 Democratic Convention for his anti-abortion views that I assumed this was not in dispute. I was wrong.

For the past 16 years, news organizations have been repeating an obvious falsehood about the 1992 Democratic convention. According to countless news reports — in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Associated Press, ABC, NPR, Time, Newsweek, CNN, MSNBC, The Wall Street Journal, and on and on and on — then-Pennsylvania governor Bob Casey was denied a speaking role at the convention because he opposed abortion rights.

That’s false. And it’s obviously false.

Here’s all you need to know in order to know with absolute certainty that Casey’s views on abortion were not the reason he was not given a speaking role: that very same Democratic convention featured speeches by at least eight people who shared Casey’s anti-choice position, including Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley Jr., Sens. John Breaux and Howell Heflin, and five governors.

[From Media Matters – “Media Matters”; by Jamison Foser]

The reason Casey was not afforded a prime time speaking position was that he refused to endorse Bill Clinton, and wanted to do a Zell Miller spew-fest, trashing the Democratic Party for various reasons, mostly having to do with abortion. Strange how that got twisted.

People involved in planning the 1992 Democratic convention have long maintained that Casey was not given an opportunity to speak because he refused to endorse Bill Clinton, who was to be nominated at the convention. That’s what they said at the time, too. The Washington Post’s first report on Casey’s request for speaking time included a quote from the Democratic National Committee’s press secretary: “anyone who is speaking at the convention will have endorsed Governor Clinton by the time of the convention and Governor Casey has not.”

It should be noted that it wasn’t merely that Casey hadn’t gotten around to endorsing Clinton. He was arguing that Clinton had only a “flyspeck” of support and that the party should consider nominating someone else at the convention.

Of course, only those involved in the decisions about who would speak at the convention know for certain if Casey’s refusal to endorse Clinton was the reason he wasn’t given a speaking role. But we do know that as soon as Casey asked for one, the Democratic Party publicly indicated that his failure to endorse Clinton would prevent him from speaking. If the convention organizers were making a bluff, Casey could have called it by simply endorsing Clinton. He chose not to. Instead, he began denouncing the party for having a “radical, extreme position” in favor of abortion rights and claiming it was bowing to “the radical far left.” Members of his own delegation were quoted saying he was “being a jerk” and said they were considering removing him as head of the delegation.

It’s also important to keep in mind that Casey didn’t merely want to speak at the convention. He wanted to devote his entire speech to opposing the Democratic Party on a single issue. After the convention ended, Casey released the text of the speech he would have delivered had he been given the chance. The speech ran more than 1,000 words — and not one of those words was “Clinton.” Nor was the word “Gore” mentioned. Casey’s speech did not include a single word of praise or support for the ticket being nominated at the convention he wanted to address. Instead, it accused the party of being “far out of the mainstream and on the extreme fringe” on abortion. That’s what the entire speech was about: disagreeing with, and insulting, the Democratic Party on abortion.

Barack Obama had better vet Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton’s speeches pretty carefully. Pretty damn carefully.
Jamison Foser continues

Methadone Is a Painkiller With Risks

Seth Anderson2 Comments

The first thought I had upon reading this article about methadone use is that insurance companies probably love methadone because it doesn’t have an active patent, and thus is cheap to proscribe.

Methadone, once used mainly in addiction treatment centers to replace heroin, is today being given out by family doctors, osteopaths and nurse practitioners for throbbing backs, joint injuries and a host of other severe pains.

A synthetic form of opium, it is cheap and long lasting, a powerful pain reliever that has helped millions. But because it is also abused by thrill seekers and badly prescribed by doctors unfamiliar with its risks, methadone is now the fastest growing cause of narcotic deaths. It is implicated in more than twice as many deaths as heroin, and is rivaling or surpassing the tolls of painkillers like OxyContin and Vicodin.

“This is a wonderful medicine used appropriately, but an unforgiving medicine used inappropriately,” said Dr. Howard A. Heit, a pain specialist at Georgetown University. “Many legitimate patients, following the direction of the doctor, have run into trouble with methadone, including death.”

…

OxyContin is still widely prescribed, but a survey of Medicare plans in 2008, by the research firm Avalere Health LLC, found that many did not even include OxyContin on the list of reimbursable drugs. Critics like Dr. June Dahl, professor of pharmacology at the University of Wisconsin, fault the insurance companies for favoring methadone simply because of its monetary cost. “I don’t think a drug that requires such a level of sophistication to use is what I’d call cheap, because of the risks,” Dr. Dahl added.

Federal regulators acknowledge that they were slow to recognize the dangers of newly widespread methadone prescribing and to confront physician ignorance about the drug. They blame “imperfect” systems for monitoring such problems.

[From Methadone Rises as a Painkiller With Risks – NYTimes.com]

and apparently, I was right:

The rise of methadone is in part because of a major change in medical attitudes in the 1990s, as doctors accepted that debilitating pain was often undertreated. Insurance plans embraced methadone as a generic, cheaper alternative to other long-lasting painkillers like OxyContin, and many doctors switched to prescribing it because it seemed less controversial and perhaps less prone to abuse than OxyContin.

The subtext is that the FDA only was concerned with methadone for narcotic abuse1:

In what critics call a stunning oversight, the F.D.A-approved package insert for methadone for decades recommended starting doses for pain at up to 80 mg per day. “This could unequivocally cause death in patients who have not recently been using narcotics,” said Dr. Robert G. Newman, former president of Beth Israel Medical Center in New York and an expert in addiction.

The F.D.A. says that in the absence of reports of problems by doctors or surveillance systems, “we would have no reason to suspect that the dosing regimen” might need to be adjusted.

In November 2006, after reports of overdoses and deaths among pain patients multiplied and The Charleston Gazette reported on the dangerous package instructions, the F.D.A. cut the recommended starting limit to no more than 30 mg per day. “As soon as we became aware of deaths due to misprescribing for pain patients, we began the process of instituting label changes,” Dr. Rappaport said.

Footnotes:
  1. in other words, there was not expensive advertising campaign touting the benefits of methadone, thus the FDA didn’t really care what the materials describing proper use actually said. Junkies don’t care what the current advertising says, and the FDA officials can’t get future jobs [↩]

The Wellington Room

Seth Anderson0 comment

Matthew Sharlot and Karen Sharlot have finally opened their own restaurant. The menu looks delicious.

In an intimate dining room where all guests enjoy the spectacular view of the Piscataqua River, The Wellington Room is sure to be a memorable dining experience. Our chef hand selects local products of the best quality and freshness, and prepares all dishes himself… including the pastries. We offer a broad variety of cuisine and all dishes are made fresh to order (even the coffee), so special requests are welcome.

[From The Wellington Room Home]

Too bad I live too far away to drive over for lunch.

Rachel Forrest liked it too:

I watch the door when people come into a restaurant and I’m always surprised at how anxious people look when they step up to a host/ess podium for the first time. I can see them wonder if their name is on the reservation list, if this restaurant will make them feel welcome, if they’ll feel good at the end. They really don’t know what to expect. I get that.

There are restaurants I go into where I know the owner, host or bartender pretty well and I go to these places in part because I do know them and feel welcomed and comfortable, but it can take a few visits to become a “regular,” to feel like I belong. Not so at The Wellington Room, where Karen Sharlot, who owns the romantic restaurant with husband and executive chef, Matthew Sharlot, can make you feel like a regular from the moment you step through the door.

[From Seacoastonline.com: Dining Out: The Wellington Room, Portsmouth]

Gorillapod Tripod

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“Joby GP3-01EN Gorillapod SLR-Zoom Flexible Tripod + SLIK Compact Ball Head + Cameta DSLR-01 Camera Care Package – for Digital SLR Cameras with Zoom Lens (3.5lb max) – including Canon Digital Rebel XT, XTi, EOS 20D, 30D, Nikon D40, D40x, D50, D70, D80, D200, Olympus Evolt E300, E330, E410, E500, E510, Pentax K10D & Sony Alpha A100” (Joby, Inc)

Picked up a portable, flexible-leg tripod by Joby called the Gorillapod SLR-Zoom. Still on my list of equipment-to-buy is a real tripod, but those aren’t as portable as this one. Haven’t tested it in the wild yet, but seems like it is excellent. Light enough that I can throw it in my camera bag, and use it if I need it, and ignore the weight if I don’t need a tripod. Bonus includes a bunch of cleaning tools which are also good to have on hand.

Kit includes: 1) Joby GP3 SLR-Zoom Gorillapod; 2) SLIK Compact Ball Head; 3) Cameta Microfiber Cleaning Cloth; 4) Image Recovery Software; 5) Memory Card Wallet; 6) Cleaning Kit. ♦ The Joby GP3 SLR Camera Gorillapod firmly secures your Digital or Film SLR Camera with Zoom Lens as well as Video Camcorders weighing up to 6.6 lbs. to just about anything. Unlike traditional tripods, it doesn’t require an elevated flat surface for you to take the perfect shot. The Gorillapod is much more than just a tripod — you can wrap the three flexible segmented legs securely to a tree branch, fence, park bench, or anything else that’s convenient. Besides allowing you to shoot at slower shutter speeds for creative effects, it also lets everyone get into the picture for self-timer shots. ♦ The SLIK Compact Ball Head can hold an impressive 3.5 lbs. and allows adjusting your camera’s postion to get just the camera angle you need. ♦ Your camera’s LCD monitor screen and optics usually become soiled with fingerprints, oily smudges and other contaminants. It can be really frustrating trying to clean the LCD monitor safely and completely without smearing using typical lens tissue or lens cloths — especially out in the field. The Cameta Microfiber Cleaning Cloth is designed using the latest 21st Century technology to perform this task quickly, safely and easily. ♦ The Digital Image Recovery Software is fast, easy to use, recovers most popular file formats and works with virtually all brands and types of memory cards. ♦ The Memory Card Wallet holds and protects three memory cards and has a belt loop.

More Red Wine Propaganda

Seth Anderson0 comment

Wine-go-Round
[Wine-go-Round, 560 W. Washington, Chicago, IL]

Good thing I like wine1.

Red wine stops effects of high-fat diet
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor

Red wine does indeed explain why the French get away with a relatively clean bill of heart health despite eating a diet loaded with saturated fats, concludes a new study.

Red wine contins resveratrol which can blunt the toxic effects of a high-fat diet
Many have speculated that answer to the paradox lies in their love of a glass or two of wine with a meal and have focused on a chemical found in red wine called resveratrol, also a natural constituent of grapes, pomegranates and other foods.

Earlier studies have shown it can blunt the toxic effects of a diet very high in fat, which causes liver damage, but this is the first study to directly look at ageing.

Today, in the journal PLoS ONE, researchers report that even low doses of resveratrol in the diet of middle-aged mice has a widespread influence on the genetic levers of ageing, and may confer special protection on the heart.

Specifically, the researchers found that low doses of resveratrol mimic the helpful effects of what is known as caloric restriction, diets with the full range of nutrients but up to 30 per cent fewer calories than a typical diet, which extend lifespan and slow the progression of age related diseases such as obesity, diabetes and cancer.

“This brings down the dose of resveratrol toward the consumption reality mode,” says senior author Prof Richard Weindruch of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

[From Red wine stops effects of high-fat diet – Telegraph ]

My thought is: everything that’s part of human experience is good. Drinking wine is part of civilization, there must be benefits.

Footnotes:
  1. another post that never got posted, but now is, sans much from me [↩]

Heroin vs Coke

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“The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star” (Nikki Sixx)

Nikki Sixx is just a putz. John Dolan concurs.

Yet heroin that gets the blame when Nikki’s retarded band mates discuss his descent to what Tommy Lee calls “a dark fucking place.” If you’ve spent any time in L.A. you’ve probably met guys like this. For them, cocaine is simply part of a normal healthy diet, whereas heroin is just plain evil. Odd, because among intelligent druggies opiates get a lot of respect, while coke is simply despised. For serious drug people there are two ways to go: up with some variety of speed, or down with some kind of opiate. Coke is scorned as a short-acting verbal emetic, a silly drug for moneyed trash. The only intellectuals who took it seriously were Freud and Sherlock Holmes — one a half-baked intellectual who masqueraded his literary criticism as therapy, postponing effective treatment for schizophrenia and depression by generations, the other an apotheosized peeping tom, who of course never really existed. Indeed, both were nasty voyeurs; perhaps that’s a feature of coke addiction too.

Opiates, by contrast, have been the drug of choice for an astonishing number of the really talented people of the last few centuries: Coleridge, de Quincy, Poe, Donald Goines, Jean Cocteau, William Burroughs, Jimi Hendrix. And prescription opiates are still the choice of L.A.’s upper class, which is why when one of the stars is arrested, their glove compartments are always full of perfectly legal percodan or Demerol. (If you’re a star, you see, you can get special prescriptions which are issued after your arrest but dated weeks before.)

Of course injected street heroin has a terrible potential for fatal overdoses, because you don’t know the purity of the dose until it’s already in your bloodstream. What no one seems to realize is that this too is a side effect of Prohibition. When you make a drug illegal, you are encouraging smugglers to import it in the most concentrated, potent form available, then charge insanely high prices for infinitesmal amounts. In the case of heroin, these quantities are so tiny that the drug must be injected to be effective. Without Prohibition, quantity and content would be clear, and people would be free to smoke opium in legal dens. In such conditions, accidental overdoses are rare. Conversely, in countries like Iran which prohibit that allegedly safe, mainstream drug, alcohol, many users die or go blind from ingesting street booze laced with the usual variety of poisons. Prohibition kills far more people than “drugs.”

Alas, even educated Americans are too intimidated to point this out. In a provincial, Puritan society like ours, nothing is worse than your neighbors’ disapproval, and speaking up against the drug laws can get you whispered about. And if Nikki’s betters won’t speak out honestly on the topic, we can hardly expect him and his idiot hessian friends to get it. So naturally, they’re all eager to blame heroin, “the worst drug in the world.” They’re also in love with its notoriety — hence the book’s title.

[From Why Is Coke Glamorous and Heroin Scary? Because of Halfwits Like Nikki Sixx | DrugReporter | AlterNet]

I had a witty rejoinder to this article, and to the nonsense of Nikki Sixx, way back when I discovered the article in 2007, but it never made it through my movabletype blog filter1, so I’ll just let Mr. Sixx wallow in his own depravity. I remember part of my critique was of those who cocaine is a drug of choice. I’ve partaken, even a few times, but cocaine never seemed very fulfilling of an inebriant.Empty calories, basically. The entire article is good, check it out if you have a moment.

Footnotes:
  1. I had a lot of trouble posting content for a while [↩]

John McCain Running on Empty

Seth Anderson1 Comment


“Running on Empty” (Jackson Browne)

Continuing on a theme, yet another musician is pissed off at the John McCain campaign for appropriating a song without permission. You’d think such copyright stalwarts would have learned to ask first. Silly kids, laws are for Republicans to break.

Jackson Browne sued Sen. John McCain on Thursday for unauthorized use of one of his songs in a television commercial.

Browne, one of rock music’s most famous activists for liberal causes, is “incensed” that the presumptive Republican nominee for president has been using Browne’s signature 1977 song “Running on Empty,” said Lawrence Y. Iser, the singer-songwriter’s attorney.

Browne filed a copy- right infringement lawsuit against McCain and the Republican National Committee in U.S. District Court in L.A., seeking damages and a permanent injunction prohibiting the use of the forlorn arena anthem or any other Browne composition.

…

Browne’s attorney said that he is “informed and believes” that McCain approved the ad.

[From Jackson Browne sues Sen. John McCain for unauthorized use of ‘Running on Empty’ — chicagotribune.com]

Luckily, I was able to write this entire post without using a pun based on Jackson Browne’s song, Lawyers in Love.

The True Cost of McCain’s Oil Industry Subsidies for Every State

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McCain likes giving his starving oil buddies federal tax dollars: Republican corporate welfare helps keep McCain in office.

Oil and gasoline prices are setting all-time records, helping the five biggest publicly traded oil companies in the world earn a staggering $148 billion in profits over the past year. At the same time, the U.S. government continues to provide massive subsidies to oil companies.

These subsidies for some of the most profitable companies in the world, given directly and through the tax breaks, are a waste of taxpayer dollars and continue tax dollar investments in oil instead of shifting incentives to clean energy alternatives. Subsidies for the oil industry preserve our dependence on oil, which leaves our economy vulnerable to price surges, our security vulnerable to hostile oil-rich nations, and our climate vulnerable to greenhouse gas pollution.

If elected president, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) would provide $39 billion in federal help for oil and gas companies over the next five years. Some of these subsidies already exist: McCain supports the continuation of many of the current subsidies, which will total $33 billion over the next five years according to a study by Friends of the Earth, “Big Oil, Bigger Giveaways.” While McCain would repeal some of these subsidies, he would also pass a corporate tax cut that would be worth more than $22 billion to America’s five largest oil companies over the next five years.

[From The True Cost of McCain’s Oil Industry Subsidies for Every State]

It isn’t as if the federal government needs money, no not at all.

Charlie Parker Month

Seth Anderson0 comment

In honor of Charlie Parker month, a little bebop with Diz at the Hot House, 1952:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Clp9AeBdgL0

3:36 of scorching, swinging jazz. I wish the volume was better mixed (can hardly hear the bass, nor much of the drum), but at least the brass is clear.

You can’t really go wrong adding some Charlie Parker to your music library, there are collections and box sets for every budget. You could even pick up 78s, if you were willing to pay the price1

Such as:



“Best of The Complete Savoy & Dial Studio Recordings” (Charlie Parker)


“The Complete Verve Master Takes” (Charlie Parker)

Free Jazz Aficionado
[Ethan is more of a Free Jazz Aficionado, but he’s working his way back to Charlie Parker]

Footnotes:
  1. and have the equipment to play 78s, duh [↩]

Hats Off for Roy Harper!

Seth Anderson0 comment

“Jugula” (Roy Harper & Jimmy Page)

I did not realize that Roy Harper sang vocals on “Have a Cigar”.

Led Zeppelin wrote a song about him. He delivered lead vocals on Pink Floyd’s classic “Have a Cigar.” This Mortal Coil has covered him, Joanna Newsom and Kate Bush have collaborated with him, and his reach has touched uncounted bands since he emerged from London in the mid-’60s.

So it’s a wonder that it has taken this long for Roy Harper to land his moment in the reissue spotlight. But that moment is here nevertheless.

Koch Entertainment has teamed up with Harper’s own label Science Fiction to distribute the folk singer’s albums. The slate includes Stormcock, Harper’s 1971 four-song epic team-up with Jimmy Page, as well as Jugula, Flat Baroque and Berserk, The Green Man, The Dream Society, The Unknown Soldier, Death or Glory, the double-disc best-of Counter Culture and more. Fans of all of the aforementioned bands, as well as Nick Drake, freak folk, Devendra Banhart and onward, will find a kindred spirit with a rap sheet decades wide.

[From UK Legend Roy Harper Finally Crosses the Pond | Listening Post from Wired.com]

I have an import version of Counter Culture, and there is some good stuff contained therein. I’ll have to look for these reissues.

“Counter Culture” (Roy Harper)

“Stormcock” (Roy Harper)

Semicolon Users of the World Unite!

Seth Anderson4 Comments

Blog posts don’t really lend themselves to heavy semicolon use; I have a fondness for the little things1 .

It is a debate you could only really have in a country that accords its intellectuals the kind of status other nations – to name no names – tend to reserve for footballers, footballers’ wives or (if they’re lucky) rock stars; a place where structuralists and relativists and postmodernists, rather than skulk shamefacedly in the shadows, get invited on to primetime TV; a culture in which even today it is considered entirely acceptable, indeed laudable, to state one’s profession as “thinker”.

That country is France, which is currently preoccupied with the fate of its ailing semicolon.

Encouragingly, a Committee for the Defence of the Semicolon appeared on the web (only to disappear some days later, which cannot be a very good sign). Articles have been written in newspapers and magazines. The topic is being earnestly discussed on the radio. It was even the subject of an April Fool’s joke on a leading internet news site, which claimed, perfectly plausibly, that President Nicolas Sarkozy had just decreed that to preserve the poor point-virgule from an untimely end, it must henceforth be used at least three times a page in all official correspondence.

In the red corner, desiring nothing less than the consignment of the semicolon to the dustbin of grammatical history, are a pair of treacherous French writers and (of course) those perfidious Anglo-Saxons, for whose short, punchy, uncomplicated sentences, it is widely rumoured, the rare subtlety and infinite elegance of a good semicolon are surplus to requirements. The point-virgule, says legendary writer, cartoonist and satirist François Cavanna, is merely “a parasite, a timid, fainthearted, insipid thing, denoting merely uncertainty, a lack of audacity, a fuzziness of thought”.

…

In the blue corner are an array of linguistic patriots who cite Hugo, Flaubert, De Maupassant, Proust and Voltaire as examples of illustrious French writers whose respective oeuvres would be but pale shadows of themselves without the essential point-virgule, and who argue that – in the words of one contributor to a splendidly passionate blog on the topic hosted recently by the leftwing weekly Le Nouvel Observateur – “the beauty of the semicolon, and its glory, lies in the support lent by this particular punctuation mark to the expression of a complex thought”.

The semicolon, continues this sadly anonymous defender of the Gallic grammatical faith, “finds its rightful home in the subtlety of a fine and rich analysis, one which is not afraid to pronounce – and sometimes to withhold – judgment where mere affirmation might be found wanting. It allows the writer to link ideas without breaking a train of thought; by contrast, over-simplified communication and bald, efficient discourse whose simplistic style is the best guarantee of being widely understood is naturally wary of this punctuation mark.”

[From Jon Henley on the fate of the semicolon | The Guardian ]

I may have a fondness for an occasional semicolon; the French have taken the debate to a level well beyond my interest level.

Footnotes:
  1. I am probably using semicolons wrong – in my mind, two sentences or clauses can be joined with a semicolon if the sentences have a close relationship, and the semicolon could be replaced by a “but”, “yet” or similar conjuctions [↩]

Why Georgia and Georgia are both named Georgia

Seth Anderson1 Comment

I’ve often wondered about this myself.

Why does a country that was formerly part of the USSR have the same name as a state in the American Deep South?

Both got their present-day monikers from the British. The name of the country comes from the Russian word Gruzia, which was in turn derived from the Persian and Turkish versions of the name George, Gorj and Gurju. It’s not clear when the Brits started using the word Georgia in place of Gruzia, but scholars believe the switch happened sometime in the late Middle Ages.

In their native tongue, Georgians refer to themselves as the Kartveli and to their country as Sakartvelo. But the Kartveli have for many centuries been associated with George, the Roman soldier and Christian martyr. (They adopted Christianity under Roman rule in the 330s.) The Arabs, Ottomans, and Persians—who ruled over the country at various times until the Russians took control in 1801—chose to name Sakartvelo after its beloved patron saint, whose image dotted the art and architecture of the region.

The American Georgia, on the other hand, was named after King George II of England, who granted the state its charter in 1732. The –ia suffix, meaning “state of,” comes from the Greek and was tacked onto the end of many place names via the vast imperial and lingual legacy of the Romans. The name George became popular in Western Europe only after the Crusades, when knights traveling to the Holy Land came in contact with the widespread veneration of the saint among the Eastern Christians—in places like Georgia. (George became the patron saint of England in the 1340s.) Meanwhile, the saint’s name derives from Greek and refers to a tiller of land. In that respect, both Georgia and Georgia live up to their names.

[From Why are Georgia and Georgia both named Georgia? – By Noreen Malone – Slate Magazine]

So now we know…