Music critic Mark Kroll says the pundits may be wrong; that classical music fans may catch up with the rest of the music-listening public and avail themselves of internet-based music distribution. But his hopeful finish does not address some of the more serious concerns he raised earlier in the piece. If struggling American music companies are not subsidized like their European counterparts, they simply cannot afford to record much music (which they would have to do even with internet-based distribution), and the musicians cannot make a living. And American family life, community life, our pop culture and our educational system do not foster an appreciation of serious music — neither jazz or world music (except where they are assimilated into ‘crossover’ products), classical or so-called ‘new’ music.

Music critic Mark Kroll says the pundits may be wrong; that classical music fans may catch up with the rest of the music-listening public and avail themselves of internet-based music distribution. But his hopeful finish does not address some of the more serious concerns he raised earlier in the piece. If struggling American music companies are not subsidized like their European counterparts, they simply cannot afford to record much music (which they would have to do even with internet-based distribution), and the musicians cannot make a living. And American family life, community life, our pop culture and our educational system do not foster an appreciation of serious music — neither jazz or world music (except where they are assimilated into ‘crossover’ products), classical or so-called ‘new’ music.

I am pleased to note the burgeoning media attention to so-called “Rebuffs” to our valiant president’s efforts to save the world. Here is a Google search on “rebuff Bush” or “rebuffing Bush”, which I hope you will find edifying. Thus, it is with pride that I inaugurate the “Bush-Rebuffed” Dept. at FmH with what (below) is the first in an irregular but I hope steady stream of pertinent entries. Please feel free to watch the jargon and send me blinks. [thanks, abby]

When psychiatric evaluations are done through the court mental health services, of course, diagnoses are arrived at with full knowledge of the crime the subject has committed. Arguably, this makes finding a “certified” psychiatric diagnosis more likely. Furthermore, some of the diagnosed conditions are personality disorders. One of these, antisocial personality disorder, has among its DSM-IV diagnostic criteria aggressiveness, reckless disregard for the safety of others, and remorselessness over mistreatment of others. (I like the ICD-10 criteria better, BTW.) It may be a bit of circular reasoning to diagnose many murderers with antisocial personality disorder.

“Broader reporting needed to offset liberal opinions: The New York Times, America’s most venerated newspaper, is responding to growing pressure by pledging to increase its coverage of religion and the rural areas in the US, while also recruiting journalists who have military experience.” (Guardian.UK)

Let’s see, greenhouse gases increase the opacity of the atmosphere and warm the earth by preventing radiative cooling, and reducing greenhouse gases reduces the opacity of the atmosphere and warms the earth’s surface further. We can’t win? (New York Times )

[.pdf] “Despite its prima facie callousness, determining the value of a human life is necessary for good public policy.” — Ike Brannon (Regulation) At least it is good to see the Cato Institute acknowledging the callousness of its views…

Taibbi’s article can be found here.

Alterman’s focus in this piece is to castigate Robert Novak in preparation for their upcoming debate. However, the broader point bears repeating. The Bush dysadministration and the Rabid Right are conducting an unprecedented assault on the ability of the media to inform the public of their actions, and the media has largely caved to it. The unscrupulous always have those who still believe in respect and civility over a barrel. (So give it up?)

Jonathan Chait argues that a decade of liberal efforts to preserve government funding for public broadcasting has backfired; the only kind of free public broadcasting now, with the Rabid Right in power, will be public broadcasting free of government funding. (LA Times)

How evangelical Christians are creating an alternative universe of faith-based news (Columbia Journalism Review)

Reid calls Bush “a loser,” then apologizes. (Salon News)

Related:

Book review: Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter by Steven Johnson:

And Malcolm Gladwell also reviews Johnson’s book in a New Yorker essay, curiously entitled “Brain Candy” as well.

Let’s see, greenhouse gases increase the opacity of the atmosphere and warm the earth by preventing radiative cooling, and reducing greenhouse gases reduces the opacity of the atmosphere and warms the earth’s surface further. We can’t win? (New York Times )

Lots of people are paying attention to this meme, of which I learned from walker and which is doing the weblogging rounds:

Behold, the Caesar’s Bath meme! List five things that people in your circle of friends or peer group are wild about, but you can’t really understand the fuss over. To use the words of Caesar (from History of the World Part I), “Nice. Nice. Not thrilling . . . but nice.”

Poking into what people put on their lists is revealing. Although some people ignore the premise and simply list things they love to hate (for example, President Bush), it is more interesting if, as intended, you are attentive to what your social circle or peer group loves but you cannot get into (I feel really sorry for the Bush-hater who finds h’self embedded in a peer-group of Bush supporters!). Certainly, it is partly a question of how you define your peer group; most of the lists say much more about that than they do about your tastes and those of your social circle per se.. There are certain circles in which I hang out in which a list of five items wouldn’t begin to scratch the surface of our divergences (although I wouldn’t call them my close friends), and others in which I would be hardpressed to come up with five of any significance. How trivial or profound a difference of taste from your peers does your list embody? I mean, I hope you are going to differ from your peers with respect to some rock band or other, some TV show or other, and hopefully even on some of the books you have loved.

There are a number of entries that commonly appear — reality TV, drinking, spectator sports, NASCAR, Jim Carey, Seinfeld — or maybe I just notice them because they would all be on my list. If you can’t think of many items for yourself, I wonder — does it mean you are fortunate to share most of your preferences with your friends? unfortunate in that your circle of friends have very little stimulating diversity? or could it be you just don’t know your friends very well?

The game might be easier for someone — probably generally someone much younger — whose peer group have much more conformist needs. While this is abit stereotypical, the tastes of those of us who are older are probably generally less congruent with those of people we nevertheless call our close friends, perhaps because friendships are built more and more on shared history rather than shared preferences; people may remain friends even with drastic divergence of their cultural styles over decades. It may also be that people define who they are more securely and less on the basis of what they like, so even new friendships may be with more culturally dissimilar people. BTW, an interesting variant on this meme, for us older more settled folks, might be to “list five things that your spouse or life partner is wild about, but you can’t really understand the fuss over.”

And finally, it occurs to me that, because of the selection bias in this being a weblogging meme, there is one item that probably would appear on some lists which will not: weblogging.

They got their New York Times puff piece:

One more in a series of warmongers who repent and advocate for peace and disarmament as they grow older and wiser. I wish there were a way they could come to their senses when they still had any real influence.

Sorry, I don’t read the rightwing weblogs these days. I long ago concluded that there is little possibility of dialogue or reconciliation across the schismatic culture war, and that I don’t really need to study them to know the enemy any better. But now, through boing boing, I learn that Steve Silberman’s Wired article on George Lucas’ life after Star Wars has the conservative webloggers going ballistic, especially his supposed esteem for Michael Moore and Fahrenheit 911. Oddly enough, notes Silberman, most of the reactions to Lucas do not provide a link to his article but suggest the Lucas’ views exist out in some disembodied ether… like, maybe, The Force?

Book Review: Parallel Worlds: The Science of Alternative Universes and Our Future in the Cosmos by Michio Kaku:

If continued trials are positive, “this is going to be a revolution in acute stroke”, says a neuroscientist commentator.

As I predicted yesterday, inappropriate analogies to Terry Schiavo and allusions to his having been, in the words of his treating physician, “close to the persistent vegetative state”, are now emerging. Although I emphasize that I have no firsthand knowledge of his condition other than what I am reading, subsequent descriptions of Mr. Herbert’s condition over the last decade in the article suggest that he has always continued to show evidence of consciousness even though cognitive functions such as memory and language had been markedly damaged by the oxygen deprivation his brain suffered in his accident in 1995. This is a more crucial detail of his case than the more ‘sexy’ one the Times coverage is focusing upon, the admittedly fascinating Rip van Winkle-like drama of the information overload he will suffer, if he remains alert, in taking in all that has happened in both his personal life and the larger world over a missed decade. [Inexplicably, the Times‘ hyperbole in that sphere focuses on things like the Buffalo Bills’ performance over the intervening decade rather than, oh say, 9-11…]

According to the Times coverage, Mr. Herbert’s awakening may relate to a recent change in the cocktail of medications he has been taking.

Realize that a psychopharmacologically based approach to altering his level of consciousness necessitates that there was a substrate of brain activity there to modify with medications! This is quite distinct from a persistent vegetative state, in which bodily functions such as respiration and circulation persist in the absence of demonstrable brain activity.

Mistrial in Lynndie England trial: The judge said England could not plead guilty to conspiracy to commit a crime after the defense brought previously convicted co-conspirator Charles Graner on the stand and he portrayed leashing naked Iraqi prisoners and posing for photos with them as standard military procedure and a training exercise. Graner’s testimony was supposedly an effort to convince the judge to be lenient in sentencing England but, if taken to mean that England thought her actions were in response to a legitimate order, it undercuts the basis for her plea bargain, which depended on a knowing admission of guilt.

The judge had earlier been impatient with other defense tactics seemingly undercutting England’s guilty plea. Graner had previously indicated to reporters that he was disappointed with England’s plea and that he would have preferred to see her fight the charges. It is hard to know whether Graner’s performance on the stand was a defiant unilateral action on his part or an aspect of a defense strategy.

This is all set against a backdrop of soap opera melodrama, with Graner supposedly having fathered England’s baby and having gone on to marry another of the GIs accused in the Abu Ghraib abuses. Gleefully reported juicy detail: England suggested that a courtroom artist sketching Graner yesterday should have included the “horns and goatee.”

My first reaction, echoing a friend’s comments to me yesterday, was that it used to be that people either this hapless or this sociopathic (I’m referring here to both England and Graner) couldn’t get into the military… and they had joined long before the current enlistment crisis the military is facing.

But we are taking our eyes off the target, I remind myself, in focusing on this melodrama. The real issue is the core barbarity and absurdity of US military adventurism in the Bush-era ‘war on terror’ (WoT®) creating the inevitability of incidents like Abu Ghraib. So even if the recruiters signing up the Englands and Graners weren’t desperately facing the quota pressures they are several years later, it served the Pentagon’s purposes not to look too closely at the intelligence, the motivations or the moral fitness of the people they were letting in. Again, as my friend commented to me, “It’s harder to get a job at MacDonald’s.” Let us hope the judge’s rejection of England’s guilty plea is seen for what it, wittingly or unwittingly, really is — an indictment of the real chief co-conspirators here, the Sanchezes, the Bushes and the Rumsfelds.

Its routine inclusion in multivitamins aside, many health-conscious people have deliberately added folate supplement to their diets because of evidence that it has cardiovascular benefits. This is in addition to its established benefit in averting certain birth defects in the developing embryo when taken by women in pregnancy.

One of my favorite physician writers, Sherwin Nuland (How We Die) shares my malaise about the increasing penetration of ‘evidence-based medicine’ into medical practice. EBM is the slavish practice of basing medical decision-making only on the odds established by peer-reviewed research studies. It is all the buzz, and is especially amenable to the managed-care bureaucrats interested in denying reimbursement for healthcare itnerventions that aren’t ‘cost-effective’ or ‘proven.’ Evidence-based medicine, and the ‘treatment algorithms’ that accompany it, largely cripple what used to be one of the central intellectual tasks of the physician — being an intelligent consumer of the medical literature and a creative, indeed artistic, synthetist of research findings with one’s own clinical experience and the more anecdotal wisdom of one’s colleagues.

There are so many flaws with this way of doing business that I cannot begin to enumerate them in any better way than Nuland has done here. Just as consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, the belief in ‘objectivity’ is sometimes little more than the last resort of the uncreative, the subjectively challenged. The practice of medicine has been considered an art as well as a science; imagine if artists in other fields were constrained to produce only the types of art the market researchers had ‘proven’ would sell to the masses, or the cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists had ‘proven’ would activate the proper aesthetic centers in the brain as measured by PET scan or fMRI?

The so-called objectivity of medical research is a misnomer in many ways, among them the prejudiced opinions about what is worthy of publication of the academic journal editors and referees; the bias in favor of positive findings at the expense of negative, refutory research results; and the increasing fist-in-glove control of the research industry by the pharmaceutical industry. (Slate)

And, no, just to head off the inevitable Rabid Right take on this, his recovery has absolutely no bearing on Terry Schiavo’s case. You heard it here first.

The New York Times review of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival draws interesting parallels between the shape of a festival and the metaphysics of our technologically-mediated listening habits:

I find the process obscene but, to be candid, in the eight years since drug advertising has targeted the public directly, I have yet to be asked for a particular medication by a patient because they or a family member had seen it in an ad.

Thomas Sowell:

This article by a scholar at the conservative Hoover Institute thinktank argues, in a new form, that the institutionalized racism of American society has not disadvantaged African Americans as much as their own ignorant attitudes. On the surface, he cites credible evidence that the ‘cracker’ or ‘redneck’ culture of the South, applying to blacks and whites alike, has profound effects such as illegitimacy, increased violence, and decreased mental aptitude.

The problem, Sowell says in explaining the disproportionate impact of redneck ignorance on blacks, is that while only about a third of the American white population lived within redneck culture more than 90% of American blacks came through it. In attempting to explain black disadvantage by cultural rather than racist influences, Sowell further claims that redneck culture has faded away faster among whites than among blacks, even with the dispersion of southern blacks to northern cities in the decades after the Civil War. But this is fallacious; I would argue that redneck cultural attributes are largely alive and well in white rural culture, both southern and northern, today, and that they form the foundation for the red states’ support of the GOP. For example, see the persuasive work Ed Fitzgerald has done since the 2004 election on his weblog contrasting the red and the blue voters on numerous sociocultural and demographic dimensions. If it were cracker ignorance rather than disenfranchisement and oppression that shaped black disadvantage, wouldn’t you expect them to perform more like their white redneck brethren at the polls?? Digby did a wonderful series after the election about understanding the Republican appeal to the white exurban populace in terms of exploitation of their xenophobic tribal instincts and the fear of government giveaways by effete liberals to people who don’t look like themselves in the urban ghettoes.

The distinctions Sowell attempts to draw are a perfect example of one’s agenda — to blame the victims and explain away the victimization — shaping one’s argument. He is essentially saying ignorant people are ignorant people, white or black, and that there just happen to be a higher proportion of black rednecks because of demographic and historical forces. But it seems absurd to claim equal access even to ignorant cultural influences. By far the greater influence was the estrangement from the culture achieved by slavery and the decades of racist oppression since. Mr. Sowell too seems crippled by his own culture, that of white conservative racism with an academic veneer. [Error: see the comments. I hadn’t realized that Sowell is an African American himself. In fact, it makes more sense that way. — FmH]

Mark Morford writes… (San Francisco Chronicle)

For those who can still celebrate small miracles — the ivory-billed woodpecker, thought extinct for sixty years, has been spotted in a secluded patch of Arkansas wetlands. And don’t try to tell me it doesn’t matter in the scheme of things…

Also:

Only one of my readers, I suspect, will have any idea how I came to this. But enjoy it. A translation is here. [thanks, molly]

Ed Fitzgerald is correct, in responding below to my post on obstructionism and a principled opposition, that we should take a look at what Senate minority leader Reid is really proposing to do if the Republicans act on their threat to end judicial filibustering. It is essentially an end to the traditional deference that the minority party has shown to the majority on the floor of the Senate. Bowers explains it in this way:

In a followup post, he gives a taste of the nature of the bills the Democrats would bring forward. I share the response of several commenters on Bowers’ weblog that this is what the Democrats should be doing regardless of whether the Republicans ‘go nuclear’. If this is what is meant by ‘obstructionism’, then full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes.

Unfortunately, some of the old boys on the Democratic side of the aisle don’t have the stomach for a real fight. The ever-deferential Joe Biden (recal how deferential he was to Clarence Thomas at his confirmation hearing?), for example, proposes a compromise in which the Democrats would forestall the GOP anti-filibuster maneuver by letting some most of the contested judges be confirmed.

Biden aside, are we looking at the coalescence of the ‘principled’ part of the opposition recipé for which I was calling? One crucial question, if this moves along, is whether the Democrats can make it work for public opinion in 2006 and 2008. Webloggers like Fitzgerald and Josh Marshall argue that the Democrats will not be vilified for this sort of obstructionism, that it in important regards does not amount to a government shutdown in the eyes of the public (social security checks will keep coming, the national parks and government offices will remain open, etc.) are underestimating the GOP mastery of newspeak and spin and thier seeming lock on the American hearts and minds. Why, just look below at their largely successful effort (with the co-optation of the mainstream press), when it turned out that the ‘nuclear option’ phraseology they had coined wasn’t selling well to the public, to blame the Democrats for the term.

But, while I certainly think proposing progressive legislation in areas of social and economic policy is certainly what the Democrats should be doing, this is only a part of the picture. Yeah, yeah, yeah, these bills will help the working poor, etc., but as much as anything, they are a political maneuver to back the GOP into a corner by forcing Senators to vote against popular legislation. While rhetorical points may be won by these machinations, I still think that a principled opposition has to find a way to stop the lasting damage the Bush zealots are doing in the meanwhile. Taking the fight to the wire on American unilateral warmongering, on selling out clean air and water to corporate interests, handing a victory in the culture wars to the American Taliban and undoing seventy years’ commitment to the social welfare of the less fortunate has to start now. Otherwise, as I said (and as FmH readers who think I am wasting my time on partisan politics remind me), facilitating the Democratic victory in 2006 and 2008 will just be buying us business as usual.

Some people, among them unfutz’s ed fitzgerald, are encouraging the sort of stalwart opposition we seem to be seeing from the Democrats, particularly in the Senate. I’m just hoping it doesn’t come back to bite us. A principled opposition party, such as many of us yearn to see the Democrats become, has to be just that, principled. I worry that the Democrats could lost the ‘purple’ counties by appearing to be merely partisan. ‘Just say no’ makes the opposition seem more, rather than less, like Republican-lite, for those whose political memory goes back far enough that they recall how Clinton was treated. And there is no doubt that, with a Machiavellian genius like Rove at the helm, the Republicans will milk every bit of mileage they can out of a track record that looks like pure obstructionism. The Senate Ethics Committee, for example, is dangerously close to that already, with the Democrats refusing to convene to do the committee’s work because of the rule change that threatened to prevent the investigation of Tom Delay’s latest indiscretions. If the government is morally bankrupt, make that a central plank of a boldly stated platform rather than just refusing to come to work.

If the Democrats don’t base their desperate obstructionism on a platform, then they will be repeating one of the major mistakes they have made in the last two unsuccessful bids for the White House. More use should be made of the more principled spokespeople in the Senate like Obama and Boxer, who can articulate firmly what lines are being drawn in the sand and why. Battles should be picked, and I think the main criterion ought to be to distinguish trivial concerns that will do circumscribed damage and be reversed as soon as the Democrats take power again from those (unfortunately too numerous) policies that lead to irreversible damage to the US and the world. For example, while I think the Bolton nomination is about to go down in flames of its own accord, having him represent the US in the UN is not going to lead to the dismantling of the UN in the three years maximum he would be there, and his asininity is certainly not going to adversely affect the US standing in the international community, which is under no illusions that could be assuaged by any amount of diplomacy about the outrageousness of our foreign policy. It might be good to have Bolton there; have an asshole represent the assholes.

I think the three looming issues around which the opposition should muster are, on the domestic side, the threat to the integrity of the courts; on the international side, our saber-rattling provocations of Iran; and, environmentally, the self-serving Republican stance on global warming. I know readers probably have their own lists; my point is that battles should be picked on principle rather than willy-nilly for the sake of the fight.

And, in his next post, fitzgerald argues that there is no possibility of bipartisanship or the normal business of politics now, because the current political process has nothing to do with policy-making any more. That, and the perception (which I share) that the Republicans are trying to reverse a half-century of social progress and roll the country back to a pre-New-Deal state, is the basis for his paean to obstruction, obstruction, obstruction. But I am not arguing for working with the Republicans, I am talking about working with the voters. Asking that we choose our battles is not about being strategic about which ones can be won on the floors of the House and Senate but which ones can be won in the arena of public opinion. It is far more important to be far craftier in that sphere than the back-room machinations.

Some people, among them unfutz’s ed fitzgerald, are encouraging the sort of stalwart opposition we seem to be seeing from the Democrats, particularly in the Senate. I’m just hoping it doesn’t come back to bite us. A principled opposition party, such as many of us yearn to see the Democrats become, has to be just that, principled. I worry that the Democrats could lost the ‘purple’ counties by appearing to be merely partisan. ‘Just say no’ makes the opposition seem more, rather than less, like Republican-lite, for those whose political memory goes back far enough that they recall how Clinton was treated. And there is no doubt that, with a Machiavellian genius like Rove at the helm, the Republicans will milk every bit of mileage they can out of a track record that looks like pure obstructionism. The Senate Ethics Committee, for example, is dangerously close to that already, with the Democrats refusing to convene to do the committee’s work because of the rule change that threatened to prevent the investigation of Tom Delay’s latest indiscretions. If the government is morally bankrupt, make that a central plank of a boldly stated platform rather than just refusing to come to work.

If the Democrats don’t base their desperate obstructionism on a platform, then they will be repeating one of the major mistakes they have made in the last two unsuccessful bids for the White House. More use should be made of the more principled spokespeople in the Senate like Obama and Boxer, who can articulate firmly what lines are being drawn in the sand and why. Battles should be picked, and I think the main criterion ought to be to distinguish trivial concerns that will do circumscribed damage and be reversed as soon as the Democrats take power again from those (unfortunately too numerous) policies that lead to irreversible damage to the US and the world. For example, while I think the Bolton nomination is about to go down in flames of its own accord, having him represent the US in the UN is not going to lead to the dismantling of the UN in the three years maximum he would be there, and his asininity is certainly not going to adversely affect the US standing in the international community, which is under no illusions that could be assuaged by any amount of diplomacy about the outrageousness of our foreign policy. It might be good to have Bolton there; have an asshole represent the assholes.

I think the three looming issues around which the opposition should muster are, on the domestic side, the threat to the integrity of the courts; on the international side, our saber-rattling provocations of Iran; and, environmentally, the self-serving Republican stance on global warming. I know readers probably have their own lists; my point is that battles should be picked on principle rather than willy-nilly for the sake of the fight.

And, in his next post, fitzgerald argues that there is no possibility of bipartisanship or the normal business of politics now, because the current political process has nothing to do with policy-making any more. That, and the perception (which I share) that the Republicans are trying to reverse a half-century of social progress and roll the country back to a pre-New-Deal state, is the basis for his paean to obstruction, obstruction, obstruction. But I am not arguing for working with the Republicans, I am talking about working with the voters. Asking that we choose our battles is not about being strategic about which ones can be won on the floors of the House and Senate but which ones can be won in the arena of public opinion. It is far more important to be far craftier in that sphere than the back-room machinations.

This is a whitewash, plain and simple…and with a scapegoat, who doesn’t have access to the ‘Eichmann defense’ that she was only following orders, because her superiors did not have to give orders. The exoneration of Sanchez and others (and, by implication, the real culprits up to and including Rumsfeld and Bush) is on the wrong grounds — while they may not be guilty of failing to prevent or stop abuses (if you even believe that), they created a permissive culture in which specious goals of fighting ‘terrrrrrrism’ justify any barbaric means.

“And not only that, but he [Justice Kennedy] said in session that he
does his own research on the Internet? That is just incredibly
outrageous.”

— House Majority Leader Tom DeLay

Not since Strom Thurmond’s and Jesse Helms’ departures has the retirement of a reactionary Republican given me such a frisson.

I have conflicting thoughts about this news. First, I welcome the continuing trend toward recognizing that the emperor has no clothes in mental health care. I found it big news when research strongly supported the counterintuitive conclusion the critical incident debriefing and other emergency intervention techniques after traumas may not prevent survivors from developing post-traumatic stress. In fact, they may increase the risk. Similarly, we now learn that couples therapy may not save troubled relationships.

But is that evidence it is ineffective? In a great many cases, talking about a couple’s problems frankly may hasten the end of a doomed relationship, which is in my opinion as legitimate a purpose of couples therapy as saving a relationship at all costs. After all, the therapist is not making the decision about whether the marriage lives or dies; s/he is just facilitating the couple getting to what they really want.

[What I want to know is where in the world the 15% Dixie crept in from? — FmH]

We in psychiatry use alot of anticonvulsant drugs for modulation of mood and impulses. I can see it now; they are going to make the same methodological mistakes they have made in concluding that antidepressants exacerbate suicide risk, about which I have written here in detail.

After I used the acronym in one of my posts earlier today, a reader wrote to say he is new to the world of ‘blogging’ and wondered what it stood for. (It means “in my humble opinion,” for those of you who didn’t know.) I think I use that abbreviation fairly often here; it’s become habitual for me as an ironic comment on my tendency to sound over-authoritative when I shoot my mouth off. When I typed it today, I had a premonition that it would only be a matter of time before someone relatively new to the net would ask for a translation. This post is for you.

It’s not just a ‘blogging’ term. It is one of a number of time-honored abbreviations from the early days of bulletin boards (BBS’s), chatrooms, usenet groups and email. These days, these acronyms are experiencing a resurgence with text messaging. Other common ones include “BTW”, “YMMV”, “RSN”, “PITA”, “LOL”, “ROFL” “TTFN”, “AFAIK” “WYSIWYG” ,”OTOH”, “RTFM”, and I’m sure you know “FUBAR”, right? Some are pretty obvious, others less so, Here are a couple of compendium lists where you can go to catch up on your chatroom abbreviations:

http://searchsmb.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid44_gci211776,00.html

And:

http://groups.msn.com/JerseyBeans/acronymsorwhatdoeslolmean.msnw

TTFN
(IITYWTMWYBMAD?)

So say the headlines. As I predicted when I wrote about John Paul’s death, I expected more of the same. But Cardinal Ratzinger has been the papal confidante, theoretician and policy maker all these years; in other words, he wrote the playbook. So wasn’t it really more that John Paul followed his lead? The only question is whether this is more like Dick Cheney or Karl Rove succeeding Bush. The headlines also say that “Latin Americans react with joy and a tinge of disappointment.” More likely disappointment with a tinge of joy, IMHO, at Ratzinger’s ascension rather than any of the Latin American contenders. They do embody half the world’s Catholic numbers, after all.

One of the things I will watch with fascination during Ratzinger’s papacy — the predictions are that he will make it a priority during his papacy to address the so-called ‘silent apostasy’ of European Catholics, whose overall numbers, church attendance and observance are rapidly decaying. How will a Eurocentric Church deal with the fact that European worshippers are AWOL, if not MIA, and the only souls for capture are second-class, third-world ones, the indigenous attempts of whose own Church leaders to meld the social with the spiritual needs of their flocks with more sensitivity and appropriateness are either slighted or actively opposed from Rome?

It is going on ten years since the death of Jerry Garcia and going on forty years since the inception of the Grateful Dead. The New York Times takes the occasion of the release of Phil Lesh’s memoir, Searching for the Sound, for a very improbable reflection on the band’s legacy, clearly not written by someone who has revelled in their music. Seth Mnookin’s essay draws what might be a specious parallel between two aspects of the Dead he reads in Lesh’s book. First, while he admits that the initial two-thirds of the book are an exultant rendition of the Dead’s early years, when its soaring improvisational reach and mind-melding connection with its listeners was forged in an acid bath, Mnookin is quite taken with Lesh’s confessional about ‘the destructive effects of addiction’ in the band’s later years, particularly Garcia’s heroin addiction and Lesh’s own alcoholism. ‘During the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, his alcoholism, Garcia’s budding heroin addiction, and mountains of freely available cocaine turned a once-cohesive unit into a group whose main form of communicating became playing music with, and sometimes at, one another onstage.’ Some kind of moralist, it seems, Mnookin is all to ready to attribute the stultification of the band’s exuberant group mind to the drug use. (If he is going to do that, at least abit of exposition about the contrast he sees between the hallucinogen high and the downs of alcohol and heroin, and some speculation about why the change from one to the other occurred, is in order.)

According to Mnookin’s reading of the book, Lesh’s second central idea in reshaping the Dead legacy seems to be to conceive of their music as repertory, “like a Shakespeare play or a Beethoven quartet.” Never mind how hubristic that sounds. What strikes me is how central a betrayal of the central tenets of the Dead experience it is. There was never anything very important about their songs; most Deadheads lived for the stretches of their music, chiefly in the second sets of their concerts, that came when they voyaged far away from the songs that served as launch points, deep into the space between, untethered and (no matter where they started from and ended up) never the same twice. The stultification of the Dead’s music set in precisely when they started seeing their body of work as repertory to be recreated from concert to concert, IMHO because they — particularly Garcia — became too clumsy and addled to do much else. Identifying the precise point is debatable but it was certainly apparent by the mid- or late-80’s; I myself was bored by what the Dead were doing were no longer doing by the late ’70’s or early ’80’s.

Lesh seems to be saying that, if the Dead could no longer do it (because of the destructive effects of their drug use), at least the music lives on for itself. But even if Lesh ultimately felt betrayed by — and perhaps never gave up wanting to recreate — what became of the unique interplay of personalities that had made music together for years, the recent attempts to recreate the Dead’s magic with different personnel seem even more pitiful than the Dead’s trying to recreate their own early magic in their later years. I have attempted to listen to the post-Garcia ‘Other Ones’ and ‘The Dead’, and all I can do is cringe. The Dead today are an aging Grateful Dead cover band. The music, too, was gone, Phil, when the Dead’s magic went down the tubes. All the best, most transcendent things in life (and I classify the music of the Grateful Dead at their peak in that category) are transitory, and attempts to hang on to them after they pass little more than pitiful. It’s like Terry Schiavo — why not finally withdraw life support and end the persistent vegetative state?

You can read some more about my longterm relationship with the Dead here.

A School of Visual Arts Grad Remakes the Pill Bottle: “By the time an object, or an apartment, or a company hits the half-century mark, it’s usually been through a redesign or two. Yet the standard-issue amber-cast pharmacy pill bottle has remained virtually unchanged since it was pressed into service after the second World War. (A child-safety cap was added in the seventies.) An overhaul is finally coming, courtesy of Deborah Adler, a 29-year-old graphic designer whose ClearRx prescription-packaging system debuts at Target pharmacies May 1.

Adler grew up in a family of doctors in Chappaqua, New York, but escaped medicine for an M.F.A. at the School of Visual Arts. She was inspired to return, at least tangentially, after her grandmother Helen accidentally swallowed pills meant for her husband, Herman. The drugstore prescription bottle, it occurred to Adler, is not just unattractive, it’s actually dangerous. Statistics back her up: According to a recent poll conducted for Target, 60 percent of prescription-drug users have taken medication incorrectly.” (New York [via Amy’s Robot])

I like the flattened shape so it doesn’t roll and so that the entire label can be seen at once. It is quite smart to include a color-coded ring so one knows at a glance which family member’s medication it is. Adler has also considered including a magnifying strip, and a label that develops a big red ‘X’ across it when the medication expires.But the best innovation is, IMHO, the simplest, which is to print the name of the medication in the blodest, largest, most legible typeface. I have never been able to understand why even I, whose eyesight is unimpaired when I wear my reading glasses [g], has a challenge searching a conventional prescription label to find the name of the drug, and why the format from different pharmacy chains is different.