Grieg Piano Sonata in E Minor, Op 7, second movement, performed by Glenn Gould:
Those final falling chords at the end of the movement (and the sense of stillness and reflection that they create) are rendered beautifully in this recording by Gould.
The whole sonata is well worth a listen.
Happy Friday, everyone.
I remain relatively new to this whole blogging business, and am still very much learning the ropes.
And while I am largely making it up as I go along, what with posting pieces on the culture and politics of two different nations, interspersed with classical music excerpts, architectural musings and the odd cat picture, I do try to stick to a few strictures passed down from others that seem to have served them quite well – post regularly, engage with your readers, link selectively, and so on. This seems to be working fairly well, but there are some occasions when the pieces of advice I have read or received come into conflict with each other. For example:
1. Post something, anything, about every important story that comes up. That way, people will learn to keep coming to your blog out of habit, your readership will go up, etc. etc.
and
2. Focus on quality. Pick your battles, and only weigh in on those stories where you have strong and original opinions. Your posts will be better informed and more enjoyable to read, and your readership will go up, etc. etc.
This is tricky for me. I tend to have opinions about most things, and if I had unlimited hours I could certainly commit a lot more of these thoughts to this blog. But aside from the time constraints, I often feel that by the time I come to a story, others have already dissected and analysed it in a far superior way. There’s no point in parroting the words of someone who got there first, without having anything interesting to contribute. And that leaves the question of what to do with all of the articles that capture my attention and interest, but about which I have few original thoughts to add.
For example, George Miller, writing at adamsmith.org., has an excellent piece reminding us that the recent failures of the private security firm G4S (contracted to provide much of the security at the upcoming London Olympic Games) should not be viewed as an indictment of outsourcing, or of the private sector in general. It is concise, well-written and chimes entirely with my own beliefs, but I have nothing really to add to it.
And therefore in future, rather than constructing a throwaway, waste-of-time blog post about such articles, or ignoring them entirely on my blog, I have decided to offer a kind of “daily summary” at the end of each day, with a few select stories of interest and a line or two from me about why they are worth a read. Hopefully, once this has a chance to bed down and establish itself, it will become a popular feature of this site.
I would be interested to here in the comments section below from any readers who have any other suggestions, insights or advice that they could offer.
In the meantime, I am going to proceed as planned.
It doesn’t happen often. I think even most right-leaning Americans would agree that the political left has a disproportionate share of the talent when it comes to humour and comedy (think The Daily Show, The Colbert Report etc.) But in a recent speech Obama finally seems to have given America’s budding right-wing comedians the impetus that they needed for success.
Cue the “You Didn’t Build That” meme, which can be found here.
I’m going to treat the substance of Obama’s speech – in which he uttered the now famous line “If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that” – more seriously in a separate post.
But for now I encourage everyone to enjoy this comedic renaissance taking place within the American right. My favourite example is below:
Or maybe this one:
Clearly a vast improvement from this truly awful song about government czars under the Obama administration, which attempts to rhyme “USA” with “citizenry” and includes the dreadful line “word is they’re getting one [a czar] for centaurs”, with accompanying inappropriate footage in the video:
I guess it is true – from rock bottom, the only way was up.
The BBC reports that Apple has failed in its attempt to block sales of Samsung Galaxy Tab tablet computers on the spurious grounds of copyright infringement:
A UK judge has ordered Apple to publish announcements that Samsung did not copy the design of its iPad, according to the Bloomberg news agency.
It said the judge said one notice should remain on Apple’s website for at least six months, while other adverts should be placed in various newspapers and magazines.
It follows the US company’s failed attempt to block sales of the South Korean firm’s Galaxy Tab tablets.
…
It said the notices must make reference to the court case and should be designed to “correct the damaging impression” that Samsung’s tablets had aped the look of Apple’s products.
Let me literally count the ways that this is funny:
1. Apple got smacked down for doing engaging in the typical, bullying behaviour that causes many people to hate large corporations, and was told that it could not, in actual fact, copyright or trademark vague and ethereal concepts such as “simple design” or “coolness” for their exclusive use.
2. Apple has to pay to place advertisements in the national media, admitting that it was wrong about something. I can’t wait to read the tortured wording.
3. 1 & 2 are funny because I own a rubbish, aging, malfunctioning BlackBerry, and my iPhone-toting friends make fun of me for it.
4. Though Samsung won the case, the judge said of their Galaxy Tablet device: “They are not as cool. The overall impression produced is different” when explaining his decision. So even in victory comes a rather devastating critique of their own efforts to build an iPad rival, now officially noted in the public record.
5. Free thought remains just about permissible in Britain today, as the article states that presiding judge “Judge Birss said that the US firm was ‘entitled’ to hold the opinion that his judgement was wrong”. It is good to know that the day has not yet arrived when failure to agree with authority represents a thought crime, despite the best efforts of Gordon Brown and the incompetence/weakness of the Cameron administration.
6. Hopefully other companies can breathe a little easier now, and continue to innovate and bring new products to the market with less fear that they will be persecuted by a big bully with a shiny logo.
There. Without knowing any of the specifics of the case, I have already extracted six reasons to be cheerful. That is all.
You know how it is when you read an article that is just so weak, so clearly living in a hermetically-sealed bubble of similar opinions, so insulated from opposing viewpoints, so grandiose in its self-righteous assuredness and yet so utterly wrong that it makes you just want to issue a point-by-point rebuttal of every stupid thing that the author committed to print (hopefully at this point you are not nodding and thinking “yes, that would be the last article I read here…)?
Well, Charles Hurt, writing in The Washington Times, stepped up to the challenge and magnificently managed to push all of my buttons with his piece entitled “Obama’s South Side Chicago Thuggery” (yes). So here you are, Charles: this is why you are wrong. From the top:
Now that we know just what President Obama thinks of people who succeed in business, it is no wonder that the economy is so much in the crapper. In his desperation to avoid any discussion of his own disastrous handling of the economy, Mr. Obama announced last week what he thinks of the struggling spark plugs of commerce: They are a bunch of felons.
Of course, he did not come right out and directly say that himself, because that would risk drawing renewed questions about whether he is actually an American with the slightest whiff of respect for private industry and ingenuity that defines America.
The economy being “in the crapper”, of course, is all Obama’s fault. Nothing to do with the huge credit crisis and other systemic and structural flaws developed under the previous eight years of Republican oversight.
And what’s this? “…that would risk drawing renewed questions about whether he is actually an American with the slightest whiff of respect for…” Actually an American, what an interesting turn of phrase. Almost as though the author were trying to subconsciously plant the idea that the president is, in fact, actually not an American. But we’ll say no more about that.
So he did what gangsters from the South Side of Chicago have always done. He dispatched one of his bloodthirsty capos to handle his dirty work. Then he strolls up onto the scene all clean and innocent-looking in his fancy, pressed duds and shiny spats and plays the wise guy.
Oh really? Valerie Plame. Scooter Libby. Dick Cheney. George W. Bush floating serenely above the fray. That is all I have to say to that.
As Mr. Obama misquoted Harry S. Truman the other day: “The buck stops with you.” Obviously he was confusing Truman with his real hero, Al Capone.
This political thuggery straight off the streets of Chicago signals desperation in the Obama campaign and a level of deception unrivaled in recent presidential politics.
Yeah, I don’t know what he is talking about either. But will someone please explain to me the American right’s frequent use of of the terms “thug” or “thuggish” in describing left-wing activism? You read or hear it all the time, on any right-wing blog. Why thugs? Is this a remnant from the Jimmy Hoffa days, or something else? Why is a left-wing person who uses strident language and occasional overstatement a “thug”, while a right-wing person is just understandably carried away because of their deep and abiding love for America, and should be given a free pass? Huh?
And most decent people would not suggest that the president’s hero is a murdering gangster. You can say it, Charles, that is totally within your constitutionally guaranteed rights, but I’m going to call you a low-life, slanderous, sanctimonious moron for having said it.
Democrats howled when John Kerry got “swift-boated” during the 2004 election with questions about his deservedness of medals he won during Vietnam — medals that he later threw away in protest of America and the military.
Okay, this one really annoys me. “…threw away in protest of America and the military”? Charles Hurt, could you be any more of a stereotypical US conservative? All about institutions and paternalism and respect for authority, and livid whenever anyone questions any of these. John Kerry loves his country, I’m sure, having served it in so many ways throughout his career, and it is disrespectful in the extreme for you to suggest otherwise. I would venture to say that Kerry threw away his medals in protest at the US foreign policy of the time, as conducted by the US military, and not at the idea of America and the US military in themselves. Many people, patriots also, would defend the right to burn the flag as a protest, but then I’m sure you would consider them traitors and anti-Americans too. Because anything but total, blind, unswerving allegiance to the government policy of the day is treason, of course. Oh, wait – unless there a Democratic administration that you disagree with in power, in which case you exercise your patriotism by making warm noises about armed uprisings and overthrowing the government.
And it’s just so much easier to win an argument when you grossly mischaracterise someone else’s actions and arguments, isn’t it, Charles?
Okay, I’m not going to spend any more time on Charles Hurt. I should not have risen to the bait. But the thought of him sitting there, reading the daily papers and getting outraged about all of the terrible policies that liberals are enacting, and the dirty processes by which they operate, whilst wilfully forgetting everything bad that happened under the previous Republican administration, was too much for me.
So I’m calling you on this one, Mr. Hurt.
Your article sucks, and you are the first winner of my Bad Journalism Award. Not that what you do – based on this example, at least – can really be called journalism as such.
In case you are wondering, your prize was the fact that I called you a low-life, slanderous, sanctimonious moron on my blog.
Semi-Partisan Politics 