Open Thread: Buoyancy and Related Issues

by Eric Martin

Appropos of nothing in particular, I was scrolling through my iPod and it occurred to me that I hadn't listened to Sinead O'Connor in quite a while.  After remedying that lapse, it then it occurred to me what an amazing song this is.

Also, too, while on the topic of female singers I've been neglecting lately, Homogenic is a pretty awesome album:

Comments

[publius]

she did an absolutely great cover of All Apologies a while back.

[von]

Yes: good. But please don't forget Dessa. Or Flunk's unbelievable cover of blue monday. (Flunk's Blue Monday Cover = Johnny Cash's Hurt cover. Probably better than the original.)

The next generation is already here, my rapidly aging friends.

[von]

(I include myself among the rapidly aging.)

[JanieM]

It's all relative, von....

[von]

I contend the following, JanieM:

For some things, it's not.

I divide the world as follows:

If you can remember a time without a Betamax ....

-and/or-

If you have had one day in which you back hurt so bad that you were unable to pick yourself off the ground ....

We have something in common.

[Turbulence]

von, do you have any thoughts on what Bennett's loss in Utah means for your thesis that republicans were totally willing to pass Wyden-Bennett if only Democrats would have cooperated?

[JanieM]

Hmmmm. Yes, I agree, not all things are relative, I was speaking loosely, and being just a little cheeky.

As to your specifics -- I have been lucky -- my back, while touchy at times, has never been that bad. But I can remember a Betamax-free world. Twenty-five years' worth, actually, if wikipedia is right that it was released in 1975.

Hell, I can remember when "Davy Crocket, King of the Wild Frontier" came out. I got my heart's desire, a Davy Crockett suit, complete with coonskin cap, the Christmas when I was five.

Regardless of all that, this is certainly a familiar feeling: "The next generation is already here, my rapidly aging friends." And not just the next, but the next after that. They just keep coming, one after another.

[von]

von, do you have any thoughts on what Bennett's loss in Utah means for your thesis that republicans were totally willing to pass Wyden-Bennett if only Democrats would have cooperated?

If you mean: Was there an opportunity to forge a bipartisan healthcare bill? Yes.

Bennett is some of the evidence. (Graham is as well.) These are Republican Senators who knew/know they will face tough primaries, but will stil do what they think is right. There are Democratic Senators as well who will fight this battle (Wyden, e.g.).

I accept, of course, that none of these brave souls are in the leadership. Harry Reid, for example, f-cked Graham six ways from Sunday on the energy bill. And all Graham did was smile and retreat.

Look: If you want things to move forward in an intelligent way, you have to support the folks too stupid to realize their own self interest. That means that you support the Bennetts (or Wydens, or, even, Grahams), despite the fact that the person might lose.

The idea is more important.

And I am waiting for a true moderate - D or R - who marches forward without fear. (When I helped to found a libertarian group on my undergrad campus, I wished it would be them. But of course it wasn't.)

[von]

They just keep coming, one after another.

A problem and a solution.

Anyhoo: It looks like I'm heading out to your neck of the woods again this summer. One of these days, we'll have to connect. I know people in Maine.

On a different subject: If our readers live in Grand Rapids, MI, drop me a line at vonofobsidianwings [at] hotmail.com. I'm up there a lot.

[Nell]

Is anyone here in touch with Hilzoy? I've been wondering what she makes of Obama and his administration at this point.

[JanieM]

von -- it would be great to meet when you're in Maine. Let me know.

For a while I had the impression that you might be based in northeastern Ohio (where I grew up), but later you said something that implied that you're in Indiana. If Ohio, and you'd like to try to connect there, let me know -- I'll be there for a couple of weeks this summer to visit family.

[ben]

was Excellent . thaks .

[von]

JanieM - I'll give a heads up when I'm in Maine, but it's going to be a lightening trip this year. Last summer was a bit slow for me, but this summer is not.

[hairshirthedonist]

...but it's going to be a lightening trip this year.

Will there be a decrease in volume proportional to your lightening, or can we expect your buoyancy to increase? (See how I worked the thread title in there? Nice, huh?)

[Eric Martin]

well played

[Catsy]

Regardless of all that, this is certainly a familiar feeling: "The next generation is already here, my rapidly aging friends." And not just the next, but the next after that. They just keep coming, one after another.

Oh my god, does this ever ring true. It's been hitting me really hard lately. The last decade, in particular, just kind of flew by. I think a lot of it has to do with the disaster that was the Bush era--I spent most of those eight years going, "is it over yet?"

It's over now, and I'm finding that the better part of ten years disappeared into a nightmare. And somewhere along the line, the world left my generation behind. The people I grew up idolizing are dying off, and things I can still distinctly remember as brand new are ancient history to everyone else.

It really started sinking it when I started visualizing parts of my childhood through the same temporal lens as I used to view the events of my parents' generation when I was growing up.

When I was my son's age, Vietnam was still fresh and recent--about as recent as the first Gulf War is to him. But he has never known a time when we were not at war.

When I was my son's age, World War 2 was only thirty years in the past--still fairly recent, historically speaking. For my son, the war that was thirty years in the past is Vietnam, and it is as alien to him as WW2 was to me.

How does he see the music we listen to? I know the mental/emotional impression of the music my parents listened to--the way it felt to me, the way it informed the memories of my childhood and my own eventual tastes. What does a nine-year-old make of heavy metal? Of the often-bizarre and eclectic sounds that came out of the last 10-15 years?

TV shows. Cartoons. Civil rights. For most of my son's life, the only president he knew was Bush, and he could not help but absorb our opinions of him. Now, for him, the only two presidents he's known have been a disastrous white Republican and a successful black Democrat--what effect will that have on his attitudes towards race?

Sorry, this sort of started meandering. It's been on my mind a lot lately. I know a lot of this sort of thing is just part of getting older, but that doesn't make it any easier on the mind.

[elm]

Ladies and gentlemen, this artist has won the Internet.

This achievement will never be surpassed. Will the last person out please turn off the lights?

[hilzoy]

"Is anyone here in touch with Hilzoy? I've been wondering what she makes of Obama and his administration at this point."

You rang?

Hmm. Very 'on the one hand, on the other hand ... As in: I am furious about more or less everything to do with civil liberties. I thought the stimulus bill was great, at least given the constraints on how quickly you can do a lot of infrastructure projects. I was thrilled about health care, and also about his really pushing for it. I'm underwhelmed by the economics stuff other than the stimulus, mostly because the more time goes on, the more I think he should have picked a different economic team. I'm really, really happy about nuclear non-proliferation and the START treaty. Other than Afghanistan, I like a lot of his foreign policy. But that's a big 'other than'. Though if we do in fact manage to muddle through in Afghanistan, my rather large misgivings will all be taken back. (Here, I think, I differ from the administration less on goals and more on judgment about what to do and the likelihood of various things working out, though I do not, in fact, have any good ideas about how to deal with the Afghan/Pakistani border at all.)

I am beyond furious at large chunks of the Congress. All that strutting about and threatening to derail health care and so on that went on all fall. Gag. I have written long screeds to my Senators on the topic of Rule Reform (not just the filibuster, but the various unanimous consent rules that allow one single Senator to hold things up indefinitely if s/he feels like being an asshole.) (And, yes, Tom Coburn, I'm looking at you.)

And I don't agree with von that any bipartisan anything was ever on the table, as far as health care was concerned. I suspect that if the Democrats had proposed a health care reform bill consisting entirely of caps on malpractice claims and support for health savings accounts, Mitch McConnell would have found some way to oppose it.

[hilzoy]

I should also say that I think Obama's administration has been better than I suspect any of the alternatives would have been.

[Slartibartfast]

Salutations and well-wishes, hilzoy!

[Ugh]

Hilzoy! Yay!

[JanieM]

Sorry, this sort of started meandering.

Don't apologize, it's an open thread! ;)

But it's also an interesting topic. Being older is definitel different than being younger (ask my knees first), but not much in the ways I imagined when I was younger. From what you wrote it sounds like we could have an interesting conversation...maybe on another open thread one of these days, or at TiO.

Meanwhile, off to town.

[russell]

yay, hilzoy!!

I really, really, really, really, really wish that was a real movie. Starring Randy Rockwood, Bunny Carlyle, and Zoltan.

No Betamax?

When I came up home entertainment was small black and white TV, AM radio, and record players with three speeds.

You went to the movies because they had air conditioning as much as for any other reason.

My big sister remembers no TV at all (in our house, anyway). But when she was little she was the only grandkid, and got to go to Radio City for the Christmas show every year. Which is probably worth at least a TV, maybe even TV plus Betamax.

The only time I had a hard time getting up off the ground was when I fell off of a stage and cracked a rib. That sucked.

Now get off the lawn!!!

[hairshirthedonist]

I'm 41 and, even though I can say that there are times and places where I "feel old" relative to those around me, I'm still waiting to feel like an adult. I don't know if that makes me an arrested adolescent or what, but I still semi-unconsciously see other people as being grown-ups and, as such, distinct from me in that aspect.

It's not like I can't do my job, raise my kids, be a reasonably good husband, keep up my home, handle my finances, take on other resposiblities or be relied upon. It's just that somehow, I still feel like a kid - not a 10-year-old, mind you, but somewhere in the 16 to 25 range (I guess). It's weird.

[jrudkis]

hsh,

Me too. Must have been something in the water.

[hairshirthedonist]

Probably. It was all the, ahem, water I consumed.

[hairshirthedonist]

And speaking of that, aren't you due for a visit soon?

[Eric Martin]

FWIW, I feel the same way. But I'm actually not an adult yet: only 35.

;)

[JanieM]

Hey, I feel that way and I'm 60.

I have often mused about this and wondered whether it's different for my and later generations than it was earlier, so next time I talk to my mom (she's 86) I'm going to ask her.

My guess is they were different. After all, by the time they had settled down with kids and jobs they had been children through the Depression and young adults through WWII. Not to mention that both childhood and the transition to adulthood were different then than now. (Weren't we just talking about kids walking to school alone, or not?) Childhood is both shortened (sexualized earlier, for instance) and lengthened (expectations of post-high school education among other things) now, it seems. (This isn't data, it's just more meandering, I guess....)