Bringing It All Back Home

Back during the early eighties, we fans of loud guitars, crashing drums, and gutsy singers (you know: rock 'n' roll) had to endure what was referred to as "The New British Invasion." It was all over the radio, magazines, and MTV and was NOT fronted by bands who imagined themselves to be the new Yardbirds or the next Pretty Things. Instead, it was made up of a bunch of swishy con artists like Duran Duran, Culture Club, and ABC.

These were desperate times. Heavy metal was in a recession, hip-hop hadn't exploded yet, and it seems kids across the USA were exchanging their guitars for synthesizers and drum machines. It was enough to turn an impressionable teenager like myself deeper and deeper into Old Rock - it seemed I spent way too many trips to record stores digging through the "M" section of the used bins, looking for Mott the Hoople and MC5 albums. One winter during this era over a long-distance phone call, my older brother told me about a band called the Blasters.

"Check 'em out - they're rockabilly," he advised.

"Rockabilly?" I scoffed, "Like the Stray Cats?"

I didn't pause to think for one lousy moment that this was the same kind, wise brother who had turned me on to Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, and Lynyrd Skynyrd when everyone else in the schoolyard was listening to John Denver and Abba.

"Yeah, only much better," he replied.

"Rockabilly won't come back until Creedence Clearwater Revival re-forms," I said, quoting something I had read in the Rolling Stone Record Guide.

"Yeah, that's what these guys are," he said, "Creedence."

Then I'm sure I came back with something even dumber, handed the phone over to Mom, and probably proceeded to contemplate buying the new Rainbow album.

That summer while flipping through the unorganized bins in a newly-opened used record store, I came across a Blasters EP - Over There: Live at the Venue, London. I decided to heed my brother's words (the three-dollar used price didn't hurt) and bought it, along with Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. The Derek and the Dominos album is one of those that you are Supposed To Like and hence hasn't graced my turntable in about fifteen years. The Blasters EP, on the other hand, is a tiny slice of live on-fire magic that never fails to bring a smile to my face. Covers of Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard. Piano. Saxophones. Loud guitars. Crashing drums. A gutsy singer. Rock 'n' roll.

Today whilst doing some menial paperwork here at home, I threw on Over There. While placing the vinyl upon the turntable, I noticed something I had never noticed before: A small postage-stamp-shaped box containing a certain hell-yeah symbol dating back to the Revolutionary War. How, after twenty years of owning this slab of kickass vinyl, I had never taken note of that stamp is beyond me. But the freakin' Blasters put it on the label of an EP recorded in the capital of the British Would-Be-Empire. And they did it smack-dab in the middle of yet another failed, over-hyped, British musical invasion - surely it was to let the Haircut 100s of the world (and anyone foolish enough to buy the Brit hype) know which country was the once-and-forever King when it came to music. Yeah.

Tonight I played Over There again, loudly and proudly. Don't tread on me, don't tread on the Blasters.




Posted by Bill--Link

News From the Front

Day two of the search for the right anti anti-war slogan continues today among the Fraters Libertas editorial board. The good news is that all sorts of provocative, fiery comments have been emerging from the deliberations. The bad news is, most of these concern their objections to not being able put corn liquor and skin mags on their expense accounts.

The boys did take a stab at sloganeering based on information torn from today?s headlines. And I mean that literally. Upon reading this article one of them released the two handed death grip on his whiskey tumbler, reached over and flayed the Star Tribune to ribbons with his butterfly knife.

It was all over an article about one Matt Walker Jr., a 16-year-old from Blue Earth, Minnesota. A precocious youngster who reportedly wears an upside down American flag on his black leather jacket and writes ?coarse denunciations about the Gap clothing company across his stocking cap?. Which I believe says something on the order of ?My g*dd*mn pants are too f*cking tight!?.

He?s now staging a one man all night protest on the streets of Blue Earth against the war with Iraq, for the following reasons:

"After 9/11, I was one of the guys saying, 'Go over there and bomb 'em.' Now, I just don't think it's right. Saddam's a flat-out bad guy, but he poses no immediate threat to us." A U.S.-led war against Iraq would be about securing a source of oil, Walker said, not rescuing Iraq's people from tyranny or saving the world from weapons of mass destruction. But it also would have serious consequences for domestic programs already bracing for budget cuts.

Considering the source of this wisdom, the following slogan was submitted:

"One alienated, self-absorbed teenager from Blue Earth can?t be wrong! (despite overwhelming historical precedent to the contrary)".

As brilliant as this is, we can?t fit it onto a bumper sticker, and thus the idea has been rejected. But as I see another case of Yukon Jack has just been brought into the conference room, I suspect we?ll have a winner shortly. Stand by??


Posted by Saint Paul--Link

The Elder and I braved the cold last night to view "About Schmidt" at the Lagoon in Uptown. Decent, if not great movie, with some laugh out loud moments and other moments of eye-rolling from clichés.

Besides the horrifying site of Kathy Bates nekkid, there was something else that piqued my interest and immediately shot me back to my childhood.

Schmidt (Jack Nicholson) goes to Denver to attend his daughter's wedding and has to stay with his son-in-law-to-be's mother (Kathy Bates). The house is disgusting. Junk is piled everywhere. Couches containing an untold number of fungi and bacteria abound. The family shoves food in their mouths ala the Simpsons and greedily grab more from a Lazy Susan in the middle of the dinner table.

It reminded me of going over to eat at friends houses when I was a kid. Not so much the white trash aspects, but more of the overall feeling of "what the hell is THAT?" that you got from sharing with the family THEIR daily ritual.

Ritual is everything to kids and they don't like it interrupted. We got very used to everything being a certain way and it pretty much rocked our world when it wasn't.

It would hit you right when you walked in the door of your friend's house. The Smell. It was the first sign that things as you know them are going to be very different from now on. The smell was a combination of all the people, pets, household cleaners and food that passed through the house on a given day. It was never a neutral smell and always distinct from house to house.

Next, you might go downstairs to watch TV before "supper". Now normally you and your brother were given control of the tube, very graciously I might add, from your Old Man, which meant you knew when all the Hogan's Heroes, I Dream Of Jeannies, Gilligan Islands, etc. were on.

So you walk your pal's living room and sprawled out on a Lazy Boy drinking a beer in his t-shirt is your pal's Old Man and he's watching....the news! He nods at you as a greeting and you spend the next half hour sitting politely bored out of your mind and you think "who cares what Ron Magers has to say?"

After what seems like hours of sitting their faking your contentment, the food is ready and you head upstairs not really knowing what to expect.

The basics of the meal are pretty much what your Ma would serve: some type of hot dish, potatoes, a vegetable of some persuasion, bread and milk. But nothing ever tasted the same. There would be big chunks of onion in the hot dish. The potatoes would be julienned (something your friend's Ma read about in Good Housekeeping). The vegetable was always something you never had to eat at home, like broccoli, but you accepted a serving anyway. The bread was some hard, dark brown wheat variety only your dad ate and spreading that runny margarine on it didn't make it much more palatable. And the milk, skim. It was literally blue and tasted like water. "We drink 2 percent" I would declare.

So the meal is over and all you're thinking is "Okay, that food sucked, but bring on the dessert!". Now at home, after every supper, we would take large bowls and fill them to overflowing capacity with scoop after scoop of ice cream, Nestle's Quick, Hersey's Syrup, cookies, or anything else that we could fit in there and then dollop the whole thing with some good ol' 2 percent.

So you see the matron shuffling about in the kitchen, getting a small tray together and you are all set for a sugary delight....when she sets down a dish of Jell-O in front of you. Jell-O. Jell-O was something we ate on the side of our meals; it surely wasn't dessert material. And how can something with carrots be considered a dessert anyway? I think we all remember the green Jell-O with carrot shavings in it that I'm referring to--couldn't it at least have been the red Jell-O with bananas?

So the crappy meal is finished and all the dishes are still on the kitchen table. Like home, you immediately bolt from the area since you have done what you came to do. "Aren't you forgetting something?" a nagging voice cries out. "Umm...thank you?" you say, hoping that was it. "Take your plate to the sink." Wait a minute, she's saying I have to bus my own dishes? We never have to do that at home but you sheepishly retrieve your plate and haul it over like a good little henpecked husband to be.

You can't wait to get out of there and back to your own family ritual, which you appreciate for about 10 minutes until you're back to taking it all for granted and whining because Mom bought strawberry Quick instead of chocolate.

Labels: Misspent Youth

Posted by JB--Link

Weird Science?

Last week after what I considered a fairly innocent post on the Bjorn Lomborg flap I received an e-mail from a Danish scientist taking me to task for my views. It's very long so I won't post it all here but this is my rebuttal:

In regard to your long winded missive, dripping with condescension and arrogance, I'm going to respond with a few quick points. Unlike Danish scientists, who apparently have a great deal of time on their hands (I found it amusing that while you claim to be "too busy with my own research" to write a book exposing Lomborg. you have plenty of time to author a 4500 word e-mail to me), my hours are precious and so I'll be brief:

1. I will not attempt to answer your assertions by offering scientific evidence to dispute them. I am not a scientist and have never claimed to be one and you know that. It is incredibly disingenuous of you to challenge me to respond in that manner knowing full well that it beyond my scope of knowledge.

"I find it amusing that you like the book, so i expect you to use all of your scientific skills to counter the criticisms I levy against it. This should be interesting....."

I don't know why you find it so amusing that I enjoyed the book but you must feel very proud of yourself to challenge me in a subject that you are a professional in and that I have only a passing knowledge of. You are quite the big man.

2. Most of the charges that you level against Lomborg are related to his failures to use what you consider the proper scientific methods in his work such as peer review, inclusion of all studies, use of empirical data, etc. So you hold Lomborg and his book to a rather strict scientific standard. Yet you also point out that Lomborg is not a scientist but rather a statistician so what does he really know about these matters anyway?

Like Julian Simon and other non-scientists, Lomborg dismisses these.

To me this approach smacks of hypocrisy. On the one hand you expect Lomborg to meet the same standards as a scientist but on the other you knock him for not being a scientist and so unable to judge these matters objectively. Please pick one and go with it.

3. I don't have much of a problem with Lomborg's "selective use of studies" as you call it. I would challenge you to name one book intended for the wider market on environmental, sociological, or health and safety issues in the last thirty years that included all the published studies on a particular subject. Were you equally voracious in your criticism of Lester Brown or Paul Ehrlich and the books that they wrote predicting widespread environmental disasters which certainly used "selective" (and it turns out largely erroneous) studies on their subjects? What about works by the WWF, the WRI, the Worldwatch Institute, or Friends of the Earth? While you try to distance yourself from these groups and claim the mantle of objective scientist you must acknowledge that all of these groups have used selective scientific studies to push their causes in the past. So now Lomborg had written a book using scientific studies to present a different viewpoint. He might not be correct on every point but for the last thirty years all the public has heard has been the doom and gloom views. As Lomborg has said, let the debate begin.

4. I found this comment from you most interesting:

If he had called his book, "The Skeptical Statistician" and would have written that the contents are his opinions, then I would not have cared less.

Maybe I read the book differently than you did, after all I'm not a senior scientist, but I didn't get the impression that Lomborg was claiming that he was the sole arbiter of truth. Rather he was presenting his interpretation of the statistics available and drawing conclusions from them. The book was not called "The Skeptical Environmental Scientist" and Lomborg made no such claim to being one. He is an environmentalist in his perspective and, although you would probably scoff at the notion since you seem to believe that I've been bought off by corporate interests (I only wish!), I consider myself an environmentalist too.

5. Your conclusion on the damage that Lomborg is doing and why his message is wrong is a good example of the problem that many of us have with the environmental movement and the scientists who have supported it.

Because we understand so little about how the complex biosphere works, further assault on these systems may alter their functioning in ways that we cannot adapt to, and that may compromise the welfare of future generations. There are many thousands of studies that detail human impacts on various parts of the biosphere, and Lomborg chooses to ignore them. But we are not exempt from the laws that govern the existence of other life forms, a point I have made many, many times. In essence we are heading in the wrong direction, and it doesn't take me all of my scientific abilities to see this.

Are you honestly going to claim that this is objective scientific analysis? "Further assault on these systems"? That's a bit of loaded rhetoric don't you think? And the use of the word "may" is also troubling. Should we halt the march of progress which has benefited much of civilization because we MAY alter natural systems or we MAY compromise the welfare of future generations? One of the things that Lomborg calls for in his book is a realistic look at the cost and benefits of our actions that impact the environment rather than a blanket condemnation of anything that harms the environment in even the slightest way in spite of the huge gains that could be achieved from it.

6. Lastly you label Lomborg as a "classic con man" and a "dishonest fraud" , call him "dishonest" several times other times, and finally accuse him of being "the most disingenuous person to enter the scientific arena for years". If these accusations even remotely resembled the truth than surely the esteemed Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty should have had no problem issuing a finding consistent with those charges. While the DCSD did find him guilty of "scientific dishonesty" for not following accepted scientific practices (while acknowledging he was not a scientist) it also said:

In view of the subjective requirements made in terms of intent or gross negligence, however, Bjørn Lomborg's publication cannot fall within the bounds of this characterization. Conversely, the publication is deemed clearly contrary to the standards of good scientific practice.

In other words the DCSD's criticism of Lomborg rests with his methods not his intentions which you spent an inordinate amount of time on in your e-mail. You seem to have a personal problem with Lomborg that goes far beyond merely a disagreement on these issues. Jealousy perhaps?

Anyway as I said earlier I hope that you continue to visit Fraters Libertas and if you find the need to please feel free to drop us an e-mail anytime.

Regards,

The Elder

P.S. In case you missed it Lomborg has a piece in today's Wall Street Journal. Check it out.
Posted by Chad--Link