Cobb links to a piece purporting to list the best rock albums of the past twenty years. I’m not familiar with a single one. Worse than Cobb who at least likes three. I should be ashamed, I suppose, but I’m not.
In fact, I am loading the new IPod Mrs. Charm gave me with the stuff I grew up with: Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, and Charlie Parker. Next up: Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Stan Kenton, etc. Stuff I can whistle. I’m too retro to live, maybe…
Comments Off on Out of touch, and likin’ it
Posted in Blogosphere, Library, Mrs. Charm
Tagged Be-Bop, Benny Goodman, best rock albums, Big Band, Charley Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller, IPOD, Louis Armstrong, Stan Kenton, Swing, Tommy Dorsey
Thirty years ago this fall, the first daily newspaper I worked for went under. It was a PM and they were dying everywhere then, apparently unable to compete with television news. Or so it was said at the time, though this was in the days before cable and the rise of local teevee news.
You might say the old Huntington (WVA) Advertiser (which hit the streets in 1874) was a trend setter, in the vanguard of today’s newspaper debacle, in which AMs are collapsing like the PMs of old. Blamed, now, on the Internet. Maybe.
Anyhow, the folks who were in at the end of the old paper are having a reunion in October in the city (famous for its Swinefest–Think Pig) that has grown with a stylish new bridge among other things. My at-home dad schedule will prevent me from attending, but I’ll link their good reunion web site here for anyone interested. And wish them well. The how-it-all-began. More or less.
Comments Off on Newspaper in the vanguard
Posted in Library, Obituaries, Scribbles
Tagged Huntington, Huntington Advertiser, Swinefest, Think Pig, West Virginia
I read the sequel Axis first, only because it was available at the library and Spin wasn’t. Now I await Robert Charles Wilson’s conclusion, tentatively titled Vortex. Spin is pretty incredible. Apocolyptic but plausible. If you read a lot of scifi, I mean. The idea that a mystery race of sentient biotech machines would seek to save Earth by enclosing it in a living membrane, then speeding up time beyond it.
But it’s the coming-of-age, three lifelong friends’ saga and love story between two of them that sticks with you. The scifi binds them, beginning with the night in their puberty when the stars disappeared (thanks to the membrane) and only reappeared when they were in their forties. A bit heavy on the government conspiracy stuff for my taste. As I have said elsewhere I believe in the government’s innate incompetence, not it’s all-powerful whatever. And the idea that peak oil is our doom is tiresome. But, as I say, neither of those subjects dims the human story, which lingers yet in my mind.
Axis was a worthy sequel, with just enough of a hint about the original folks to send me out in search of Spin, which was reward enough for the trouble. Second books in trilogies usually pale beside the first ones, but Axis didn’t. Quite. The human tale was less compelling than in Spin, but worth the read. Now I await Vortex, curious to see how the sentient biotechs, called the Hypotheticals, will wrap it up.
Comments Off on Spin
Posted in Library, Science/Engineering
Tagged Axis, chiliasm, hypotheticals, peak oil, Robert Charles Wilson, Spin
I’m reading Amity Shlaes’ The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression. It led me almost immediately to a debunking of one of the enduring myths of the New Deal: the idea that FDR’s National Recovery Act of 1933, which set production quotas and prices for industry and small business, was strictly voluntary.
Shlaes shows how the NRA, in fact, nationalized everything by bringing twenty-two million workers under its five hundred and fifty-seven basic legal codes. Then the NRA sent out inspectors to make sure employers were complying. The Justice Department prosecuted companies that refused.
"All across the country, the NRA was being litigated," Shlaes writes on page 223 of the paperback edition. Three Jewish butchers in Brooklyn finally brought down the house of cards. They were indicted on sixty felony counts of violating the "voluntary" codes. When they lost in the lower courts, they appealed and won a unanimous victory in the Supreme Court in 1935.
"…some 500 cases against people charged with breaking NRA codes were now to be dropped," Shlaes writes on p. 245.
Instapundit says Socialist Barry should read the book. At least he should read the NRA part of it. When he has time. He’s busy at the moment golfing with one of his tax-cheat enablers.
Comments Off on The New Deal’s NRA myth
Tagged Amity Shlaes' The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, one of the enduring myths of the New Deal: the idea that FDR's National Recovery Act was strictly voluntary.
I’ve had a few. This is from an agent queried by J.R.R. Tolkien about his YA novel "The Hobbit.":
"This might be a good place to mention the apparent gender imbalance in the work. There would appear to be just a slight deficiency of female characters in the story. To put this another way, there are none – zilch – zero. There are men with hairy feet, men with long beards, men with pipes, men who can see in the dark – there are even men who can turn into bears. There are men of every size, shape and smoking habit imaginable, but the closest you come to a female character is the inclusion of several slightly effeminate elves. This just won’t cut it in today’s publishing world."
Oh, no, no gender imbalance. Perish the thought. And let’s have a story that looks like Middle Earth!
Comments Off on Rejected query letters
Posted in Library
Tagged J. R. R. Tolkien, Middle Earth, The Hobbit
MissMermaid, stormcarib.com‘s hurricane correspondent from Tortola in the British Virgin Islands, is laid up in the hospital. Her legion of fans are passing the hat and urging purchases of her book Hurricanes and Hangovers.
For a Booksurge product it’s doing very well in Amazon sales, and their amateur critics speak highly of it. If you ever wondered what life in the islands was like, she tells it. My interest stems from reading stormcarib every summer for the latest in the latest hurricanes. None yet this year.
Comments Off on Buy Miss Mermaid’s book
Posted in Blogosphere, Library, Weather/Climate
Tagged BVI, Dear Miss Mermaid, Hurricanes and Hangovers, stormcarib.com, Tortola
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 
