David

sanity

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 02:46:47 GMT

I thought I was losing my mind, but in fact that faint voice I heard while listening to Glenn Gould's "Goldberg Variations" is the pianist himself, displaying one of his "eccentricities."

Stars of the Lid, "And Their Refinement of the Decline"

Fri, 29 Jun 2007 15:20:25 GMT

I'm really loving this double album by Stars of the Lid that I downloaded from eMusic a week ago. I guess people call this drone music now, it used to be called ambient, back when Eno was making it, or minimalism if by Glass or Reich, but it's all about tonality and space. It's so spare and elegant, it makes it hard to listen to anything else afterwards, without it sounding clumsy, cluttered, and adolescent.

http://www.myspace.com/starsofthelid

activist judges

Thu, 28 Jun 2007 15:36:48 GMT

Who exactly, are the judicial activists on the Supreme Court? Perhaps its Ailto, Robert, Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy, who won't let school districts mind their own business in an attempt to achieve a modicum of diversity. The segregationist racists are now just a little more subtle than they were 50 years ago.

Hello, American apartheid. Welcome back. It's just one more step in this country's slide down the toilet.

ex-drinking buddy

Thu, 28 Jun 2007 13:50:15 GMT

My former drinking buddy back from my law school days is going to meet up with us in Berlin. We're planning to travel around a bit while Saltbox is in her conference.

We were chatting yesterday about plans, when he tells me that he hasn't had a drink since February. He read some book that convinced him that even drinking moderate amounts is too much, because it causes your body to crave more and puts you into a perpetual state of stress until that stress is relieved by drinking. He claims that he now feels as relaxed normally as he used to feel after a few beers.

Anyway, I found this relatively convincing. I started to think about how much time and money I spend on drinking, and how it forms such a central part of the social life here in Madison. Even a few beers keeps me from sleeping properly and makes me somewhat dehydrated. It certainly interferes with my running.

So I'm considering giving up drinking at least until Berlin, although I'll definitely want to sample the local beers when I'm travelling.

But our conversation also made me wonder what he now does with his time. He's a retired internet millionaire. His one real hobby was trying to destroy the reputation of this dentist that maimed him, and he's now successfully ruined that former "dentist to the stars". He's currently engaged in designing his Greenwich Village pleasure palace, but it doens't seem like that's a full-time endeavor, although maybe it is.

running intervals

Thu, 28 Jun 2007 13:42:31 GMT

I ran some pretty quick intervals last night after work: 2 x 5 mins and 2 x 3 mins. I'd estimate that I was around 6 mins per mile or maybe a little faster.

I quickly realized that it was a mistake to eat before pushing myself so hard on intervals. After finishing the first one, I almost retched up a combination of kippers (protein, omega 3), triskets (for the kippers), and chocolate sandwich cookies (indulgence). Let's just say that having those flavors come up in a combined stomach acid sauce was no fun at all.

Ran for a total of 7 miles. That puts my weekly mileage since Sunday at 23; I'd like to hit about 35.

Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World

Thu, 21 Jun 2007 06:06:56 GMT

Why didn't anyone ever tell me this book existed? I just stumbled onto it via Amazon, and can't wait for it to arrive. From the description, it sounds like it combines my interests in philosophy, class identity, politics, and history. It was exactly what I've been looking for, without even knowing it.

Random rules

Thu, 14 Jun 2007 14:59:26 GMT

I ran about 7.5 miles last night, and listened to my iPod on shuffle play.

Brian Wilson, "Roll Plymouth Rock"--I'm not sure exactly what the lyrical theme is about--is Brian suggesting that the whites should leave North America? At the very least, he's acknowledging the damage they've (we've) done, but in his usual gentle way. The song turns some very tight corners, with sharp harpsicord breaks coming out of nowhere, and maintains a lovely dream-like quality throughout. He also revisits songs from elsewhere on Smile, like "Heros and Villains," adding to the sense of deja vu.

Lush, "Ciao"--Lush were one of my favorite bands from college. They were one of the original shoegaze bands, fronted by two tiny, super cute women: they punky, tough Miki Berenyi and the huggable Emma Anderson. I had a giant crush on Berenyi--she's half Japanese half Hungarian descent, had various shades of neon hair, and played tough on some songs (e.g., Bitter, The Untogether), but was still very sexy.

"Ciao" is a duet between Berenyi and a male guest vocalist with a Shane McGowan type broken baritone. They've recently split up, and each is trying to top the other in each verse, talking about how terrible the other was, and how much happier they are now. Their voices then join together on the choruses. It might be the most paradoxically effective love song of all time--they ostensibly loathe each other, spewing forth verse after verse of invective, but if they didn't still love one another, why would they bother?

It's a fantastic song, one of many by Lush. They'd go on to hit it marginally big on their next album, primarily from their single "Ladykillers." I saw them in concert in Detroit that year, with my friend and old roommate D--, in a great show at St. Albans. Their drummer would tragically hang himself within the year, and the band dissolved.

Jeff Buckley, "So Real"--This is a real rollercoster of a song. The song doesn't have any straight narrative arc, but it touches on questions of authenticity, self-doubt, and adolescent lust. The verses are a strange kind of ghostly blues, with an off-kilter guitar strumming followed by vocal fills. The chorus is a big, satisfying rock and roll hook with Buckley's beautiful voice perfectly in control. But then, out of nowhere, Buckley lacerates his song with brutal guitar squalls and feedback.

In retrospect, it encapsulates Buckley rather concisely--limitless talent, plagued by self-doubt and self-destruction.

Iraq and humiliation

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 05:31:50 GMT

I was reading Thucydides, "The Peloponnesian War," and came across a striking passage. At this point, the Athenians have the advantage over the Spartans, by virtue of their victory at Pylos and encirclement of Spartan helots stationed on Sphacteria. The Spartans plea for peace, suggesting that at this point in the war they can each leave with some semblance dignity. They suggest that, even if the Athenians press their advantage and extract a more favorable peace, a settlement that is the result of humiliation will just lead to resentment, backlash, and eventually another conflict.

When we invaded Iraq, we steamrolled the Iraqi army. Many Americans thought it was hilarious, and took great pride in our overwhelming superiority. But the flipside of this is that the Iraqis must have been utterly humiliated. Even if they weren't strict nationalists or completely identify with Saddam's regime, it must have been emasculating for them to be defeated so effortlessly and yet so comprehensively.

In the aftermath, the US attempted to give them a state, to award them a democracy. But many Iraqis likely don't want to be handed anything by the Americans, as a simple point of pride. They want to win the state, to earn it for themselves as an assertion of autonomy. This, in turn, may have helped fuel the reassertion of ethnic identities and sectarian fighting.

We should have found some face-saving way for the Iraqi people to emerge from the rubble. But macho-man Bush, of course wouldn't dream of such a thing. Well asshole, look where it got you.

This makes me sound pretty weird.

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 05:21:59 GMT

From Spark: http://community.sparknotes.com/person/

--------

You are an Experimenter!
(Dominant Introverted Abstract Thinker)
You are an EXPERIMENTER (DIAT). Although you're slightly shy (admit it!), you love control. When a problem comes across your way, you stomp on it swiftly and decisively. You are bothered easily by failure in others and failure in yourself. You don't like people that you don't think are intelligent. Rather than arguing with them, however, you would just as soon ignore them altogether.

In relationships, you have a strong heart. And because you're introverted, people take you as someone they can trust. But the fact is that in addition to solving problems, you like to create them.

You're a good person at heart, but then again, who isn't?

Compared to 14,997,896 other test takers...
98% are more Submissive than you.

1% are more Dominant than you.
2% are just as Dominant as you.
3% are more Introverted than you.

92% are more Extroverted than you.
5% are just as Introverted as you.
1% are more Abstract than you.

95% are more Concrete than you.
4% are just as Abstract as you.
14% are more Thinking than you.

80% are more Feeling than you.
6% are just as Thinking as you.

i am the dominator!

Sat, 24 Mar 2007 02:52:47 GMT

absence

Sat, 24 Mar 2007 02:28:01 GMT

I went for a run at lunch today, listening to my iPod. Towards the end of my run, the song "Before the Day," by the Bats came on. For some reason, this song always makes me think of my departed friends, izmar and J--, I suppose because it's such a modest, beautiful, intelligent song, it just reminds me of how humble, yet still scintillatingly brilliant they both were. Ever since I lost them, I've noticed that I'm affected far more easily by things--even schlocky movie trailers can have me on the verge of tears. And the thought crossed my mind--I can understand why people get faces of departed friends tattooed onto their bodies. That way, you always carry them with you, in some very tangible way.

Novartis case

Fri, 09 Mar 2007 16:38:37 GMT

I haven't been following it all that closely, but apparently there's a lot riding on a patent case brought by Novartis in India. The availability of many life-saving medications for people in developing countries is at stake.

-------------
9 Mar, 2007
Times of India, Editorial

LEADER ARTICLE: Dead Man Walking
"Generic drugs only hope for many AIDS, Cancer Patients"
Richard Rockefeller

(available at
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/OPINION/Editorial/LEADER_ARTICLE_Dead_Man_Walking/articleshow/1738298.cms)

Chances are you have never heard of the drug, imatinib mesylate, let alone Section 3 (d) of India's Patent Amendment Act of 2005.

But a court case in India this month involving both could determine whether people throughout the world have access to life-saving medicines for diseases like HIV/AIDS for decades to come.

I am intimately familiar with the drug, marketed by the Swiss-based multinational Novartis as Gleevec, because my life depends on it.

In October 2000 doctors diagnosed me with chronic myelogenous leukaemia (CML), a rare and deadly form of cancer. Six months later, the Federal Drug Administration approved Gleevec.

Years of taxpayer and privately funded research went into the drug's development, and it has all but eliminated my cancer.

Novartis has filed suit against India's government because an Indian court rejected its patent application for a new form of the original compound.
The company is challenging both the patent office decision and a key public health safeguard within India's Patents Act that aims to reserve patents for real innovations only.

If Novartis succeeds, a surge of additional patents is likely, resulting in further restrictions on the production of generic drugs in India and inordinately high prices for newer medicines. India's generic medicine industry is often called "the pharmacy to the developing world" because it produces quality drugs at dramatically more affordable prices.

Generic competition is what brought prices down for antiretroviral (ARV) medicines for people living with HIV/AIDS from a staggering $10,000 to
$136 a year.

Most AIDS treatment programmes throughout the world rely on generic ARVs made in India, including more than 80 per cent of the 80,000 patients treated by Doctors Without Borders in more than 30 countries.

And 70 per cent of the ARVs purchased by UNICEF, the International Dispensary Association, the UN Global Fund, and the Clinton Foundation to treat patients in 87 developing countries come from generic Indian sources as well.

In Malawi, the importance of generic ARVs was brought home to me a few years after i was diagnosed with leukaemia. I saw first-hand how hope had replaced despair for thousands of people throughout the impoverished country when, just a short time earlier, AIDS devastated whole communities.

Like me, without treatment, many of the people i met most likely would have been dead. And without a generic source of ARVs, only dozens would have been treated, not thousands.

Even as millions around the world still have no access to treatment, these fortunate few are put at risk by Novartis's legal attack in India.

A constant flow of affordable newer medicines will be particularly important for AIDS treatment, as patients inevitably become resistant to first-line therapies and need newer drug combinations.

This lawsuit threatens the supply of these medicines because of the precedent it could set for future patenting decisions.

Novartis says that concern with its lawsuit is misplaced because the company gives Gleevec for free to patients in India.

Of course, those receiving it do not represent the total number of leukaemia sufferers, and in any event, a drug delivery system based solely on donations is vulnerable to shifting political winds and the drugs can be withdrawn for any reason.

The company also claims on their website that their court case is actually about increasing access to medicines because strict intellectual property
(IP) protection lays "the foundation for the massive investments made by the pharmaceutical industry in R&D that are vital to medical progress".

While this may sound good in a press release, it is just not true for most people in the world. A growing body of evidence - most recently the WHO's Commission on Innovation, Intellectual Property and Public Health - indicates that increased patent protection has done little or nothing to increase innovation in treatments for the afflictions of the developing world.

Of the 1,556 new chemical entities marketed worldwide between 1975 and 2004, only 20 were for diseases that affect 90 per cent of the world's population.

To many people, Novartis' lawsuit is a case of deja vu. Novartis was one of 39 drug companies that sued South Africa in 1997 to block legislation aimed at improving that country's access to essential medicines.

At the time, the companies trotted out the same arguments, predicting the sky would fall - on them and us - if South Africa were allowed to shop around for the lowest-priced medicines.

Since that unsuccessful court case, though, Novartis has posted billions of dollars in profits, including $6.1 billion in 2005 alone.

I am grateful everyday that a treatment was found to prolong my life. But one can't be as cheerful about this as one would like, knowing that AIDS kills more people each year - nearly three million - than the number of people in my home state of Maine.

Or when one thinks of the people in Malawi and around the world who would be most affected if Novartis gets its way today in India. Quite simply, the company should drop its case.

The writer is chairman of Doctors Without Borders.

lucky

Tue, 06 Mar 2007 15:18:55 GMT

I've only been at my new job for 2 months, and I'm already moving into a corner office, with a view of the capitol building. It might be even nicer than my old office in DC, which had a view of Massachusetts Avenue and Union Station. I used to enjoy watching the gulls hover on the wind currents whooshing down Mass Ave.

Home Shopping

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 19:02:48 GMT

We're going home shopping in Madison today. I feel like such an adult.

Rollerskate Skinny

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 19:02:15 GMT

I've really been digging Rollerskate Skinny's "Horsedrawn Wishes" -- a combination of My Bloody Valentine and Pet Sounds era Beach Boys.

dialogue

Fri, 02 Mar 2007 15:00:53 GMT

Why do bad things happen to good people?

The Theist: The ways of God are beyond human comprehension. It is not our place to question providence, but to submit to God's will, and recognize that this life is nothing more than the blink of an eye when compared with enternity. We trust that, however flawed events may appear when viewed in isolation, they are part of a larger, ineffable grace.

The Humanist: We do good things not out of hope for some other reward, but because of their intrinsic worth. So far as bad events may befall us or others who do not appear deserving, all we can do is recognize that fortune is often capricious, and hope that, when we need it, others will help us, just as we helped them. We should not be too proud to accept help when offered, nor too parsimonious to provide it to others when needed.

perspective

Fri, 02 Mar 2007 06:38:36 GMT

"What can the farthest-reaching mind say of this? Nothing; the book of fate is closed to our view. Man, a stranger to himself, is unknown to man. What am I? Where am I? Where shall I go? From where did I come? Atoms tormented on this heap of mud, which death engulfs, and with which fate plays; yet thinking atoms, atoms whose eyes, guided by thought, have measured the skies. We throw our minds across the infinite, yet cannot for one moment see and know ourselves."

-- Voltaire

excellence in snide reporting

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 22:50:25 GMT

I had no idea:

1) Jamaraquai was still around;

2) That they were anything other than a one-hit wonder (Jay Kay somehow has 6 platinum selling albums and 40 million pounds in the bank); or

3) that anyone would care.

But the last line of the Guardian article makes it all worthwhile:

"I might be back if I get my inspiration again, but who knows," he told the Mirror's 3am column. "I'm bored. I don't want to go back on the road. We all need a rest to be honest. I don't need the money or a deal." Whether his desire to make more ersatz funk has also diminished was left unclear.

Jean Meslier

Sun, 25 Feb 2007 07:00:58 GMT

Speaking of blowing it all up, I was just reading about an 18th Century French priest names Jean Meslier. He served his tiny parish with quiety humility for 40 years, every year donating all of the residual income left from his abtemious lifestyle to charity. After he passed away, he left three copies of his "testament," to his congregation. The testament was a stunning denunciation of not only Catholicism, but Christianity and even all organized religion. He apologized for serving as a priest, and could only explain that he was forced into it by his parents.

It's hard to imagine what it could have been like for Meslier, serving an institution he abhorred for so long, spreading myths that he knew to be false, and being able to confide in no one other than his folio sheets. Was he filled with self-loathing? Or had he reconciled himself to being an insignificant figure in a immense absurdity?

Despite attempts at supression, his testament reached Voltaire and many of the other philosophes, influencing and buttressing their attacks on the Catholic church.

Blur, "Tracy Jacks"

Thu, 22 Feb 2007 15:52:26 GMT

I was walking to work on icy Madison sidewalks the other morning, listening to Blur's album Parklife. For the first time, I really paid close attention to Albarn' lyrics for "Tracy Jacks," which I always assumed was a bouncy tune about a kind of lager-swilling lout. In fact, it's a lot darker and more exisistential: Tracy is a civil servant that likes golf and leads a pretty banal life, until he just completely loses it. He skips work one day, takes the train to the coast, takes off his clothes and beings prancing around naked. The authoritis bundle him up, and take him home. But then he snaps again, this time bulldozing his own house.

The theme about blowing it all up and starting fresh with a new identity is very similar to Tom Wait's "Frank's Wild Years," (the song, not the album), but it's far more jarring, because the bouncy happy music is at such odds with the bleak, depressing lyrics.

Becks

Wed, 21 Feb 2007 21:10:35 GMT

Okay all you haters -- Beckham can still bring it. He was the Man of the Match for Real yesterday, showcasing his clinical set pieces, pinpoint crosses, and ability to control the flow of the game.

I also enjoyed hearing about Giggs's cheeky penalty, which he took before the whistle blew. Apparently you're allowed to kick the ball immediately, if you inform the umpire about it beforehand.

"Village Green Preservation Society"

Tue, 13 Feb 2007 17:10:49 GMT

One of my favorite albums is "The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society." The title track, which leads off the album, appears at first glance to be about a simple appreciation for the old English traditions, particularly in the smaller towns. But as early as the second line, Ray throws us a curball -- "God save Donald Duck, Vaudville, and Variety." Donald Duck is obviously neither English, nor traditional, so it's not clear how this fits into the mix. Is Davies saying that what started out as an modern American pop icon has become so woven into the fabric of English culture that it now must be preserved? Is he poking fun at the very idea that there's anything left of a "British" or "English" culture at all?

Later on in the song, he suggests the Society is "Preserving the old ways from being abused, Protecting the new ways, for me and for you." So now it's not even clear that the Preservation society is even historically or backward looking in nature -- they're just about preserving things that they happen to like.

Then Ray turns back to the question of what it means to be English: "We are the Sherlock Holmes, English speaking vernacular." Perhaps the Society thinks there really is a distinct English culture worth preserving. Or maybe it's just about restoring the decisions about what gets saved to individual people, rather than corporate and government monoliths: "We are the office block, persecution affinity; God save little shops, china cups and virginity; We are the skyscraper comdenation affiliate; God save Tudor houses, antique tables, and billiards." Or maybe it's about how any group, even a small community group like the Society, immediately turns from anything approaching a coherent message, into a variety of inconsistent and sometimes self-defeating initiatives.

The song works on so many levels. It's both obvious and slyly abstruse; slightly ironic, yet sympathetic; resigned, yet hopeful.

From "The Man Without Qualities"

Thu, 01 Feb 2007 20:50:57 GMT

I'm reading Robert Musil's "The Man Without Qualities," and especially enjoyed this passage about Autro-Hungarian national identity at the beginning of the 20th century:

"This sense of Austro-Hungarian nationhood was an entity so strangely formed that it seems almost futile to try to explain it to anyone who has not experienced it for himself. It did not consist of an Austrian and a Hungarian part that, as one might imagine, combined to form a unity, but of a whole and a part, namely of a Hungarian and an Austro-Hungarian sense of nationhood; and the latter was at home in Austria, whereby the Austrian sense of nationhood actually became homeless. The Austrian himself was only to be found in Hungary, and there as an object of dislike; at home he called himself a citizen of the kingdoms and realms of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy as represented in the Imperial Council, which means the same as an Austrian plus a Hungarian minus this Hungarian, and he did this not, as one might imagine, with enthusiasm, but for the sake of an idea that he detested, for he could not endure the Hungarians any more than they could endure him, which made the whole connection more involved than ever. . . . It entirely suffices if it is noticed that the mysteries of this dualism (such is the technical expression) are at least as difficult to understand as those of the Trinity; for the historical process more or less everywhere resembles a juridical one, with hundreds of clauses, appendices, compromises and protests, and it is only to this that attention should be drawn. All unsuspectingly the common man lives and dies in the midst of it all, and lucky for him that it is so; for if he were to realise in what a process, what an action, he is involved, with how many lawyers, what costs and motives, he might be driven into persecution mania, whatever country he lived in."

some good one chord songs

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 00:25:26 GMT

Neu, "Hallogallo"
Stereolab, "Emperor Tomato Ketchup"
Wire, "Reuters"
T. Rex, "Get it On (Bang a Gong)"

I think it takes a surprising amount of skill to write a good one chord song. You need a lot of attitude and killer rhythm.

Thailand to big pharma: "Up Yours"

Thu, 25 Jan 2007 20:24:01 GMT

Thailand is planning to invoke the WTO's the compulsory licensing provision of to break the patents of several branded pharmaceutical products that treat AIDS, HIV, heart disease, and diabetes.

http://nationmultimedia.com/2007/01/25/national/national_30025030.php

AIDS activists are ecstatic, the pharma industry is furious, and the US trade representative will undoubtedly try to punish the Thais.

The shopworn argument would be that, although it might be in Thailand's short-term interest to break those patents, it will prove counterproductive in the long-run, because it will decrease the incentive for research and development for new products that would help treat diseases the impact Thailand and other less-developed countries.

There are several fallacies in that line of argument. First, most the real innovation occurs in universities and the NIH. The pharma companies do spend a lot in sheparding products through the clinical trial pipeline, but that's a bit different from the image they like to convey of a bunch of scientists wearing lab coats, with a 'eureka' type moment. Also, in fairness to pharma, they do help fund some of the primary research done at both the NIH and universities. But the second, and probably more significant fallacy, is that losing the money makes any difference: whatever Thailand can afford to pay would probably be insignificant to the pharma bottom line anyway.

My sympathies generally lie with Thailand on this one: they have a very limited amount of money, and a great number of lives to try to save. And if it helps pull down the pillars supporting the existing IP regime, then so much the better. Eventually big pharma will need to realize that it faces a choice: either provide medications to developing countries at a reasonable price (say marginal cost plus 15%) or the whole system will collapse.

A better system might be to peg the price of the pharma product to the wealth of the individual, so rich folks, whether in Germany, Thailand, Canada, or the US, all pay approximately the same amount, and that people of more modest means also pay similar amounts, regardless of nationality. Of course that raises problems about a blackmarket, but I'm sure there are other, more workable solutions.