At the risk of turning this blog into a series of responses to Democracy in America posts, I'd like to briefly highlight a post from the beginning of this week entitled "Work for Post-Materialists."
The post is mostly a discussion of the idea of 'threshold earners' and their place in today's rather shaky economy. Threshold earners are, according to the excellent Tyler Cowen essay on American income inequality cited in the DiA post, "someone who seeks to earn a certain amount of money and no more...That person simply wants to 'get by' in terms of absolute earning power in order to experience other gains in the form of leisure--spending time with friends and family, walking in the woods, and so on."
I say with the (as ever) unnamed Economist writer: "This is me. I don't want to maximize income. I want to maximize autonomy and time for unremunerative but satisfying creative work."
Friday, July 22, 2011
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Machine gun
A band called Burnt By the Sun played their final show in New York City last night. They split up once before in 2004, reunited for a farewell album in 2009, and have now thrown in the towel for good. I considered them my favorite band during the first half of high school, and it was a thrill for me to see them again one last time.
I've seen BBTS four or five times in total, and this was easily their best performance of the bunch. When rock music gets this discordant and overdriven, tight performances and well-run sound become much more important. The band and the sound guy were on the same page for the entire show, and BBTS handily reproduced their recorded material. I found myself wondering why they'd break up when they appear to be at the peak of their powers.
Seeing Burnt By the Sun again was also an opportunity for me to reflect on the impact they've had on my life and my perspective on music.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Former athlete
One more entry in the frightened-or-baffled-by-the-news series here.
Yesterday's New York Times featured a story entitled "Across Nation, Budget Talks Stir Pessimism." The gist of the story is approximately as follows:
"A quick, informal selection of voices from across the country over the weekend found both pessimism and cynicism about the state of negotiations in Washington, resignation about the partisan jousting and more confusion than conniption about what exactly will happen if the president and his Republican opponents cannot make a deal to raise the debt ceiling by Aug. 2. And neither side, they say, looks good."
The story carries on with a series of man-on-the-street interviews, largely with professionals of various stripes. As the writer tells it, even people who work in fields that will be directly affected by a default care very much. "I have no interest in it," says a woman who works in a financial services office in San Francisco. A financial-products trader describes the possibility as "a storm out in the gulf" and goes back to drinking in a Manhattan bar.
Meanwhile, I ("a waiter living in Brooklyn," the Post writer might say) am pretty freaked out. What do these people know that I don't?
Yesterday's New York Times featured a story entitled "Across Nation, Budget Talks Stir Pessimism." The gist of the story is approximately as follows:
"A quick, informal selection of voices from across the country over the weekend found both pessimism and cynicism about the state of negotiations in Washington, resignation about the partisan jousting and more confusion than conniption about what exactly will happen if the president and his Republican opponents cannot make a deal to raise the debt ceiling by Aug. 2. And neither side, they say, looks good."
The story carries on with a series of man-on-the-street interviews, largely with professionals of various stripes. As the writer tells it, even people who work in fields that will be directly affected by a default care very much. "I have no interest in it," says a woman who works in a financial services office in San Francisco. A financial-products trader describes the possibility as "a storm out in the gulf" and goes back to drinking in a Manhattan bar.
Meanwhile, I ("a waiter living in Brooklyn," the Post writer might say) am pretty freaked out. What do these people know that I don't?
Friday, July 15, 2011
Cannibal sounds
So I guess this is going to be my only post this week. I'm experiencing a serious energy shortage right now and I haven't done much of anything for the past few days. Sorry about that.
I'm a pretty avid music fan, but not the most thorough rock historian out there. There are plenty of extraordinarily influential albums from the period between 1950 and 1990 that I've never heard from start to finish. Until last Friday, I could count the Beach Boys' 1966 album Pet Sounds among that number.
Though I'd never heard the album, I knew plenty about it by reputation. Brian Wilson retired from the band's touring lineup in order to compose it. It was among the first and most influential psychedelic rock albums of the 60s; it helped to codify the notion of 'chamber pop' with its complex and layered arrangements; it introduced a whole new musical vocabulary to a generation of rock songwriters.
I also knew that it was a central influence for a lot of modern indie rock bands. I didn't realize exactly how central until I sat down with it.
I'm a pretty avid music fan, but not the most thorough rock historian out there. There are plenty of extraordinarily influential albums from the period between 1950 and 1990 that I've never heard from start to finish. Until last Friday, I could count the Beach Boys' 1966 album Pet Sounds among that number.
Though I'd never heard the album, I knew plenty about it by reputation. Brian Wilson retired from the band's touring lineup in order to compose it. It was among the first and most influential psychedelic rock albums of the 60s; it helped to codify the notion of 'chamber pop' with its complex and layered arrangements; it introduced a whole new musical vocabulary to a generation of rock songwriters.
I also knew that it was a central influence for a lot of modern indie rock bands. I didn't realize exactly how central until I sat down with it.
Friday, July 8, 2011
Paranoia revisited
As I said on Wednesday, my worldview can lean towards paranoia at times. Here's an example.
New York's subway system sells ad space in big blocks. You'll see the same four or five ad campaigns plastered all over every train for a few months, and then those ads will disappear in favor of a different set of campaigns.
One of the current campaigns includes a spot that I find terrifying:
I mean, seriously. Yikes.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Teetering
Carrying on the theme of yesterday's post:
Between 2006 and 2010, the political and economic shape of the world changed radically. So did my understanding of it. I was in college during that period, and while my education was genuinely eye-opening, I didn't like everything I saw. Ultimately, the experience destroyed my faith in a number of ideas, values and institutions that I had previously held dear.
The Economist's excellent Democracy In America blog published a post today that highlights a couple of them:
"Unless you buy the Nouriel Roubini argument, and I don't, China is going to be the world's largest economy within ten or 15 years, bigger than America or the euro-zone. And, in case anyone has failed to notice, it's a Communist country. Every year China continues to grow, the case that countries need to be democracies in order to become wealthy and developed becomes more tenuous. In fact, what's happening both in America and in the EU at this point is raising the possibility that democratic governance may in some modern situations be inimical to competent economic stewardship. The incentive structure created by democratic political competition in an internet-era media society may actually be driving countries towards fiscal self-destruction. We're increasingly getting a polarised, viciously divisive, intellectually bankrupt, wildly irresponsible populism that lives up to every negative caricature of multiparty democracy that a CCP ideological hack could dream up. That's certainly what the behaviour of the tea-party-driven GOP and the Party for Freedom suggests."
Between 2006 and 2010, the political and economic shape of the world changed radically. So did my understanding of it. I was in college during that period, and while my education was genuinely eye-opening, I didn't like everything I saw. Ultimately, the experience destroyed my faith in a number of ideas, values and institutions that I had previously held dear.
The Economist's excellent Democracy In America blog published a post today that highlights a couple of them:
"Unless you buy the Nouriel Roubini argument, and I don't, China is going to be the world's largest economy within ten or 15 years, bigger than America or the euro-zone. And, in case anyone has failed to notice, it's a Communist country. Every year China continues to grow, the case that countries need to be democracies in order to become wealthy and developed becomes more tenuous. In fact, what's happening both in America and in the EU at this point is raising the possibility that democratic governance may in some modern situations be inimical to competent economic stewardship. The incentive structure created by democratic political competition in an internet-era media society may actually be driving countries towards fiscal self-destruction. We're increasingly getting a polarised, viciously divisive, intellectually bankrupt, wildly irresponsible populism that lives up to every negative caricature of multiparty democracy that a CCP ideological hack could dream up. That's certainly what the behaviour of the tea-party-driven GOP and the Party for Freedom suggests."
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Not the alien invasion movie
Drink makes me even more prone to rumination than usual, and my thoughts took a predictable turn towards my country and what exactly I was celebrating.
A few years back, I would have described myself as a patriot. In modern usage, a patriot is someone who loves his country. I no longer call myself a patriot because I don't love the United States in the sense that so many of my countrymen mean when they use the word.
Friday, July 1, 2011
Well-executed
The conclusion of yesterday's post got me thinking a little more about the importance of execution in music.
I've got a fondness for the left-of-center in music. Most of my favorite artists are, or were at one time, on the musical fringe. This preference isn't quite a matter of principle, but it's at least partially ideological. I want rock to keep being interesting for me well into the future, and it has to keep attracting fresh young talent to do so. In order to draw in young people, rock music (which is far and away my favorite genre) must constantly reinvent and expand itself. That means that I like it when bands push into uncharted territory.
That being said, I listen to tons of bands who don't forge out into the unknown. In fact, some of them consciously adhere to established standards, and are all the better for it. Here are a few examples.
I've got a fondness for the left-of-center in music. Most of my favorite artists are, or were at one time, on the musical fringe. This preference isn't quite a matter of principle, but it's at least partially ideological. I want rock to keep being interesting for me well into the future, and it has to keep attracting fresh young talent to do so. In order to draw in young people, rock music (which is far and away my favorite genre) must constantly reinvent and expand itself. That means that I like it when bands push into uncharted territory.
That being said, I listen to tons of bands who don't forge out into the unknown. In fact, some of them consciously adhere to established standards, and are all the better for it. Here are a few examples.
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