In Tenure Veritas: Libations From The Ivory Tower

Yeah, I think I'll do another of these.  Anyone surprised by my fondness for  Watchmen  hasn't been paying attention, and anyone expecting me to express disdain for Zack Snyder... has.  You may be surprised, though, that I watched and enjoyed Lost .  So, sure, I'll give Damon Lindelof a chance here. So... Rorschach.  What kind of a character is he?  Hero?  Villain?  Something else?  I'll go with "something else."  It's almost as though how you interpret him as a character says something about you as a person.  Like, some kind of a test, or something.  There ought to be a name for that. Eh.  Whatever.  Anyway, in the original comics/graphic novel, depending on how you read it, presuming you read it, Rorschach was neither hero nor villain, nor conventional antihero, nor any of that.  What made him so compelling a character from a literary perspective (yes, literary) was his complexity.  His moral ...

Jeff Lang, a live performance of "Watch Me Go."  The studio version is on I Live In My Head A Lot These Days .  I guess Rorschach did too.

I saw christmas crud being sold.  It's October. I'm doing a veepstakes post.  Who's gonna stop me?  Hey, remember in 2016, when I called the Pence pick in April? What have I done since then?  Um... I, well... published a book, but nobody outside of academia cares about stuff like that, so here's a veepstakes blog post.  How, you may ask, can I write a veepstakes post before we have a nominee?  Well, I did it in 2016, so why not now? Let's start with the nomination itself.  Probably Warren.  Betting right now has her it 40 cents on the dollar , and that's probably a bit under because you still have people putting money on candidates with no chance, like Yang, so let's start with Warren's likelihood as a basic observation.  Of the alternatives:  Biden or Sanders are the main contenders, and Buttigieg... no, but fine, I'll throw him in here.  Biden has been falling, but he's not out of it, and Sanders... I've never really  s...

Selwyn Birchwood, the title track from Pick Your Poison .

Dean Magraw & Eric Kamau Gravatt, "Inside Outside," from Fire On The Nile .

I'm going to try to keep this short and sweet today.  This is more of a pedagogy post, inspired by a few interesting comments from last week's classes. Who taught you how to solve word problems?  I don't mean, who taught you the steps to take when you see that canonical "two-trains" problem.  I mean, a generalized method of looking at any  word problem, on any  topic, regardless of the style of mathematics involved, and converting the words into numbers, variables and equations such that you can perform whatever kind of operation is necessitated by the structure of the set-up in order to get the numerical information you need. Think back to that class. Oh, wait.  You probably never took that class, or had that happen for you. Nobody did.  There's no mathematical magic school, where they ship people off to Brakebills and teach the magic trick that solves the hardest of math problems, leaving everyone else to scratch their heads and struggle. ...

Given today's post, there's really only one choice this morning.  Little Feat, "Two Trains," from their best studio album, Dixie Chicken .

So, somebody made a mistake a few days ago.  A political scientist who doesn't study electoral politics decided to ask some experts  in electoral politics about polling on impeachment, via email.  By accident, this person, who shall go unnamed, included me.  Oops.  It happens.  Thanks to that, and several days worth of everybody's favorite-- reply to all -- I've had a fun, little excursion into the minds of a few other political scientists' thoughts on impeachment, polling, and 2020.  These individuals, mind you, are some smart people, whom I shall not name. I still disagree with the gist of most of what they typed. Nevertheless, here's what gets said behind your backs!  Watch me tattle!  (But... without naming names.) There are actually some big divisions.  As a starting point, remember that political scientists are, like most academics, Democrats.  They don't like Trump.  In fact, even the Republicans  in academia ...

A solo acoustic performance by the quieter member of the Drive-By Truckers.  Mike Cooley, "Behind Closed Doors," from The Fool On Every Corner .

Sorry about the technical glitch. John Scofield, "Behind Closed Doors," from This Meets That .

There are a lot of ways I could introduce the general topic of the morning, which is another step back... step back... Will there be a recession by the end of 2020?  The betting market over at PredictIt  currently puts the chances of that at around 40%.  Close to 50-50.  An impeachment?  The gamblers... excuse me... investors  call that 70% as of this morning, with " yes " shares trading at 70 cents on the dollar, but I'm a little more circumspect.  Over 50%, but I'll claim more... "uncertainty."  Trade?  We just got something that Trump is calling "phase 1" of a trade deal with China, but mostly it is ratcheting down of some tariffs, and calling off some new ones.  We don't really have settlement on, oh, things like intellectual property issues, which nobody with a brain really thought would be settled.  What's really going to happen, long term?  No clue. Now, when I say, "no clue," what does that mean? I think, maybe, i...

Just because I post jazz on Fridays doesn't mean I should limit the rest of the music posts to exclude jazz on other days.  You can never have too much jazz in your life, and given today's post, this is the right track to play.  -ore.  Not -our.  Different guy.  David Gilmore, "Uncertainty Principle," from Ritualism .

Fine.  I'll do it.  Comments on the news of the week. First, let's address the challenge of polling on impeachment.  Short version:  be leery of it.  I'll begin with a link to an article I wrote for The Conversation  on polling ... before  the Ukraine phone call leaked (delay in publication).  The Conversation  asked me to write something very general on polling, how to analyze and interpret polls, and so forth, and that's what I gave them.  It has some important lessons for polling on impeachment. Specifically, asking voters about impeachment directly is, at best, a weak indicator.  What's actually happening is that voters are lining up on impeachment, pretty much with their parties!  That was my point!  And... polling data can't tell us how they'd react after  a failed impeachment (I'll get to that in a moment), partially because they  don't necessarily know! There are 13 months between now and the 2020 g...

Tracy Grammer, "Solitary Man," from The Verdant Mile .

I debated which version, but ultimately went with Roy Haynes.  Because... Roland Kirk.  "Fly Me To The Moon," from Out Of The Afternoon .

One of the greatest jazz drummers of all time has just died.  Here's a live clip of Ginger Baker, with one of the best bassists around, Jonas Hellborg.

I like math.  I like science fiction.  The probability that such a person would also like comic books is quite high.  And you know what?  If you made a bet based on that, regarding yours truly, you'd do fine.  Comic books are awesome. Yes, I can like Shakespeare, pretentious modern authors such as Jemisin and Stephenson, and comic books.  There's no contradiction.  Comic books are cool.  Obviously, that means I am following this whole Joker  thing. Art and politics.  Art within the realm of the abstract, such as instrumental music, can exist divorced from politics.  Can instrumental music be political?  Certainly!  But instrumental music can also avoid politics entirely.  The less abstract an art form becomes, though, well... what does it take to have any real importance?  Literature can have meaning by connecting at a personal level, but it gets harder to say something at a broader social level without a...

Richard Thompson, "Outside Of The Inside."  This is a live performance, with the original studio version on The Old Kit Bag .

Taking a step back... taking a step back... Watch me not  get sucked into the great, spinning vortex of the week's political lunacy.  Instead, let me make some meta-comments on the process of commenting on politics-- satellite-related and otherwise. I am, depending on whom you ask, a political scientist.  While the current state of politics can cause some of us to question our life choices, those life choices are what economists call "sunk costs."  As in, we sunk a helluva lot of time and money into our educations, and we maximize the marginal utility of our future efforts, given  those expenditures, by continuing to practice the increasingly-dark arts of political science, wherever that leads us, or wherever we are dragged by the tides of our lunatic times.  [See what I did there?] That does mean, however, that I am often asked a variety of questions.  But... why? And here's a little secret.  When people who don't know me, and probably won'...