In Tenure Veritas: Libations From The Ivory Tower

I feel like posting this.  'Cuz. Son Volt, "Been Set Free," from their underrated second album, Straitaways .  Whether or not this is directly related to an upcoming post that will be somewhat less pessimistic about the state of American politics... decide for yourself.  For your own readership, just enjoy some good music.

Early on in the coronavirus mess, I wrote this post on what I called "the Batman test" for presidential leadership .  Short version:  you have to be willing to do the right thing and let people hate you, like Christopher Nolan's Batman at the end of The Dark Knight . I think that the concept of the Batman test works as a general principle, and that its application to our current circumstance becomes ever more clear.  This post is mostly a simple update, demonstrating how clearly the Batman test explains what is happening with respect to coronavirus testing. The short version is that Donald Trump wants to reduce coronavirus testing.  He said so publicly, and while his flunkies attempted to fall back on the standard lie that it was just a joke, Trump undercut that by saying, no, he's serious, and, "I don't kid." Consider two scenarios, following from my set-up in the original Batman post. Scenario A:  We conduct a full range of testing, and on the

I just realized I haven't posted the Drive-By Truckers for a long time.  That's out of character, and very wrong of me.  This one is appropriate for today.  "The Righteous Path."  Here's a live version from Austin City Limits.  The studio version is from Brighter Than Creation's Dark .

This one's-a-gonna be a ramble.  Fair warning. One of the processes that has accelerated lately amid the prominence of the Black Lives Matter movement is the removal of monuments to a variety of historical figures.  I am prompted, in particular, by the removal of a statue of Theodore Roosevelt from the Museum of Natural History in New York.  Roosevelt also happens to have his face on Mount Rushmore.  No word yet on any plans for Mount Rushmore. Many of the removals that have taken place should be obvious and are long overdue.  Monuments to traitors who attempted to secede in order to keep in bondage a race of people... monuments that were erected not even in the aftermath of that war, but generations later to spit in the faces of burgeoning civil rights efforts... this took how  long... why ? Oh.  Right. And of course, I am reminded of the poem by Elie Wiesel, "Never Shall I Forget."  We don't build monuments to atrocity nor to its perpetrators in orde

Going with the obvious choice today.  Leadbelly, "Bourgeois Blues."

Charlie Hunter, the title track from Everybody Has a Plan...

I don't have much new to say on this, but I will direct your attention to a very good article at Vox  about the Fall semester, down whose barrel some of us are staring.  The article begins with a great quote from Scott Galloway, a Marketing professor at NYU.  Galloway accurately says that the narrative spreading within every university about COVID and how to manage it is, "this is unprecedented, and we're all in this together."  He goes on to say, "which is Latin for, 'we're not lowering our prices, bitches.'" Read the article. This is chaos.  You have no  idea how chaotic this is.  And Galloway nailed it.  Colleges and universities do not have viable plans for in-person instruction or anything like orderly on-campus operations, but they don't want to admit that because they don't think they can get people to shell out full price for fully on-line instruction, and they don't want to cut their prices to something that accounts for

So I've been thinking lately about crime.  Of course, there are many varieties of crime, and this is a big topic of discussion as the left rallies to the self-own of "Defund The Police."  As we contemplate the many varieties of crime, one may think back to the famous line from Woody Guthrie's "Pretty Boy Floyd," shamelessly stolen by that overrated hack, Bob Dylan. Now, as through this world I rambled I seen lots of funny men; Some will rob you with a six-gun, Some with a fountain pen. Interestingly enough, when those of the white collar persuasion have done their best to screw me over, they have generally favored ballpoint pens, whereas I am an honest, hipster douchebag who likes fountain pens as a weirdo affectation.  And yes, I am watching their pens, and judging them for their pens, and I judge you for your pens.  Hipster douchebag, like I said. Moving on.  Many varieties of crime, from white collar crime to street crime.  Let's talk about

Given today's post, this is really the only choice.  Woody Guthrie, "Pretty Boy Floyd."

I couldn't quite do what I wanted.  There isn't a single track on Booker Ervin's The Freedom Book  named for the album title, and there's nothing on youtube to embed the whole album, but if you don't know the album, it's a great one.  Instead, let's go with Duke Ellington & John Coltrane, "My Little Brown Book," from Duke Ellington & John Coltrane .

Charles Mingus, because of course. What?!  Yes, I listen to other jazz musicians.  I post them here.  Mingus rules.  "Freewoman and Oh This Freedom's Slave Cries," from The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady . It was either this, or someone else I post all the time-- Roland Kirk.

No inspiration today.  Here's a JJ Grey concert.  This man is great .

Here I go with another news-of-the-week.  My excuse:  I have been saying for a long  time that Trump will refuse to concede, or go quietly, even if he loses in November.  Two recent interviews bring this to the forefront.  Joe Biden told Trevor Noah that he is concerned that Trump would refuse to leave office upon losing, but  that the military would properly escort him out of the White House, and that would be that. The Biden interview pushed the question to the forefront of the national discussion.  Finally.  Donald Trump was asked about it in the friendly confines of a Fox interview with Harris Faulkner, and Trump said, "Certainly, if I don't win, I don't win."  So he'll accept it, right?  "You go on, you do other things."  I guess we have nothing to worry about, right? Um... no. Once we have reached the point at which we are having this conversation, we're already off the rails.  This is not a discussion we have ever had with previous presi

Bernie Worrell, "OK, You Can Leave Now," from Improvisczario .

Horace Silver, "How Did It Happen," from Blowin' The Blues Away .

OK, time to tackle a classic.  I have been doing science fiction posts for much of this blog, but mostly, I have steered clear of the classics, favoring modern authors.  However, I think it is time to deal with a classic, or perhaps, the  classic of the genre.  When Isaac Asimov wrote the original Foundation  novels, one might have forgiven people for thinking of science fiction as nothing more than silly, childish drivel, although Asimov himself did no favors for the genre with his robot series.  And alas, he eventually wrote some prequels to the Foundation  novels in which he decided to connect his robot universe to the Foundation  universe, and made R. Daneel Olivaw-- a ubiquitous character-- show up as a sort of mentor/guide for Hari Seldon.  I'll get to him.  I'm getting off-track anyway. My point is that being a literate person means reading the original Foundation  trilogy:  Foundation , Foundation & Empire , and Second Foundation .  Skip the rest.  These books h

Willie Brown, "Future Blues."

Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. Robert Oppenheimer reflected on his role in the creation of the atomic bomb by quoting this line from the Bhagavad Gita.  Hopefully you got that reference, rather than being stupid enough to think that I was threatening anyone.  ( Some people... )  Oppenheimer was a scientist, but he was not engaged in a search for knowledge for the sake of knowledge.  He was working on what was as much an engineering problem as unraveling the mysteries of physics, and he was doing so in full knowledge of the historical context of how his science would be used.  This was no Archimedes death ray.  This was a bomb to end World War II.  And more.  And it scared the shit out of him, as it should. For some levity in comparison, but keeping with the WWII theme, let's consider Wernher von Braun.  Or at least, Tom Lehrer's song about him.  Von Braun was a nazi scientist who worked on the V2 rockets.  He later worked for the US Army.  The famous line f

I'm doing a twofer today, so as not to be completely bleak.  First, Richard Thompson's "No Peace, No End," from Still .  Then, the late, great McCoy Tyner's "Search for Peace," from The Real McCoy .

This is what I have today. Ginger Baker, the title track from Why?

OK, this is kind of my thing.  Congressional elections are my actual research area, and I have a long-time interest in congressional wackos.  My most fun published paper was Going Off The Rails On A Crazy Train: The Causes And Consequences of Congressional Infamy .  Yes, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) made an appearance. Steve King lost his primary on Tuesday.  I'll do my scholarly duty here.  (And this weekend, I'll write more generally about scholarly duties, as I hinted earlier this week). My first point is that this is one anecdote.  Don't read too much into it.  In any election cycle, a few weird things will happen.  The strong empirical pattern in legislative elections is that incumbents win, and this pattern is strongest in primaries, for a variety of reasons.  Moreover, in primaries, ideological extremists have an advantage.  See, for example, Brady, Hahn & Pope's 2007 article from Legislative Studies Quarterly .  More distressingly, see Porter & Truel's