In Tenure Veritas: Libations From The Ivory Tower

 What is your goal?  To ask the Shadow question, rather than the Vorlon question (apologies for the outdated and obscure geek reference), what do you want?  Donald Trump will not be convicted, particularly not on the hush money charges.  To reiterate my central argument, no prosecutor can keep all Republicans off a jury, and no Republican juror will vote to convict Donald Trump.  When the Mar-a-Lago Papers scandal broke, I thought there might have been a chance of a conviction on those charges, but once Biden's attorneys found papers at the Penn Biden Center, and his own house, the politics of that changed because to Republican eyes, they are the same thing.  No Republican will vote to convict Trump, and these are not even close to the most serious charges, nor is the evidence as damning. What do you want?  If your goal is the salvation of American democracy, your goal is the Republican Party divided against itself, and more specifically, divided on Do...

 For those who follow the news of the stupid, a school principal in Florida has been fired for displaying one of the most horrifyingly pornographic depictions ever.  Michelangelo's David.  The principal did not issue trigger warnings, and David had them in the sights of his love gun.  Cue freakout.  C'mon.  It's not like he's packin' that  much heat!  George Costanza will be the first to leap to his defense on the shrinkage issue.  Regardless, consider something else that causes controversy.  Maia Kobabe's Gender Queer .  Whether or not you have heard of this particular work will depend on the news bubble you inhabit.  If you only permit yourself to take in news from left-leaning sources, you will likely be unaware of this book, which has been common in schools, and the cause of much consternation.  Why?  Consider some of the content and images .  I am not going to post the images here, but you may click on that ...

 How many books into a series do you read before you give up on it?  Nona The Ninth  is the third book in Tamsyn Muir's Locked Tomb series, and while it was originally supposed to be the final book of a trilogy, Muir did the most predictable thing ever and said, hey, people are reading this, I'm making money, let's keep this thing going!  Gideon The Ninth  was a surprise.  One hesitates to call a gothic necromancers-in-space book a "breath of fresh air," but I did not expect to like it.  It had over-the-top buzz, and generally speaking, when something has that much buzz, I lose my hipster card if I don't find a reason to say that I hate it, but damned  if that wasn't a fun book.  Muir took every absurd, self-indulgent gothic trope and turned it upside-down by having a POV character named Gideon Nav who was so crass and badass that she undercut everyone's self-seriousness with her two-handed sword, lascivious jokes, or both.  She was grea...

 In a moment that might cause the sanest among us to question whether or not we have slipped into an alternate universe, Democrats and Republicans have found common ground on something other than the breathability of oxygen (and if we're honest, some of those in Congress seem to enjoy stomping their feet and holding their breath until their faces turn blue).  When there is bipartisan agreement, something can happen, right?  Right ?  Not so fast.  Suppose we all come to universal agreement on how awesome it would be to eradicate the common cold.  Well, presto!  Bipartisanship shall work its magical mumbo jumbo and presto change-o, rearrange-o, begone, common cold!  Bipartisanship commands it.  Or not.  This week, Democrats and Republicans found mutual agreement, although perhaps for slightly different reasons, on the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad app called "TikTok," as opposed to all the good  social media platforms, like, u...

 John Coltrane, "Time Was," from Coltrane .  (That's the Prestige album rather than the Impulse album.  A few years earlier.)

 It's 7:30.  Do you know where your money is?  Kids, that's a very old reference, and my references are very dated.  No self-indulgence today.  This morning, we shall perform some good, old-fashioned social science.  In the real world, and the world of things that matter in the United States, the financial situation is getting scary.  Er.  Differently.  I suppose the tenuous economy with inflation perhaps just barely coming under control already consisted of "scary," but bank failures are never good.  Unless they are crypto banks.  Then they're awesome .  However, we appear to have a systemic problem with regional banks, with customers, investors, the FDIC and fellow banks looking at each other side-eye, and asking, is this thing going under?  At the extreme end of concern, there are rumblings of a new financial crisis.  With that in mind, let us review the history of the financial crisis, the "great recession," and p...

 You may think you know what Bill Cosby did, but I have uncovered some startling new footage.  This will change everything.  Whatever your preconceptions, they come from the left-wing media, and it's all a conspiracy.  You have only seen what they want you to see, and that is not the story.  I'm telling you, once you see the footage that I am about to show you, you will change your mind.  What you think he did?  That's just spin and misdirection.  You have been told that Bill Cosby drugged and raped women, but what would you say if I could show you footage-- actual video evidence-- of Bill Cosby not  drugging and raping women?  I know!  Shocking to contemplate, but I, ladies and gentlemen, have dug deep into the bowels of youtube's security footage, and found America's dad sitting on a chair, and just telling jokes.  It happened, and I am going to show it to you, right here, on this blog.  Bill Cosby, not  drugging an...

 A few weeks ago, I posted about Jeff VanderMeer's outstanding novel, Borne .  It was an unusual novel, as all VanderMeer's books are, but it painted a vivid picture of a strange world with complex meditations on morality.  That is precisely what I find most compelling in a work of fiction, so between that and the similar heights VanderMeer achieved with the Southern Reach trilogy, reading the sequel was necessary.  Dead Astronauts  is something altogether different, more surreal, less defined, and a book that cannot even be judged by the same standards. Borne  took place in a vaguely post-apocalyptic world that appeared to slouch towards Bedlam (sincere apologies) rather than extinguish itself in fire.  In a city's ruins, scavengers try to scrape out a living among the biotech remains of "the Company" that tried to set up shop there towards the end, but mostly, what is left of the Company is their last creation, Mord.  Mord is a giant kaiju bear,...

 Shit.  You have heard David Lindley, even if you didn't know you were hearing David Lindley.  He was a virtuoso of every stringed instrument.  He started with the weirdest band ever:  Kaleidoscope.  They were brilliant.  Then, he went his own way, while backing big names from the 70s on, initially, most prominently, Jackson Browne.  All of those cool guitar solos on Jackson Browne tunes?  David Lindley.  He had plenty of other projects of many varieties, but he was best known as a slide guitarist.  Few have ever rivaled him.  I intended to post the version of "Oh Death," from Twango Bango II , with Wally Ingram.  Instead, I found this duet with Ry Cooder, who is no slouch either, yet here, he's playing next to David Lindley.  Lindley is the guy on the viewer's left, playing lap-style.  It is a Weissenborn guitar, which is a hollow-necked instrument with strings elevated above the fretboard like a dobro, lapsteel...

 One of the more interesting news developments towards the end of the week was the announcement by Walgreens that their pharmacies would no longer sell "abortion pills," even where they remain legal.  The decision is a response to pressure from conservative activists who assert that, while legal, abortion in general-- and hence the abortion pill, too-- is immoral.  The response from the pro-choice side has been interesting.  Their response has boiled down to the following observation.  Abortion in these states remains legal, and that it is improper for Walgreens to bow to a pressure campaign given that abortion remains, in those states, legal.  Let us consider. X is a legal product.  It is legal to produce X.  It is legal to sell X.  It is legal to buy X.  It is legal to possess or use X.  An activist group pressures a major retailer to stop selling X because that ideologically motivated activist group believes that X should be exci...

 One of the greatest musicians of the modern era just died.  Wayne Shorter.  Like so many giants in the jazz world, Shorter got his big break playing for Miles Davis.  Miles's second quintet, with Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams may not have had the cultural impact of the first quintet, but Coltrane looms so large that nothing can have that kind of impact.  Yet the second quintet arguably had a bigger impact on jazz overall, if one separates Coltrane's post-Miles work.  Part of it was the fact that Wayne Shorter was such a brilliant composer.  And then he went on to do some of the most important work in fusion, with Weather Report.  And then he just kept going.  For me, though, I keep going back to a string of albums he recorded on his own on the Blue Note label in the mid-60s.  He, and Herbie both.  Blue Note is best known for a very specific style of hard bop, but they put out so much more than that, and anyo...

 Anyone who has ever worked in a cubicle has found joy in Dilbert .  While I have spent very little time in actual, literal cubicles (do grad student carrels count?), there was a time when Dilbert  mattered, and if you dig through the detritus of the audio-visual media era, you will find that there was even a televised cartoon, ever so briefly.  Dilbert, himself, was voiced by Daniel Stern, who also did the voicing for The Wonder Years , which mattered for us, Gen-X'ers.  Weird, but true!  Anywho, Scott Adams is a smart person, but intelligence, sanity, and moral virtue are three traits that are not necessarily linked, regardless of Marcus Aurelius's attempt to link them.  They come apart like so many unraveled threads of mental floss.  With that in mind, I cannot resist a post for today in which I ask, on the nuts-o-meter, how bonkers is Scott Adams? For those who have not followed the final demise of He-Of-The-Upturned-Tie, it happened like so....