In Tenure Veritas: Libations From The Ivory Tower

I am not doing a full post today.  I wrote a very long post yesterday, it was effort-intensive, and right now, there are so many things that disgust me that I am spending a day (at least) withdrawing. I have the capacity to do so.  I am relatively safe from the police because of my skin color.  The protests in my metropolitan area are nowhere near my home, and do not threaten my house, my property, nor my person, despite sporadic violence. My capacity to withdraw in disgust is not uniformly distributed across society.  See previous comments.  And yet, I shall use it, while pointing it out and describing its distribution. To withdraw is to say no more than that.

Fair warning:  This one's a-gonna be a ramble.  I have a lot to say on this, predictably, and as is sometimes the case in any writing endeavor, no particular structure immediately suggests itself to me right now, as I begin writing.  So I shall impose structure by writing, which is a thing I teach to my students.  If this were anything more than a blog, I'd go back and edit and rewrite, but this is a blog.  So, I'm just-a-gonna-ramble.  And I'm going to start with Jeffrey Dahmer. Do I have your attention? Perhaps you don't remember Dahmer the Menace.  Or... maybe I'm not supposed to do cutesy, little nicknames for him.  Too soon?  Anyway, I am not a biographer for Jeffrey Dahmer, but here's a little bit about him.  He was born on May 21, 1960 in Milwaukee, WI.  Throughout his life, he had some problems with alcohol.  He attended, but did not complete a degree at Ohio State.  He enlisted in the Army, and was discharged in 1981.  So, those are just a

Beating a theme into the ground.  But with great music.  Henry Butler, "I've Got My Eyes On You," from Blues After Sunset .

I'm going to keep going with my current theme.  Let's have a tune from the greatest guitarist ever:  Lenny Breau.  Here's, "If You Could See Me Now," from Live at Bourbon St.  with Dave Young on bass.

For all of my "I'm not doing the news of the week on the new blog," ... I keep doing this. Yes, I have a lot to say about Trump, Twitter's response to his insistence on lying on their platform, his executive order, and the legal and philosophical principles involved. Short version:  Aside from the fact that democracy is dead anyway, Twitter has picked the wrong fight.  This will end badly.  Facts are vital to democracy, and the death of truth is the death of democracy.  However, we were screwed before Twitter made its decision. This is going to be ugly.

OK, that's enough day-to-day politics.  Bigger picture. One of the more irritating tics of modern political commentary is to treat the left and the right as mirror images of each other, functionally equivalent.  They are not, for a variety of reasons.  They are structurally different.  And yet, every once in a while, something interesting happens that leads to a "hey, look, the ideological spectrum is a circle and the far left and far right are meeting on the ends" kind of a moment.  If I could draw, or had any graphic/technological competence, I'd do some sort of visual/graphical thing here, but you come here for the snark, not the visual aids. Snark, the herald angels sing! So let's talk about Amazon.  Not our soon-to-be-trillionaire overlord, Jeff Bezos, but Amazon itself.  Do you order stuff from them?  I'll bet you do.  You have probably increased your orders over the last few months, but you probably ordered stuff before then. Now, do you like  A

I've got a bit of a thing going here.  And it turns out, I can embed the whole album for this one.  Les Claypool's The Big Eyeball In The Sky .  This one has Buckethead on guitar and Bernie Worrell on keyboards, with Bryan "Brain" Mantia on drums, for the band name, Col. Claypool's Bucket of Bernie Brains.  Zappa may have ascended to a higher plane of existence years ago, but he left us with Les Claypool.

A couple of weeks ago, I posted something on Tara Reade's accusations against Joe Biden.  I stated that I would adhere to my standard method of assessing accusations of sexual assault, and using that method, I came to an assessment that Joe Biden probably  did it. I always begin with the baseline probability that any given accusation is true.  That's high, but I draw no conclusions simply because  an accusation is made.  I updated my probability, in Bayesian fashion, when it was revealed that Reade had informed others contemporaneously, including to a sufficient degree that her mother called into Larry King Live  making implications about Biden.  That was sufficient for me to come to an assessment that Biden probably  did it.  The post was more elaborate, and crass, because I'm me, but you can read or re-read it for yourself. However, here's the thing about Bayesian thinking.  A Bayesian probability is an assessment of the quality of information you possess, and you

I usually stay away from the famous stuff, but let's stick with the theme.  I'm goin' classic today.  Sly & The Family Stone, "Somebody's Watching You," from Stand!   Their best album.  Anyone who complains about Sly... go away.

Art Tatum, "Someone To Watch Over Me."  Themes?  Um...

So, today is Sunday.  By my math, that makes yesterday Saturday.  What did you do with your morning yesterday?  I spent it with a rather large (super duper ?) mug of French press coffee, writing about the novels of Paolo Bacigalupi and John Scalzi, trying to make the case that they have some insight into the current economic problems created by supply chain breakdowns, trade and trade protectionism in the coronavirus era.  Why would I do this with my Saturday morning?  Words is  are, um... things that are happy-making, and they... um, I like the things that are word-inclusive, and... OK, see what I did there?  Let's take an unfunny joke and make it even less funny by explaining that which did not need to be explained.  The humor, such as it was, came from the juxtaposition of professing my love for the written word with stumbling over my attempt to express it through the act of writing.  See?  Of course, you saw that already.  It was an obvious joke, and if you hadn't seen it

More jazz.  Sorry, but this was too obvious.  Herbie Hancock, the title track from Speak Like A Child .

One of the long-running themes in my commentary on Donald Trump has been the frustrating contrast between one of his few deeply held convictions-- trade protectionism-- and what modern economics have shown us about the value of trade.  I won't take a public position on issues like abortion because such issues come down to philosophical questions that you must resolve for yourself.  Trade, though, is about math, and I may as well restate it. The Buchler-Gekko Rule:  The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that math, for lack of a better word, is good.  Math is right.  Math works.  Math clarifies, cuts through... If your position violates basic math, we're gonna have a problem.  Trade protectionism, mercantilism... No.  Just... no. But I've been through this before.  On The Unmutual Political Blog , and even a bit here.  Yet, something this week really grabbed my attention, and called out for what I've been doing on In Tenure Veritas . In an interview with Maria Barti

Preston Reed, "Border Towns."  This is a live performance of the track from Metal , allowing you to see just what insanity the man has to do to get those sounds out of a guitar.

Watch me exercise some self control and not  post Roland Kirk again.  I was really  tempted to post "Bright Moments," for what should be obvious reasons, but... no.  I won't do that.  I'll even resist the obvious Metheny choice.  So, here's M-BASE Collective, "One Bright Morning," from Anatomy of a Groove .

I have a day job, you know.  I don't just snark on the internet.  Oddly enough, a significant portion of my day job involves reading other people who snark on the internet, but that's another matter.  Anyway, the 2019-20 academic year just ended, grades submitted and everything is all wrapped up in a nice, tidy bow.  Or, not.  That was weird.  Weirdest academic year ever. So, how was it?  Is this the wave of the future, or something? If you are following business news, you may know that many of the people who have spent the last several months working from home actually prefer it, and hope to keep it that way.  Not everyone, of course, but businesses going forward will have to make some decisions about how they structure themselves, and how to adapt.  There are plenty of people who can work from home, who prefer it, and plenty of jobs that really don't need to be done "in the office."  Much rethinking in the business world. And of course, on-line education