Obsidian Wings

Snow at night

by Doctor Science

It's snowing lightly and sticking, for now, so we're seeing something a little like a White Christmas. Hopefully it won't be around tomorrow, when the Christians are driving down from Long Island.

Normally me, Our Guy, and the Sprogs celebrate on the 25th in the Tradition of Our People: Chinese food and a movie, which was going to be "Les Miz" this year (so I'm keeping away from lj's post for the nonce). Then the Christians arrive and we have Xmas dinner on the 26th. But this year they'll be here on the 25th itself, so Jewish Christmas is postponed until the weekend.

From Hiroshige's 53 Stations of the Tokaido Road:

16 Kambara:
A mountain village at nightfall under deep snow, through which three people are toiling, one with his head buried in a half open umbrella.

This was the first edition of Hiroshige's famous series.

Right after I noticed the snow, I happened across Adam Nicolson's review in The Spectator of Winter: Five Windows on the Season by Adam Gopnik.

Over the last 300 years, our relationship to winter has turned from one in which winter called the shots to one in which we do. The season once exerted a brutal grip on the populations of the northern hemisphere. The only correct attitude, Gopnik says, was to hold it at bay, to survive it.

... for Gopnik, the Romantics essentially invented winter, largely because they were living inside and looking at it from the comfort of their drawing rooms. ...

This reminds me of At Day's Close: Night in Times Past by A. Roger Ekirch, which made me aware in a way I hadn't been before that pre-modern people had, on average, nights that were fully 12 hours long -- and in the winter much longer. That was an awful lot of time to sleep, hang out, and not do anything you really need good vision for (=sex, gossip, nursing the baby, story-telling, sex). So when you're reading a story and travelers are keeping watch in shifts? That's *totally easy*, it's not like anyone's losing sleep, they're in the solid dark for 10-12 hours or more. Ekirch argues that in pre-modern societies most people slept in two 3-6 hour stretches, with a break in between for conversation, sex, or just thinking.

This would be even more the case at high latitudes in winter. Remember, humans are evolved for tropical and sub-tropical locations, where nights are from 10-14 hours in length. In England, though, nights may be 16 hours long in late December, and in Scandinavia longer still. That's enough time for monkeys to get *really* antsy, sitting in the dark. No wonder my Viking ancestors are famous for things like really long epic poetry, alcohol abuse, blackout rage, and vacations in Byzantium.

The Spectator review says that Gopnik writes

with deep regret [about] the banishment of winter by the insulating comforts of modern life. We have left behind the magical transition zone in which the culture lived from 1750 until 1950. ‘As safety grows, the sense of season flees from us. A sense of security is excellent for civic capital, bad for sensibilities.’ Winter is now over. All we have is shopping and television. ‘We have all gone inside, and may be some time.’

The South Pole Station and aurora australis, July 8. Photo by Sue.

Les Miz: musicals, artifice and realism

by liberal japonicus

I mentioned that I was taking my oldest daughter to see Les Miz (the movie of the musical). It premiered here in Japan on Friday the 21st, and we were going to see it on Saturday, but it was cold and raining, so we actually went this morning. In looking up stuff, I see that, for some strange reason, the movie opened 4 days earlier here in Japan than in the US Christmas Day opening tomorrow, though I don't think I need to include a spoiler warning...

Some videos and other stuff below the fold

Holiday swag Friday open thread

by liberal japonicus

When I first came to Japan, it was at the end of the bubble in Japan, and they basically brought over a lot of college grads to work as assistants in the school system and paid them very well. I was on the program for 5 years, and so saw 5 years of folks go thru the program. Every year, a few people would be really excited about getting the salary they were getting and make every effort to save as much of that money as possible. They started in September and right around this time, they would crack and end up splurging.

At the lj household, a similar thing happened this year. We've been trying to keep expenses down all year, but the past week, it is as if we were trying to raise domestic consumption single handed. I basically follow around carrying the wallet. 

Still, there are some things that I want, and will dare to reveal them after the first 25 brave souls of the commentariat say what they are trying to score this year. Watcha want?

Cleaning out the spam filter

by Doctor Science

For some unknown reason a whole bunch of comments on my last two posts, including ones from me, have ended up in the spam filter. I'm cleaning it out now, so you should be seeing your comments -- but the conversation will be out of order, I'm afraid.

LJ, there are several comments on "The Long Goodbye" that you'll need to approve.

Graffiti in Paris by SPAM CREW. I have no idea if this is one person or a collective.

Guns and Contamination

by Doctor Science

As I predicted, gun sales are up in the wake of the Newtown massacre, particularly the type of Bushmaster assault rifle the killer used. This is par for the US gun massacre course.

Gun buyers all say that such post-massacre surges in popularity are because they're afraid that weapons associated with tragedy are going to be banned, so they're getting them why they still can. No-one has talked about how very peculiar this attitude is.

Usually, when there's a horrible public tragedy, everything associated with it gets contaminated with that horror. For instance, I remember grape Kool-Aid being pulled from stores after the Jonestown massacre, because of rumors that it had been the vehicle for the mass poisoning. No-one actually thought that the Kool-Aid in stores was poison, but the association with Jonestown was repulsive on a gut level. It was better for stores if customers couldn't even see Kool-Aid on their shelves to be repulsed.

This kind of repulsion-by-association or contamination is so strong and common I'm willing to call it instinctive -- a term I do not use lightly or metaphorically. This makes it particularly striking and even weird that guns do not get contaminated this way for gun buyers. Why isn't the normal instinct being activated?

I'm not really asking why gun buyers don't make a logical or rational connection between a massacre and a particular type of weapon. I'm talking about an emotional or gut reaction, something like, "well, that's another thing ruined for me now".

This is even more peculiar because, at least in the US, gun enthusiasts tend to be politically conservative, and conservatives tend to feel issues of purity and contamination are more important than liberals do. So why do conservatives not feel an instinctive sense of contamination in this case, only? Why are your feelings about guns teflon-coated?

In both the United Kingdom and Australia[1] gun laws were significantly tightened after horrific massacres in the 1990s. They weren't particularly difficult political decisions: both countries were united by grief, shame, and (importantly IMHO) revulsion, the urge to reject things associated with the horrors.

For the first time that I can recall, lots of Americans are starting to feel that kind of revulsion toward guns. Even though Bushmaster sales are up, some stores are pulling the weapon from the shelves. More significantly, investors are starting to reject gun manufacturers.

But I don't know if significant numbers of gun fans[2] are starting to have that reaction, that rushing out to buy a weapon famous for slaughtering little children is -- or should be -- repulsive, not an automatic response. And I guess I'm asking those of you who *are* gun fans what it would take to break that response, to make the weapons of mass murder seem hideous, not attractive.

Part of Red Bowl, an art installation by Andy Cao & Xavier Perrot at the Saint-Lazare Leprosarium, Beauvais, France. The design

recalls the way lepers once bathed in animal blood in an effort to cure themselves and avoid being ostracized to the one-time leprosarium where the installation is located.

Contamination, madness, blood: (part of) what we're talking about.

[1] In case you have seen pro-gun posts going around, about how the Australian gun laws led to an increase in crime, I refer you to Snopes. In brief, no.

[2] I'm not saying "gun nuts", and I'd appreciate it if other commenters refrained, as well.

Another neat invention

 

via liberal japonicus

This is, to me, 10 kinds of neat.

 

What do y'all think? If you like it, the website is here

'Grief is its own size'

by liberal japonicus

A little bit back, Gary Farber linked to this Playboy interview of Stephen Colbert on his facebook page. (apologies for the various stuff around the interview, but I can't find a way to just link to the frame) From the interview, Colbert talks about the experience of his father and two brothers dying in a plane crash when he was a teenager.

The interesting thing about grief, I think, is that it is its own size. It is not the size of you. It is its own size. And grief comes to you. You know what I mean? I’ve always liked that phrase He was visited by grief, because that’s really what it is. Grief is its own thing. It’s not like it’s in me and I’m going to deal with it. It’s a thing, and you have to be okay with its presence. If you try to ignore it, it will be like a wolf at your door.

more rambling thoughts below the fold.

Watering the Tree of Liberty

Another mass shooting, this time in an elementary school in Connecticut. I am ill with horror.

Have some predictions:

1. The shooter will turn out to be male.
2. He will turn out to be white.
3. He will turn out to be angry at a woman, or women in general
4. If he's angry at an ex (wife or lover), she either works at the school or he murdered her before going to the school.
5. More than half of the victims will be female.
6. The weapons will have been obtained legally.
7. There will be no legislation to make such weapons harder to obtain, stockpile, or use.
8. Most reliable of all: gun sales will increase, especially for the particular weapons used in the shooting.

I may not be right about all these predictions, but you can take that final one to the bank.

I absolutely think we need to talk about gun violence in America, and after this kind of massacre is no time to hold back. I also think we have to bear in mind that mass murder is different from normal American homicide:

1. Normal American homicide is black-on-black; mass murder is white-on-white
2. Normal homicide is male-on-male; mass murder is male-on-majority female

Read Mother Jones' overview of mass shootings in America for statistics and details, I don't have to stomach to wrap them up for you now.

Previously, I've talked about guns as macho fantasies, and paranoid delusion as a gun marketing strategy.

It is perfectly clear to me that the American Founders intended the right to bear arms to be the people's bulwark against government tyranny, specifically the threat of a standing army. It is also perfectly clear that that is not how firearms are *used*.

Most firearms in America are actually used to make men feel better about their dicks -- sorry, as symbols and reinforcers of masculinity. Men buy guns, telling themselves that they will use them in the masculine role of protector and defender. But in fact, guns are used to defend masculinity, first and foremost. Very occasionally, defending masculinity means defending others in your masculine role, but usually it means attacking other men for slights against your masculinity, or women for being uppity enough to disagree with you or reject you. Or children, for caring about anything other than Daddy. The god of masculinity is a very jealous god indeed.

Why else are gun defenders are so willing to water the tree of liberty with the blood of kindergartners?

The most respect I can show those of you who are gun defenders is to ask this: What would it take to break the cycle where every mass shooting leads to increased gun sales? What is the weak point in that feedback loop?

The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons, by Jacques-Louis David. Because obviously when women kill their children they're Medea, horrible and crazy, but a man who sacrifices children for the tree of liberty is noble and tragic. Right?

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey placeholder

Our Hobbit tickets are for 4:00ish tomorrow afternoon, but other people will no doubt be reporting back sooner. Start your party and/or rant in the comments here, I'll chime in after I've seen it.

Ski the Misty Mountains! Home to the Best Underground Resorts! Travel posters by Steve Thomas.

12-12-12 Concert Live Blog

The Concert

It's been a long time since I've seen The Boss live, but I can't miss this one.

Land of Hope and Dreams
I love the way you can sing "People get ready", to this, how good Bruce is at weaving gospel and rock.

Wrecking Ball
The swamps of Jersey -- the ones he's talking about aren't really the ones by the shore, but the ones near Newark, with the Meadowlands rising through them. It's not that we're exactly proud of our pollution, but we don't pretend it doesn't exist.

My city of ruins
I admit, I really like Asbury Park during the down years, when you could actually watch birds there.

Jersey Girl
-- but only a few lines of it

Now Bon Jovi -- to help sing our (barely) unofficial state anthem, Born to Run
I have no idea if I'm embarrassing the kids as I sing along up here, but I. Don't. Care.

Oh Billy Crystal, are you really the best they could do?

Fucking ROGER WATERS
from The Wall, omg

this is actually Chris Christie's anthem: We Don't Need No Education

I hadn't heard this stanza before, or this acoustic-y rendition. And I'll have to look up what's on the screen behind him.

Dark Side of the Moon! "Money" is definitely a theme in NYC, all right.
Unlike some of the other fogeys here, Roger Waters has brought in some younger voices to do what his can't, so his music sounds fresh.

And it does -- this is still glorious.

Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, singing Comfortably Numb.

Who's the less-old guitarist with the roses on his guitar?

Halleluja, as reinterpreted in very authentic NY/NJ style. The unofficial motto of New Jersey, after all, is "Sez Who?"

Exit 13 of the Turnpike is indeed the stinkiest location in NJ, everyone knows it.

Bon Jovi: It's My Life
which I just realized has a reference to Frank Sinatra, son of Hoboken.
In 1981-82, I think, I lived in a basement apartment in Hoboken, before it gentrified. I haven't checked, but I'm sure the place was destroyed by Sandy -- it was around 2nd and Bloomfield.

Dead or Alive
damn, he's still got his pipes. That's a guy who must never have been a hard drinker, because he can still hit 'em. Unless he's being autotuned, what do you-all think?

Bruce comes back! to the ritual howling
Duet for "Who Says You Can't Go Home"

Living on a Prayer -- and the audience is pretty good, too!

Jon Stewart, says it's the Best Hannukah Party Ever!

The political subtext here, is that we're not going to have what happened with Katrina, where the rebuilding got rid of a lot of the previous residents.

Eric Clapton, singing a Bessie Smith song, "Nobody Knows You When You're Down & Out", and playing acoustic guitar.

"Got To Get Better In A Little While" -- a song about how it only gets better if you *do* something. And wow, his playing has not lost anything over the years. But that's the secret of the blues -- it's like a whiskey that only gets better with age.

and speaking of the blues: "Crossroads", by Robert Johnson.

Ladies and Gentlemen, The Rolling Stones. "You Got Me Rockin"
"Moves like Jagger" *means* something, you pipsqueaks. Although, hm, I think maybe he needs a new hip joint ..

Jumping Jack Flash, doesn't quite have the old flash: the dancing isn't really there anymore, but boy howdy, they can still play. The Sprogs are terrified that Jagger is going to keep stripping ...

Stephen Colbert ILU.

Kanye West, Alicia Keys -- I know this because my kids told me. AND THEY LIED! It was P. Diddy and .. someone. Now Alicia Keys is singing (and she can really sing, and play) "Brand New Me".

The thing about New Yorkers that is maybe most annoying to people from other cities, is that they really, truly believe -- with the certainty of objective fact -- that theirs is the greatest city in the world.

Now she's singing "No One".

The Who! with Who's Next! but the Sprogs ask, were they not on first?

Is Pete Townshend having trouble? Roger Daltry is also maybe in need of some robot joints ... Now they're doing "Bell Boy" with the ghost of Keith Moon.

I take it back, Townshend can still bring it to Pinball Wizard.

... See Me, Feel Me. yes! I actually think this is one of the great rock hymns.

Those poor kids, they only *think* they've heard me sing along before. Baba O'Reilly!!!

Yet more Who: Love Reign O’er Me

I *love* this song, always have. And I guess they had to do a rain song.

Roger Daltry is the least-dressed (and buffest) 60+ guy so far. Maybe he picked up some special tricks when he was on “Highlander”.

"Tea and Theatre" -- huh, a new one on me. I see it's from a concept album about NYC. "The three pursue their own dream: to perform an extraordinary elaboration of their children's play in Central Park in New York that is webcast to the entire world for charity, and during which they demonstrate Ray's idea to 'turn everyone into music'. "

The kids aren't completely impressed with The Who, but as I told them, this was my youth! and they're f!cking geniuses, especially Pete Townshend. But now Sprog the Elder says, "godddd I love these people tho, look at their faces -- I LOVE ENTHUSIASTIC OLD MUSICIANS".

The kids can't tell me what song Kanye is doing, but they agree he's rocking the skirt.
Mah googlage says: Jesus Walks, which is pretty good poetry, even by this white girl's standards.

omg, is this really as good as Saturday Night Live gets these days? Take them out back and shoot them.

Billy Joel, and as Elder Sprog predicted, Miami 2015, slightly modified. We're already betting on New York State of Mind. Both the Sprogs are Joel fans.

But first, Moving Out. And then, yeah, NYSoM. This is one of the great NYC songs, for me: I was just getting to know the city (or, as they say around here, The City) when the album was new.

Now we boogie down along the River of Dreams.

And You May Be Right, I May Be Crazy!

Billy Joel is *such* a New Yorker -- and now it's Only The Good Die Young. It's a very metropolitan song, because it's explicitly about a world where not everyone is the same religion, and we all know about each other's -- at least to some extent. And, as Elder says, despite being a "hey girl have sex w/me" song it's not gross.

Coldplay guy at last! All the youth (that aren't mine) rejoice! First, a song even I have heard, "Viva La Vida". And now he brings out REM dude!!! And they do Losing My Religion, one of my favorite things Kids These Days (or several days ago, actually) like.

"Us Against The World", this one is. Lovely and appropriate.

And now, at last, Sir Paul. Helter Skelter, wow. I didn't realize he was doing this in concert.

"Let Me Roll It", now 1985. My Valentine.

Blackbird. I never knew before that this was a civil rights song. I used to sing it to the babies as a bedtime song.

And now Nirvana comes out to play with him! and I have no idea what that thing Paul's playing is. Or what song that was, though it was pretty good and they all had fun.

Now I Got a Feeling -- but it has to be a duet with John?! How will he do it? random John stand-in, it seems.

Live and Let Die -- and all pyrotechnics breaks lose.

Final bow for the first responders, and I'm for bed ... but Alicia Keys is singing about NYC.

your eulogy for Occupy Friday open thread

via liberal japonicus

This Friday, read this incredible article about the Occupy movement (via Crooked Timber) and discuss.