Obsidian Wings

Some suggested thoughts

by liberal japonicus

Perhaps time to take a break from fevered dreams of libertarian heavens, one commenter suggested I put this article forward.

https://www.americanpurpose.com/articles/the-tolling-bell/

While I agree with the notion of the exhausted center, I have to admit, the article doesn't really grab me so much, though at this point, 'centrism' seems to be outmoded. I know everyone wants to go back to the way things were not only before COVID, but really the way things were before Trump. Unfortunately, that gets you a presidential press conference where none of the questions were about COVID, but there was a 15 minute section on whether Biden was going to run for a second term. Or Politico turning to Stephen Miller. I've gotten into fights with friends (perhaps former now) who insist that Jorden Peterson, Bari Weiss, or Andrew Sullivan 'have a point' and the world looks like, to me at least, one power of one constituency is slowly ebbing but they are not going down without a fight. However, the constituencies whose power is waxing have problems because replicating the way power has been taken in the past merely replaces the group on the top with another group, leaving the problematic social relations intact.

I would try to write more, but the school year is starting here and I'm still trying to get my head around what I will do. So I toss this up and let all of you go at it. Play nice, please.

Good Sauceability, but undecided on Forkability

New pasta shapes

https://kottke.org/21/03/the-invention-of-a-new-pasta-shape

Otherwise, a food open thread.
(via a friend on facebook)

copyright, patent and IP

by liberal japonicus

I wanted to make a post about copyright, patent and IP, though there has already been some discussion. First, a copyright story.

When I first came to Japan, I was based at a high school with a really good band. They are called brass bands here, but they are just like your average high school band. Sort of. I say sort of because the level they play at is head a shoulders above what your average US HS band could do. Click on this to get an idea
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wOif5OfsL0

The high school I was placed at was trying to break into the top rank and the music teacher, who had studied trumpet and conducting in Germany, had a band transcription by Mark Hindsley of Richard Strauss' Til Eulenspiegel. The director asked me to get permission to perform for the band to perform it at contest. This was before email and internet, so I tracked down who I needed to contact and called them and made the request. He gave me a figure to transfer, not a huge amount, and I did it and got a letter saying that with that letter, the band was allowed to perform the piece up to 4 times. Yay for me.

About 2 months later, as I was getting ready to move to a new school, I got a panicky call on my answer machine. There had been a huge mistake, the Strauss heirs really didn't like transcriptions and so could I please tell the band not to play it. I had just transferred to a new high school and so I went back to my old high school. They had already heard about it, as they had gotten a box of music to apologize for the mixup. However, the band was already on their final performance at the all Japan competition, having previously performed it for the prefectural and the block contests.

The solution, which was a very Japanese way of doing things, was that I turned my phone off at night (no cell phones then) and since was 'the agent', I would point out that I had been transferred to another school. The band would not record the performance so there would be no record. Which worked out.

I was researching the situation to write this and I don't know if they relaxed their position on transcriptions, there was a 2014 YouTube video of Michigan State performing it, though all of Strauss' music went out of copyright only in 2019. This article says that the State Opera had to pay the Strauss copyright holders 15,000 euros each time they performed Der Rosenkavalier.

This is not to make any kind of point except to suggest that I was lucky that screwup happened before the internet, or I might still be paying for the mistake. I think that is true for a lot of other things as well.

Anyway, feel free to post other articles about copyright, patents, etc.

Re: the filibuster

by liberal japonicus

I'm grateful to Janie for the open thread, and I encourage you to keep posting there, but it seems that talk about revising the filibuster is increasing so a thread to discuss that.

Here is the Vox article (I am appreciating their explainers more and more) and a TPM article that points to another Dem senator rethinking his position. Apologies for just posting two articles, but the list of articles on the filibuster is pretty massive. Post your faves here.

The post also prompted me to look up the etymology, which was a bit surprising.

FILIBUSTERING is a term lately imported from the Spanish, yet destined, it would seem, to occupy an important place in our vocabulary. In its etymological import it is nearly synonymous with piracy. It is commonly employed, however, to denote an idea peculiar to the modern progress, and which may be defined as the right and practice of private war, or the claim of individuals to engage in foreign hostilities aside from, and even in opposition to the government with which they are in political membership. [Harper's New Monthly Magazine, January 1853]

The noun in the legislative sense is not in Bartlett (1859) and seems not to have been in use in U.S. legislative writing before 1865 (filibustering in this sense is from 1861). Probably the extension in sense is because obstructionist legislators "pirated" debate or overthrew the usual order of authority. Originally of the senator who led it; the maneuver itself so called by 1893. Not technically restricted to U.S. Senate, but that's where the strategy works best. [The 1853 use of filibustering by U.S. Rep. Albert G. Brown of Mississippi reported in the Congressional Globe and cited in the OED does not refer to legislative obstruction, but to national policy toward Cuba.]

Amazing (to me) that something associated with lawlessness could become something that is seen as the 'normal'. Anyway, a place for your filibustering thoughts.

Do we need a new thread?

By JanieM

Okay, some topics.

1. Guns

I wrote this comment at BJ today in a thread about last night's killings in Atlanta:

I was poking around on YouTube yesterday looking for something or other and stumbled across some clips from a Western that was on TV when I was a kid. I had forgotten all about it, but I hadn’t forgotten about all the other shows we watched, like the Lone Ranger, Maverick, The Cisco Kid, Have Gun Will Travel, Gunsmoke, Davy Crockett, Bronco Lane, Annie Oakley, Kit Carson, Jim Bowie, Wyatt Earp, Gene Autry, Death Valley Days, the Rifleman, Rin Tin Tin, Kit Carson, Bonanza, Bat Masterson….As I ramble through the list, it’s a wonder we had time for anything else, even including other genres like My Three Sons etc.

I know there have been a gazillion cop shows and even more westerns on TV, not to mention movies, since I was a kid in the 1950s. But with guns this deeply embedded in our collective psyche, I don’t know what it’s going to take to break the spell.

Then again, I grew up awash in the mythology of guns and have barely ever touched one, much less shot one.

Between that and the Pope’s announcement the other day, I’ve fallen into about the deepest pit I’ve been in since January 20

ETA: The Western I had forgotten about was The Lawman.

Several people listed more shows that I had forgotten, and someone reminisced about cap guns, which I haven't thought about for probably sixty years. But yes, we played with them.

2. Gays (to put it briefly)

The International Pedophile Protection Ring otherwise known as the hierarchy of the “Holy” Roman Catholic Church has once again displayed its pathological arrogance in claiming to have a direct line to God concerning other people’s sex lives.

Can anyone please explain the difference between these people and Q? Other than that the fathers [sic] of the church are probably wealthier?

An open thread

by liberal japonicus

For reasons unknown, the video below the fold popped up in my Youtube feed and since we have a few metal fans here as well as Russell, I thought I'd put it up.

Surprise, surprise, surprise

by liberal japonicus

From that Marxist rag, the Atlantic.

The researchers also found that the guaranteed income did not dissuade participants from working—adding to a large body of evidence showing that cash benefits do not dramatically shrink the labor force and in some cases help people work by giving them the stability they need to find and take a new job. In the Stockton study, the share of participants with a full-time job rose 12 percentage points, versus five percentage points in the control group. In an interview, Martin-West and Castro Baker suggested that the money created capacity for goal setting, risk taking, and personal investment.

and

Finally, the cash recipients were healthier, happier, and less anxious than their counterparts in the control group. “Cash is a better way to cure some forms of depression and anxiety than Prozac,” says Michael Tubbs, a former mayor of Stockton, who spearheaded the project. “So many of the illnesses we see in our community are a result of toxic stress and elevated cortisol levels and anxiety, directly attributed to income volatility and not having enough to cover your basic necessities. That’s true in the public-health crisis we’re in now.”

More work, less destitution, more family stability, less strained social networks, less stress, fewer incidences of homelessness, fewer skipped meals: This is what welfare could give the country.

Go for it.

The latest Japan-Korea thing

by liberal japonicus

As was astutely observed in the comments, it's amazing that problems are so often reduced to a failure of people to make proper contracts. If you like the sarcasm in that observation (which I do), you'll love this, below the break