Make America Sick Again?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/21/supreme-court-trump-research-dei

Should Berners-Lee Testify Before Congress?

The testimony by Alphabet's Sundar Pichai, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, and Apple's Tim Cook at the House of Representatives probably made for good television, and there was much to be gained from subsequent analyses, particularly from sites such as BBC News. While I am no fan of those that skew the distribution of wealth to such a radical extreme, I suspect that most of our Congressional representatives may have missed out on a significant elephant in the room and how that elephant got there. While questions about work practices at all levels of the hierarchy are important, just as relevant is how this new generation of “captains of industry” got to be where they now are.

I would like to consider the possibility that all four of these gentlemen constitute the leading edge of a new generation of prospectors. I am more interested in how they came by their wealth than I am with what they are now doing with it. I propose that all four of them succeeded in “mining” a new “field” of resources that turned out to be very precious and thus very valuable. That “field” is the World Wide Web itself and its global impact on information flow.

For about two decades prior to the emergence of the World Wide Web, many research organizations came to appreciate the value of both shared data and shared software for processing data resources. That sharing was realized through the technology of computer networks. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, was one of those organizations. During his time working at CERN, Tim Berners-Lee saw the value of sharing within that organization; but he also realized that researchers could be even more productive if such sharing could take place across organizations. That was the motivating concept from which the World Wide Web would eventually emerge.

One of the original platforms for sharing across organizations was Usenet and the bulletin board system it supported. Simply put, researchers from different organizations were provided with “gateway” technology for both reading bulletin boards and contributing to them. The “gateway” allowed information to cross from one network to another; and the World Wide Web introduced new protocols for communication that did not have to take such gateways explicitly into account.

Fun fact: The very first unsolicited advertising, better known as “spam,” was distributed through Usenet before the World Wide Web had come up to speed. The fact is that dedicated researchers, such as Berners-Lee (and, for that matter, myself), seemed to take it for granted that sharing information could only be for the good. However, by the time the Internet as we know it was enabled, a new generation of those prospectors was beginning to emerge. They were more interested in the growth of capital, rather than the growth of collective knowledge. Four of those prospectors that “struck it rich” in a big (gargantuan?) way were called to account by our Congress yesterday.

One way of viewing this history is through that old guns-don’t-kill-people-people-kill-people cliché. One of the side effects of this new generation of prospecting was a growing myopia where issues of consequences were concerned. The prevailing motto was, “If you build it, they will come.” There was little concern over who “they” were or what they would do after they arrived. This leads me to wonder whether or not that myopia can be traced back to Berners-Lee himself. Nothing would please me more than to see him testifying before a Congressional committee and being confronted with that question of myopia.

Mind you, I suspect that anything Berners-Lee would say today would amount to little more than a historical perspective that is beyond the ken of those that have wealth and power. Nevertheless, the extent to which the very concept of information is now being undermined, simply because no one ever really bothered to view deceptive information (otherwise known as “fake news”) as a problem, amounts to a serious crisis situation. Ironically, I used to write about a book that took on the question of how serious crises should be addressed.

The title of the book was Thinking in Time, written by Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May. It amounts to a collection of case studies concerning Presidential decision-making. When I used to write about this book, I summarized its “punch line” as a recommendation that any crisis situation should be addressed through two fundamental questions:

1. How did we get into this mess?
2. If we take this particular action, what will the consequences be?

In that context, I feel that the Congress might benefit from what Berners-Lee might have to say when it comes to answering the first of those questions!

Uninformed Thoughts about the Nasdaq Index

I have gotten into the habit of using the Apple Stocks app to track significant indices in the United States, Europe, and Asia on a daily basis. (I review my own portfolios on a monthly basis based on statements provided by my broker.) As I write this, the Nasdaq index is at 117.33. This is the highest it has been since the index peaked at 118.67 on February 4!

Let's not kid ourselves. No stock index is a measure of "value." At best the level of an index can be taken as a level of confidence or, perhaps more specifically, willingness to trade. Why should that willingness be higher for the Nasdaq portfolio than it is for the S&P 500? Since I am not in any way an expert on these matter, my best conjecture is that Nasdaq holdings represent businesses that can function with much, if not all, of the employees working from home. Nasdaq reflects companies that "push bits," one way or another, rather than build houses or manage grocery stores.

In other words, while it might be easy to promote Nasdaq as a sign of recovery, the basis for computing the index value may not be a statistically significant indicator of the health of the overall economy.

A “Battle Cry” Against Political Backlash

From the current vantage point, there is little doubt that the presidential election of 2016 has inflicted the most damage to the very concept of a “United States of America” that has emerged since the country was torn apart by Civil War. Writing as one born shortly after the end of World War II, it would be fair to say that the better part of my life has experienced a series of advances in the social world as well as the scientific world. Like many, I saw the election of President Barack Obama as a sign that the country had finally chosen open-mindedness to social diversity over fundamental convictions of hate directed towards “otherness.”

What we learned in November of 2016 was that significant social progress must always be on guard against regression to nativist prejudices. Under the current circumstances the scientific world is now taking as much of a beating as the social world. It has been as if rationality could not see the backlash coming, just as no one could see that the dissolution of monarchy in Germany after World War I would ultimately lead to the rise of the Nazi Party and the outbreak of World War II.

In that global context it is probably more than a little immodest to cite music as a channel through which fundamental issues of human rights and liberties can be expressed. However, they were expressed through music in this country going all the way back to the days of the Declaration of Independence and advancing through the Civil War and the Great Depression. In other words the album Battle Cry, available in both physical and digital form since the beginning of this year, is based on an extensive foundation of music committed to basic human rights.

courtesy of Kate Smith Promotions.

The album was produced by Atlanta-based jazz vocalist Virginia Schenck, who was dubbed “VA” by a local disc jockey and chose to adopt the moniker. The album’s title is taken for Schenck’s only contribution as a composer, a song entitled “Hear My Battle Cry.” Nevertheless, none of the remaining selections are explicitly militant. Rather, they reflect examples of progress and change, sometimes just hoped for but other times achieved. In other words, each of the eight other tracks (which include the texts of both the Pledge of Allegiance and the Gettysburg Address) provide musical reflections on how we have advanced and where advance as not been achieved.

At the end of the day, this album neither heals nor takes up arms in defiance. Rather, VA offers up her selections as a foundation for reflection. To the extent that reflective practices are currently on the rocks, it is clear that any “new beginning” will require such a foundation as a prerequisite. The tracks of Battle Cry may encourage at least some of us to set about laying that foundation.

A Necessary Departure from the Usual

When this site was first created, it involved examination of many issues other than those involving the performance of music. Over the last few years I have narrowed my focus, simply to keep my plate from getting too full. Nevertheless, I feel that the following opinion piece is one that deserves all the circulation it can get:

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/free-market-deepen-coronavirus-crisis-200408122743522.html

Mind you, there is probably nothing in this article that cannot be found in the writings of Max Weber; but this particularly piece has the advantage of being less opaque!

Politicized Jazz for Our Time from Mark Dresser

Mark Dresser (photograph by Jim Carmody, courtesy of Braithwaite & Katz)

According to my records, the album Ain’t Nothing But A Cyber Coup & You was released by Clean Feed this past October. By all rights, I should be apologizing (yet again) for procrastination and scheduling delays; but, by way of an excuse, this seems like the ideal recording to discuss in the wake of yesterday’s State of the Union address. The music is performed by Mark Dresser, an acoustic bass player whose sense of jazz tradition owes much to Charles Mingus, another bassist who refused to shy away from politically sensitive issues (most explicitly by taking on the segregationist governor of Arkansas Orval Faubus). On this album Dresser leads the Mark Dresser Seven, whose other members are Nicole Mitchell on different sizes of flute, Marty Ehrlich on clarinet, bass clarinet, and alto saxophone, Keir GoGwilt on violin, Michael Dessen on trombone, Joshua White on piano, and Jim Black on percussion.

In the notes for the accompanying booklet, Dresser acknowledges Mingus in his second paragraph for providing the inspiration “to engage with our current dystopian landscape from a place of hope and positive potential.” To a great extent that phrase reminded me of the title of the anthology of Esquire articles that took on an earlier dystopia, the highly troubling times of the Sixties. The title of that volume was Smiling Through the Apocalypse. Indeed, I would argue that one encounters more wistful smiles in Dresser’s tracks than I ever did in most of my Mingus recordings.

This is not to say that Dresser is trying to sugarcoat current conditions. As a case in point, consider the track “Let Them Eat Paper Towels.” That was Paul Krugman’s headline for a column he wrote for The New York Times, calling out President Donald Trump’s callous and clueless attitude when he visited Puerto Rico after the island had been devastated by Hurricane Maria. Dresser gives a figurative voice to the Puerto Rican population by drawing upon the melody of the island’s unofficial anthem, “Que Bonita Bandera” (what a beautiful flag).

Dresser describes the title track as “an attempt to give acerbic levity to our national realty-horror-show of corruption, malice, xenophobia and class warfare.” As in “Let Them Eat Paper Towels,” he does this by incorporating well-chosen tunes. His “primary sources” come from the Great American Song Book: “I’m Just a Lucky So and So” and “Things Ain’t What They Used to Be.” This is one of the most intense tracks on the album, complete with a wild piano introduction from White that prepares the listener for the madness to follow.

While there are only six compositions on this recording, they are “interlaced” (Dresser’s word choice) with bass improvisations. These are performed on the McLagan Tines, invented by luthier Kent McLagen. As Dresser describes it, the instrument consists of “a set of seven graduated steel rods attached to a secondary bridge that touches the bass bridge, activating the resonant cavity of the bass.” This makes for some other-worldly melodic lines that, at least to my ear, seem to arise from the ability to set some of the more remote upper harmonics into resonance.

Listening to Ain’t Nothing But A Cyber Coup & You may not change your reaction to either the State of the Union Address or the conduct of the Senate over the last week, but it may still give some reassuring strokes to your personal attitude!

Today is Sophie Tucker's Birthday!

Share a dirty joke with a friend!

Infrastructure Priorities

The other day I was listening to Frank Deford's comments on Morning Edition concerned primarily with the fall from grace of basketball in New York. This led to a reflection of Madison Square Garden having become a relic of history (my words, not Deford's) in an age when just about any city either had or was planning an even higher-tech arena. I forget his exact words, but they were something to the effect that such arenas had become a city's excuse for infrastructure. Regardless of the exact wording, the authorial intent really stuck with me.

I have had any number of experiences with infrastructure, both positive and negative. On the positive side I have been in any number of cities of different sizes that have been impressively accommodating to whatever my day-to-day activities happened to have been, whether they involved work or tourism. Unfortunately, very few of those cities are in the United States, which is why most of my infrastructure experiences have been negative! I had my first car when I became a graduate student in the Greater Boston Area, and there was no end of deterioration that I would encounter both within cities and along the arteries that connected them. Decades later I was living in Stamford, Connecticut, when the Mianus River Bridge on Interstate 95 collapsed. Now I live in a city with any number of socio-cultural advantages but where day-to-day life tends to bring frequent encounters with infrastructure failures, each of which, at best, is treated by trying to close the barn door after the horse has been stolen.

So, between Deford's curmudgeonly dismissal of the new sports arena as an excuse for infrastructure and a residence from which I can see infrastructure deterioration just by looking out my window, I came this morning to C. W. Nevius' column in the San Francisco Chronicle. Apparently negotiations are under way to bring the Golden State Warriors back to San Francisco; and the deal involves (you guessed it) building a new ("state-of the-art," as Nevius emphasized) sports arena in Mission Bay. Needless to say, this is one of those efforts that is going to involve considerable flows of money. Just to get into the right ballpark (which seems like the appropriate metaphor for both the location and the intention), consider that it will probably cost the Warriors around $60 million to get out of the current lease with the Oakland-Alameda County Sports Authority before it expires in 2027. Think of that as a baseline for which the financial planners will have to find the right multiplier (it had better not be an exponent!) to cover everything else. Meanwhile, we have a public transportation system that progressively gets worse and costs more. Whenever possible, I tend to go for the pedestrian option, which sometimes provides an entertainment benefit in observing traffic congestion. Some of that congestion is just a matter of too many cars; but there are also the incidents of utility-related breakdowns below the surface of the streets. Those are the occasions when things really come to a screaming (considering the way people react, that usage is literal rather than figurative) halt.

The point behind Deford's swipe has to do with how rapidly any city, regardless of its size, seems to embrace a state-of-the-art arena as an instrument of development. The embrace is so passionate that no one ever bothers to ask whether there might be better ways to spend the money that would also further development but in less noticeable ways. Besides, wasn't Mission Bay supposed to be the site of a major complex that would make San Francisco a world leader in biotechnology?

High-Wire Chutzpah

I told this joke over two years ago on this blog (and more times that I can recall in social conversation). It's the one about a mule that can do any kind of work on the farm, provided that first you whack him on the head several times with a two-by-four "in order to get his attention." I find it a good way to approach our chronic cultural problem of evading (if not outright denying) our sense of reality. I suspect that this is the sort of thing that Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva had in mind when he spoke at a press conference held in conjunction with a visit to Brazil by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. As reported for BBC NEWS from Sao Paolo by Gary Duffy, Lula offered his own interpretation of how the world can come to be in economic crisis:

It is a crisis caused and encouraged by the irrational behaviour of white people with blue eyes, who before the crisis appeared to know everything, but are now showing that they know nothing.

It takes high-octane chutzpah to invoke such language in a diplomatic setting, leaving it to Brown to keep up diplomatic appearances, which, according to Duffy, he seems to have done:

If Mr Brown appeared uncomfortable with this claim, he did his best not to show it.

The press, on the other hand, was more interested in the smell of blood in the water and tried to get Lula to elaborate. Surprisingly enough, he obliged:

As I do not know any black or indigenous bankers. I can only say it is not possible for this part of mankind, which is victimised more than any other, to pay for the crisis.

Without trying to be an apologist, I think it is important to recognize that these are the words of a man whose ox has been seriously gored. Back in September it seemed as if Brazil had been blessed with a new source of wealth in the form of potentially vast deepwater resources of hydrocarbons. At that time Lula had the chutzpah to start laying down plans that indicated that, as I wrote at the time, he was "more interested in resolving existing problems of education and poverty than … in turning his country into the next 'engine of economic growth.'" Indeed, he went so far as to take this discovery as an opportunity "to rethink the very nature of governance," by virtue of being liberated from those who, regardless of the color of skin or eyes, "appeared to know everything." All those plans must now be on hold when both the price of oil and the very "wealth of nations" have been thrown into question by circumstances that can be traced back to those aforementioned (if undiplomatically so) "Masters of the Universe" (now trying to be "masters of rehab").

So was today's chutzpah nothing more than a man whose ox was gored trying to gore another man's ox? Would answering that question determine whether the chutzpah carried a positive or negative connotation? I doubt that there is a clear answer to that second question. My guess is that if these words had come from the mouth of Hugo Chávez (who already holds a Chutzpah of the Week award), then the Western press would spare no effort to condemn him as a "red menace;" but, since both the United States and the United Kingdom see Brazil as an important economic partner, the media will go to great lengths to make sure that Public Opinion (perhaps as personified by Jacques Offenbach) will cut him some slack. (For the record I have no idea of the color of Brown's eyes.) For all we know Lula was well aware of the extent to which Public Opinion really wants to direct her anger at "sticking it to the rich;" but, if he was playing to that anger, then his chutzpah is taking him to the brink of demagoguery. My personal feeling is that there is no clear call on the nature of this particular act of chutzpah, but the act is strong enough to justify Lula receiving his first Chutzpah of the Week award. Whatever else we may say about him, he invoked an interesting strategy to get the mule's attention.

The Epitome of Understatement

Forget about Chuck Shepherd's NEWS of the WEIRD or even the Odd News category for Yahoo! News aggregation. If your tastes run to the off-beat, then click your heels three times and say, "There's no place like the BBC!" After all, this is news from the country of William ("Lord, what fools these mortals be!") Shakespeare (even if he cribbed that line from Seneca). Last night's dispatch, however, was not a matter of British whimsy coming from some remote corner of the "sceptered isle" but a rather curious account of the justice system in the Democratic Republic of Congo:

A minister in the Democratic Republic of Congo has ordered a Kinshasa jail to release a dozen goats, which he said were being held there illegally.

Deputy Justice Minister Claude Nyamugabo said he found the goats just in time during a routine jail visit.

The beasts were due to appear in court, charged with being sold illegally by the roadside.

The minister said many police had serious gaps in their knowledge and they would be sent for retraining.

Perhaps Nyamugabo felt that understatement would be the best way to emphasize the absurdity of this situation without having to face up to the problems faced by humans unfortunate to find themselves in the DRC prison system or addressing the question of whether "blame the evidence" is standard operating procedure in the Ministry of Justice. After all, the blindfold that Justice wears probably does not affect her sense of smell!

Superstitious about Language

Paul Reynolds, world affairs correspondent for the BBC, has written a useful think piece for the BBC News Web site on the role of foreign policy in the coming Presidential election, contrasting the current position statements being delivered by John McCain and Barack Obama. He structured the piece in terms of McCain speeches directed to attack Obama and Obama responses that, in turn, attack McCain. Unfortunately, one of the Obama quotes invoked a haunting memory from my high school history days:

The American people are going to look at the evidence. We don't get a sense that this has been a wise foreign policy or a smart foreign policy or a tough foreign policy.

The memory was of a Democratic candidate who lost a Presidential election. The candidate was Al Smith; and he gave a famous (at least still in my high school days) speech attacking the policy of Prohibition. He is best known for the first sentence of that speech (to the extent that more people remember the sentence than remember that the speech was about Prohibition):

Let's look at the record.

He then confronted the American people with evidence (choosing my words from Obama's text) to demonstrate that a Constitutional Amendment that had been motivated by what may be called a "War Against Sin" had actually led to a significant increase in violent crime, much of which was directly related to the trafficking of goods that had been declared constitutionally illegal.

My point is that, compelling as Smith's speech was, the American people didn't look at the evidence. They were more preoccupied with fear. Prohibition was escalated to Constitutional authority through the zealous efforts of Protestant evangelists, who knew precisely how to cultivate fears, not only of sin and hell-fire but also of those who did not embrace their particular breed of Christianity. Smith was victimized by those fears not only by opposing Prohibition but by being Catholic. (In 1884, long before Prohibition became a Constitutional Amendment, the Republicans had already classified the Democrats as the party of "Rum, Romanism and Rebellion.")

One lesson from Reynolds' analysis is that things have not changed very much. The Republicans still know how to cultivate fear of rebellion and have reaped considerable political gain from transforming their predecessors' "War Against Sin" into a "War Against Terror." Romanism, on the other hand, has been replaced by Islam, particularly as embodied by the new linguistic barbarism of our culture, "Islamofacism." (Invoking The New Oxford American Dictionary, Wikipedia uses a less extreme characterization than I do, calling the word a "controversial neologism!") Thus, Reynolds offers a simple example of McCain's skill at fear-mongering:

The McCain campaign circulated this comment: "We need change in America, but not the kind of change that wins kind words from Hamas, surrenders in Iraq and will hold unconditional talks with Iranian President Ahmadinejad."

In one sentence, John McCain linked three American foreign policy fears - Hamas, Iraq and Iran - and tried to isolate Mr Obama as unreliable on all three.

However, if good slogans come in threes, then the Republicans have been very careful about manipulating the third element. I would suggest that the issue of rum has now evolved into the issue of race. This is particularly evident in a post written last week by Doug Feaver for his dot.comments blog for The Washington Post. The post is a reflection on a report that had recently appeared on the front page of the Post's print edition, summarized by Feaver in his first paragraph:

Kevin Merida wrote a front-page story earlier this week reporting that Sen. Barack Obama's "phone-bank volunteers and campaign surrogates are encountering a raw racism and hostility that have gone largely unnoticed -- and unreported -- this election season. Doors have been slammed in their faces. They've been called racially derogatory names (including the white volunteers). And they've endured malicious rants and ugly stereotyping from people who can't fathom that the senator from Illinois could become the first African American president."

The Web version of that story accumulated 3300 comments in the time between its appearance (last Monday) and the time of Feaver's post (last Thursday). Feaver used his post to reproduce what he felt was a representative sample, neither offering any critical observations nor trying to draw any conclusions.

Reading his selection reminded me of the sorts of calls placed to C-SPAN's Washington Journal (which I listen to on XM, rather than watch on television). While this program gets its share of "oddball calls," it has a high proportion of listeners who deserve attention; but, what I like most is that C-SPAN provides separate call-in numbers for Democrats, Republicans, and independents. This provides an approximation (which, of course may be disguised) of the background of any caller who chooses to make a comment about race, whether it involves Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama, or racially divisive language in political advertising. The Washington Post made no effort to identify the backgrounds or persuasions of the authors of all those comments it received; but we have already been exposed to accusations (which may or may not be valid) of Republican involvement in cultivating fear of race.

My point is that the Republican rallying standard of "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion" may now very well have been transformed into "Race, Islamofacism, and Terrorism" (even if it is no longer alliterative); and this new standard draws just as much strength from cultivating fear as the old one did in 1884. If Obama really believes that this standard can be pulled down because "The American people are going to look at the evidence," then he may be lacking sufficient respect for how formidable the force of well-cultivated fear can be. I would suggest that he and his strategists set aside some time to examine what were the most critical factors in Smith's loss to Herbert Hoover in 1928 and make sure that they do not find themselves bitten once again by those same factors.

Depression on the Job

In light of yesterday's extended post on depression, it is worth noting that the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration has just released a report that ranks jobs on the basis of the percentage of employees who get depressed with their work. The key results have been summarized in an Associated Press dispatch by Kevin Freking:

People who tend to the elderly, change diapers and serve up food and drinks have the highest rates of depression among U.S. workers.

Overall, 7 percent of full-time workers battled depression in the past year, according to a government report available Saturday.

Women were more likely than men to have had a major bout of depression, and younger workers had higher rates of depression than their older colleagues.

Almost 11 percent of personal care workers _ which includes child care and helping the elderly and severely disabled with their daily needs _ reported depression lasting two weeks or longer.

During such episodes there is loss of interest and pleasure, and at least four other symptoms surface, including problems with sleep, eating, energy, concentration and self-image.

Workers who prepare and serve food _ cooks, bartenders, waiters and waitresses _ had the second highest rate of depression among full-time employees at 10.3 percent.

In a tie for third were health care workers and social workers at 9.6 percent.

The lowest rate of depression, 4.3 percent, occurred in the job category that covers engineers, architects and surveyors.

There may an interesting correlation lurking in these data, which is that there is a correlation between the probability of depression at work and the extent to which work is conducted in the social world (as opposed to the subjective or objective worlds). Is this a sign that empathy may be an "occupational hazard;" or is it a consequence of the likelihood that one may have to empathize with a client who is, as a result of prevailing conditions, already depressive? In the Mencken tradition any simple answer to a question like this is bound to be wrong; but just raising the question supports the premise that we need to recognize that there pathological aspects to work today, which are in dire need of serious analysis. There are truths lurking here that, as Herbert Agar put it, "men prefer not to hear;" but, like Oedipus, we must pursue those truths, even if they ultimately lead to unpleasant truths about ourselves. After all Oedipus was eventually redeemed at Colonus and died a quiet and peaceful death there. Given the extent to which our very environment (both physical and social) is exacting revenge for the damage we have done to it, the rest of us should be as fortunate as Oedipus!