Video: Bird goes snowboarding on roof

Hilarious and kind of awesome.
Update: Fixed link after the first one was taken down. Read the rest of this post...

Cynthia Nixon’s choice to be imprecise with her language

You may recall that I wrote last week about Sex & the City star Cynthia Nixon claiming she "chose" to be gay.  At the time I responded that it's not really possible to choose who you're attracted to.  Do some guys prefer brunettes because they choose to find brunettes attractive?  No.  Do straight men and women prefer opposite gender partners because they choose to be attracted to those partners?  No.  You may choose whether to act on those attractions, absolutely, but I've never heard of anyone who chooses the kind of man or woman they're attracted to.  Anyway, AP is covering this now, as has the Daily Beast. I've got more over at AMERICAblog Gay, including why this matters. Read the rest of this post...

A little Dave Brubeck: "Blue Rondo"

This delightful Diana Krall piece from yesterday put me in mind of Dave Brubeck, with his large hands and his big ten-fingered chords.

Here's the quartet doing their classic "Blue Rondo à la Turk" — one of their early time-change masterpieces in a 1962 television performance.

Watch for the big-hands chords during his solo, about 2:42 into the clip. And listen for (in my view) the sweetest woodwind player of the century, Paul Desmond.

Enjoy:



Can you count that piece? In beats, the first part is three measures of 9/4 (nine beats per measure) grouped three times as 2+2+2+3 (=9), and then one measure grouped as 3+3+3 (=9).

Listen for it — it's not as complicated as it seems; it just goes by fast (for the ear, 2+2+2+3 sounds like this: 1-2, 1-2, 1-2, 1-2-3).

Then the piece shifts into a swinging 4/4, where 2 beats of the 9/4 become 1 beat of the 4/4. Smooth, yet fascinatingly complex in sound.

You should be able to easily hear the shift from 9/4 to 4/4. This is what made Brubeck Brubeck. (The immortal "Take Five" — in 5/4 natch — is from the same album.)

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Murdoch’s Newscorp UK offices searched by police

Why are the Republicans so close to such a shady operation that has admitted violating the law? Rupert Murdoch's business is in for some tough times and the story just won't go away. For a supposed "law and order" organization, they seem to be struggling with what it means to follow the law. The Guardian:

Four men – including a serving police officer – have been arrested in connection with payments by journalists to police officers. The Metropolitan police said on Saturday that it was carrying out searches at the offices of News International, parent company of the now-closed News of the World, in Wapping, east London. A serving police officer, 29, was arrested at his place of work in central London on suspicion of corruption and misconduct in public office. The officer, of the Met's territorial policing unit, became the second police officer to be arrested under the Operation Elveden investigation into payments to police officers.

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Violence on the rise in Syria, still waiting for the Arab Spring to spring in Damascus

Russia is always going to be there for Assad at the UN, so that route is not likely to produce any results. The Guardian:

The head of the Arab League monitoring mission in Syria has said violence has risen significantly in the country in recent days, as the UN prepares to debate a resolution on the crisis next week. The flashpoint city of Homs has again been the focal point of clashes, which are thought to have killed at least 100 people since Wednesday. Activists in the besieged city reported a massacre had taken place at the hands of regime forces on Thursday. European and Arab states are frantically drafting a resolution aimed at ending the violence and seizing power from the president, Bashar al-Assad, whose regime had enjoyed absolute control over Syria until a sustained and increasingly violent challenge to its rule.

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Apple has created up to 700,000 jobs ... in Asia

This is a two-fer; I'm going to link two opinion pieces to make one point.

First, Paul Krugman, in a recent column commenting on Mitch Daniels' assertion that American businessman Steve Jobs was a hero–job creator who should be emulated. He gets to the Apple point midway through (my emphasis):

[A]nyone who reads The New York Times knows that [Daniels'] assertion about job creation was completely false: Apple employs very few people in this country.

A big report in The Times last Sunday laid out the facts. Although Apple is now America’s biggest U.S. corporation as measured by market value, it employs only 43,000 people in the United States, a tenth as many as General Motors employed when it was the largest American firm.

Apple does, however, indirectly employ around 700,000 people in its various suppliers. Unfortunately, almost none of those people are in America.

Krugman points out that it's not just the low wages; it's also the local supply infrastructure. But even so, how did the whole of it, the factories and that lovely network of local parts suppliers, get there to begin with?

Answer — American industrial policy. Yes, we did it to ourselves. (By "we" I mean the do-ers, Our Betters; and by "ourselves" I mean the do-ees, you and me.)

American government always has an industrial policy. We've never been without one. And in the last 30 years, the right-wing Reagan government — and every U.S. government since — has grown campaign-contribution-fat by picking corporate winners and labor losers in the newspeakishly named "free market." The rest is just disinformation, something to keep you confused until they've robbed you totally blind.

Here's Robert Reich to make the connection:

Jobs Won't Come Back to America Until the Government Pushes Greedy Corporate Executives to Invest at Home

That's his headline, not to put too fine a point on it.

And here's a bit of the meat (my emphasis below).

... An Apple executive says “We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible.” He might have added “and showing a big enough profits to continually increase our share price.”

Most executives of American companies agree. If they can make it best and cheapest in China, or anywhere else, that’s where it will be made. Don’t blame them. ... What they want in America is lower corporate taxes, less regulation, and fewer unionized workers. But none of these will bring good jobs to America. These steps may lower the costs of production here, but global companies can always find even lower costs abroad. ...

But here’s the political problem. American firms have huge clout in Washington. They maintain legions of lobbyists and are pouring boatloads of money into political campaigns. After the Supreme Court’s Citizen’s United decision, there’s no limit.

Who represents the American workforce? ... [C]orporate America isn’t their friend. Without bold government action on behalf of our workforce, good American jobs will continue to disappear.

The headline makes the point stronger than the piece itself, but still, the point is there.

Government always acts (or not-acts) in someone's behalf. It always picks winners and losers, in exactly the same way you do when you decide to see Chucky Does Paris rather than Midnight in Missoula — or even when you stay home instead with a big box of deep-fried Drummer Boy Wings and your tears. Someone walks away with your dollar, and the rest just walk. Same diff.

The real question is — What's American labor, chained as it is to the NeoLiberal-dominated Democratic party, going to do about it?

Not many choices, are there? I can think of just three — Leave the party. Kick those corporate-financed NeoLibs out of first position and take over. Whine.

If you don't pick (1) or (2), the third picks you (not to put too fine a point on it).

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Roy Orbison - Only the Lonely

I'm back in Philly for a few days and thankfully Mother Nature is cooperating this time. No miserable winter cold and no snow which is fine by me. I'm getting ready to head to a diner for one of my favorite breakfast foods, Scrapple. I love the stuff. Last night I went to my nephews wrestling match (two matches and two pins, so he was in a great mood) and tomorrow I will head to a cheerleading competition to see my niece. Lots of things to squeeze in this visit. Read the rest of this post...